Innovative companies across the world have reshaped the working week to suit the demands of their staff. We speak to some of those doing it in the UK

How do you measure work? By the quality and speed of decision making? The number of phone calls and emails you reply to? Or the number of sales you make in a week? For many employers—and the majority of employees—the answer is far simpler: it is measured by the number of hours you spend in the workplace. But huge technological changes, enabling people to work anytime and from anywhere, have changed our perception of where and when work takes place.

Communications and IT companies have led this flexible working revolution. One of the first out of the blocks was telecommunications giant BT. By 2005 its 11,600 home workers were saving the company £82m a year in accommodation costs and were on average 20 per cent more productive than their office-based colleagues. BT's flexible working project is now among the largest in Europe, involving over 70,000 employees.

Beyond the communicatons sector, companies have been slower to develop a working culture where employees are judged on what they produce, rather than the hours they spend sitting at their desk. Many are still wedded to the view that work is carried out in an office between the hours of 9am and 5pm, Monday to Friday. The UK lags behind its competitors when it comes to flexible working. Just 20 per cent of UK companies offer flexi-time compared with 90 per cent in Germany, 94 per cent in Sweden and 92 per cent in Finland, according to a Cranfield School of Management study.

The problem, it seems, is cultural. "We are on a journey with home and flexible working," says Sam Mercer, director of workplace at Business in the Community. "Until we get our heads round the idea that work is an activity, not a place, [flexible working] will be treated with a degree of scepticism." And yet studies and anecdotal evidence show how flexible-working practices improve productivity, general employee wellbeing and can even impact the bottom line.

Mercer says flexible working is not just about financial gain for employers. "This is also about staff retention, especially from a gender perspective. But the clear message that comes through is that to be successful this can't be gender specific. It should be done by all and taken up by all."

To get to a stage where flexible working is accepted, firms have to instil a feeling of trust throughout the company. "It does not happen overnight. You have to build up trust," says Mercer. "There is a perception that if you can't see people, then they can't be working. We should be valuing someone because of the output of their job. Many employers already do that," she says, but, "it requires you to look at jobs in a different way."

Here, Director talks to those that have made the leap and entered the world of flexible working.

The Directors

Who Base Connections
Sector Telemarketing
Why Work-life balance

Julia Scott and Annetta Snider started their Surrey-based telemarketing company in 1994 with the aim of creating a better work-life balance for themselves. "We wanted part-time work to fit round our families, we wanted more fun and we wanted to use our brains," recalls Scott. But once Base Connections began to grow, the duo found they were spending more time training employees. "We were working longer and longer hours to employ people to work part-time," explains Scott.

Between years two and eight of growing the business there was little in the way of work-life balance for the two founders, who were often to be found in the office at 2am on a Saturday. The irony was not wasted on them. They re-evaluated where they were and what they wanted and decided that the solution to their problem was to set strict parameters, such as no working in the office after 5.30pm.

Today, Base Connections has a total of 67 employees, 44 of whom work part-time. No two people are on the same flexible-working arrangement. Two employees were set up with broadband and a computer to work from home. "They have been with the company for 13 years," says Scott. "They have [maintained] the discipline they had in the office."

While trust is still an important element of the relationship, telemarketing lends itself to flexible working because it is easy to monitor how many calls are being made and how many appointments are being set up. "Some jobs don't lend themselves easily to flexible working," concedes Scott. "It does work with our job and we are very, very lucky."

Employees choose the days and hours they work, within set parameters. "We like people to have started work by 9.30am, which means they have time to do the school run," says Scott. "We find out what [prospective employees] are looking for and see if we can accommodate it."

No one is praised for working long hours: "If people are working late either they are not trained properly or they have too much to do," says Scott.

Scott is convinced that the financial performance of Base Connections is heavily tied to the company culture. "The only way we can keep the company stable and grow, with quality staff, is by offering a rewarding, interesting, fun environment," says Scott. "We also have to offer good salaries."

Staff retention figures are impressive: 13 people have been with the company for more than 10 years. For Scott, the benefits of home working and flexible working are unarguable: "If you are doing the hours that suit you, it relieves a lot of stress."

The diversity Director

Who Addleshaw Goddard
Sector Law
Why Employee retention

Law firms are not generally considered to be at the forefront of innovative working regimes. But Addleshaw Goddard, one of the UK's largest law firms, has turned conventional thinking on its head. It offers flexible working for all staff, which includes job sharing, splitting the working week between office and home, compressed hours, annualised hours, term-time working and flexible hours. Some 14 per cent of employees now have formal flexible-working arrangements, more have informal arrangements and many people work from home in an ad-hoc manner.

What started as a drive to retain talented women has changed the company culture. Katherine Hallam, Addleshaw's diversity manager, says: "We became aware, three or four years ago, that we were losing women when they were midway through their career and that was to do with flexibility."

Addleshaw's had three aims: to ensure the firm didn't lose talented women at a crucial stage in their career; to save the firm money (it cost up to £200,000 per person it was losing); and to attract even more talent because of the favourable working conditions.

For Addleshaw the process of moving to a flexible-working regime was gradual. First came internal surveys to back up anecdotal research the firm had about flexible working. Next came a pathfinder, launched by one of the firm's transactional departments, which found it was not just female employees who wanted flexibility.

Then the firm moved to a desk-sharing environment where people no longer had offices and instead worked from their clients' offices, from home or were hotdesking at work. "It was about moving from presenteeism to an environment where people were rewarded for their input to the firm," says Hallam.

The business was careful not to be prescriptive about flexible working. "There is no 'one size fits all'. What works in one area of the business won't work in another or with a different team. You have to keep an open mind," says Hallam. As employees moved to home, remote and mobile working, Addleshaw invested in upgrading the IT systems. New laptops, BlackBerrys and key fobs were purchased to enable people to access the system remotely.

Hallam says it is impossible to quantify the financial gain from changing working practices, but says, "We believe the evidence shows people working this way are much more productive."

And there are other tangible upsides. The company recently won the Opportunity Now Advancing Women in Business Award, has moved 43 places up The Sunday Times Best Companies list to number 40, and is also one of The Times Top 50 Places Where Women Want to Work. Both men and women have embraced flexible working—men for the same lifestyle or childcare reasons as women. As Hallam is quick to assert, "Flexible working is a business tool."

The employee

Who Happy
Sector Computer training
Why Staff morale

If ever there was an advertisement for a great place to work, Happy would be it. With its upbeat name and confident approach to flexible working, it is no wonder the London-based computer-training company was named the second best UK company to work for in the FT's Best Workplace Awards last year.

At any one time it has 2,000 people on a waiting list for a job with the company. Since Henry Stewart founded the business in 1990 it has evolved to give employees a true work-life balance. Stewart, the company's CEO, practises what he preaches and works flexibly to enable him to take his children to school twice a week.

Debbie King, who has been with Happy for eight years, explains: "People work best when they feel good about themselves and flexible working is part of that."

King was a catalyst for the change in working practices.
She needed time off for hospital appointments but was so bored in hospital that she asked to have her computer at home. Gradually the arrangement became formalised and King now works a compressed week-carrying out five days' work in four days, with two days spent at home and two in the office. If she has completed all her hours she leaves early. If not, she stays late. "It was a learning curve for me and Happy," explains King.

Flexible working was taken up by others in the firm and now there are numerous variations on the theme, with some people choosing to arrive early and leave early and others staffing Happy's helpline from home.
King says the staff-centric ethos at Happy makes flexible working easy. "We have a culture of absolute trust. We don't set people up to fail. Instead we give them parameters in which to work," she says.

The only unbreakable rule on working hours is that they should not exceed their allotted time. King acknowledges it can be difficult for new recruits because the culture is entirely different from most other companies. Some people struggle to work from home, and prefer to be in the office. "You have to live and breathe the company culture here," says King.

Happy currently employs 45 people, including one person who is on a year-long sabbatical. After six years' service everyone is entitled to a month's paid leave, which they have to take in one chunk, though some people choose to take two months at half pay.

Financial performance goes hand in hand with the culture—though King can't quantify it. "We are not being pushed for sales and target figures," she says. "The idea is to make people feel good about themselves."