The rise of flexible working — accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic — has brought many benefits to employees and employers in recent years.

Arguably it should have been an easier adjustment for freelancers and fractionals, most of whom would have enjoyed a more flexible approach to remote working.

When it comes to managing flexible working to achieve a happy and healthy work-life blend — not to be confused with a work-life balance as it blends your personal and professional priorities, rather than separate them entirely — it doesn’t feel like fractionals, freelancers and founders are always reaping the benefits.

If a work-life blend is about moving smoothly between your work life and your personal life, it could feel like the working day is never properly over. Throw in caring responsibilities and it starts to sound like not-so-organised chaos.

Learning to blend

For me personally, it’s opened up career opportunities that simply didn’t exist just five years ago in the early days of Start Communication. During lockdown, clients experienced flexible working themselves, and have a greater understanding of the different ways they can work with freelancers. And with understanding comes respect for the scope of the project or role that has been agreed.

For those sceptical of the concept of work-life blend, it might sound like it means the removal of boundaries. For me, it’s been about setting clear boundaries and being unapologetic in communicating them to clients.

This is critical too, as a leader.

Flexible working is not just policies, they have to be lived, breathed and grounded in reality. I talk openly about how I manage my own time and responsibilities with my team to make it clear that flexibility isn’t a hidden privilege.

Bills and boundaries

Fractionals and freelancers should always be aware of their own value. Time is money, so price accordingly.

Regular benchmarking will ensure you’re charging enough for your time — whether you’re in bed with a business for the long haul, or brought in to deliver a tactical win or specific deliverable. This also means making time to handle the admin and for all-important business development.

While it’s tempting to fill every working hour with billable work to maximise income, it’s critical to ringfence regular time for prospecting and to send/chase those invoices, so the money keeps coming in. AI can be your friend with productivity tools to automate administrative tasks, which personally helps me to focus on the parts of my job that I love.

Benefits for working mothers

At the start of the month (5 March) CIPR revealed there is still a gap in women at senior levels in PR, and one thing that could help to address this is to stop thinking of flexible working as something only for women or those with caring responsibilities. If it’s embraced more widely, women won’t be penalised if they do need to adopt a more flexible pattern to accommodate their family.

That ability to balance, juggle, and to flex develops skills with real commercial value, such as time-keeping, ruthless efficiency, multi-tasking, prioritising and decision making.

While things have improved for the better in recent years, reports like the one from the CIPR do reflect that there’s still some way to go. If employers can embrace the work-life blend, as well as employees, we will see a more inclusive, diverse and productive workforce — and that can only be a good thing.