Productivity and innovation are essentials for any successful Recruitment Consultant, however, what yields more… A Consultant working from home or a Consultant working in an office?
COVID-19 has caused a seismic shake of both the economy and our working environments, assuming you are one of the lucky ones to still have a company to go back to – and to all those people, I hope the market picks up for you and you take this time to re-align your goals and help support the UK through volunteer work or get paid to help the core sectors (Tesco, Asda, Ocado, Sainsbury's are all hiring!). Once the country is back on its feet, I hope you can find a job, and quickly.
I’d love to write this post and present a very logical for an argument for working from home, however, I am somewhat opposed to the notion of permanently doing so (and this view is representational of my experiences, founding and managing a recruitment agency focusing on placing candidates within the Utilities and Energy sectors).
Although some industries thrive on a WFH environment, a friend of mine works as a CX consultant, and his creative juices flow freely when sat at home, the environment seems to stimulate the creative thinking he requires. However, recruitment is fundamentally undercover sales (or if you work at Toro, it’s just sales!) – and a sales environment requires consistent praise and positive affirmations.
Although it's our duty as recruiters to create and help with hiring solutions for our clients, I'd argue that a lot of the day to day tasks remain the same: talk to top candidates in the market, sort through leads, generate referrals, account management, new business development, emails, etc. Generally, these tasks require well-defined habits and not necessarily a lot of creativity. Having people around you, who you can hear constantly on the phone, excites me and makes me want to get onto the phone - I think this excitement spreads in the office and you bounce off yours and your colleague's wins.
As a Recruitment Agency Founder and Managing Director, I ultimately want to facilitate an environment that breeds innovation and productivity. I, therefore, think having one foot on each side of the court might be the ultimate solution. When we finally go back to work and awaken to a new reality, I for one, have learnt the importance of a working sales environment to drive performance and the importance of working from home to increase innovation - it's likely I will discuss with my staff the possibility of working from home for a portion of the week to get this balance right.
In the current economical downswing we find ourselves in, it's hard to seek out positives, however, I hope this blog has made you think openly about the possibility of working from home in conjunction with our standard working regime - to optimise both productivity and creativity, a balance of both working at home and in the office may have to have to be considered as the new working normality.
My opinions are that of my own and are my unique experiences, however, I'd love to hear your point of view on the matter and would appreciate any and all opinions, so please feel free to post them below in the comments section (via LinkedIn).