Embedding flexible working for all

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so let's get started good afternoon everybody and welcome to today's cipd webinar on
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embedding flexible working for all i hope you're all well my name is daphne judy green and i'm the head of cipd
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northern england and i'm delighted to be hosting this session for you today and it's great to see so many of you
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joining and continuing to join and for what is especially an important and topical discussion as we consider
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how we create more inclusive and fair workplaces both now and in the future
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so last month we launched our flex from first campaign where we're encouraging employers to support flexible working
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this includes a change to uk law to make flexible working requests a right from day one
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so you can pledge your support and through the flexible working pages which are on the slide in front of you
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and i guess this flexible working campaign really sets the context for today's session so in today's session you're
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going to hear from three speakers who will share insights evidence and examples that will
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support you as you consider embedding flexible working practices and making it a
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reality in your organizations we're joined by ben wilbot wilmot who's the head of
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public policy at cipd dr charlotte gastline who is a flexible working consultant
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and researcher with 20 years experience in changing organizational practice and vicki casey chartered member of cipd
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and head of hr business partnering at the university of sutherland so thank you all for joining
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us today and contributing to this session um i do have some housekeeping that i
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need to cover off with you and before we get started so the session will be recorded and will
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be available on demand via our webinar section of the website and you can also access
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um previous webinar recordings and sign up some future ones including this week's um session on how
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to run successful online placements um on thursday we'll also be hosting another session on
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the 8th of march on testing followed by a discussion panel disc discussion story on mental health
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um and um there are future uh webinars also available so if you haven't please um go on to the
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webinar pages and register now slice will be available um later on and
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my colleagues will add a link and to the flexible working pages of our website
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you will be muted throughout the session and um to submit questions we would suggest
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that you use the q a box not the chat function and as we won't be monitoring the chat function
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please use the q a box and i'd strongly encourage you to ask um questions today this is your opportunity
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if you do want to network and share observations please use the chat function and but use the all
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panelist and attendees button to make sure everybody can um see your comments and
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before we get started i just want to remind you of all the great resources that we have available for you we are updating our faqs and resources
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all the time on the cipd website to make sure that you have um everything available
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to respond to the current situation so reminded to go to the cipd coronavirus hub and we've also updated our flexible
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working pages so you can get the latest guidance and resources um available for our members
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you do have access as members to an individual legal advice line so call hr inform helpline and that's
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available 24 7. and then finally cipd members in the uk and ireland can also access
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our new well-being hub and helpline so together with an award-winning workplace well-being
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provider health assured we're now providing cipd members with free 24 7 365 days a year uh
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online and consultations with qualified therapists members can find out all that
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information via our benefits web page um as well as as you can see on the slide
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and unlimited free access to a health and app so lots of great resources for
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you to access okay so let's get started um
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cipd has been championing flexible working practices for many years now and although the pandemic has driven an
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increase in remote working it's clear that employers need to understand flexible working
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in a much better way and than beyond just homeworking our research tells us that 46 of uk
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employees still don't have access to flexible working whether that is remote working flexi time job shares compressed hours
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part-time working or even nine to five so the number of quality flexible jobs falls short in
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demand and of the current demand and there's lots of um inequalities and variables in terms
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of how employers are approaching flexible working so as we think about returning to the workplace as we think about
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creating better work and fair work um and with the disruption of coved we now have
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a significant opportunity to embrace flexibility that benefits employees and organizations more broadly
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so i'm delighted to have our three speakers as mentioned earlier ben will be our first speaker followed by charlotte and then we'll
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finish with vicky we'll open up for questions for the remainder of the session so can i encourage you again
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to post your questions and i'll get through as many as we possibly can so that's it for me for
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now i'm going to hand over to ben to get us started thank you ben
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thanks daphne and uh good morning everybody um so i thought a good place to start um would be to provide a bit of context
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and to draw on some new uh survey data um that helps to provide
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some of the rationale uh behind our flex from the first campaign
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and so uh next flight a slightly christian thank you um so rather fortuitously um
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just before the pandemic um our labor market economist john boyes uh did some analysis on
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homeworking trends up to that point up to the end of 2019
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and this slide um is taken from his report and so what it shows is data
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from the ons labor force survey um and the um the orange line is
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um the the data up until 2014 when they stopped asking the question
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around um do people work from home occasionally what it's what this slide shows is back in two 2005 about 22 percent
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of people said that they work from home occasionally uh and risen to sort of just under uh
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about sort of 24 and a half i think by 2014 and then john has extrapolated forward um using the the
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previous data as his as his sort of baseline and um so his project projection is that
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uh back uh this is about this is almost exactly this time last year um that um the proportion of people who
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work from home occasionally was about 25 uh by the end of 2019
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there's also data in the report from the lfs survey which showed that about five percent of people
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were working from home all the time um at that point as well so this led john in in the report to say we
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can confidently assert that around three and ten people work from home exclusively or occasionally so that was
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that was a situation uh broadly just before the pandemic uh next slide please um
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so um but what about now and um we have new data from an employee
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survey um which we ran in uh early january this year and what that showed is that um
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about uh four in ten people said that um they had um work typically have
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worked from home uh since the start of the pandemic either all the time or most the time and a further
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17 said they work from home some of the time and then you had about 44
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of people who had continued to have to attend the physical uh workplace
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next slide please but what about the future um so of
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course it's very difficult safe for for certain exactly what uh this will look like in terms of
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homeworking at least for the for the future but um some employer
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uh survey data which um we published um in september uh 2020
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showed that employers do expect a significant increase in the um in homeworking
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so before the crisis um employers estimated that on average
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about 18 of the of their workforce work from home on uh on a regular basis
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and about nine percent uh work from home uh all the time and then we asked
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in the survey what proportion do you think will be working from home um after the crisis and broadly the the
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proportions have doubled so after crisis um uh employers expected about on average 37
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of the workforce we hope it working from home regularly and about uh 22 to be working from home
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all the time so a really significant shift um certainly that was employers thinking back then we don't of
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course know exactly what the what the real pitch would be but i think it does suggest that there will be a sustained increase in homeworking
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next slide please however what we've also found is that um there
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is going to be at the moment there's much less focus on other forms of flexible working so this this data in this slide is taken
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from an employer survey which uh we conducted uh in january this year
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and what it showed is that while nearly half of organizations plan to take steps to enable more home
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and hybrid working over the next 12 six to 12 months um only about a third less than a third
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thirty percent of employers are planning to increase the uptake of other forms of flex working besides home working over the
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same period so i think there is a risk that we do see more of a two-tier workforce where
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some people can benefit from homeworking and the flexibility that that uh provides
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and um and many workers uh have to continue to attend at the workplace and have very
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little flexibility next slide please
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so currently overall um again this is from the employee survey from january
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this year um 54 of respondents um this is a uh a sample of 2 000
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employees waiting to be representative of representatives of people working in the uk
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um so 54 said that they have flexibility in their current role and 46 said they have no flexibility
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next slide please but we also um found from this survey that there's
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real unmet demand so not only do some people um you know have no flex working at all
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many people who do work flexibly um are not working flexibly in a way that would most suit them so this
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this slide shows um the sort of flexible working besides homeworking that people are able to use and then
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what they would choose so for example if we look at annualized hours four percent of of respondents said that
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they they currently work on uh benefit from your life hours
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but 12 would choose to work uh in this way if they could very significant um unmet demand for um
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flexi time and and then if you look at compressed hours so um in our survey
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three percent of people said that they had they benefited from either nine day um
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fortnight or four day um week um and but
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19 they would like to to benefit from from compressed hours so again this this really shows a gap
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between the sort of flexibility that the people benefit from and the sort of flexibility
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they would optimally be able to choose from next slide please and the employee
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survey also suggested that there are significant issues around around fairness
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and availability of flexible working practices from an employee perspective so 74
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it agreed it is important uh people who can't work from home can work flexibly in other ways
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41 agree that it's unfair that some people can work from home while others have to continue to attend their employees workplace and
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have little flexibility um nearly four in ten respondents said their employer seeks to provide
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uh choice to people over when and where they were suggesting this is the most significant
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proportion of responses who don't believe that is the case and while 49 agree they're able to work
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flexibly in the way the best suits their life at the moment 43 say they have very limited
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flexibility in the way they they currently work next slide please
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so um this is really part of you know the sort of rationale for um
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our flex from the from the first campaign and of course there was also um you know a significant
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business case for uh investing in fletcher working in terms of increased motivation
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recruitment retention support for working parents older workers etc um
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because increasingly an aging workforce is is going to mean that um employers going to have to be more
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flexible if they're going to be able to recruit and retreat and retain um the
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workforce that they need um so our the flex from the first
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campaign is calling um on employers and the government uh to make the right to request flexible
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working at a day one right now we know that about 30 of employers
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already provide um the right to request flex working from day one so to a large
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extent the um the campaign is really about increasing the uptake of existing good practice
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but we also think there is a strong case for government to um uh make the right to request flex
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for working a day one right rather than something you you have to effectively earn after working for an
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employer for 26 weeks so we think that would support um a move towards more
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inclusive flexible working and boost you know the number of conversations that happen around flex flexibility in the workplace
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next slide please we'll also be um championing the campaign through the
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work of the flexible working task force the um flexible working task force um
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was formed under the last government um but then um it's its work was slightly curtailed
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by the pandemic um but the small business minister uh in the current government um paul scully
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has written to ci to cipd's um ceo piece of cheese asking
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to reconvene and co-chair the task force um over the next year and um
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membership includes bay's treasury the department working pensions a cast and organizations like cbi bcc
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guc um fsb so really has a wide ranging membership and reach
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um and um the uh the first six months of the task
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force will really be looking at um a review of uh hybrid working
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practices and the creation of best practice guidance and it will also explore what can be done to support and promote
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informal ad hoc or non-contractual flex working and um the task force work will also feed into
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the forthcoming consultation on making making flex working the default uh that was one of
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the ambitions set out or the intention to consult on that was set out in the queen's speech um
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right i'll leave it there understand we've got a busy agenda for the webinar um both have to take questions as we go
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at the end of the session thank you ben um great insight there and we're going to go quickly
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on to dr charlotte gascoigne and i'm going to pass over to you now charlotte thank you
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thank you daphne and thank you ben that's a really helpful overview of the sort of landscape at the moment um i'm going to talk a
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little bit about some work that i've been doing with the cipd about the employer's response to the pandemic um this is um
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research that's coming out later this year but i have also reviewed um existing um
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previous research um particularly on homework so i'm going to talk a little bit about that um as daphne said at the beginning i've
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been i've been working in this field for um well actually it's 22 years now um so this is this is my passion
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um and i'm going to cover four areas in the in the talk today um briefly because i've only got 10
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minutes but um first of all um to talk a little bit about the flex from first campaign
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um secondly to look at home working in the pandemic and i'll be drawing on that uh work i've just mentioned with the
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cipd um thirdly to make a brief point about flexibility hours and then
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fourthly and even even brief a point about the business case as it is at the moment and i'm really drawing on
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you know the experience of being involved in this field over um a long a long period of time
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so those are my four areas um next slide please um so the first point is about um the
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flex from first campaign and i just wanted to um uh really support that campaign and say
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that this is a really important um uh step forward in terms of removing the
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barrier to changing jobs because the point of hire is an opportunity for negotiating flexible working um
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and it's one that is written sometimes people find really really difficult uh particularly because
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of this this six month period um however it so it's a really important basic principle that flex from first
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um uh levels the playing field if you like um however there are four other points or
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opportunities if you like to negotiate flexible working and i just wanted to really make the point that um you know the personal
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request is the sort of typical um opportunity that people expect to make a
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a um a request for for flexible working or to negotiate flexible working um i i really wish more more employers
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would make it part of an annual um review um so an annual review of people's
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working arrangements have you got the um the flexible working that you want um so not just when somebody
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requests but to to to take it from a sort of the employer reacting to individuals to a more proactive
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approach um so the employer actually asks rather than waiting to be asked um and then um obviously sometimes
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there are big organizational initiatives around flexible working so flexible working sometimes comes about in that in that
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way they're often linked to reducing office space um and then the last one is um i've called it market
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shock but that's when something like um coronavirus happens and as ben has demonstrated
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um huge um change in people's attitudes um a sort of um
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a trial um of of a new way of working that comes as a result of a market shock
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um so i think the uh the flex from first campaign fits really well with with within that within
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that landscape it's a really important element um next slide please is about my second
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point so my second point is about homeworking and here i'm drawing a distinction between um the hygiene factors and all
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the other factors um and the hygiene factors are the things that in in in in the um in the situation we're
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in the moment when lots of people have been doing involuntary flexible working in involuntary homework um the hygiene
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factors have not always been in place um so i'm hoping not many people are still um squashed um
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under the stairs next to the gas meter trying to work um in with inappropriate workspace or um
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it kit and so on although i know there was a lot of that at the beginning of the pandemic but obviously that's um that's a really
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basic factor um having appropriate domestic circumstances um you know another one that comes up
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all the time during the uh the pandemic um and i think it really helps to um to distinguish between the hygiene
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factors and these sort of effectiveness or work related factors um and the hygiene factors are things
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like you know the broadband the it kit um having a workstation a chair that
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doesn't hurt your back um appropriate child care if that's part of your your um part of your needs
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um and i think the pandemic has really you know made that distinction and brought that distinction to the fore
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about the hygiene factors and the work factors next slide please so when we've dealt
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with the hygiene factors um how do you get to effective um homeworking
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um and the answer is for most people as ben's landscape shows the answer is
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is probably hybrid rather than total or exclusive homework and it's all about tailoring um so um
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but having said that the hybrid picture which is the picture in the top right um you know people sharing their work um
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between working from home part of the time and working uh um in the workplace part of the time
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it doesn't work for everybody um as ben said it's maybe going to be a third of people perhaps um
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after the pandemic this hybrid working um position um but certainly um half the workforce
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at least half the workforce possibly more um has not done any homework during the uh during the pandemic they've been
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furloughed or they've been in the workplace and if you work in any of those other jobs whether it's construction or
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catering or teaching or healthcare or a really wide range of other jobs um
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you know this change hasn't happened for you um and and just to foreshadow what i'm about to
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say about the business case at the end i think we need to think a lot more about those kinds of jobs
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um so uh next slide please um very briefly what does the research
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tell us about homework um and just looking at the sort of i did a review of of previous research on um
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on homeworking um um at the end of last year um which is available on the cipd website
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five really brief points to make um first about work life boundaries um
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they can be a challenge when you're working from home um and two things happen uh work extension so people carrying on
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working into the evening or starting work earlier and work intensification which is about uh people not taking breaks
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uh not standing up stretch as much as they might you know because you're not moving to another meeting room for a um
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a um for a another meeting you're sitting at the same desk all the time in your home um you're probably not
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uh having coffee or taking breaks or you know even just walking around a bit
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um and that's definitely come up comes up all the time as a challenge for home workers um secondly concentration um
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concentration can be a benefit the the ability to concentrate to avoid distractions can be a benefit
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but only if you've got the hygiene factors sorted out um uh in fact the lack of commuting is the
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most commonly um mentioned benefit but avoiding distractions and being able to
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concentrate certainly can be a benefit um if if you've got the hygiene factors sorted out
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um thirdly the point about productivity which is the one everybody always wants to know about is our homework as
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as as productive as um as uh office workers or workplace people based in the workplace um
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i think the answer is that they can be um if if um good team processes are in place
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and good task related communication is in place um in fact there's good evidence to show
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that hybrid working can outperform co-located workers if they've got the processes right
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um so that takes us to the next point which is about tasks and i think when you're looking at home working it is all about the tasks
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um and the the the tasks within a job and the processes across the whole team
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so rather than looking at it at a job level it really helps to look at it as a at a task level and a team level
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and then finally um there are um there are long-term impacts of working
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from home um which mostly haven't come up during the pandemic because although it feels
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like it's been going on forever it is actually only just about a year um but for studies of homeworking over
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multiple years um the long-term impacts are about reductions in informal learning
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reductions in relationships reductions in cross
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team or cross company networking and indeed getting forgotten when it comes to
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promotions and those impacts are really important um in the long term uh
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next slide please um so in terms of flexible hours as ben said there's been
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much less change in flexible attitudes to flux flexible hours than the has in attitudes
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to um and to homework or flexible location um
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and the reason that it's changed much less is because it's a really different it's a totally different uh job design challenge um there are
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some jobs um symbolized by the picture in the top right where uh you know we can sort of um smash the
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clock and um our tasks can be done at any time um
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but they are probably a minority most people are doing jobs where
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the tasks require specific times and that's particularly true of um customer facing jobs um
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people working in call centers or people working in manufacturing um particularly true of interdependent jobs
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i don't think many of us are building human pyramids but um lots of us have meetings at particular times and need to talk to other people at particular times
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um and and um those interdependence is a really key element of whether your job
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can be flexible in terms of hours or not so really um next slide please um that's really
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just making that point that the flexible location scale is completely different from the flexible hours scale so in that
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sense it's perhaps not surprising that that flexible flexibility of hours hasn't changed as much as
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flexibility of location um the really positive thing is that there's attitudes to flexibility of
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um of location have changed um and that an enforced trial such as the
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one that's been um imposed on us all by the pandemic really can make a huge difference to
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people's attitudes um so but but it is important to identify which tasks are on which scale
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um and and just as a sort of sidebar you can increase um hours flexibility by looking at it
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across the whole team um particularly in those team-based jobs
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like manufacturing and call centers and retail and logistics and all those sorts of
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jobs that are based around shift patterns um so my fourth and final point is about
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um the business case um so uh the next slide um just says
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very briefly that it needs more work um and i think um i think it needs more work particularly
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around all those people who are doing jobs that don't involve sitting at a desk we have over the last
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20 years focused too much i think on office work knowledge work managerial and professional work when looking at
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hours flexibility in particular and i don't think we've really developed as well the business case for people who
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work in catering or in construction um and we need really some much more
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radical thinking about this on the costs and the benefits and where those costs and benefits fall
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because at the moment a lot of them fall on the individual and the business unit and i think there might be a case for
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saying more of the costs where there are costs need to fall at the organizational
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level or indeed at the state level and and you know the pandemic has certainly meant state intervention in this whole
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area in a way that certainly hasn't happened previously
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um so finally um just wanted to say uh next slide please finally um just um
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if anybody's interested in more of the um evidence on um previous research on
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working from home in particular that's the uh the document that's available on the crpd website that as i
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said i wrote at the end of last year and then the the report on on flexible
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working lessons from the pandemic which is about all the flexible working not just working from home um is coming out later this year
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thank you um and i will finish there and pause back to daphne great thank you charlotte lots for food
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for thought there and um uh yeah we're looking forward to to the q a just a reminder and that
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you can post your questions in the q a function at the bottom so any questions you've got
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and so far please submit them and i'm going to hand over to vicky casey now who's actually going to share
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um a case study um an example of a flexible working
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scheme that she's implemented so over to you vicky thank you thanks stephanie good afternoon everyone um as daphne
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said i'm vicki casey i am head of hr business partnering at university of sunderland
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and we experienced what um charlotte quite rightly described as a bit of a market shock
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during the pandemic um and we implemented a flexible working scheme in
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july 2020 and cipd thought it might be interesting for me to share this as
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part of this webinar so going back to summer 2020 the university
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was reforecasting its financial position following the coronavirus pandemic and
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at that point it was not clear fully what impact the pandemic would have on our income from student recruitment
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for example it seemed likely that we would need to make some cost savings and as part of that we looked at staffing
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costs and one of the ideas that was put forward was to look at whether staff would
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want to reduce their hours to work more flexibly we were also at that time revising our
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approach to how we expected staff to work generally people have been working from home much
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more um many of our staff were working completely at home managers were having to um
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adjust to that whole smashing the clock idea where people were working at a time that suited them people had children at home and caring
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responsibilities so all of those things were sort of the business drivers
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for us thinking about a flexible working scheme in addition to that the the pandemic had
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had a massive impact on all of our working lives and the research was starting to come
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out about specific groups who were disproportionately affected such as women and those with caring responsibilities
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but also people had started to get used to working in a completely different way sometimes because they had those
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responsibilities but other people were working in a way that suited their own lifestyle or personality better
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and the technology has advanced and people have become much more comfortable very quickly with technology that
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enabled that to happen and then on top of that the coronavirus
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pandemic was an enforced pause for a lot of us and people were starting to think about how they wanted their work-life balance
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to be maybe realizing that they wanted to spend more time on different activities
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to that previously or with people family friends that they hadn't had the opportunity to do
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in addition to that we were starting to think much more about our university culture
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around inclusivity so one of the things that is very good about our culture at university of
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sunderland is it's very friendly diverse and inclusive and we started to set up
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network groups for for different groups of staff and think about how we wanted to encourage people to be able to be themselves at work
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and that includes activity bringing activities outside work into the workplace and sharing information about that
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um from a well-being point of view we did put in place quite a lot of well-being support around the pandemic
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and we already had great well-being support but it was clear that some people were really struggling with
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the additional challenges that the pandemic was throwing up working at home or living at work as
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some of us felt um and also juggling all of those other responsibilities at the same time
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is trying to work so we felt like we needed to do a bit more around well-being
34:14
um and link that if we could to flexible working and then the final thing was employee engagement and and it's been touched on
34:21
in the previous panelists um sections around the business case for increasing engagement through more
34:28
flexible working so all of those things sort of melded together into an idea to
34:34
initiate something around flexible working next slide please so we decided
34:41
to um put together a scheme to brand more or less brand what we already
34:47
had around flexible working because we did already have a lot of good flexible working type policies so
34:53
we obviously had a policy around the right to request flexible working we had a job share policy um
34:59
we had a career break policy special leaves or compassionate leave etc so we had all of those things in place
35:05
but they were very long bureaucratic policies hidden away on our website and we might have a handful of
35:11
applications each year for flexible working but but generally it wasn't at the forefront of people's minds
35:18
so the first thing we did was pull together a project group and a massive thank you to my colleagues justine gillespie elizabeth green
35:25
and charlene offer who were the three people who really led that project group we also brought in staff from our
35:32
marketing team rit team and payroll team um along with staff development to think
35:38
about the kind of support we would need from other areas of the university and the hr department
35:44
we then went out and talked to some of the key stakeholders to ask how they felt about flexible working and
35:50
float this idea of launching a scheme to try and work out what might be important in ensuring it was a success so we
35:56
talked to our trade unions to start with who came up with some really good ideas about the things that might be barriers
36:02
to people um asking about flexible working and we also consulted our amazing
36:07
equality diversity and inclusion groups so we have groups for parents and carers an enable network for
36:12
people with disabilities a beam network lgbtqi fertility network
36:18
and a menopause network so we talking to those groups gives us a really good idea
36:23
about the different factors that might be important to different groups of staff and they're really good for bouncing ideas often and discussing
36:30
um initiatives with so we talked to them
36:35
what we decided as a result of all of that was that we didn't really need to do a lot
36:40
of new things what would probably work best was was pulling together what we already had
36:46
into a more branded approach that was easier for people to access easier for
36:53
people to understand and easier for people to buy into um and step one in that
37:01
was around widening access to what was already there and reducing the eligibility
37:06
requirements down so justine our equality diversity and inclusion manager completed the
37:11
herculean task of reading all of these policies and i'm very glad i didn't have to do that and looking at the criteria that were
37:18
already there that people had to fulfill and seeing well basically asking why
37:23
why do we need people to have this length of service to access this why do we have these criteria
37:30
and if the answer that was we don't know we then remove the criteria so for example um we took away the
37:38
service requirement for the right to request flexible working so that was step one all of those
37:44
policies were rewritten and approved um and then step two was pulling it together into a
37:50
a good visual um an easily accessible medium for staff to look at
37:56
so that was a website with um a bit of a sales kind of approach to the
38:01
to the copy on it nice visuals it looked different to anything we've ever done before
38:07
and video case studies so we spoke to um several people who had taken up the
38:13
various flexible working options so we had a job share a career break flexible working
38:19
um and they weren't all women who wanted to take time off to look after children so we
38:25
had a father we had someone who had bought additional leave to travel and and take more time over hobbies
38:32
so we had a really good broad set of video case studies on there we also had a face and a voice so the
38:39
person who actually um was leading the project from an advising staff point of view
38:45
had her photograph on there an explanation of how she herself worked flexibly and the copy was written in a way that
38:52
it could be perceived that the staff were being talked to by this person and then the thing that i love most about
38:58
the whole thing which was really effective was we put a contact us for a chat button on there
39:04
so rather than saying read the policy and decide what you want to do or in fact read all seven policies and decide which
39:10
one suits you best we try to make it as low friction as possible so that people could click the
39:15
button fill in a form they had a choice of video web chat um telephone call or email
39:23
so we cater to everyone um everyone's different communication preferences and they and they would be contacted by
39:28
the person whose face was on the website by enlarge um so it sort of personalized it and and
39:34
made it feel like it was a chat it was a no obligation chat but of course as soon as you start to talk to someone about something you're
39:40
more invested in it and our business case was to try to get people to take this up um so so that was sort of quite an
39:47
effective thing that we did there so it was more of a sales approach and we looked at it as we had these products that we were trying to sell and people
39:54
could contact us for a chat and we would explore their needs so it was almost the other way around
39:59
we asked them to talk to us about what they wanted to achieve how they wanted their life to be what the drivers for them were and then
40:04
we could advise on the right product for for them to um achieve that where possible and we also
40:11
were prepared with information about implications for tax um and pension
40:16
contributions of the various options so for example for some people it was better to purchase additional annual leave from
40:23
from a pension point of view
40:28
the the final point on that slide is a really key one and that is line manager training and support so all of this was
40:34
great and we got a lot of interest and a lot of engagement from staff but but we did feel it was really important to put in
40:39
place line manager training and support to go alongside that so one of the video case studies on the
40:44
site was a line manager who had supported several members of his team to work flexibly and he talked really candidly about how
40:51
he'd done that top tips the benefits and the pitfalls of that and i think that was really
40:56
effective we also designed and ran in conjunction with the organizational staff development team
41:02
a series of webinars about how to support staff to work flexibly they were really well attended um and i
41:08
think you know virtual webinars as we're seeing now are much more convenient so i think we've got better attendance than we would have
41:14
done if they've been face to face and we went very much with a message of start with yes so obviously going back
41:20
to the fact the university had a business case we wanted to make some staff cost savings we were saying to line managers start
41:26
from yes and work backwards from there and the hr business partners
41:32
in my team were involved in having those conversations and making sure that that approach was in place next slide please
41:41
so in terms of the impact we launched it in july 20 so it is still early days but up to now we've supported 34 staff
41:48
to work more flexibly which is a massive improvement in terms of numbers one of the things that is really really
41:54
annoying to me is we never recorded the numbers of flexible working requests essentially before so i can't compare it but it was at most a handful every year
42:02
we did have a staff cost savings target and we exceeded that in the first three months of the scheme which was designed to run
42:09
for a whole year um there has been a cultural shift calling the scheme flex select in itself
42:15
seems to have made it easier for people to remember it and it sort of is now part of the cultural language within the
42:21
organization and i've been really surprised at how quickly that has happened uh people talk much more positively
42:28
about flexible working and the anecdotal feedback we've had so far has been really really good and positive
42:34
around it in terms of what's next the first stage is to properly evaluate the scheme it is
42:39
still early days but we are going to go out with a questionnaire to those who took up the flexible working options and also those who
42:46
inquired but didn't as well as um including questions around this in our whole organization polls
42:52
survey so hopefully i will have much more concrete evidence of the positive impact of the
42:58
scheme in addition to the the cost saving that we achieved we're also looking at how we move
43:04
forward with this um so it was a one-year scheme and we're going to think now about redesigning if it needs it
43:10
for the future um we're launching an agile working statement at the university which is about you know how we're going to work going
43:16
forward in a more hybrid way so it ties in with that so for next academic year we would hope to have
43:22
a more permanent flex select scheme in place
43:27
next step next slide please so my top tips and takeaways are involved stakeholders so as i said
43:33
we used our network groups we got some great suggestions for them so for example one of the key things that was
43:38
flagged was people were reluctant to come forward because at that point all of the media coverage was around job uncertainty
43:43
people were saying what if i'm made redundant and i've reduced my hours does that mean i will lose out on redundancy pay so we put in place a
43:50
guarantee for this year that if there was any redundancy consultation it would be based on previous higher hours rather than a reduction
43:57
under the flex select scheme take a branded approach to it we we
44:02
already had most of these things in place but we just changed how we actually sold it to people that had a massive
44:08
impact make it as low friction as possible you know it's a relatively small
44:14
investment of time to explore people's needs with them rather than expecting them to read a lot
44:19
of documents having a face and a voice to it seemed to entice people to get in touch it was
44:24
a bit more friendly and the final point is using video case studies they were so effective and when i've
44:31
been talking to people about taking up the scheme they have mentioned you know listening to them and giving
44:36
them the confidence that they would be listened to and that other people had done it and that maybe hearing even some
44:42
of the things that hadn't worked so well helped them to scope out what it was they wanted to achieve
44:49
thank you very much thank you vicky um huge amount of
44:56
insight and um great case study um for the university so thank you so much for being here and sharing that today
45:03
and so questions are coming in i'm going to get straight um to it and so that we um use as much time
45:09
as possible to answer um the questions so ben very quick question for you and
45:15
then we can move on to some of the more detailed ones is around um best practice and guidance and
45:22
i'm sure on the back of the flex from first campaign and um i know that we're updating our
45:27
content around sexual working but is there anything else coming out in terms of guidance and best practice
45:33
um i know charlotte mentioned um some work as well but yeah over to you
45:39
yeah i mean i think um i mean hopefully we we've got quite a lot of of uh good practice guidance around reflex
45:46
working already but as charlotte has said um the piece of work that she's been leading on will
45:51
um also translate into hopefully quite a lot of practical insights and guidance uh based on i think
45:59
charlotte we had seven case study organizations involved in that research um so um yeah i don't know if you want
46:07
anything to add on that specifically no that's fine i think i think for any any of our listeners um i'd encourage
46:12
you to just keep going on to our flexible um working pages and resources
46:18
for members and to get any updated uh information so i've got a question here um i guess
46:25
it's broadly about um influencing flexible workings so where you're in an
46:30
organization for example um who are not really bought into the idea of flexible working or
46:36
working from home and having to influence um leadership
46:41
um to really embrace sex for working um i'll put this out to the panel any any
46:47
ideas any ways and approaches um that you know people can um take away
46:52
from today's call and do you want to go charlotte um
46:58
i i guess my my top tip would be to build an um a business case that's individual um as
47:04
in that is targeted at you and your job but that but you get your colleagues on board um
47:10
because often um an employer or a line manager who is reluctant um is um is being led by
47:18
some sort of quite old-fashioned ideas about how if somebody is um working from home then all the
47:24
work will will land on the people who are left in the office so it is about designing the work across
47:31
the team and coordinating the tasks so that um you can um overcome those objections
47:39
um um counter those object objections and if you've got your your team colleagues on board with you
47:46
um then um it's much easier to make the case to a to a manager um if you've got your team your team
47:52
colleagues on board with you um yeah i think the other one something else we would
47:57
recommend um which sounds like um you know vicki's you know probably would also
48:04
support is you know if you pilot an approach um then you know you can start to to really
48:10
um demonstrate within the context of your organization how what the benefits you know might be in
48:15
in different ways um and the on the business case we've also um the flex working task force
48:21
um before it went into hibernation during the pandemic did publish um a summary of the
48:28
the evidence around the business case that's on on our website which is worth a look okay thank you ben
48:35
can i just come in there too yeah absolutely i think is really helpful is to get line managers talking
48:40
to each other about this so i mentioned that we had a video case study but also when we ran the webinars i
48:47
think managers who had experience of enabling and supporting people's work flexibly discussing their experiences with their
48:53
colleagues who hadn't was a really good encouragement um
48:59
to those managers to see how it could work i'm being honest about the things that are difficult because and i think going back to what charlotte
49:04
said about building your own individual business case when you ask for flexible working being honest about what the challenges
49:10
are going to be and the ways that they could potentially be mitigated is really key
49:15
yeah absolutely vicky i think investment in in my management and mindset around my managers is is really
49:22
um really important so um sorry more questions coming a few for you vicky but
49:27
um before i move on um there is a
49:34
there is a question about um you know people who potentially don't want to work flexibly
49:40
who want to work in the office and again i guess this is another dynamic um of flexible working so whilst
49:46
we're thinking about returning to the workplace there are um many employees who who
49:51
don't really want that option what what would you say in in terms of um you know um this question
49:58
um from one of our listeners um challenge do you want to pick that up oh
50:04
ben i mean i was just sorry i was just gonna make the point that
50:09
um you know where possible um you know i think individual choices is critical and and
50:15
if if um you know as an employer you can you can you know meet the needs of the business and you can meet the
50:21
you know the preferences of how people want to work that's the sweet spot ideally i think and charlotte did you want to
50:28
add to that yeah i just i just add um i totally agree it's about it's about it being voluntary rather
50:34
than involuntary and a lot of what we've seen um during the pandemic as i said is
50:40
involuntary um flexible working but i think in terms of um being fair across the team
50:45
um a much more proactive approach is really helpful and and i really liked
50:51
what vicky had to say about the sort of sale calling it a sales sales approach to flexible working
50:56
but if if you as an employer can be more proactive about it don't sit back and wait for an individual to request because if
51:03
you do that then you can often end up in a sort of accommodation mode whereby
51:08
you think oh we've got to be nice to her because she's asked and then we've got to be nice to person two because he's asked and then we've got to be nice to
51:13
person three and you end up with a sort of patchwork of of accommodations that don't actually add up to
51:19
effective working across the team whereas you can be much fairer if you look at it across the
51:25
whole team and you take into account the needs of the people who want to work in the office as well as
51:31
the people who want to work different hours or in different places um and and so it is about
51:37
the sort of the line manager really taking control of that uh rather than sitting back and just you
51:42
know sort of hoping to hoping nobody asks um yes no thank you thank you charlotte um
51:49
a couple of questions for you vicki i'll i'll kind of generalize one because um i guess there was a question
51:55
um about the impact of your initiative um on your customers as well as the staff
52:02
flexibility so um how you know in in all that you you did over the last year how did you
52:08
make sure that customers experience wasn't impacted that's a really interesting question so
52:14
we were obviously university so our primary customers are students and the um the take-up of the the flex
52:22
select scheme was much lower among academic staff now academic staff generally have a lot
52:27
of flexibility in how they organize their own work so that is probably one of the factors in it
52:32
um but the other might be they are more customer-facing than the support staff
52:38
so it was around um 87 of our uptake was support staff
52:45
um the customer experience whether that is a student or an internal customer could not be
52:52
impacted to such a degree um detrimentally by the request so we would say no if
52:59
there was if it was going to reduce customer experience but what we found by and large
53:04
was that with a little bit of creativity and ingenuity it was possible to accommodate most of
53:10
the requests that we had and it came down to um the just
53:15
i think one of the good things that we put in place was follow-up which we didn't have before so line managers could make that decision themselves
53:21
without any sort of hr discussion that you know the good light managers would discuss it with their business partner
53:27
but many often just made the decision themselves but because we were having the comp the initial conversations we
53:33
would then follow up with the individual and say what happened did you put in a request have you had that conversation follow it
53:38
up with the line manager um and people were talking about it more so so it was about helping the managers
53:44
explore how it could be accommodated without there being uh a detrimental
53:50
impact on the customer experience there were some that we couldn't accommodate of course
53:55
but overall it was actually surprisingly easy to do with a little bit of creativity that's
54:01
great thanks vicky um a question um for charlotte now um there's a question around engagement and
54:07
working from home um so how do we decide on the types of activities
54:13
and that we need to do to keep people engaged and how do we know that they're working when people are at home and then how do we
54:20
um equip our equip our line managers and in terms of kind of engagement and
54:25
performance whilst people are working from home so lots of questions in there and so i'll hand that one over to you
54:33
okay um so i think we probably do need to draw a distinction between engagement uh during the pandemic and engagement in
54:41
our new normal whenever that arrives um post-pandemic um i mean obviously a lot
54:47
of employers during the pandemic have been doing a huge amount of um um
54:54
you know well the sort of the pub quiz type um activities social online social activities to try to
55:00
to keep that sense of team to keep that type that sense of um of engagement with the organization um
55:07
and you know a really wide range of activities you know the pub quiz is the most obvious one but lots of
55:13
um you know charity fundraising activities um health and fitness activities um
55:19
all for you know every kind of social team event that involves sort of virtual food and drink and playing games
55:26
and all sorts of things depending on the um the type of organization you're in and the type of
55:31
people you're working with um you know there's a really wide range of those um those opportunities having said that i
55:38
think those are the sorts of things that really need to be done during a pandemic when
55:43
when people can't go out um i think in a in a um in a post-pandemic scenario when
55:49
people get their their normal social life back um the the the the um the issue is is going to be much
55:57
more much much less about um um
56:03
about people needing to be socially engaged um and um and and in that situation i think
56:10
and part of the reason that i'm much more of a fan of hybrid working rather than total exclusive homework is because i
56:18
think most people do need some sort of face-to-face contact in order to keep
56:23
those relationships going with their team and with their organization that enable um that that sort of engagement
56:32
um i think just one final point is that um another thing that a lot of organizations have been doing uh during
56:38
the pandemic is sort of um town hall um sort of a q a with the chief exec those
56:45
sorts of um in zoom event where you can make those sorts of direct
56:53
connections with senior people in the organization that can really help with organization and organizational
56:59
belonging um and you know several of the hr directors i've been speaking to have
57:04
been saying well we're actually going to keep those when we um in the post-pandemic world we'd we'd like to keep doing those because we
57:10
can't have you know 250 people in a room when we're all working in the office but we can have 250 people
57:16
on a zoom call all of whom are you know um able to ask questions of the chief executive talk about strategy
57:23
you know and those can be very engaging for people thank you charlotte um
57:31
there's another question here about i guess the the uh broader unfairness of flexible working
57:37
that it isn't inclusive particularly for lower paid uh workers manufacturing uh workers and i guess
57:45
it's uh you know what kind of activities what are the first steps and that need to be considered when when
57:51
it's those type of roles in terms of trying to embed uh flexible working practices i think ben
57:56
and charlotte you you touched on this um in your um presentations um so yeah ben
58:03
i'll come to you first first of all yeah i think i mean i i would go back to
58:10
sort of you know starting small um making the trade making the the sort of case around uh
58:17
more inclusive innovative ways of of flexible working um and then once you've once you've
58:22
demonstrated that it can work in in that context then then it's you know it's much more likely that you'll you'll
58:28
be able to build on that um so i think i think i think
58:33
a key point generally around around flexible working is that organizations really do need to invest
58:40
more in in how they support their line managers to manage people properly i know that points come across very strongly
58:46
but those core people management behavior surrounds empathy around communication around flexibility and
58:52
support really really knowing your staff and what makes them tick and demonstrating you care about them
58:58
that lies at the heart of the trust based and inflexible and flexible um
59:03
working practices um so i think um sometimes you know those sort of core aspects are
59:09
slightly um overlooked sometimes sure no thanks thanks ben and um uh
59:14
i think we've got a couple of minutes left so one more question for um vicky um particularly around your um
59:20
suggestion of agile working um as a kind of you know next step and how does that tie into the the kind of
59:27
flex uh select um scheme yeah so at the moment we are um we have initial thoughts
59:34
around agile working and we see that we would have a statement setting out our overarching approach to being more
59:41
agile in how we work and then underneath that would be a set of policies and procedures
59:47
that would help put that in place and one of those things would be a flex select kind of arrangement
59:53
whatever that ends up being permanently um and you know there would also be things like a homework and policy it
59:58
would address some of the things that are coming out in the questions around equipment and tax implications
1:00:03
and things like that so it's really the the devil in the detail of agile working but the agile working
1:00:09
statement will be around this sounds a bit cheesy but more of a state of mind yes absolutely
1:00:15
no thank you vicky um and there have been a few questions around business case around
1:00:21
resources um and case studies and so what i would recommend is that you again keep um keep looking
1:00:28
on the flexible working pages and as part of the flex from first campaign we are gathering case studies
1:00:34
um and that will of course feed into to best practice and ben and charlotte have mentioned the
1:00:40
guidance that's coming out um as well so um we are time
1:00:45
i think with our time is up so thank you all for joining the webinar today and i hope you found it useful um and
1:00:52
thank you to all of our contributors and speakers and for giving up their time as well and
1:00:58
just a couple of things and the webinar will be available on demand later as all the slides
1:01:03
and so please um keep an eye out for that and a final reminder about the
1:01:08
well-being support um that i mentioned earlier and so it's been lovely and to
1:01:13
host this session and for you today and um yeah we'll see you um at other sessions um over the next
1:01:20
couple of weeks thank you