agile Archives - public sector NOMADS

Sustainability: a driver for change?

On average, UK workers spend one day every fortnight travelling to and from work. 25 million commuters go to a fixed place of work every day and of these 18 million go by car, compressed into a few hours in the morning and evening rush hours. Annual UK Office commuting alone produces19.7 million tonnes of CO2 emission.

With cost pressures, performance and carbon emission targets becoming increasingly challenging, coupled with high workplace stress levels and long working hours, is it still sensible for people to spend long hours commuting to “the office” ?

While car travel is one of the big carbon emitters, buildings (and particularly offices) are by far the biggest source accounting for over 40% of the total UK emission of 153 million tonnes of CO2. So reducing the daily commute in “gas guzzling” cars is one way of helping sustain the planet, but perhaps using this to also reduce the need for “carbon guzzling” under utilised office space is even more effective in reducing carbon footprint.

Implementing and developing agile working can if managed well meet the sustainability targets of reducing both travel and the office footprint for many organisations. This twin focus on agility and sustainability – sustainagility – can reduce environmental impact as well as property related costs, but also improve service resilience, business and individual productivity, customer focus, and create better “work life” balance and CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility).

Increasingly, forward thinking management aware of sustainagility benefits are allowing, promoting, setting up and supporting more staff to work ‘agile’ and remotely – from home on a regular or ‘ad hoc’ basis, from ‘third places’ and on the move – utilising technology to limit the need to come into the office, working closer with customers and in the community, whilst also staggering work patterns so employees can avoid peak travel times, overall enabling more productive working.

In the public sector, Ofsted is the largest home-based government organisation employing over 2,000 staff, of which 60% are home-based inspectors. For Ofsted the idea of homeworking is not about reducing costs, but about improving efficiency through flexibility and locating staff where the work is. Nevertheless, the move to homeworking significantly reduced Ofsteds building footprint from 8 to 3 buildings.

In other organisations the drive to reduce carbon footprint coupled with a desire to move resources to a more variable cost base is encouraging a change towards a virtual existence. BT has 70,000 remote enabled workers as well as 15,000 registered Home Workers which has allowed the Company to reduce its office space by 50% in the last decade. Supporting agile workers through BT’s extensive use of teleconferencing has eliminated the need for over 850,000 face to face meetings a year, saving £135m in travel related costs and 97,000 tonnes of carbon as well as £103m in productivity benefits.

Unilever’s Agile Working programme made new software available to enable employees to hold virtual meetings through online discussion forums, document-sharing and presentation capability. This enabled its people to work more flexibly and interact with their colleagues from work, home or while travelling. By 2009 some 97,000 virtual meetings were held, and with over 40 000 employees using the technology, savings on travel costs, CO2 reductions and improved work–life balance are significant.

One of the largest Local Authority investment programmes in progress, Birmingham City Councils “Working for the Future” is designed to transform the Council’s operational property portfolio to enable improvements in customer service delivery, offer new ways of working and enhance the work environment for employees. The key elements are focused on enabling agile working across the Council through the introduction of new work styles, working practice guidance and new ICT technologies, as well as providing improved more sustainable workplaces.

The City Council aims to make savings of £100m over 25 years through consolidating the council’s office portfolio. The programme is also significantly reducing the Council carbon footprint not only through creating the ability for people to work remotely – reducing unnecessary travel, but also by reduction in floor space (35% reduction in its 1 million sq ft back office estate) as well as upgrading and trading in old inefficient space for 3 new “green” buildings on “brownfield” regeneration sites.

The “drivers” (excuse the pun) and enablers of change for new ways of working are clearly visible and available to most organisations. So has there ever been a better time or justification to implement and gain the benefits of sustainagility?

Paul Allsopp, The Agile Organisation
www.agile.org.uk

Filed Under: nomadNEWS Tagged With: agile

Agile Working – More With Less

As minds focus on the immediate need to do more with much less, “ slash and burn” may seem like the only option for organisations implementing drastic budget cuts. Councils are looking at grant cuts of 26% in the period to 2014, with some having to save as much as 9% of total expenditure in the first year. The scale and timing of required reductions certainly demands a more drastic response over and above the normal temporary fixes and limited tinkering around efficiency savings or departmental reorganisations.

While slashing may achieve the short term cost reduction goal it may also create damage to the ability of the organisation to operate effectively – reducing standards, staff morale, productivity and corporate confidence. Following the thoughts of John McCready, Head of the Government Property Unit, “it is important we build strategies that deal with both the immediate priority of tackling the deficit, whilst safeguarding the interests of future generations.” So to meet the new stringency challenges what is needed is a plan that is both sustainable and transformational, a change from traditional to new different and agile, but at the same time produces early wins.

Many organisations are having to make difficult decisions on service and resources in balancing their short and long term budgets – cost bases are inflexible, revenue is reducing, markets have diminished, service requirements are changing while price inflation continues to rise. In essence there is unrelenting pressure to do more with less, not as a “one off” but on an ongoing basis. To cope with this there is clearly an underlying and urgent need to be more responsive to rapidly changing situations. Therefore organisations must become agile and adopt new workstyles.

People are an organisations biggest liability but conversely they are also their greatest asset. Employers are wrestling with the need for agility in the workforce – need for reductions, redundancies, outsourcing and doing things differently while trying to retain or attract talent to maintain services and improve productivity, innovation and business value. Simultaneously employees are fearful for the present and the future – certainty of employment, disposable income, and lifestyle in general. In this situation both the organisation and its people are now much more receptive to culture change, innovation and rapid implementation of agile working.

Property is the second biggest liability on the balance sheet and while it is clearly a business asset which does give support and value to the organisation, in the current economic climate some property can equally be seen as an increasingly underutilised, inflexible carbon inefficient liability that is a drag on rapidly changing organisational needs and business effectiveness. While the property market may not currently be conducive to major disposal activity, there are opportunities which can be found if organisations re-assess and re-focus on creating agile property strategies.

In such a climate has there ever been a better time to introduce agile working ? A recent survey of more than 250 facilities managers, conducted by Leesman research for the British Institute of Facilities Management (BIFM), suggests the time is right. It revealed that, “61% of organisations are actively encouraging remote and flexible working for all staff….and increasing numbers of employers are looking to displace their teams away from expensive corporate environments”.

It would be nice if you could get “agile working in a box”, but every organisation is different and at different levels of capability. Therefore the agile journey may have similar ingredients but the path is likely to be individual for each organisation . However what is clear is that if managed well, introducing agile working can significantly cut fixed and variable costs, reduce environmental impact, improve productivity, resilience and customer focus as well as creating a more satisfied workforce with a better work life balance.

The holistic benefits are real and significant for those with the leadership vision and capability to progress transformation across the organisation, but for many agile working has until recently remained no more than a “cottage industry” focussed on studies, small scale pilots and projects with long gestation periods. Too often management inertia, fear of disturbing the cultural status quo and focus on other political priorities often stalled any serious introduction.

The drivers for change are now clearly in place and agile working is a major element in addressing the ongoing “more with less” dilemma. Indeed the Westminster Sustainable Business Forum report “Leaner and Greener: Delivering Effective Estate Management” confirms that by following best practice examples of low cost, agile working practices, UK Local Government could reduce the space it occupies by 20-30 per cent, with the potential to deliver savings in running costs of up to £7 billion a year.

In the current changing economic climate a rapid move to deployment of agile working is therefore both irresistible and necessary. So what is delaying your organisation ?

Guest Post by: Paul Allsopp, The Agile Organisation
www.agile.org.uk