Statement of ServiceWORK WISE SOUTH WEST LAUNCHED
Senior executives from leading organisations in the South West attended the launch of Work Wise South West at the Met Office, Exeter, yesterday (March 26).
Suzanne Bond, executive director of people and skills at the South West of England Regional Development Agency (SWRDA), was joined by executives from BT, Devon & Cornwall Business Council, CBI South West, First Great Western, Exeter City Council, and Work Wise UK, amongst others, to sign the Work Wise UK Concordat, committing their organisations to the principles of smarter working practices and their wider adoption across the region, marking the launch of Work Wise South West.
Work Wise South West will adapt the national Work Wise UK initiative to the specific needs and issues of the South West. John Horne, programme director for Work Wise South West, explained: “It will promote the wider adoption of smarter working practices, such as flexible working (including condensed hours and nine-day fortnights), home working, remote and mobile working, across the region.”
Barnaby Harris, also a programme director for Work Wise South West, continued: “Smarter working is a more efficient use of resources. It enables people to be more productive, and their organisation more competitive, provides people with a better work-life balance, allowing them more time with their families and to pursue leisure activities, reduces the need to endure the stress of long commutes or travel on congested roads and over-crowded public transport, and at the same time, has a lower impact upon the environment.”
All of these elements are particularly relevant to the south west of England - a huge and geographically dispersed region which is home to around five million people. The significance of smarter working for the south west was recognised in the Regional ICT Strategy published by SWRDA in 2006. The document focused on the need for excellent communications infrastructure, advanced uptake and use of ICT and better support for businesses in managing this use. The document identified flexible working as a core use of ICT: "Creating economic, social and environmental impacts through rethinking what work means. How technology can support cultural change that affects use of premises, transport patterns, employee rights, management practices and, foremost, that liberates working and learning practices. Rethinking the role of the individual in business and society".
Suzanne Bond, executive director of people and skills at SWRDA, said: "Work is something you do, not necessarily somewhere you go - this is the basis of the "smarter working" revolution. We are excited about what smarter working - in all its forms - could do for the South West. For example, flexible hours can create skilled work opportunities for disadvantaged groups; teleworking can reduce business accommodation costs and get cars off the road; and working on the move can boost employee productivity and help unlock business potential. It's good for the environment, good for the economy and good for quality of life.
"We need to get the message out there that the world of work is changing, so we welcome the arrival of WorkWise South West to help make sure smarter working plays its part in making the South West's vision of a sustainable economic future a reality."
Across the UK, smarter working is a growing phenomenon, with home and flexible working the most popular. According to the Labour Force Survey, undertaken quarterly by the Office for National Statistics, nearly 350,000 people work from home in the South West, which is over 14 per cent of the working population, the second highest in the UK. Nationally, over 3.4 million people, 12 per cent of the working population, regularly or permanently work from home, a figure that has increased by a fifth in the last ten years. The highest proportion of home workers is in the South East (excluding London) with nearly 15 per cent, the lowest being in Scotland with 8.5 per cent.
Sally Wilcox, South West regional director for BT, one of the Westcountry's largest private sector employers, said: "Smarter, more flexible working is a vital part of remaining competitive in this rapidly-changing internet age.
"The benefits of adopting flexible working practices are clear in terms of increased productivity and employee satisfaction. It can be a major factor in recruiting and retaining key staff and dovetails very well with the South West's aim to develop a strong knowledge economy.
"As a leader of flexible working in the UK, BT is seeing huge benefits both for the company and its people. We estimate that BT homeworkers are able to cut their commuting mileage by more than 20 million miles per year - and that reducing our need for office space has in the past five years resulted in annual savings of £88 million on overheads such as rates, rent and repair.
"We would certainly encourage employers in the South West and across the UK as a whole to take full advantage of the great opportunities offered by smarter working. With the cost of transport continuing to rise there couldn't be a better time for people and organisations to ask themselves whether they could work more flexibly.
"Nationally, BT has supported the WorkWise UK initiative for the past two years and has seen the campaign go from strength to strength."
Smarter working has meant that BT has been able to reduce the number of offices it operates. Since 2003, the number has fallen from 159 to 94, reducing the number of workstations provided by 18,545, the floor area required by 222,500 m2 (2,395,400ft2), leading to savings of £88million per annum in overheads such as rates, rent, repairs, facilities management, etc. The savings in commuter travel by BT homeworkers is over 20 million miles per year. This is a conservative estimate based on each commuter avoiding 100 commutes a year of a round trip of 15 miles.
Nigel Costley, regional secretary for the TUC in the South West, is supporting the initiative because it has the potential to change for the better the nature of work in the South West: ''WorkWise is an initiative that can push a lot of important buttons for employees and their trade unions. We want to see our employers thrive, we want to achieve a better quality of working life and we want to reduce congestion and pollution and protect our environment.
“Introducing genuine smarter working practices, which include flexible working and homeworking, would mean that many workers would have more choice over their hours and working patterns. This could have a beneficial impact on people’s lives in terms of giving employees more quality time, helping them to balance their work and family commitments, and reducing their stress levels. It could also help widen access to jobs - especially for those with caring responsibilities.
The environmental benefits of smarter working are widely accepted, but smarter working will also help lessen the impact the changing environment will have upon organisations. Bernd Eggen of the Met Office explained: "Under a changing climate, certain types of extreme weather, such as summer heat waves and heavy rainfall events, are becoming more likely. Companies that are using smarter working practices for their workforce will be more resilient to such changes which would otherwise impede on working conditions (air temperature in offices becoming unbearable) or on commuting to work (when transport network suffers from flood / storm related disruptions)."
Work Wise UK (www.workwiseuk.org) provides various tools and resources to enable organisations to work smarter. These include an adoption ladder, to see the extent to which an organisation is working smarter, the Work Wise Mark of Excellence, which provides a framework and accreditation to work to, and access to a national network of Work Wise Advisers for help and assistance.
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March 27, 2008
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