What kind of organisation are you?

What motivated you as an organisation to start your flexible working journey?

Pre-pandemic, two people worked fully remote, three people worked part time, and some others occasionally worked from home. But mostly, everyone was in the office all the time, with some flexibility around start and finish times. During the pandemic the vast majority of staff worked from home, and it was clear we could still deliver for clients while working hybridly. We were also growing, we’re 20% larger now than before the pandemic, so we don’t physically have enough desks for everyone to come into the Edinburgh office every day.

How and when did you start introducing flex/more flex?

As Scottish Government restrictions eased, we introduced our first hybrid policy. This didn’t mandate that people come to the office unless they were a line manager, in which case we asked them to come in three days a week. But the feedback from staff was that it put a dividing line in straight away between managers and non-managers, and that there was pressure from managers for people to come in anyway, regardless of what the writing in the policy said.

At this point we started taking part in a Flexibility Works pilot project for hybrid training, and then their broader Go Flex programme and this helped put a fairer and more consistent approach in place for all types of flexible working, not just hybrid.

Flex today – what are you doing right now?

We retired the original hybrid policy and introduced some Guiding Principles for flexible working and a wider flexible working policy. This agreed both what informal flex might look like, and a process for formal applications for flexible working and how they would be handled. At first, we were nervous we would get lots of applications. But we’ve had five out of a workforce of 90, so it’s been completely manageable. They were all for people who wanted to reduce their hours, and we’ve been able to accommodate them all.

In terms of hybrid working, each team has put together its own charter, agreeing when they expect to come to together and why. There’s no blunt mandate on the number of days in the office though there was a strong recommendation from senior management for people to come in at least two days a week. People are in the office on average two to four days a week and for most it’s working really well.

What challenges have you faced?

While most people like working in a hybrid way, some colleagues aren’t coming to the office regularly and this is an ongoing challenge we are still dealing with.

How to maintain performance has also been a challenge. Previously, we’d relied on regular in-person contact in the office to monitor performance. Now we are working towards a system where tasks are allocated a rough number of days needed for completion. If managers notice significant outlier figures they’ll have a friendly check-in at first to see if everything is ok and can escalate if need be. This overhaul of performance management away from presenteeism is definitely a good thing.

Our people managers have faced additional challenges because we’ve found it harder and more time consuming to manage a team in a hybrid or remote environment, and cross team-collaboration presents further logistical barriers. On-boarding of new employees in a hybrid world requires careful management too.

We want SeeByte to be a good place to work, and we’ve consulted with staff on everything. Flexibility Works has supported us to do this, and it’s been appreciated by our colleagues.  It’s been a hard process because there’s tension between some senior managers wanting people back in the office, and 90 members of staff who all have their own opinion. It’s impossible to keep everyone happy all of the time. But ultimately, we’ll be in a better place because of it.

Impact of flexible working

Our people now have a clear, fair policy towards flexible working. They have flexibility around when they work, where they work and for how long they work.

We’ve also improved our meeting room technology and collaboration tools to support our people to work productively in a hybrid environment.

We’ve noticed a very significant improvement in our staff retention rate, which was one of the objectives of the new policy. It’s difficult to separate the specific effect of the policy and the wider external job market but the feedback from an employee survey supports our approach to flexible working.

The future of flex in your organisation

It still feels like early days for us. It will take time to bed in the changes we’ve made so far and we will monitor how things progress. We also plan to deal with performance and engagement issues separately, rather than attributing them directly to the new policy because we recognise the issues would come up in some form or other with or without hybrid and flexible working.

Top tips for flex

• Be clear about your objectives and bring in external expertise to support achieving them.
• Consult and engage your staff early and throughout this process.
• Support your people managers with additional training and support for hybrid working, including improved performance management and holding difficult conversations.
• Get the core message across to everybody that for hybrid to work, it has to work for the four key stakeholders: the team, the business, the customers and the individual. It is not just about individual wants.
• Invest in quality meeting room A/V solutions
• You may not get it right first time. That’s okay, you will learn a lot whilst getting it wrong!