FLEXIBLE WORKING
Gillian Daines
employees and how that 24-hour global workplace may affect them.” Another change is cultural in terms of what people expect at
work. “There used to be much more fixed working hours,” Ms Daines commented. “We realise that now we can’t always fix a breakfast meeting and expect that to suit everyone’s schedule. This is all about looking after people and being productive. But at the same, it’s also about making these wider opportunities work for our business.”
Rebooting flexible working To leverage the opportunities and manage the well-being aspects, Forster Communications has adopted a broad approach to flexible working that goes beyond reduced hours. Led by line managers and employees, the company’s practices cover temporary as well as permanent arrangements. “The overarching idea we want to talk about at the CIPD
Conference is that when we think about flexibility for working, it’s much more than just about being part-time,” explained Ms Daines.
“I think that’s a very old-fashioned way of looking at things.
Flexibility can equal adjusted hours and people working in different locations, whether that’s at home or in another office, in a client’s office. But, personally, I’ve taken international clients’ calls at 7pm or 8pm in the evening. I don’t want to be doing those in the office, I want to do them at home, so it might mean I leave the office a bit early. “I adjust my working week when I have a client with those
needs. That might be for a few weeks or a few months, or even just on that particular day. But as an organisation, having that flexibility is something we can just do without having to go through a process of sign off.
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