This week’s UKTN Podcast guest is Flexa CEO and co-founder Molly Johnson-Jones, who discusses the future of flexible working, how companies can “turn hiring into marketing” and why she thinks some corporate CEOs are using flexible working as a scapegoat for innovation failures.
Flexa is a careers platform that aggregates a company’s workplace benefits to give job candidates more information when applying for a role. Johnson-Jones co-founded the company in 2020 – alongside Maurice O’Brien, and Tim Leppard – after she was told to leave her job in investment banking. It came after Johnson-Jones, who has an auto-immune disease, had submitted a flexible work request.
“And so I was told, after about 18 months being at that company, that they were open to flexible working requests and that I should put one in, so I did,” says Johnson-Jones. “And about 10 days later, they put a settlement package in front of me, told me I was underperforming and to leave immediately.”
Flexa aims to inform job candidates about a company’s remote working and benefits policies. Approved companies, which include the likes of Atom Bank and Improbable, can then advertise open roles on the platform and applicants can filter by criteria. More than 2.5 million people now use the platform. In 2022, the startup raised £2m in a seed funding round led by Ada Ventures.
While the Covid-19 pandemic forever changed how we see the world of work, there are some who Johnson-Jones thinks are using flexible work for their own agendas.
“So I think we’re in a really divisive time where there’s a lot of rhetoric around flexible working being bad and it’s a scourge on society because everyone’s too lonely or they’re avoiding or they’re working four jobs or whatever it might be, but a lot of it’s scaremongering I think,” she explains.
Elsewhere in this episode, the Flexa CEO looks at the different approaches startups and corporates are taking for flexible working, and shares her view on the UK’s recent flexible working legislation.
Listen to the full episode here, along with all previous episodes of the UKTN Podcast.
The UKTN Podcast is sponsored by HSBC Innovation Banking, which offers flexible banking solutions for startups, scaleups, growth businesses, investors and those working towards IPO.
Throughout the series, the UKTN Podcast will be speaking to some of the key movers and shakers from UK tech. We’ll learn growth strategies from both seasoned and up-and-coming founders, hear market sentiments from investors, and question policymakers on the decisions impacting the country’s innovation economy.
Sign up for our podcast newsletter to ensure you don’t miss an episode.
The post Podcast: What does the future of flexible working look like? – Flexa’s Molly Johnson-Jones appeared first on UKTN.
