If you’re responsible for implementing a flexible working policy, you need to understand your organisation’s level of maturity for flexible work and to identify the changes needed for flexible working to become business as usual.
Launching a flexible working policy involves:
- building leadership buy-in
- scoping and planning the work
- launching flexible working initiatives
- introducing the change slowly, and trialling it
- measuring progress and evaluating impact
- integrating flexible working into business-as-usual processes.
The resources below give evidence-based advice for each step needed to successfully implement flexible working.
Guide to making flexibility happen
Follow the steps in the guide to support your organisation through change so that flexible working becomes business as usual.
Building leadership support
Leadership support is critical to successfully implementing flexible working in your organisation.
Start by developing a plan for influencing your agency’s leaders to commit to and support flexible working. Understanding your leaders’ vision and goals for flexible working can help you design strategies that deliver results.
Start engaging leaders by following this step by step process.
Work with leaders to set your agency’s vision and how you’ll get there.
Using workforce management to support flexible working
Workforce management processes are an important driver of change to integrate flexible working across your organisation.
Principles that can help determine the activities and strategies that support flexible working throughout the employee lifecycle.
Being specific about flexible working options can help to attract more applications.
Measuring and evaluating your organisation's progress
Measuring your organisation’s attitude and adoption of flexible working can help you set a benchmark and identify areas for progress so that flexible working can become business as usual.
You may consider tracking People Matter Employee Survey results and supplementing this with internal pulse surveys for more regular data.
Questions asked in pulse surveys could include any questions in the People Matter Employee Survey, and:
- I feel I can talk to my manager about working flexibly for any reason
- My manager explores the flexible working options possible for my role and team, to find a mutually beneficial solution
- I can easily set up a flexible working arrangement based on current agency processes and procedures (not including technology)
- My use of flexible working allows me to manage my workload more effectively
- My commitment to the team or organisation would be questioned if I worked flexibly
- My team or work group has a spirit of co-operation and support that enables flexibility for all members in how, when and where work is done.
Use the example KPIs to inform how you can use results from the People Matter Employee Survey to measure flexibility in your organisation.