Weve come to flexible working bit by bit. There were lots of reasons for it: recruitment and retention, the fact that buildings were not being used to their full capacity, traffic congestion in Cambridge and its effect on travelling, and the need to provide e-government by 2005. New technology has made flexible working possible.
We piloted it with one team moving to a new building. Part of our HR team moved to a new department, and a modernisation group was set up to support it, to live the flexible working idea. Personally I was given a new laptop and a mobile phone card. Now I no longer have to drive 50 miles to read my emails, I schedule all my meetings for one day and catch up at home the next.
Training for managers and staff is absolutely vital to make this work, and the example has to be set at the top. People need support its not just a case of Heres a laptop go home. Its not unlike the shift to open-plan offices flexible working takes getting used to, people may not like it at first.
Carol Savage, managing director, Flexecutive
The business case for flexible working is not complicated. You widen your chances of recruiting the best people if you offer more flexible working practices. Its a competitive tool in the war for talent its not just about salary.
Peoples requirements change as they go through different life stages, so flexible working helps retain talent too. It gives them control. You arent forcing staff into non-creative work between nine and six.
But a flexible working culture has to respond to the business needs and its customers. You cant just put up a sign saying, Were all going part-time. And culture means having more than just a policy, it means providing support for managers so they can make flexible working a reality. Managers have a right to say no, but equally people must know that opting for flexible working isnt going to harm their career prospects. Performance management in this context means worrying about what people do, not where and when they do it.
Peter Thomson, director, Future Work Foundation, Henley Management College
To create a genuine flexible working culture, it has to be part of HR strategy. At the moment it still happens by accident rather than by design. You need champions at the top to emphasise that flexible working is a business imperative.
You are really talking about a more enlightened approach to management, where managers trust employees to make their own decisions about how they manage their workload. Formal contracts of employment mitigate against this they are much more literal about where you work and between which hours.
This will come into sharper focus next year April 2003 when the new Employment Act will give employees the right to request flexible working, and employers will have to provide business reasons why this may not be offered. Pretty soon people without children are going to say, I wouldnt mind a bit of that flexibility. They may have ageing parents, or just want to play golf.
There will be a lot of pressure to introduce flexible working. And of course it is about productivity too. This isnt about welfare, it is about challenging the long hours culture and establishing a healthier work/life balance.
