Flexible working for all

Today is a key date in the evolution of work. In the UK there is a change to the legislation giving employees a right to request flexible working. It will now apply to all employees not just parents and carers.

You could just dismiss this as a minor change which will involve a quick revision of the appropriate HR policy. Or you might see it as a fundamental change in our assumptions about work. I think it’s the latter.

For the last 200 years we have made the assumption that work consists primarily of full time, permanent employment. Flexible working, temporary jobs, part-time working, job sharing and working from home have all been exceptions to the norm. So employees have to ask permission to work differently from the standard ‘9 to 5’ routine at their employers premises.

Then the government, in its wisdom decided to introduce some ‘family friendly’ legislation to encourage employers to at least consider that work could be done differently. This reinforced the view that flexible working was only applicable to people who had children and didn’t really apply to everyone else. So up to now it has been seen as an employee benefit along with items such as maternity leave and therefore a cost to the business.

Now we are about to enter an era when people without children or other caring responsibilities will start to ask for flexible working. It will become more acceptable for ambitious, career minded professionals to work in non-standard ways. Employers will come to realise that by giving people more choice over when and where they get the job done they will get a more effective workforce.

By giving people more freedom over how they get their job done their productivity will increase and employee turnover and absenteeism will reduce. So flexible working will move from the current situation, where it is the exception, to being the norm. This means that managers will need to develop new skills to cope with the increased variety in the way their people work. And that also provides a great opportunity for HR to guide the organizational culture and management behavior to reflect the new world of work.

Webinar about the changing workplace

I've had the pleasure of being on a couple of panel discussions run by Philip Tidd of Gensler and know that he has an informed view of the way the workplace is developing. So I'm delighted to be running a webinar with him where I will be covering the changing world of work and he will be looking at the implications for the workplace.

It's happening on Thursday May 22^nd 18.30-19.30 UK time

I will be basing my contribution on the latest version of my book ‘Future Work’, co-authored with Alison Maitland (www.futureworkbook.com) and my extensive experience in helping clients to implement flexible working. Philip will talk from his experience as Head of Consulting, EMEA at Gensler where he advises organisations on all aspects of how improved working environments can lead to enhanced business performance.

This session is not just about new office design. It’s about the changing nature of work and the implications on the places it can now be performed. It will therefore cover developments such as hubs and shared space as well as working on the move and at home.

There are just 25 places on this webinar so attendees will get an ample opportunity to ask questions and comment if they wish. To book a free place please email me (peter.thomson@me.com). We will be recording the event so if you can’t make the date let me know and I can point you at the video afterwards.

Why I’m no longer hitting my head against a brick wall!

I have spent the last 20 years trying to get managers to change old habits. I ran the Future Work Forum at Henley Business School in an attempt to collect the best research information on the changing world of work and use it to show managers how work is changing. I kept asking the question – If it’s so obvious that work is evolving then why are managers not grasping this as an opportunity to change the way they manage? Surely they can see that their employees will be happier, more effective and more loyal if they are treated differently. They must be able to see that the way we manage today is a hangover from an earlier era when people were content to do mindless routine jobs and were grateful for the money. Now we are surrounded by technology that has freed up all sorts of work to be done at varying times and places, isn’t it obvious that management has to change?

I guess that after 20 plus years of banging my head against a brick wall, I’ve finally sat back and looked rationally at the situation. I can continue to produce logical arguments as to why our management practices are outdated. I can use the best research in the world to show that autonomous employees are more productive that those under close supervision. I can point to numerous management gurus over the last 50 years, all of whom have said the same thing - give people responsibility and freedom, trust and empower them, and you will get a high performance workforce. I can cite successful examples of agile working, self managed teams, diverse leadership, mobile technology, flexible workplaces and results based management systems. But managers still continue to do the same things they have always done, oblivious to the changing world around them.

I’ve come to realise that it’s not in the interest of managers to make any change. They are happy with the status quo. For them any change is potentially threatening. Particularly change that may strip them of power and even question the need for their job at all. They are comfortable in their current positions of authority, giving orders to their staff and checking that they have carried them out. They have probably risen to their current position by being good at doing the work they now manage. The Finance Director is likely to have been a successful Accountant, the Research Director will have come up through the labs and the Sales Director was once out on the road himself. They are experts at the work done by their employees. So managing them involves telling people how to get the job done – in most cases the way they used to do it. After all, they got to be the manager by being the best Accountant, Salesman or Engineer.

And who promoted these managers on the first place? Obviously their superiors, who themselves were chosen by their bosses – and so on. So we have a formula for appointing managers that reinforces the current values and behaviours of top management. Unless you are prepared to admit that you are a poor manager (in which case you shouldn’t be in the job) it is perfectly normal to select people who act like you. So no wonder it’s difficult to change organizational cultures. They weed out the ‘misfits’ who do not agree with the prevailing regime and reinforce existing practices that have been around for decades.

So when I talk to a group of middle managers and tell them about the changing world of work, I get polite nods. They agree that the younger generation have different values about the place of work in their lives. They understand that technology is freeing up people to work very differently.  They listen politely to the examples of companies that are reaping the benefits of agile working. And they already know that trusting and empowering employees makes them more engaged and probably more productive. But when they get back to the ‘real world’ of their office they have no incentive to rock the boat and try out new ideas.

If you are a manager why should you empower your employees? That means losing power by giving it away. It means admitting that individual members of your team know their own work better than you do. It could mean allowing people to choose when, where and even how they get their work done. Then what is left for you to do? This looks like you’ve lost control and are no longer managing the operation. That’s not the way your boss did it when he was in the job and it’s certainly not what he now expects from you. Unless there is a major disruption to the business forced on it from the outside (competition, regulation, takeover etc) your career is dependent on supporting the existing values, systems and behaviours and not introducing radical change.

This has led me to the conclusion that the work revolution has to be driven bottom up. Employees need to be pressurizing their bosses to manage differently. They need to point out the outdated work practices and the barriers to improved productivity. They need to express their frustration at the long hours culture and the lack of personal time associated with success. They need to show that they can take on responsibility and become more effective, given the chance. And when they get rebuffed by entrenched management they need to vote with their feet.

I may have been a bit slow in getting there, but I now realise that I have to change tactics. Yes, I will still keep on giving presentations to senior management about the importance of addressing the work culture as a business priority. I will probably still be talking to middle managers about moving from ‘command and control’ to ‘trust and empower’. But I am now going to address all those people stuck in a job under a traditional management system. I’m gong to point out how outdated our management practices are and show them there is another way. Then the combined pressures of Directors who ‘get it’ as a business strategy and employees who ‘want it’ as a way to live their lives will overcome the inertia of the managers between them.

In my survey for the book, ‘Future Work’, I asked an audience of 350 junior/middle managers (mostly MBAs) if they agreed with this statement “There will be a revolution in working practices in the next decade”. To my surprise, two thirds of them agreed, or strongly agreed, with the statement. So they recognise there is a revolution on the way which will effect the way they manage. But they can’t make it happen whilst they are in the middle of a system that resists the change. So, I’m now setting my sights on the working population as a whole, who stand to benefit from the revolution, instead of the current generation of managers who do not.

Why should we take employee engagement seriously?

There are lots of surveys showing that employees are not engaged at work. It varies a bit by country, but as a rough guide only a third of employees are fully engaged.  So what?

The consultancy Blessing White regularly surveys 30,000 people across the world and measures levels of engagement from fully engaged to fully disengaged. The figures for Europe show that 31% are engaged and a further 24% are almost engaged.  But that means that just under half the workforce are not even ‘almost engaged’.

Should we care? Does some theoretical measure of engagement actually matter to employers? Are we aiming to keep people happy or do we have a business to run? Why should leaders worry about this when there are more pressing issues to manage?

To answer these questions it’s worth taking a moment to look at the relationship between engagement and business results.

One example is is employee turnover. 81% of engaged employees definitely intend to stay with their employer for the next 12 months compared with 23% of the disengaged. Plus a mere 2% of the engaged are definitely planning to leave compared with 32% of the disengaged.  So an employer with a demotivated workforce is likely to have an employee turnover 16 times that of a fully satisfied one.

Measurement of the cost of employee turnover is an inexact science. Because it’s not as visible as a direct expense it tends to be underrated. And it varies a lot between jobs, depending on the ease of replacement. But if you make a very conservative assumption that people take three months to get up the full productivity, during which time they are at an average of 80% of output we can work out some figures.

In this case the engaged organisation loses 20% of productivity for a quarter of the year on 2% of the workforce; a hit of 0.1% on output. However, the same calculation for the disengaged workforce at 32% turnover gives a 1.6% hit. That doesn’t look like much until you consider that a labour-intensive business with a 5% profit margin is potentially putting a third of the profit at risk just through high turnover.

But the real problem with disengaged employees is not the ones that leave, it’s the ones that stay. They are not just going to be below average performers for a few moths they are likely to be permanently low performers. And they are also quite likely to bring others down as well. It’s interesting to see from the Blessing White data that 34% of engaged employees stay in the job because they like the work they do, compared with 16% of the disengaged.  But in contrast, 11% of the disengaged stay because they are ‘comfortable’ compared with just 7% of the engaged.
So however you measure it, engagement is likely to result in higher performance for the business. It’s not just some arbitrary concept invented by HR; it’s a real business measure. It should be right at the top of the priority list for senior management. But because it’s not as tangible as the financial results it rarely is.

If leaders actually cost the impact of low engagement they will take it much more seriously. They will reduce the need to replace talent and get more out of the people who stay. It will directly improve output, value for money and profits. So they should all remember– A COMPANY IS ONLY AS GOOD AS THE PEOPLE IT KEEPS.

Productivity and Pay

A new report has just hit the media in the UK defining the level of pay that constitutes a 'living wage'. Below this people are deemed to be living in poverty, so the idea is that employers should adopt this instead of the minimum wage already in force.
It would be great to have everyone paid more but I can't quite see how this will add up. If we increase the hourly rate of pay and people continue doing the same job then whatever they produce has to increase in price. I'm no economist, but it seems to me that if goods cost more then fewer get sold, or customers simply go to a cheaper source. Or if there is a fixed amount of money to pay wages (as in the public sector) then there are less jobs to go around and services have to be cut.
Worse still, many of our jobs are competing with low wage economies around the world. If we increase pay in the UK then work will be transferred overseas and we have lost the job forever. This is clearly what has happened in manufacturing and as more and more of our services are delivered remotely they are also vulnerable.
In order for the UK to maintain the standard of living we have come to expect, we have to increase productivity. We have to remain competitive in international markets for goods and services so our cost of production and delivery must be kept to a minimum. If we want to increase the rate per hour we pay people to a minimum wage that reflects an acceptable standard of living, we have to find the money somewhere. There is no point in pricing ourselves out of work as a nation.
So, how do we make a step change in productivity? We have to look at the way we get work done and find smarter ways of doing it. The whole idea of breaking down work into jobs and then employing people on a fixed salary in exchange for their time has to change. We have to pay for output not input. If you are paid by the hour the slower you work the longer it takes to get a result. The longer it takes, the more you are paid. So the least productive person is rewarded the most. If my lawyer is being paid by the hour to represent me (probably actually billing me by the minute) then he/she will get paid more for taking longer to sort out my case. The bad plumber who takes 2 hours to fix my leaking tap gets paid twice as much as the good one who fixes it in an hour.
If we encourage people to find smarter ways of doing their jobs we should let them share in the reward. Here's a simple way. Instead of encouraging people to work long hours we should have competitions to see who can go home earliest. If people can get their week's work done by Thursday they should be able to take Friday off. They should then be given the freedom to come up with smarter ways to get the work done. I bet a high percentage would find very inventive ways of increasing their productivity because they would have a reason for doing it. Then we could get better at rewarding results and people would be getting paid more per hour for the time they are working. That way we can afford the living wage; otherwise it remains a pipe dream.

At Last - Business Leaders Champion Agile Working

After 20+ years of promoting the business benefits of flexible working I'm pleased to see the launch of the Agile Future Forum (AFF), with the aim of maximising the competitiveness of UK businesses in the global marketplace. Twenty-two businesses – including several well-known brands – who currently realise financial benefits through using workforce agility have joined together to help other UK businesses to do the same. 

The purpose of the AFF is to define the business value of workforce agility as a key input of the competitiveness of UK plc and to provide the leadership and practical support required to increase agile working practices across the UK. Workforce agility enables an organisation to establish the optimal workforce to support its business objectives by thinking about when and where people work, what they do and who is employed to the mutual benefit of businesses and employees.

This marks a step change in the development of working practices in the UK (with implications that will resonate world-wide). I have been researching new ways of working for the last two decades and have seen the way it can improve productivity, reduce employee turnover, cut absenteeism and help employers attract talented people. But too often it has been seen as an HR-driven employee benefit and dismissed by managers as a burden on the business. Now, at long last, here is a report pointing out the benefits for employers, backed by some serious chief executives. 

(see http://www.agilefutureforum.co.uk/AgileFutureForumReport/report.html)

The announcement about the launch of the report says..." The AFF believes that agile practices can be established that benefit business and employees, but a new approach is needed where business leaders, rather than simply HR, should lead the development of agile practices starting with a clear understanding of the needs of the business and their workforce. In addition to the report launched today, the AFF has developed a range of practical support that enables organisations to consider workforce agility in this way. The AFF CEOs are also committed to sharing their experiences with the CEOs of other organisations to support the growth of the UK economy."

This gives the HR function an opportunity to be seen as business partners by promoting Agile Working as an initiative that will contribute to the bottom line, instead of pushing it as an employee benefit or employment law compliance issue. I look forward to seeing if HR rises to this challenge!!!

Managers out of touch with employees

Two recent surveys have shown how managers are out of touch with their employees. The first was carried out by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and found that too many managers have an inflated opinion of their ability to manage people. Eight out of ten managers say they think their staff are satisfied or very satisfied with them as a manager whereas just 58% of employees report this is the case.

This 'reality gap' matters as the survey finds a very clear link between employees who say they are satisfied or very satisfied with their manager and those that are engaged - i.e. willing to go the extra mile for their employer. The CIPD research found a significant contrast between how managers say they manage their people and the views of their employees:

 • Six in ten (61%) of managers claim they meet each person they manage at least twice a month to talk about their workload, meeting objectives and other work-related issues. However, just 24% of employees say they meet their managers with such frequency.
 • More than 90% of managers say they sometimes or always coach the people they manage when they meet, while only 40% of employees agree.
 • Three quarters (75%) of managers say they always/sometimes discuss employees' development and career progression during one to ones, but just 38% of employees say this happens.
 • There are similar gaps in views between managers and employees on how often managers: joint problem solve with employees; discuss ideas employees might have to improve the business and; discuss employees' wellbeing.

 Given this mismatch, it’s not surprising to find that employees are disengaged and have little respect for their management. The second survey was carried out by hyphen, the recruitment solutions provider, and showed that there is a clear discrepancy of attitudes to social media between young and older workers. The research finds that the use of online networking sites such as LinkedIn while at work is now an expected norm for younger people. Nearly two thirds (58.7%) of 'Generation Facebook' believe that having access to social networking tools at work actually increases their effectiveness as an employee.

 However, many mangers still don’t trust employees to use social media at work. They assume that people will spend hours chatting to their friends, wasting company time. But the poll of 1000 workers showed that close to a third (31.3%) didn't spend any time dealing with personal matters in their work time, which increased incrementally with age. Indeed, over half (55.1%) of the workforce spend less than 10 minutes a day on their personal affairs. This suggests employer concerns over employees wasting time on social networking sites could be ill - founded.

Managers who are out of touch with the younger employees are going to miss out on recruiting and engaging the best talent. If they are not able to adapt their working practices to reflect the values of the Facebook Generation it will reflect in the quality of their workforce and ultimately in the effectiveness of their business.

Civil Service Home Working

The government has just announced that thousands of civil servants will be allowed to work from home over a seven week period covering the Olympic and Paralympic Games. This has attracted negative media coverage, implying that the Civil Servants will be having an extended holiday and that the wheels of government will grind to a halt. This is based on the mistaken assumption that people working from home are less productive than those coming into the office. But the results of research and the experience of major employers is the reverse. People who work from home are generally MORE productive than their office counterparts. A survey of 350 home workers carried out by the Telework Association showed that 85% of people who work at home claim they get more done by staying at home. The challenge for managers in the Civil Service will be to measure the output of their people and manage them based on results not on the hours put in. This is counter to the ‘presenteeism’ culture that still exists in many organisations which results in long hours of low productivity work. This week a senior judge has called for an end to the hourly billing by lawyers which gives a financial incentive to drag work out rather than speed it up. A survey by the CIPD released this week shows that three-quarters of employees make use of some form of flexible working and 20% work from home on a regular basis. Despite this becoming a much more common feature of the modern workplace, managers are struggling to keep up. In the CIPD survey 35% of employees cited line managers as a barrier to flexible working and this will probably be reflected in the Civil Service this Summer. If the experience during the Olympics is negative then home working will get a bad name. If it’s positive then government managers will find they can run a more effective operation by continuing to allow people a choice of where to work. With mobile technology allowing people to work remotely, we have a great opportunity to update our working practices to match. The Olympics should be a catalyst for change and a nudge into the 21st century for those managers still operating a presenteeism culture. Whether the civil service takes this opportunity or not remains to be seen.

Anywhere Working Week

This week is Anywhere Working Week (see http://www.anywhereworking.org/2012/anywhere-working-week-27th-february/ }. It’s being promoted by the Department for Transport, supported by a variety of sponsors who are interested in spreading the word about mobile working.

One of they key triggers behind this initiative is the Olympic Games. The government is trying to persuade employers to allow people to work from home, or a remote location, during the peak fortnight of the games. The aim is to reduce commuter traffic by 30% and avoid complete gridlock in London.

Hopefully this will push reluctant employers into considering remote working as an option for their workforce and they will find that it isn’t as disruptive as they feared. Then they might continue to allow people to work from home after the Olympic rush is over.

However, there is a good chance that employers will see this as a bad time to let people work from home. Whist daytime TV is not normally a great incentive to stay at home and avoid work, during the Olympics there will be continuous coverage of the events and the temptation will be greater. So, a manager who already has difficulty trusting people to work at home is hardly likely to have a change of heart during the Games.

We need more persuasive evidence that remote and flexible working is good for business. There are some good examples of organizations, such as BT, which have saved millions in real estate costs and improved productivity through flexible working. But these are still seen as isolated cases. Maybe the government could sponsor some wider research into the relationship between remote working and increased output, to convince managers of the benefits. It might have help to improve commuting conditions in London forever, not just for the Olympics.

UK Government Recognises Value of Flexible Working

It seems that at long last the message might be getting through. Instead of seeing flexible working as just a ‘family friendly’ provision, a government minister has now recognized that it can also deliver massive cost savings.

Eric Pickles, the Local Government Secretary, announced this week that the government could save £15 billion per year by adopting flexible working and home working practices. He based this on a report just published by the Westminster Sustainable Business Forum chaired by Matthew Hancock MP. This group published a report in February 2011, called ‘Leaner and Greener: Delivering Effective Estate Management’, which estimated that public sector organisations could deliver £7 billion in annual savings from decreasing the space they occupy. The latest report ‘Leaner and Greener II’ adds a further £8 billion to the total, based on increased productivity.

The report and its recommendations concentrate on real estate and the way that property costs can be reduced by better utilisation and rationalisation. However it concludes that “Research shows that improvements to the workplace can enhance productivity of employees from between 5%-15%”. Using the bottom of this range they calculate that £8 billion a year can be saved from government expenditure by having more effective workplaces.

While this report is primarily focused on efficiency savings achievable through property, it adds “it is important to emphasise that the relative weightings of property and staff costs … display that the cost of human resources far outstrips property cost. In addition, evidence shows that flexible working opportunities are an important element in retaining a highly skilled workforce and lowering turnover, as employees seek employers able to provide them with work- life balance. Flexible working therefore has significant potential to not only deliver property savings, but can importantly also reduce staff costs.”

So maybe the government need to follow up with a report looking at the potential for savings based on new working practices and not just include it as an afterthought in a report about property.

Future Work - book now published

I'm pleased to announce that I am the co-author of a great new book - "Future Work: how businesses can adapt and thrive in the new world of work". It's been almost two years since I teamed up with Alison Maitland and we embarked on this project.

Alison has a background as a journalist, having worked for the FT, and has written many articles about Flexible Working and related management issues. She has also co-written a previous book "Why women mean business". We found that the combination of our background and experience worked well in identifying the key components that contribute to new ways of working.

We decided to call the book, and the new style of working, "Future Work" to differentiate it from Flexible Working or Smart Work which come with their own baggage. We feel that Flexible Working has been too closely associated with 'family friendly' employee benefits and is seen as a burden on business. We point to many examples of Future Work which contribute to the bottom line through increased productivity, lower costs, reduced employee turnover and lower absenteeism.

We identify the 'trust and empower' culture needed to implement Future Work, based on the results of a survey of middle managers carried out for the book. We show that these managers are not happy with their current organisational culture and would like their people to have more autonomy over their working practices.

As we say in the book "We are still in the early stages of the transformation of work, largely because corporate cultures and management styles are not keeping pace with technological advances. This was why we embarked on this book: to help managers and organizations make the necessary shift to more efficient business, better lives and a healthier Earth for the next generation to inherit.
Future work is one of those rare opportunities for all-round benefit. As we have shown through numerous examples in this book, it contributes positively to the bottom line while improving the lives of workers and helping to protect our fragile ecosystem. It is not an option for business any longer. It is a matter of staying competitive."

For more information see www.futureworkbook.com

Social Media - why ban it?

ACAS have recently issued guidance for employers on social networking and managing performance. They point out that the use of social media is allowing many employees to work remotely, which offers unique challenges for performance management. They also say that it blurs the distinction between work and home life, with many employees available at home and while travelling. This has led some employers to put more emphasis on managing the tasks an employee performs rather than managing the time they work.

The fact that ACAS are not saying ‘ban social media at work’ is encouraging. They point out the benefits and dangers and provide advice on the way forward for employers. They suggest that organisations should have a policy so it is clear to employees what they may, or may not, do. They also recommend that line managers have guidelines on remote/home working and that they focus on end-products rather than managing time too closely.

It does seem that some organisations are now realising that social media can be useful in supporting their business objectives and not assuming that it is all a waste of time. The latest Robert Half Technology survey of 1,400 CIO’s from the US showed that 51% of them now allow employees to use sites like Facebook and Twitter for business purposes compared with 19% in 2009. However the survey also shows that 31% ban social media completely at work and only 4% give people complete freedom.

In the UK, a recent survey of 2,500 businesses showed that 48% of them ban the use of social media completely by their employees at work. So there is a long way to go before most employers trust their people to act responsibly. In most cases the ban is introduced because managers fear that their employees will waste hours of work time chatting to friends on Facebook or tweeting away on Twitter. But the common ownership of smartphones means that the individual can quite happily tweet away from their desk without using the corporate system anyway. So what’s the next move: ask people to leave their mobile phones at the door when they come to the office?

It's Work Wise Week

It's Work Wise Week in the UK this week. (May 16th - 20th) This is an interesting time to reflect on how we have progressed in the six years since the WorkWise Uk initiative was launched.

I remember being involved in the first year and the organisers coming up with a problem. The Government Minister who was due to launch the week was only available on a Wednesday. So I was one of the people who suggested that this was an opportunity to make a point and start the week on a Wednesday. By doing this it would illustrate that today's work practices are not restricted to Monday to Friday and that a lot of 'Smart Working' goes on at weekends. I see that this year it is only a Monday to Friday week and is a much scaled down affair compared with the first few years.

Does this mean that WorkWise has run its course and that everyone is now working wisely? No, definitely not. It does reflect the recession which has killed off the sponsorship of the event and made people focus more on survival than reviewing their working practices. Although, ironically, flexible working is a great way of surviving a recession. It improves productivity and creates a workforce that can be more responsive to changing customer demands. So now more than ever we need to challenge some of the outdated assumptions about work.

Why does the government insist on linking flexible working with maternity?

Looking back over my previous blogs, I see that in July 2008 I pointed out the discrepancies between maternity and paternity provisions in the UK and hoped that they would get changed. Today at last I see that the government is starting a consultation process on the idea that parents can share the leave between them. see http://tiny.ly/X7gZ

This looks like a step in the right direction, but included amongst the proposals is the extension of the right to request flexible working to all employees, not just parents and carers. Whilst this is a welcome development, one I have argued for over the years, it is a pity to see it bound up in a package of 'family friendly' provisions and still firmly in the 'employee benefit' camp. Inevitably some employers will see this as yet another imposition on business and will equate flexible working with other parental rights that are an additional burden.

In practice there is overwhelming evidence that flexible working makes people more productive, reduces absenteeism and lowers employee turnover. Let's see it promoted as good business sense that also happens to be an employee benefit, not the other way round.

To be fair to Vince Cable, he is quoted as saying "But I’m also confident that we have a good case to make on the wider benefits to business - not least from a motivated and flexible workforce and we will be making this case to employers over the next few years before these changes are introduced." However this still comes as an afterthought not the main argument.

The Book is Written

I've been quiet on this blog for the past year whilst I've been busy writing a book.

I teamed up with Alison Maitland who has an excellent record as a journalist (ex - FT) and co-author of another book 'Why Women mean Business". Together we took most of a year to gather together the information and write it up. We interviewed over 60 people, mostly senior leaders in major organisations and have included many cases studies in the book. We also carried out a survey of managers to find out more about the organisational culture that they are working in and how it compares with their ideal. We asked them about the prevalence of flexible working in their business and found that there is a disctinct management culture that seems to go along with new working practices.

The result is "Future Work: how businesses can adapt and thrive in the new world of work" which will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in October. It's now just a frustrating time waiting for the book to come out but meanwhile you can find out more about it at www.futureworkbook.com. This website has a discussion forum which is initially only being opened to the participants in the survey and invited guests. If however, you are interested in the future of work and how organisations need to adapt to meet the challenges of the 21st Century, then let me know and I will get you an invite.

World Cup Fever

Earlier this year we had travel chaos in the UK because of a few inches of snow. Businesses closed down for several days, and industries started counting up the cost of the disruption. Then as the sun shone through we soon forgot the snow and went back to business as usual. Some people learned a lesson and thought about contingency plans for the next time it happens but many just decided we have to live with it.

Soon after this, Washington DC suffered a major blizzard and many people had difficulty getting to work. The federal government had already started a telework programme and this gave it a great boost. So on May 24 the Senate passed the Telework Enhancement Act by unanimous consent. The bill grants federal employees presumptive eligibility to telework and would require that all federal agencies establish telework policies, designate a telework manager and ensure that telework is part of continuity-of-operations planning.

As the spring arrived we encountered a different disruption to travel; this time an Icelandic volcano. Again employers were faced with people unable to travel, stuck awaiting a flight home. So the question comes up again "What do we do when this happens?". Do employees get unpaid leave, paid leave, deductions from their annual holiday allowance or a request to make up the lost time? As if this wasn't enough of a disruption to air travel, British Airways cabin crew then decide to run a series of 5 day strikes.

So by now you would assume that most employers are aware what to do when employees can't come to work. Maybe they have arrangements that allow people to work from home? Maybe they have flexible hours arrangements? Maybe they measure people by results and allow then to choose their own hours? Well, it doesn't seem so based on the latest concern - The Football World Cup. There are now concerns about how to manage absence during this tournament when key games are televised during normal working hours.

This again raises the question of what work/jobs have to be performed at a specific place and time and what work can be done flexibly to fit around the individual's personal life. Allowing people to take time off to watch a football match where possible and getting them to compensate with more work at another time seems reasonable. It hopefully removes the temptation to take sick leave on match days. Discussing this openly with employees shows that you are prepared to be flexible and it might even produce some football-hating employees who will be happy to cover for the fans!

Obama promotes flexible working

This week the White House hosted a Forum on Workplace Flexibility. Michele Obama started it off giving some of her personal experiences in trying to balance family pressures and a career. There was then a panel discussion and the event ended with a great speech from the President pointing out the benefits of flexible working, not just for individuals but for employers as well.

It can all be found on YouTube ( see http://bit.ly/ObamaFlexibility )and there is a report from the Council of Economic Advisers called "The Economics of Workplace Flexibility" (http://bit.ly/WorkplaceFlexibility). The text of Barak Obama's speech can be found at http://bit.ly/ObamaWFtext.

What we need now is a similar lead from the Prime Minister in the UK and fom the EU for Europe. Promotion of new ways of working as a BUSINESS BENFIT not just a social policy.

Here are some quotes from his speech...

".. we as a society still see workplace flexibility policies as a special perk for women rather than a critical part of a workplace that can help all of us."

"And as for how this issue affects companies’ bottom lines, a report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers that we’re releasing today found that companies with flexible work arrangements can actually have lower turnover and absenteeism, and higher productivity, and healthier workers.

So let’s be clear: Workplace flexibility isn’t just a women’s issue. It’s an issue that affects the well-being of our families and the success of our businesses. It affects the strength of our economy -- whether we’ll create the workplaces and jobs of the future we need to compete in today’s global economy.

And ultimately, it reflects our priorities as a society -- our belief that no matter what each of us does for a living, caring for our loved ones and raising the next generation is the single most important job that we have. I think it’s time we started making that job a little easier for folks."

"Many of you here represent companies and workplaces that are already doing just that -- embracing telecommuting, flextime, compressed work weeks, job sharing, flexible start and end times, and helping your employees generally find quality childcare and eldercare. And if you’re doing this not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because you’ve found that what’s good for your workers and is good for your families can be good for your bottom lines and your shareholders as well, then you need to spread the word."

"And that’s why John is working ... to provide opportunities for federal employees ...to telework on a regular basis. Where regulations are in the way, we’ll see what we can do to change them. Where new technology can help, we’ll find a secure, cost-effective way to install it. Where training is needed to help managers and workers embrace this approach, we’ll adopt the best practices from the private sector."

"It’s about attracting and retaining top talent in the federal workforce and empowering them to do their jobs, and judging their success by the results that they get -- not by how many meetings they attend, or how much face-time they log, or how many hours are spent on airplanes. It’s about creating a culture where, as Martha Johnson puts it, “Work is what you do, not where you are.”"

Let's hope some of these messages get through to the Public Sector in the UK. Given the current emphasis on improving efficiency this seems like a good place to start.

Productivity of Home Working

I've recently carried out some research into the productivity of people working at home. The results are fascinating and challenge conventional thinking about telework.

Rather than try to explain it all here you can either get the report from here or better still if you have 10 minutes to spare hear me giving a presentation with slides of the results here.

MPs' Expenses - A solution

The topic of MPs' expenses has gripped the nation, or certainly given the media a timely distraction from depressing news about the recession. It seems to me that the whole idea of paying for second homes is out of line with 21st century working practices.

The argument for the allowances is that MPs have to work in two places and therefore need two homes. This might have been true in the 19th and maybe the 20th Centuries when they had to meet constituents face-to-face and also be present at Westminster. But now people can contact their MPs over the phone, meet them face to face on Skype, send them questions by email, contact them through facebook and comment on their blog. MPs are teleworkers and should be able to work satisfactorily from one base with occasional visits to the other when they have to be face-to-face.

Looking at the Commons chamber on an average day, the argument that MPs need to be ther for the debates is clearly rubbish. Except for times like PM's questions or a really close vote very few MPs are present. When they are in the building they listen for the division bell and then rush into the chamber to vote, usually following instructions from the whips.

So what we need is an Internet age work pattern for MPs. They should be able to vote remotely, engage in debates over the Internet and should keep their constituents informed by having a blog. Using video, they can hold face to face consultations and meetings and avoid excessive travel as well as second home allowances. There are plenty of people who do real jobs who have to travel to customers but who don't get a second home allowance.

But the real indication that Gordon Brown and other MPs of his generation are out of touch with the modern workplace came from his solution to the problem. He proposed an attendance allowance which would be paid for every day that an MP came into the palace of Westminster. This is 19th century thinking about work. It assumes that people can only work when they are in a particular building and completely ignores the way many people, including MPs, now organise their working lives.

To add insult to injury, Gordon Brown chose to make the announcement about this clever solution on YouTube. This is one of the new media that allow people to communicate without having to be in the same place and is an icon of 'Generation Y' who don't see why we have these antiquated work practices that are based on presenteeism.

So we can continue to try to solve the 'allowance problem' by tweaking the payments system, or we can use this opportunity to make a more fundamental change in the working practices of MPs and bring them into the Information Age. Nobody needs an allowance for a second home, because nobody needs a second home. They can have one home and stay in a hotel on expenses for those days they really need to be away. I suggest the government block books the hotel in County Hall across the river from the houses of parliament and uses that. Meanwhile MPs can set an example to the rest of the nation by using technology instead of travelling so much, thus saving the economy a fortune and saving the planet at the same time.

Peter

Business Friendly or Family Friendly?

On April 1st in the UK we are extending the legal right to request flexible working from parents of children up to age 6 to parents of children up to 16. As someone who promotes flexible working you might think this is a time for me to celebrate but in many ways I see it as a backward step.

If we introduce rights for parents and we don't give those to other employees what does that tell us about flexible working. It is obviously seen as an employee benefit which is given to parents because they have to manage the conflicting pressures of caring for children and working for a living. It puts it firmly in the 'family friendly' category and associates it closely with maternity leave as another major imposition on business. So it is hardly surprising that many businesses see the new legislation as yet further government red tape designed to help families at the expense of productivity and effectiveness at work.

This legislation also encourages a form of discrimination in the workplace. It says that people who have caring responsibilities should be treated differently from other employees. If there is any flexibility available it should go to them and not to others. It means that employers are encouraged to make a value judgement about the personal lives of their employees, implying that rearing children is a more worthy use of people's time than other activities like playing sports or enjoying the arts. If the new right is given only to parents and carers it can result in resentment and low morale from other employees who feel left out.

But by classifying flexible working as 'family friendly' makes people assume that it is not 'business friendly'. If it is an employee right that has to be forced on employers by legislation it must be something that is a cost to business. Presumably it means that people are less productive, less reliable, less loyal and absent more often? Well, the answer is 'no', 'no', 'no' and 'no'.

All the research into the impact of flexible working practices shows that employees are MORE productive, MORE reliable, MORE loyal and have LESS absenteeism. After all there is no reason why something that is good for employees had to be bad for business. In this case it's a win-win.

People who can get a better balance between home life and work life are likely to be less stressed and to choose working times when they are able to concentrate and feel motivated. If they are able to work at home or closer to home for part of their time they may avoid time-wasting, stress-inducing commuting. It is often the case that the home offers a more productive environment for work without some of the interruptions and distractions in the office. With today's technology and broadband connections many people can do large parts of their job without leaving home.

Employees are also likely to appreciate that their employer is prepared to trust them to manage their working time and repay this trust with more effort and dedication. They are less likely to leave to join another employer and are also less likely to take days off sick. Even if they are not feeling 100% they may be able to do work at home on days they are unable to get to the office.

So any sensible employer will not just implement the divisive new legislation but will recognise that this is an opportunity to implement a win-win solution. Offering everyone the right to request flexible working is not a recipe for chaos but a way of enhancing business productivity. A recent government survey showed the 90% of the employers who have had requests from employees approved 100% of the requests. So people are not being irresponsible but are coming up with solutions that work for them and the business.

At a time of economic pressure we need to increase productivity and also retain our best people. For some businesses this will be the key to survival. If they miss out on the opportunity to use flexible working as a way of combating the recession they just may end up becoming one of the casualties.