Case Study - Newcastle Building Society

Newcastle Building Society

Background

Newcastle Building Society employs 799 staff, of whom 529 are at the Principal Office in Newcastle, 270 are in branches and around 30 in subsidiary companies (although the flexible working policy does not formally cover the subsidiary companies).

The Society introduced the policy with the aim of becoming the 'best employer' in a tight labour market.

Flexible working arrangements

The policy gives all staff at the Principal Office (and to some extent in the branches) the right to request flexible working arrangements; not just those with young or disabled children or those that have worked for the company for over 26 weeks. [See right to request flexible working]

Newcastle Building Society defines flexible working as 'any working pattern that is different from the 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday, working week' but states that 'any working arrangement must meet the needs of both the Society and the members of staff and for this reason not all flexible working arrangements will applicable to every branch, department or role.'

In addition, the Society has a separate but linked written policy on working from home.

Take-up and patterns currently in operation

A total of 85 employees have 'flexed their contract' with the following patterns:

• 32 consolidated (compressed) hours (9 of them managers)
• 30 reduced hours (10 managers)
• 9 different working times (1 manager)
• 1 term-time only contract
• 13 working from home

One training officer works full time hours but in four days a week of compressed working, rather than five. The Society still get the same amount of training time from her as she does her admin work between 8.30 and 9am and 5 and 5.30pm when most staff are not available for training.

Examples

One of the 40-odd members of staff in the customer lending department at the Principal Office works full time but her 35 hours are compressed into four days to allow her to have a day off each week. She requested this as a preferable way of working for herself rather than the more typical reason of childcare. Her request was processed and agreed within two weeks.

She now works from 8.45am to 6pm, with 30 minutes for lunch, four days a week with Fridays off. Her manager said having Fridays off depends on business needs and the day off was subject to change, though this has never happened.

She is very happy with the arrangement and would recommend it to others, but points out that not everyone would be happy with the longer days.

One problem is, she is applying for a higher post in a department where flexible working will not be available.

A member of staff in the Telecare department - which has 21 members of staff - works 20 hours a week, 10am-2pm five days a week. She wanted to switch her work hours to enable her to take Wednesdays off, so requested to work until 4pm on Mondays and Tuesdays to make up the four hours needed. Her request was agreed within days.

It worked out well because Wednesdays tend to be quiet days in that department - another member of staff had a request to have Mondays off turned down. She is not sure what will happen at 'statement time' - which is a very busy three weeks once a year.

Reasons for requests

Childcare is a major reason for flexible working requests but others have included working a nine-day fortnight to allow more time to spend with a spouse or partner and one who wanted to study.

Rejected requests

Requests that have ended up with a lot of debate are where HR feels the individual is not being reasonable. Usually requests have been reasonable as staff have thought it through themselves.

One request rejected was from a manager who wanted to compress her full-time hours into a four-day week. However, it was felt that the very early and late hours would be lost to the Society as there were no staff to be managed at those times. It was agreed she would reduce her hours to four normal days a week, the 5th day's money would be allocated to someone else and a new role for somebody could be created.

Response of line managers

There have not really been problems, and around 20 of the managers themselves have 'flexed' their contracts.

Union involvement

The union on site is Amicus, which generally enjoys good relations with the Society's management. The policy was initiated by management, who gave a draft to union officers for comment. All was agreed pretty quickly as the union was happy to have more generous provision than was required by law.

The union has had no involvement with the running of the policy, as matters are agreed directly between the individual concerned and the management.

Generally the union feels that the policy is currently working well, although it has a number of concerns, including:

• People are often not aware of the policy, particularly if they are not parents of young children;
• Flexitime arrangements are unduly restrictive and not operated fairly across the board;
• The ability to work flexibly depends very much on what type of job you have. For example, if your job involves answering phone calls from the public, there is much less flexibility than for purely computer-based work; and
• Flexible working arrangements are given on a first come, first served basis. If someone already has an agreed flexible working pattern, and another flexible working request conflicts with it, the request will be refused.