WALES
The Welsh Government’s Chief Digital Officer, Caren Fullerton (pictured) says an award-winning Smart Working project trialled in the Merthyr Tydfil office will be rolled out to the rest of the country’s Public Service buildings.
Ms Fullerton said Smart Working was a business-focused approach that gave everyone an opportunity to choose when, where and how they worked.
“It’s about increasing productivity without increasing time spent in the office,” Ms Fullerton said.
She said that might mean taking a laptop into a meeting instead of printing out copies of papers, or it could be simply working from a different location.
“One key change was that we removed core hours and flexi bandwidths,” Ms Fullerton said.
“In order to make sure the changes didn’t have a detrimental impact on delivery, teams were asked to hold discussions about how they would apply flexible working to their own circumstances.”
She said some teams developed a roster so the same person wasn’t always stuck covering the phones on Friday afternoons.
For teams that did not need cover in the office, discussions started to chip away at any residual culture of “presenteeism”.
“After a while, people see that the work is still getting done even if the person doing it isn’t sat in the office,” Ms Fullerton said.
She said the changes had been really well received.
“Staff told us they felt more trusted and, as a result, more positive towards the organisation,” Ms Fullerton said.
She said that in the People Survey, Merthyr Tydfil was the most engaged office, with scores in some areas 10–11 per cent higher than the average.
“As someone commented in the feedback, ‘There’s now a level playing field and flexible working is seen as the norm’,” Ms Fullerton said.
“People no longer feel they need to justify why they might be starting later or finishing earlier.”
Cardiff, 18 October 2019
