This International Women’s Day, we want to highlight the importance of supporting females every day. We’re using the hashtag #ItsNotJustADay to remind other organisations that championing strong women is an ongoing commitment.

We want to celebrate all the female leaders within our network that we have the pleasure of working with, through a snapshot of the past 12 months:

Read more about our fantastic events, as well as keeping up to date with future plans, here: https://www.emearecruitment.com/events

All past episodes of the EMEA Recruitment podcast are available here: https://www.emearecruitment.com/podcasts

You can also find out more about the wonderful members of our team through their profiles: https://www.emearecruitment.com/our-team-members

We’re also proud to reveal our latest initiative to promote Diversity & Inclusion in the workplace. We are supporting the Boardroom, an exclusive, members-only club for senior women leaders in Switzerland, founded by Diana Markaki.

According to a recent PwC report, Switzerland lags significantly behind the international field in terms of gender diversity; only 16% of board members at the 100 largest Swiss companies are women. the Boardroom hopes to create and cultivate an active pipeline of qualified female leaders to fill corporate board positions.

the Boardroom is a strong network that supports and encourages women to achieve their professional goals, enables companies to retain and promote senior female talent, and helps boards achieve gender parity.

Not only does the Boardroom help female leaders land a board seat, but it also helps them succeed when they get there.

Are you looking to promote gender equality in your organisation? Your female leaders could benefit from the education, coaching, networking and inspiration of the Boardroom. Please contact Diana Markaki to find out how to apply or to ask any questions you have: https://www.linkedin.com/in/diana-markaki/

If you have any questions or comments regarding Diversity & Inclusion, please contact Charlotte Cruise, our ED&I Ambassador.

Almost overnight, the COVID-19 pandemic transformed the work experience for millions of people across the globe.

For Human Resources (HR), the impact has been huge. Rarely has the spotlight shone so brightly on this function, and many have felt the strain as they do their best to support their employees through this incredibly difficult time.

In particular, the huge rise in remote working has exposed flaws in many employers’ benefits packages, and benefits and wellbeing management systems.

It is important to remember that such dramatic workplace changes, such as remote home working, undertaken for sustained periods, can be both isolating and not suitable for employees accustomed to coming into an office every day. So, the need to link remote working employees and look after their wellbeing has never been greater.

Flexible working is a theme that’s gained a lot of traction in recent years, but ultimately simply refers to a way of working to suit an employee’s needs. This can mean making adjustments to start and finish times, to allow an employee time to drop off/pick up a child from school, or even working from home where necessary.

This simple gesture can improve an employee’s loyalty to their employer, can make them feel more motivated and can also start to tackle some Diversity issues: with almost no geographical restriction, there will be a bigger pool of candidates to consider, it is a better option for working parents, and will benefit candidates with physical or mental disabilities.

Employers need to recognise there will be no return to ‘business as usual’ for the foreseeable future and, instead, they need to adapt to the ‘new normal’. They must ensure their employees’ changing needs are supported, no matter where they’re based.

Employees have been forced to cope with unprecedented change, but this can also be a unifying experience that helps build trust and loyalty between employers and their workers, and this must continue to be nurtured.

The current crisis has also highlighted the fragility of many employers’ existing employee benefits systems, many of which weren’t designed to be accessed or managed remotely. Employers without digital solutions that are fit for the future of work will find it increasingly difficult to cope with the demands.

Overall, it's important that, during this testing time, HR will focus on ensuring the working wellbeing of its people to ensure that they are fit for purpose in the ‘new normal’. This will sustain your competitive advantage and establish your credentials as a responsible employer.

We understand the unique challenges of Human Resources recruitment. If you require support with your HR recruitment needs, please contact Keely Straw to arrange a call on: +41 41 588 1876 or email: [email protected]

As 2020 came to an end, a lot of us reflected on what last year meant to us, especially working from home.

In March, when the majority of employees were asked to work from home, it was an exciting prospect. It gave us the flexibility that working from the office full-time couldn’t offer. We welcomed the idea of not having a commute and the luxury of being able to make your own lunch everyday with open arms.

However, as we look back on last year, there are definitely some things we want to change in 2021, in order to make our working from home environment even more productive and beneficial. One of the best things about being in the office is being able to see your co-workers.

Although we won’t be able to have office catch-ups in person for a while, planning virtual coffees has been one way of keeping in regular contact with our colleagues, where we can catch up on life outside of meetings!

This is one of the five things we want to change this year, so here are some tips for working from home that we're taking with us into the New Year:

1. Pretend like you are going into the office – When working from home, try to prepare as if you were going into the office. Make a coffee, wear a nice outfit (try to avoid sweatpants!) and give yourself a chance to wake up before logging on.
    
2. Structure your day like you are in the office – At home, you are your own manager. Make sure to segment your tasks over the course of the day, to avoid getting burned out or losing focus.
    
3. Get some fresh air – Weather permitting, it’s important to try and get out if you can. Even if it’s a quick walk around the block!
    
4. Work when you’re most productive – It’s natural for your motivation to rise and fall throughout the day. Make sure you understand your working pattern to capitalise on your most productive periods.
    
5. Stay connected – Video calls are a great way to break up the day and keep in touch with your colleagues.

If you have any other tips for working from home successfully, let us know by contacting Neil Cope at [email protected] 

There's no doubt that 2020 was an unusual year in many ways. In the professional sphere, one of the most significant has been 'The Great Work From Home Experiment’.

For many years, despite the tools and technologies being readily available, many corporate cultures viewed working from home as code for 'Netflix & Chill’. The past year has surely demonstrated that, for most office/computer-based workers, if anything, the opposite applies.

People consistently tell us that their working day has expanded to include their prior commuting time and that, for the majority, their days are longer - accommodating colleagues and video calls across multiple timezones.

Interestingly, people for whom it is an option have also told us how much they have enjoyed the social elements of the occasional day in the office - to the extent that they often feel as if they get less work done while they are there!

We have also identified a third group, who have optimised their use of technology by relocating their WFH to cabins in the mountains - or even entirely different countries!

For us, the big question is this - what happens next?

At some point this year, we hope to return to a situation where groups can congregate more safely and so we are curious to see how corporates respond - whether their suspicion of WFH returns, whether they close offices entirely or look for some sort of meeting-hub hybrid.

Equally, we are also seeing a distinct shift with candidates, who have a far greater expectation of location flexibility than ever before.

Finally, as always, there is the caveat of too much of a good thing - if teams demonstrate that they can collaborate effectively in a distributed manner anywhere in the world, then what is the benefit for a company to continue to employ those teams in a high-cost location?

EMEA Recruitment is proud to be working in collaboration with St. Gallen University’s Institute of Cognitive Automation to bridge the gap between humans and machines.

This research intervention is working with project leaders across Switzerland’s leading businesses, who want to help close the gap between automation and human augmentation.

We know that 70% of digital transformations within businesses fail, but the failure rate has actually increased with technology. St. Gallen University has found that 85% of Data Science projects add no value to a business.

We know that the Future of Work is not solved by one company. Therefore, St. Gallen University’s Cognitive Automation Institute has worked with us to find companies who want to optimise human augmentation.

Project leaders from these businesses are now participating in research to find out where and how they’re going wrong.

The project is broken down into two phases:

Phase 1: Structured Interviews

All participants will receive the critical human and machine teaming design criterion, using a method of inquiry to identify the design challenges in cognitive automation.

Phase 2: Empirical Study

For selected companies, a human and machine solution that addresses the criterion would be defined at a pragmatic level, e.g. process level or judgment level. To impact the company on the criterion identified.

We are delighted to be collaborating with St. Gallen University’s Dr. Chantelle Brandt Larsen on this research.

We look forward to supporting the Institute of Cognitive Automation and our partner businesses throughout this research project, and to working towards a human and machine solution to change the Future of Work.

You can read more about our ongoing partnerships here: https://www.emearecruitment.com/partnerships

If there is anything you’d like to discuss with us or for more information, please contact Mark Robinson in our Swiss recruitment team.

Many of us had to adapt to working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, but what mix of home working and working in the office would we prefer?

Employees were advised to work from home where possible from March 2020 onwards in both Switzerland and the Netherlands, as the pandemic took hold in Europe.

Although flexible working was already quite common across Europe prior to COVID-19 restrictions, remote work has still been a new phenomenon for many office workers. But do we actually prefer working from home, or have we missed working from the office?

The pandemic will have given many employers and employees the opportunity to consider home working for the first time. Moving forwards, some workers may feel that they prefer working from home, and could try to split their working hours between the office and home. Some may never want to return to the office at all.

At EMEA Recruitment, we wanted to hear from our network across Switzerland and the Netherlands, to determine how many days people prefer working in the office versus working from home.

The results may be interesting to managers, particularly in the Human Resources sector, considering how to integrate remote working in the future.

On LinkedIn, we ran a poll for one week from 21^st -28^th October. We had a total of 1,364 votes on the survey, which asked respondents to vote for their ideal mix of office work/working from home.

The poll revealed a staggering preference for working one to two days from home, with the remaining days in the office. This option won 47% of the vote, with 642 professionals choosing this mix.

The second most popular choice highlighted a clear preference for remote working, with 38% of respondents (or 524 people) opting for working three to four days from home.

In fact, working from home five days per week was the preferred option for 10% of people (130), indicating that the days of full-time office work may be behind us. Just 5% of professionals (68) said they would like to work in the office five days a week.

Although many of us would like to be in the office most of the time, companies should be aware of how many professionals feel that working from home is beneficial to them in some way. Perhaps the changes brought about by the pandemic could enforce more flexible working conditions for office workers moving forwards, in line with their clear preferences.

We would be interested to hear from HR leaders who are navigating the changing world of work on your plans for the future. If you based in Switzerland, please contact Keely Straw or if you are in the Netherlands, contact Katie Insley.