In a pilot with three hospitals, and supported by the Burdett Trust for Nursing, Timewise explored whether a team-based approach to the roster could give nurses greater control of their working patterns. The goal was to improve nurses’ work-life balance, with a view to alleviating the NHS staffing crisis.
Getting and keeping staff is now the number one challenge for the NHS. And the NHS Long Term Plan recognises that poor work-life balance is a key underlying reason.
From our work across many sectors, Timewise knows that work-life balance is a key element of any ‘great place to work’. But how can hard-pressed ward managers, trying to provide 24-hour patient care with limited resources and at the same time satisfy clinical requirements for particular skills on particular shifts, also facilitate work-life balance for nurses?
Timewise set up a pilot to explore one way of addressing this problem. We worked with 240 nurses in seven wards in three hospitals, to test whether a team-based rostering system could improve nurses’ work-life balance. The aim was to increase nurses’ input into their own working patterns.
The education profession is in crisis. Long hours, constantly changing workloads, and better paid opportunities elsewhere, are all factors that are making recruitment and retention an ever increasing challenge.
While flexible working cannot tackle all of these issues, it has a big role to play in improving work-life balance for teachers. It can help make the profession (one dominated by women) more accessible to those with other commitments such as family.
This project explored how to create part-time and flexible pathways in secondary schools. Key points are summarised below.
In the 12 years that Timewise has been focusing on the flexible jobs market, we have heard anecdotal evidence of a key barrier facing part-time employees: a sense of not being fully part of the team.
This research survey set out to quantify the problem. It found that many part-time workers do indeed say they miss out on key meetings, on professional development events and training, and on networking opportunities.
Among the part-time workers who responded to our survey:
If part-time workers are missing out in these ways, they are unlikely to progress as well as their full-time colleagues. Not only is this a waste of their potential, it could also have a negative impact on their organisation’s gender pay gap. By failing to take part-time workers’ schedules into account when planning important meetings and events, employers are making it harder for these employees to deliver their role to the highest standards, and creating operational inefficiencies.
Employers who really want to benefit from the skills and talents of their part-time workers, need to start thinking differently about the best way to support them.
In simple terms, employers need to think differently. They need to challenge the assumption that, just because something has always been done in a certain way – such as entertaining clients after work, or having team meetings on the same day and time each week – that’s the only way to do it.
By thinking creatively and innovatively about how things are done, employers can deliver a workplace culture and working week that is as inclusive of part-time workers as their full-time colleagues – and benefit from the results.
Specific suggestions, made by the part-time workers in our survey include:
Published September 2018
The staffing crisis in the NHS has the organisation close to breaking point. Large numbers of staff are leaving, with many citing work-life balance as their main reason. And recruitment is challenging, with huge numbers of unfilled vacancies. As a result, agency costs for locums and temporary staff are spiralling.
Flexibility could help to tackle these issues, yet there is no clear definition of what flexible working means within the NHS. The organisation currently tends to operate on a request-response model, in which flexibility is seen as a problem to be accommodated rather than a way to meet the non-work needs of their staff. The variety of roles and ways of working in the NHS adds further complexity, with different solutions needed for shift-based working.
In the last year, Timewise has begun working with a range of NHS Trusts to scope how flexible working can enhance their ability to retain staff. We are also conducting an action research project to help NHS Trusts retain nurses within a 24/7 workplace.
Timewise recommends that the NHS implements a three-part Action Plan for Flexibility, to drive sustainable change
1. Define what flexibility means
The NHS needs to develop a clear definition and vision for flexible working
2. Design flexible job roles
The next step is to create flexible job design options for each profession, job role and specialty.
3. Develop a flexible culture
Organisational cultures which drive and promote flexible working at team level will be essential for the changes to be successful.
In this report, we recommend a fresh approach to redesigning NHS jobs and working practices, taking into account the specific clinical and operational constraints in each profession, job role and specialty. This innovative approach to flexible job design will create role-specific flexible options, for staff at all levels, and will help the NHS to:
Flexible working, done well, could help the NHS to deliver a 24/7 environment which works for all their staff, whatever their other responsibilities. The result would be a dramatic increase in the organisation’s ability to attract, nurture, develop and keep its hard working, talented people.
Published July 2018
Our enduring social aim at Timewise is to enable women and men to find the flexibility they need in their careers without reducing their value in the workplace.
Professional services firm Deloitte also shares this aim – providing a working environment where everyone is able to enjoy a successful career alongside a fulfilling life outside work. It is this shared aim that led Timewise and Deloitte to produce our Manifesto for Change.
To prepare our manifesto, a research survey was conducted amongst 1800 professionals working in the UK. The survey was followed up by qualitative research interviews with 12 business leaders.
Key findings from the research are shown below:
The survey identified several perceived barriers to flexible working, including outdated workplace cultures and attitudes that perpetuate the ‘flexibility stigma’. It’s clear that even when business leaders want to accommodate the flexible working needs of their employees, there is a gap between what is said at the top and how that translates to everyday working life.
Because the barriers to embedding flexible working are primarily cultural, success must go beyond a programmatic approach. Both the survey respondents and our interviewees told us that real change only comes when leaders challenge workplace culture and dismantle practices that are no longer fit for purpose.
Based on the survey results, we developed a Manifesto for Change. We want this to be a blueprint for attitudes and actions across UK organisations. We want business leaders to recognise that getting flexible working right will drive success in their business. We want them to share best practice and be brave in trying new approaches.
The following five manifesto actions are what we believe will accelerate workplace change, making it fit for today’s flexible workforce:
Published May 2018
Flexibility in working hours is one of the most important reasons cited for choosing to work in retail1. And yet employees who need flexibility all too often become trapped in shop-floor roles by the lack of opportunities to work part-time or flexibly at store management level.
Following an initial pilot with Pets at Home, Timewise launched our Retail Pioneer Programme in 2017, developed with the BRC and five pioneer partners: B&Q, Cook, Dixons Carphone, Tesco and the John Lewis Partnership.
We set out to understand what was getting in the way of offering flexible working at store management level. Through in-depth research with each of the five retailers, we interrogated and challenged the cultural and operational barriers to flexibility. We then identified key changes needed to break down the barriers, so that employees who need flexibility can progress their careers and employers can make the best use of their talent.
Current take-up of flexible working at the five Retail Pioneers’ stores
How retail staff feel about current practice
Under-utilisation of skills
Talented people who need flexibility are being underdeveloped because of the lack of flexible career progression. This might encourage them to leave the industry, and deter others from joining it.
Diversity issues and the gender pay gap
For some of the five retailers, attracting female talent to their stores was a particular challenge. Other retailers had a diverse gender mix at shop floor level, but this reduced dramatically at supervisor or manager roles. As flexible working is disproportionately attractive to women, there is a real opportunity for flexible career pathways to have a positive impact on the gender pay gap for retailers.
Our research points to the need for a 2 step change process:
1 Redesign existing part-time managerial jobs to make them achievable and attractive, supporting management teams to explore how they can redesign workloads and schedules collaboratively.
2 Open up all roles to flex, promoting and hiring people flexibly into managerial roles.
Based on the insights revealed by our research, we worked closely with each of the five retailers to develop tailored action plans containing our recommended job design options. We have been delighted with the responses from the Pioneers, who are taking a variety of approaches, depending on their particular findings and their business priorities.
1 Retail 2020, What Our People Think, May 2016, BRC
Published May 2018
An ambitious government programme is underway to raise the quality and quantity of apprenticeships, funded in part by the new Apprenticeship Levy. It has catapulted apprenticeships to the top of the agenda for many businesses. The benefits to apprentices, to businesses and to our wider economy and society are considerable.
However, access to high quality apprenticeships is uneven. Gender segregation is entrenched, mirroring the inequalities in the labour market that see women over-represented in low paid, low skilled jobs.
Timewise holds that one root cause of this gender inequality is the lack of part-time or flexible apprenticeships. Just one in ten apprentices are contracted for less than 30 hours per week, leaving the training out of reach for many who are unable to work full-time – particularly women, people with caring responsibilities, disabled people and young people leaving the care system.
This report investigates the feasibility of part-time and flexible models of apprenticeships. It is based on research conducted by Learning and Work Institute and Timewise, supported by the Young Women’s Trust and Trust for London.
The research suggests that part-time and flexible apprenticeships can increase access to skills and allow businesses to reach a broader, more diverse candidate pool. An effective programme would include the following critical success factors:
Timewise are now developing a part-time and flexible apprenticeship model which we intend to pilot later this year. Our goal is to build an evidence base to support a scalable part-time and flexible apprenticeship offer.
Published February 2018
Across the UK, policy makers with ambitious plans for regeneration and growth are keen to ensure that no one in their community is left behind. But the lack of good flexible jobs means that key groups of people (such as parents and carers, people with disabilities or older workers) are often trapped in low-paid roles or locked out of the jobs market altogether.
Timewise has been commissioned by some of the UK’s most forward-looking local authorities and policy makers to report on the availability of flexible roles within their regions. The research we’ve carried out so far has shown clearly that the demand for flexible roles dramatically outstrips the supply, and has provided the evidence to support the creation of strategies for systemic change.
However, gathering the evidence is just the first step. We’re also working closely with local leaders to bring these strategies to life, unlock their jobs markets to quality flexible roles, and so tackle issues of social mobility, gender and diversity, as well as a lack of career progression.
We are currently partnering with over 25 councils and other major public sector employers, who are acting as champions for change, both as employers and influencers. We’re also working with metro mayors and anchor institutions to support the drive for more flexible jobs, through social consultancy and job design programmes.
As the Social Mobility Commission highlighted in their recent report, local leaders have a key role to play in building routes out of low-paying roles and into higher, skilled positions, by thinking creatively about interventions that could help address career progression. The lack of good, flexible jobs is holding communities back; if you are a regional policy maker who is looking to develop an innovative strategy for inclusive growth, please get in touch.
Download our latest Regional Flexible Jobs Index, for West Yorkshire
Flexible working means different things to different people. Our research focuses on the following types of flexibility, which are generally seen as favourable for the employee:
Our respondents included full-time workers who might be working flexibly now (or not), and may have told us they would prefer to work part-time or to work full-time but with flexibility in their working pattern.
BUSINESS IMPERATIVE TO HAVE A PROACTIVE STRATEGY FOR FLEXIBLE WORKING
THE NEED TO OFFER FLEXIBLE WORKING IN THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS
Timewise commissioned the survey from ComRes, who interviewed 3,001 UK adults online between 13th and 26th June 2017. Within these sub-samples: 1,250 full-time employees; 750 part-time employees; 500 self-employed people; 501 people who were not working but wanted to work. All participants were aged 18+. The data for full-time employees and for part time employees was weighted to be representative of the UK working population for those employment types; other data were unweighted.
Published September 2017
Social care has a reputation for offering flexible working to suit those with personal caring responsibilities and indeed 53% of the care workforce work less than full-time. But equally, it requires unsociable hours – early mornings, evenings and weekends. Up to 60% of workers in domiciliary care are on zero hours contracts: in theory, such contracts enable carers to choose both the schedule of hours they work, and the amount of work they do each week. But does the rhetoric of flexibility and family-friendly match the reality of carers’ jobs?
Timewise, with the support of the JPMorgan Chase Foundation, set out to explore how care providers manage the challenge of delivering a high quality service to people who need care, whilst enabling carers – 82% of whom are women – to find the flexibility they need to manage their own non-work responsibilities.
The purpose of the pilot phase of our research was to test whether a geographical team-based approach to scheduling could stabilise and enhance jobs in care. The pilot showed that:
Published May 2017
