Local authorities are responding enthusiastically to the compelling business case for flexible working, says a new report from Socitm Insight.
Modern public services: flexible working says that the practice of flexible working, which includes working at convenient times (flexi-time), ‘hot-desking’, peripatetic working, and working from home, is growing fast in local authorities. The report estimates, for example, that at least 26,000 council employees are already formally established as home-based workers, and that this number is growing rapidly.
The drivers for this change, says the report, are many. They include the potential to provide better services by taking them to customers’ homes using mobile technologies, to make savings through disposal of redundant office space, and to improve the quality of employees’ of working lives by enabling flexible working that helps them to accommodate other roles as parents or carers, and in congested areas, avoid peak times for traveling to work.
The report includes a detailed case study from Surrey County Council, an organisation that taken a broad approach to flexible working to support its corporate strategy and that has reaped significant efficiency gains, particularly on use of office space, as a result of using these modern methods of working. A series of other examples in the report include:
● Castle Morpeth Borough Council that has improved the appearance and safety of public areas by equipping its own staff and those of partner agencies with mobile devices
● Hampshire County Council that enables care workers to log on to the office systems at any work device or location and connect from home.
● Hertfordshire County Council that has flexible working as part of its recruitment and retention strategy, and has also used it to rationalize the council’s property portfolio
● Test Valley Borough Council that has transformed its benefits service through mobile working
In addition to these and other case studies from outside the local authority sector (British Airways, the Department of Trade and Industry and the Nat West Tower) the report describes the various forms of flexible working and highlights its impact upon peoples’ work and personal lives.
The report also describe the contribution of flexible working to the achievement of a supportive culture for business transformation and sets out the enabling technologies that are driving flexible working. Practical approaches to implementing a programme for flexible working are also set out in the report, which provides a self-assessment grid to allow councils to assess their degree of maturity on this issue, and sets out a generic business case that can be used to assess the costs and benefits of flexible working.
According to Socitm Associate Christopher Head, who wrote the report: ‘The efficiency review and the transformation agenda demand that councils exploit the opportunities arising from all types of flexible working. The potential to provide better services to the community, make savings and improve the quality of working life add up to a case that is too compelling to ignore.’
Modern public services: flexible working will be available as a ‘pdf’ to Socitm Insight subscribers from 20 March 2006. The 48pp printed version, available from early April, costs £90 to non-subscribers (£80 to Socitm members) from the Socitm website.