Conjure up some more time: flexible working in public services
Print page
“Working from home” used to be a confusing process of filling the boot of your car with piles of folders. Today, flexible working is a source of improved productivity, yet makes for happier staff and benefits the environment.
Stephen Pritchard asks, where did it all go right?
Flexible working has become something of a buzz word over the last few years, with governments, pressure groups and businesses all promoting it as a way to reduce organisations’ carbon footprints.
Putting a flexible working programme in place, however, needs more than just a green conscience. Implementing a flexible working programme properly demands several strategic investments:
- Money is required for a range of new technologies
- Time must be invested in establishing working practices which readily adapt to the flexible model , (and these might need to be changed significantly from today’s ways of working).
- Both time and money must go towards ensuring the security of data and services for mobile staff. This involves both technology and training to keep information safe outside the perimeter.
Fortunately, there are considerable advantages for public sector organisations taking the flexible working path. Allowing officers to make use of “dead time” between appointments, even when they are out of the office, can bring immediate productivity gains.
So can providing secure, remote access to critical information, allowing staff to respond to citizens’ queries more immediately and more accurately. Organisations that have embarked on flexible working projects often report that service levels, and client satisfaction, have improved sharply as a result.
Morale, too, can benefit from giving staff more choice over when and where they work. In the NHS, for example, flexible working is now a key policy, under the Improving Working Lives Standard. But other public sector bodies, including government agencies and local councils, report improved job satisfaction and better staff retention, as a result of flexible working initiatives.
In the current financial climate, however, such initiatives are unlikely to gain executive support unless they can show a return on investment. Fortunately, there is a growing body of evidence that suggests that they can.
Wakefield Metropolitan District Council, in West Yorkshire, employs 50,000 people. Under the council’s Worksmart programme, Wakefield aims to save more than £4m in annual costs, as well as disposing of buildings with a capital value of £7.3m. The authority is aiming to reduce its administrative buildings from 34 to just six – yet at the same time improving services to local people.
Not all of the authority’s departments have introduced flexible working. But among those that have, early results are encouraging.
In the case of Wakefield’s e-Services department, for example, 81 per cent of staff now work from home some of the time. The council has also seen productivity gains of 15 per cent; the e-Services unit has been able to cut its office space by 32 per cent, and save £81,000 a year in the process.
In Warwick, the Midlands council has found that social care workers are able to see one to two additional clients a day, as a result of flexible working tools. Using Windows Mobile devices in the field has also improved the council’s ability to monitor staff movements, and to ensure safety, according to Andrea Wyatt, the authority’s principal benefits officer.
“Councils should consider flexible working as a big cost saving opportunity,” says Dan Pilling, marketing programmes manager for Microsoft’s public sector business.
“It enables the consolidation of older office buildings, helps drive CO2 efficiency savings through travel reduction and improves efficiency, thanks to electronic document management. It can also improve staff morale, and makes organisations more attractive to many new employees like graduates who may be used to these technologies in commercial environments,” he says.
Technology building blocks
Top ^
The technologies used to deliver flexible working will vary from organisation to organisation and from role to role. However, almost all solutions start with remote and mobile email access, and then move on to collaboration tools such as Microsoft’s SharePoint and Office Communications Server. Yet even commonplace workhorse applications like Office have their part to play.
“Organisations should consider a platform, rather than start with one type of technology,” suggests Pilling. “You want technologies that are familiar or easy to use, and which are easy to integrate into existing environments or work with current IT investments,” he says.
For this reason, organisations often start by upgrading their messaging environments to Exchange Server 2007, and deploying a combination of laptops, tablet PCs and Windows Mobile devices for their field workers.
Collaboration tools like SharePoint and Groove make it easier for staff to share, and work on, documents. Groove, for example, has an offline mode allowing public servants to continue to work on projects even when they are not able to connect to their organisation’s network, and to synchronise data when they next go online.
These tools are valuable because they allow local authority staff to take their workplace to clients – rather than expecting the clients to visit council offices – but also support working from home or working flexibly between district offices.
Supporting innovative working practices
Top ^
However, some of the greatest benefits – both in productivity and in service delivery – come from integrating established technologies with those closer to the cutting edge.
Office Communications Server, for example, can be used to replace face-to-face meetings with video conferencing, and could also support remote training.
Presence – where colleagues can see who in their workgroup is online and available to contact – can improve collaboration markedly by speeding up response times and removing email or voicemail “tag” from teams who might to be based at the same physical location.
There are some more dramatic applications for the technology too. Dundee-based Tayside Fire and Rescue replaced its conventional office phone system and pagers with an integrated system based on Microsoft Office Communications Server and Office Communicator 2007, along with Windows Mobile devices.
The system allows managers supporting major incidents in the field to access a single, unified mailbox for voice, fax and email. The presence feature in Office Communications Server allows teams to see immediately who is available to help deal with an incident – a big improvement on pagers and phones.
The service will also use its mobile devices’ multi-media features to allow real-time audio and video communication between teams, helping the service tackle different types of fires. Staff have also gained the ability to work remotely or from home, with a laptop, and still have access to all the communications facilities they have in the office. And that’s the hallmark of effective home working: access to everything without actually having to be there.
Find out more about the Wakefield Worksmart programme
Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007
Security for flexible working
Stephen Pritchard is a journalist of many years standing specialising in business and technology. He writes regularly for the Financial Times, The Independent, Information Age and Red Herring.