As Work Wise Week gets underway the
Employer Coalition takes to the road 

On the first day of Work Wise Week - Mobile Office Day - we take a look at the North East Employer Coalition (NEEC), a local not for profit organisation, which has adopted flexible working practices in a bid to reduce costs.

The aim of the Work Wise campaign is to make the UK one of the most progressive economies in the world by encouraging the widespread adoption of smarter working practices such as flexible, remote and mobile working as well as working from home.  It aims to give half the working population - some 14 million people - the opportunity to work smarter by 2011.

As one of ten Employer Coalitions from around the country the NEEC has a major impact on shaping and influencing national employment and skills policy and provides a direct employer voice to Government.

The North East team works on a variety of strategic and practical initiatives to improve the employment prospects of local people, helping to ensure that employers have access to a high quality, skilled workforce and more local people have access to good jobs and careers.

Last year, seeking to gain maximum outputs from a small operational budget, the NEEC team took the decision to embrace flexible working, setting up a number of virtual home-based offices, each of which is linked to its North East regional office base, located in the Durham and Tees Valley Business Centre, Stockton.

Twelve months on, things are going so well that the NEEC has decided to embark upon working towards the Work Wise standard which is a mark of excellence to assess the effectiveness and deployment of flexible and remote working practices within the UK workforce. 

Howard Forrest, NEEC's Chief Executive(pictured), is thrilled with the new working arrangements.  He said:

"Adopting flexible working has led to a significant increase in productivity as it has eliminated travelling time in and out of city centre based locations.  It has also allowed us to reduce costs significantly, particularly in the area of accommodation.

"Now, we have one regional office base and work from our homes, cars and partnership locations. By providing conferencing facilities for each member of the team we able to respond to the needs of employers and partners across the North East region much more effectively because developments in IT allow us to stay in constant contact with one another as well as with the UK network of Employer Coalitions.

"We have also introduced this style of flexible working to our Employer Coalition colleagues outside of the region."

As employers seek to use their resources ever more carefully, Simon Roberson, Chair of WWNE, believes that an increasing number will sign up to smarter working in the future as they seek to reduce staff numbers, save money on accommodation costs and yet still retain a high quality of contact with their customers.  He says:

"Working smarter, working flexibly, working remotely or in this case, mobile working, makes sense on so many levels.  As well as saving on overhead costs, organisations that work smarter can expect to benefit from a boost in productivity of between 15%-31%, suffer from less absenteeism and in general, have a happier workforce who really appreciates the greater degree of control over their lives, which a flexible working policy provides. 

"The difficult economic climate in which we find ourselves, is forcing businesses to review the way they work and I am convinced that this is where Work Wise has a major role to play.

"We are delighted that the North East Employer Coalition has not only decided to adopt smarter working practices, but also, work towards achieving the Work Wise standard."

For more information contact Philippa Clothier or Zoe Lacey at Clothier Lacey & Co on 0191 278 9897 or zoe.lacey@clothierlacey.co.uk