By Naseema Banu Maideen

They are in the talent search business. They value their candidates for their competencies and value-add. So, business leaders in PeopleSearch Pte Ltd well know the impact on their clients when they lose talented employees who slip out of the workforce.

A good number of those who leave the workforce are women. Some leave because they cannot choose work over family. Some emigrate with their husbands on career postings. There are also some to want to further their studies to enhance their careers.

But as a regional executive search firm headquartered in Singapore, PeopleSearch believes it can be a strong advocator of promoting flexible work arrangements in its business of matching suitable candidates with the appropriate organizations.

Said Madam Jaime Lim, Consulting Director of PeopleSearch Singapore :”PeopleSearch is constantly identifying talents for our clients and sometimes the talent exists as an inactive talent. When employers evaluate candidate profiles, the preference tends to be for candidates who are in the active workforce as their experience and skill-sets are considered to be current.”

“Where the nature of job operations allows, when employers open their minds to flexibility and are willing to explore some form of job redesign, they can retain their skilled manpower or attract the inactive workforce keen on a flexible work arrangement.”

NTUC Women’s Development Secretariat has made getting companies to offer flexible work options a priority. PeopleSearch is one such company and it is actively promoting the Flexi-Works! initiative to help businesses attract more women into the workforce.

“There will be firms that need more resources when closing books or research companies that have special projects on hand, and they may not need full-time people, yet require skilled people. This is when they can make use of inactive talent that comes with a lot of value-add and life-skills from their years of experience from the industries that they have worked in.”

“Working mothers with children younger than 7 years old may prefer to work on flexi-hours. Some candidates have expressed interest to go back to the workforce when the children grow older, and therefore prefer to stay current with the market trends by taking on jobs with flexible work arrangements,” said Madam Lim.

Walking The Talk
Well before adopting flexibility at the workplace became the talk of the town, PeopleSearch had already been advocating such work arrangements. With the enhancement of the Flexi-Works! funding, which provides a new tranche of funding to help companies introduce flexible work arrangements, PeopleSearch will also be reviewing additional ways of attracting economically inactive workers.

“We have formalized our plans to enable staff to telecommute and the enhancement of this Flexi-Works! initiative in March this year is timely for us to execute our plans. Due to the confidentiality of our work nature, we have invested significantly in our IT infrastructure for telecommuters to connect to our IT network while protecting client and candidate information,” said Mrs. Peggy Toh, Human Resource Manager of PeopleSearch Singapore.

PeopleSearch is an employer of about 100 consultants in Singapore; about 80 per cent of them are females.