| Construction
pioneering programme: BAM Construct, BAM Nuttall, Skanska UK and Willmott Dixon. In July 2022 a follow-up report was published. Called Making Construction a Great Place to Work – A View One Year On, it shared updated insights from the pilot organisations to: ● See if any long-term changes are taking root. ● Understand how flexible working is impacting the working culture.
● Look for any emerging impacts on business performance, and on the well-being of employees.
Positive impact Initial results demonstrate that flexible working has
had a number of positive impacts – for workers in terms of reduced stress, increased well-being and job satisfaction; and for firms, in terms of enhanced performance and notably, a reduction in sickness- related absence rates. The Pioneer Partners all report results that buck the wider UK picture. Specifically: ● Skanska UK: one-day sickness absences have more than halved.
● Willmott Dixon: overall sickness absences have reduced by one third since 2019.
● BAM Construct: overall sickness absences have reduced by one tenth.
● BAM Nuttall: one-day sickness absence reduced by a third.
By contrast, analysis of Office for National Statistics data shows that the national sickness absence rate in UK construction has increased from 1.4% in 2020 to 2.1% in 2021. While flexible working won’t be the only factor reducing the sickness absence rates experienced by the four companies, Timewise says the difference in the direction of travel is significant. Sickness absences cost the industry millions of pounds a year – last estimated at £160 million in 2018, as reported by the Health and Safety at Work Executive. There was also no reported adverse impact on
project timelines, quality standards or costs when flexible working was increased. The construction industry is grappling with a range of challenges, not least continuing skills shortages, which flexible working can help to address. The participating firms reported that working patterns are a hot topic in recruitment. All four firms involved in the pilot now offer flex from day one and advertise flexibility in their recruitment campaigns. They also say that they recognise the strategic imperative of having a diverse talent base in their businesses, especially with regard to gender balance. As the report states: “The gender pay gap is still a major concern and the firms are taking action to improve the attractiveness of the sector to women. Greater opportunity to work flexibly has the potential to be an integral asset in their employee value propositions. It will take time for female representation to shift significantly across the construction industry, but there are some encouraging trends.” For example, Willmott Dixon has been listed by
The Times as a Top Employer for Women for four consecutive years, and Skanska Group was fourth in the Forbes list of the World’s Top Female-Friendly Companies in 2021.
Alice Jennison, Skanska UK Inclusion and Diversity Manager said: “The findings from the TimeWise trials
have shown the benefits for the workforce and our business. Uniquely, these trials also show how to approach flexible working on a live construction site, an area where flexible working has been considered too difficult to manage. The results from this report provide guidance, advice and case studies to enable the industry to provide flexible working for all.”
More to do Adapting to flexible working will take more than of
a couple of years. As Emma Stewart, Founder and Development Director of Timewise explained, there is still more to do. This includes consistency across the different departments and roles within an organisation to iron out pockets of resistance. “Hybrid working has been easy to roll out for head office staff, but trickier for site-based ‘knowledge’ workers, and hugely challenging in manual roles,” she said. “Job design around time-based forms of flexibility needs more attention, to provide a degree of equity for site-based employees.” Another more difficult challenge is ensuring that
flexibility ripples down fully to the sub-contracted frontline workforce. The next step is to begin open conversations with the supply chain, to ensure that some form of flexibility is available across the sector, including for all frontline workers whether employed or sub-contracted.
“Conversations need to reach upwards too, to
involve clients,” Stewart continued. “There is a potential difficulty around who reaps the benefit of cost savings from flexible working…Timewise advocates the need for fairness, with some of the savings being used to benefit frontline workers, whose experience of long, demanding working patterns is compounded by low pay.” A groundswell in action is being reported in relation
to an increased uptake of flexible working hours in the construction industry. Ripples are even being felt in the Australian construction taskforce and other firms in the UK have been engaging, such as Balfour Beatty and the Kier Group.
Suzannah Nichol from Build UK said that they will continue to champion flexible working. “I would encourage other industry organisations to
do so too,” she added. “If you aren’t already having the flexible working conversation within your business, it is definitely one worth starting – I promise you won’t regret it.”
Looking to the future, if flexible working becomes less of a subject in its own right, and weaved it into all communications within an organisation, it will simply become “the way we work”. ●
References
The full report, Making Construction a Great Place to Work: Can Flexible Working Help? A View One Year On, can be downloaded at
https://timewise.co.uk/wp- content/uploads/2022/07/ Construction-pioneer- programme-one-year-on.pdf
Left: Flexible working in the construction sector can improve employee job satisfaction and reduce sickness absence rates
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