Case study - Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council

Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council

Background

Rochdale MBC has some 11,000 employees, around 5,000-6,000 of whom are teachers. The non-teaching staff working in 18 service groups.

There has been a commitment at a senior level to improving work-life balance (WLB) for a few years, so when in 2000-01 there was a possibility for DTI funding for a project management made a - successful - application.

Under DTI timescales, results had to be achieved very quickly, so it was agreed not to go through the usual long consultation process but to immediately run a pilot in one team in the Revenues and Benefits Service (RBS). This was very successful (see below) and so it was rolled out to other teams in the RBS.

Another pilot, in the information service, was less successful and was abandoned. This was mainly because it was a very customer-focused frontline service, which offered far less flexibility to staff. (However, another WLB scheme is now back up and successfully operating in this area.)

Since the pilots, WLB schemes have spread out to other departments. However, this roll-out is on an ad hoc basis, and generally spreads through word of mouth.

Flexible working in operation

The system of flexible working in the Council operates purely on a decentralised team-by-team basis - there is no overarching corporate policy. However, there are five basic principles set out in a guidance pack provided to team managers by the Employee Relations Co-ordinator. These are:

1. Service cover will be maintained (and where possible improved) according to customer needs

2. Clear and simple systems will be used for measuring employee outputs against performance targets

3. Communication will open between managers, employees and trade unions

4. All employees will be considered fairly for flexible working

5. Flexible working involves a degree of trust; employees who misuse this trust may have flexible working removed and may be subject to disciplinary action.

The guidance sets out the full range of flexible working options for teams to consider, including opening up the flexitime system, compressed hours, working at home, reduced hours on a temporary or permanent basis, term-time-only working and annual hours.

Beyond that, the Employee Relations Co-ordinator's advice to managers is: 'You work with your team and come up with a WLB scheme for you and your team. Sweep aside existing rules on flexitime etc. Look at the needs of your customers and when they need you to be there; look at the general overriding needs for your service and the individual needs of all team members and then come up with a set of rules which are your WLB scheme.'

Benefits to the service users and to the Council were made very clear from one of the RBS teams. Before WLB, the answer phone would be put on before people started work at 8.30am, and messages would come in from 7am. The WLB scheme means that the office was opened earlier and stayed open later, allowing the phones to be covered from 7.30am.

In another case, a major project was completed on time because the staff knew that, if they put in extra hours when necessary, they would be able to take them off later. According to the manager: 'We couldn't have delivered the £12 million piece of work on time without WLB without a large overtime bill.'

The Employee Relations Co-ordinator emphasises that WLB is not an individual arrangement. 'The whole team must buy into the scheme. You have to agree it as a team and to agree the parameters. Some might use it more than others, but the boundaries must be agreed by all. '

Patterns currently in operation

The upshot of not having a prescriptive system is that there are different arrangements in different service areas. For many it is just a general opening up of the flexitime system. But for mobile wardens in the adult care service, for example, it merely comprised a re-arrangement of their shift system, which hadn't been working for them previously.

There is no ongoing central system of monitoring, so overall figures for numbers working flexibly are not available. However, a review carried out in 2003 indicated that 700 staff across 17 services were working flexibly, and a 2005 review should be completed shortly.

The Benefit Control Team in the RBS

The pilot for the whole WLB project was in the 16-member benefit control team, and was initially run for three months. The team gradually introduced greater flexibility into the working day and working week, with the main changes to work patterns being:

Changes to the flexitime system to allow staff to start earlier and finish later;

A small degree of homeworking for completion of specific tasks; and

A greater carry-over of flexi debit or credit, with hours to be reconciled over a longer period than previously.

At the end of the pilot, the benefit control manager reported great success of the project for staff and for the business.

He reported staff had noticed 'considerable benefit in being much better able to fit the demands of their home life into the requirements of their working life. The ability to start and finish earlier or later has allowed people to approach work without the worry of childcare or other personal demands that may ordinarily interfere with their capability to carry out their duties effectively.'

From the business point of view there had been several benefits. The key one was a major reduction of sickness absence, described by the manager as 'dramatic'.

Another benefit related to a particular very time-consuming piece of work that had been put off for some time. Flexible working allowed this work to be carried out by one member of the team working at home, where there were fewer distractions. 'The result is the completion of the project within an extremely short space of time - something which simply could not have been achieved without this initiative,' the manager reported.

In addition, the manager felt that there had been an improvement in productivity, although there was no scientific measure of this, and a massive increase in morale.

The pilot was rolled our to other parts of RBS and it has generally been successful.

Mohammed Iqbal, a deputy team manager in RBS and also the UNISON branch equality officer at the council, is very supportive of WLB. He says there are no limits to flexibility 'as long as the service is not undermined.'

There are around 30 staff in the team, and between 95% and 99% use WLB. He has five officers below him, four of whom have childcare responsibilities, so school holidays are a challenge to manage, but he says 'there is a general willingness among staff to support each other.'

Iqbal is happy that the system is informal and fluid. For example, he has people asking if they can work six hours a day just for the next month as they have a particular short-term problem and his response is: 'it's fine by me, and better not to have to go through a load of bureaucracy.'

He benefits from WLB himself: as a councillor in another authority he is entitled to a certain number of days off but that gets used up quite quickly. 'If I have a meeting at 4pm I can just go early, rather than taking a half day's leave.'

One of his team who has benefited hugely from WLB is Revenues Officer Eunice Joyce, She is full time but has worked a number of different patterns.

She says: 'When the WLB scheme originally started, it suited me to work six hours and have an afternoon off on one day for household duties.

'But then new circumstances arose at home with us both having elderly parents to help. So now I can put extra time in at certain times and take time off to clean their houses and so on. WLB gives you that flexibility instead of using your whole weekend.'

'When I first started this pattern - coming in early and going home late some days - it was to miss the bad traffic. It is stress-free and totally suits me. Then I continued to do that. The organisation benefits too as always someone to answer phone in the evening and in the morning I can get on with more complicated work without interruptions.'

Team manager Iqbal adds that this works fine as 'Eunice puts in a lot of hours for two to three weeks and then takes a week of WLB. As long as everyone doesn't want the same week off, I've got no issue with it.'

Rochdale Boroughwide Housing

This is an 'arms length' management organisation with around 600 staff in total.

The scheme adopted there is a very flexible flexitime system with no core time and a maximum carry forward at the end of each month of 22 hours' credit or 71/4 hours' debit (management may authorise variations in exceptional circumstances). It covers weekend and evening work where required.

The main limitation is that 'actual hours worked will be subject to the needs of the service and in particular individual team requirements' and that a maximum of two days WLB leave can be taken per month.

This is an important WLB scheme as it covers 400 craft workers, who have to be out and about, and constitutes the council's largest group of operational staff. The scheme represented a fundamental change to those workers as they had no flexibility before WLB.

Response of line managers

There has not been an obviously adverse attitude from managers as they are not being instructed to implement WLB, but some managers are quite resistant and expect people to come in at 9am every day. The managers that the personnel department tends to hear from are those that are very 'forward looking' and have approached personnel themselves about WLB.

Union involvement

The largest union at the Council is UNISON, which has around 4,000 members The T&G is the next biggest union, while the GMB and Amicus have a very small number of members each.

UNISON has been heavily involved in the WLB project from an early stage, and the current branch secretary was delighted to be involved in something very positive for members at a time when there are a lot of more negative things going on in the council, such as privatisation and budget cuts.

She often goes with the Employee Relations Co-ordinator to speak together to teams and line managers about issues around WLB. The union is happy to co-operate with the limitation on WLB arrangements that service cover had to be maintained.

The branch secretary also feels being involved in WLB formed the start of the branch being able to work as partners with the management on other things, even though they do not always agree.

'WLB did start off more of a dialogue, for example we now hold a lot of joint management-steward seminars on other things such as the new sickness monitoring policy. We don't like it but council has adopted it so we have to work with it. So next month we are having a stewards seminar on how to help members within those procedures, and someone from personnel will also do presentation.'