Guest blog: The secret of smarter working: not just when and where, but how? - By Susan Clews, Chief Executive of Acas
/The Gov.UK website describes smarter working as a way of empowering us all “to make the right decisions about where, when and how we work.” Arguably, the national experiment in homeworking, engendered by the pandemic, has helped to sharpen the debate about where and when we work; but the ‘how’ part is perhaps the hardest to pin down.
The Acas experience
Within a couple of weeks of the first national lockdown, Acas went from having 12% of its staff working at home all, or almost all of the time, to close to 100%. Our staff have been fortunate in this regard, and we had good technology to make it happen. We must remember that homeworking is not an option open to everyone. But we have also faced many of the same problems as people up and down the country, with colleagues shielding, caring for vulnerable relatives, home educating young children and trying to develop their personal coping strategies.
Thinking differently about the way we work makes sense for us. Here is a quick snapshot of how we are doing in meeting the government target of achieving smarter working by the end of 2022:
The opportunities
As with many organisations, a window of opportunity opened for us in March last year. It allowed us to improve work-life balance for our staff, while also saving money on travel and being more creative. The changes we are planning are based upon the use of:
· Team Charters, so that local parts of the business can decide what works best for them. This might involve agreeing how many days are worked in an office and whether office space needs to be ring-fenced for certain activities. Smart very much equates to local.
· Smarter Working Principles. These cover things like ‘digital by default’ and ‘optimised workspace’. Another core principle aims to signal a more adult-adult dynamic between managers and staff with a much greater focus on an individual’s outputs rather than when and where these are carried out.
Speaking to colleagues I know how much they appreciate having more say in how they plan their work; as well as not having to spend time commuting to the office. Workshops with staff have re-enforced this appetite for greater autonomy and quicker decision-making processes, which brings me on to the challenges.
The challenges
Technology is an enabler of the rapid change we have seen but there is a real danger that the old templates for the way we worked will be imposed on what we all hope will be a new mindset. Spending all day in face-to-face meetings was one thing; but at some point, you needed to put your coat on and catch a bus or train home. Now there is often no natural division between the two worlds. We must be mindful of work intensification; with statistics from the ONS showing that homeworkers did 6 hours of unpaid overtime on average per week in 2020 (compared to 3.6 hours for those that never work from home).
The two main barriers to smarter working are the same as they were when we carried out our research on homeworking nearly eight years ago:
· Productivity: employers are often fearful that staff can’t be trusted to work without close supervision. Thankfully this perspective is beginning to shift. Figures from the CIPD reveal that employers are more likely to say a shift to homeworking has boosted productivity now (33%), than they were in June 2020 (28%).
· Wellbeing. Although homeworking is often closely associated with greater work-life balance, it can come at a cost. For some, mental health has improved during the pandemic but for others, things have got tougher. This is not helped by worrying accounts of widespread monitoring of employees – a recent survey showed 44% of those working from home have had monitoring software installed in their devices. Communication and consultation are paramount here.
We need to keeping talking about when and where we work, but how we do things – in terms of the way we communicate, the decision-making processes and the degree of control we are prepared to relinquish, are more challenging areas. What appeals to many people about the idea of hybrid working is that it seems to offer a compromise between the old ways and the new. This isn’t a bad place to start as we plan for an uncertain future.
