New study reveals giving frontline workers greater control over their working patterns improves health and wellbeing

A new major two-year project by the flexible working consultancy Timewise and the Institute for Employment Studies, backed by Impact on Urban Health has found that frontline workers who gain input and control over their working pattern DO see wellbeing and job satisfaction improve. And organisations that offer this, see improved employee engagement levels.

The report ‘Flexible working for all: Achieving greater equity for frontline and site-based workers‘ states it has become clear that the UK has become two-tier, split between ‘flex haves’ on the one side and ‘flex have nots’ on the other.

Timewise, in partnership with the Institute for Employment Studies and three trailblazing employers: Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, Sir Robert McAlpine and Wickes has completed a two-year action research project designed to try and narrow this divide.

Funded by Impact on Urban Health, the ‘Flex For All’ project set out to establish how to introduce a sense of flexibility into site-based roles through greater autonomy and choice in working pattern.

Just over five million people in the UK work in construction, retail and nursing – the sectors in which this trial was conducted. Many work mostly on building sites, behind tills or on wards. In fact, 60 per cent of UK employees do not work from home.

To date, there has been limited coordinated action between employers and industry to redress such workplace inequality – until now.

Three employers were invited to take part in the action-research programme by Timewise: Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Foundation Trust, Sir Robert McAlpine and Wickes. Each were selected because they have large concentrations of site-based workers, and have made strong commitments to flexible working, health and wellbeing.

Timewise experts listened to the experiences of employees and managers to create new ways to schedule work or manage teams with each employer, taking their priorities and operational challenges into account. This included:

• Piloting a new rostering process for 15 nurses on the Acute Admissions Ward at Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Foundation Trust in London, to give them increased input and control over their shift patterns.
• Working with senior leaders and seven teams of middle managers at Sir Robert McAlpine to build a more consistent approach to supporting formal and informal flexible working, ranging from late starts and early finishes to part-time working.
• Offering a range of flexible working options to store managers, operations managers and duty managers at 13 Wickes stores across the UK.

To understand the impact of the new ways of working for both participants and their employers, three different methods of data collection were used: employee surveys both before and after the pilots, HR data collection and discussions with those involved.

What improved?

At all three organisations, employees reported improvements:

• Improved health – Half of those surveyed before the project agreed with the statement: ‘My current working arrangements allow me to maintain a good level of personal health and wellbeing’ (51 per cent). By the end of the project, those taking part nearly all agreed – 82 per cent.
• Improved balance – Before the trial, 52 per cent of all survey respondents thought they had a good balance between their work lives and home lives. For those taking part, this figure increased to 78 per cent following the end of the trial.
• Job Satisfaction – 83 per cent felt their satisfaction with their jobs improved by the end of the trial due to their new flexible working arrangement.

Benefits to employers

The project found evidence of financial benefits for employers. For example, at Wickes more than a quarter of participants (28 per cent) reported taking less sick leave due to their new flexible working arrangements.

One of the report authors and Head of Programme, Dr Sarah Dauncey said: “This research shows that employers who are prepared to innovate and invest in flexible working for site-based staff will be rewarded by increased employee engagement and performance. All three of the employers who participated in the programme – Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Foundation Trust, Sir Robert McAlpine and Wickes – are looking ahead and furthering plans to widen access to flexible options. For them, there’s no going back. And, for employees, the benefits of increased autonomy over their working pattern are stark. The flexible working they gained through the programme is central to how they want to work in the future.”

Co-author Astrid Allen from the Institute for Employment Studies commented: “When it comes to offering flexibility for people in roles that cannot easily be done from home, Guy’s and St Thomas’, Sir Robert McAlpine and Wickes are ahead of the game. Our research found that frontline and site-based staff want (and, sometimes, really need) better flexible working, and the piloted approaches that Timewise helped to introduce were beneficial to both the employees and their organisations. Our findings suggest that many other employers could benefit from offering similar approaches to their people.”