BT, as an entity, has seen a move from the public sector to private, we have transformed our cost base and the way we engage, and now we are working on provision of technology to assist in the transformation in public services.
So what have we done, and how has our own experience at BT allowed us to identify so clearly with the issues facing public sector organisations?
Well for a start we introduced as much flexible working as we could, and we weren’t jumping on a bandwagon – we built the wagon. As early as the 1990s we were pioneering new ways of working. And that doesn’t mean we just gave employees access from home, we deliberately re-thought every aspect of flexible working, including the issues around office-based flexible workers who often get overlooked. Our aim was to dramatically increase desk sharing among the non-mobile population. Our City of London HQ had 1,600 shared workstations to accommodate not just people who work there daily, but also over 8,000 mobile employees who use the space for meetings and hot desking every day.
Our Options 2000 programme reduced desks in central London from 10,000 to 3,000 and cut the number of BT offices in central London from 23 to just five. According to the British Council for Offices, the average office desk is vacant 40 to 50% of the time as its ‘owner’ is out visiting customers, meeting colleagues, taking holidays or off sick. We wanted to increase this occupancy rate to more than 85%, and we did, by analysing usage and offering employees flexible working choices. Ultimately, 63% of office-based employees, who came into the office all day every day, opted for flexible working; we already had high numbers of home and mobile workers. A reduction in allocated desks from 63% to 32% and an increase in shared desks from 12% to 68% increased desk occupancy from 50% to 80%, creating more efficient use of existing office space.
As a result by 2005 we were saving around £550m annually in property costs, compared with expenditure before the programme began, and reduced our property portfolio by more than 40%. As for the other benefits, we saved £29m on annual travel costs, reduced absenteeism by 63% among flexible workers, increased our post-maternity leave retention rate to 95% compared with the UK average of 47%, avoided 11 million kilometers and 2,800 tonnes of CO2 from company car, rail and air travel and calculated each one of our home workers reduced their annual carbon emissions by 1.4 tonnes.
Of course, introducing agile working is not something that should be adopted simply because it’s a buzzword, or something you “should” be doing. Likewise, although the business benefits are undeniable, it is not something that should be “done to” employees – it’s not all about the business case. There are sound benefits to employees, the improvement of the work life balance being the most significant, but those benefits get harder to communicate when we come to in-building flexible benefits. For flexible working to be successful, good management practice must prevail. That means doing all of the things that should be done but often are neglected, such as regular one to one meetings, personal development plans, measurement by objectives and sound performance management.
This experience has meant we are able to offer an unparalleled portfolio of tried and tested flexible working products and services. These products comprise BT Workstyle Managed Services, which encompasses consultancy, process design, best practices on agile working and how to implement them, objective based management techniques, hosted and managed flexible working portals and e-learning and workflow. They have emerged directly from the challenges we faced and the learning we have gleaned as part of our transition from public sector organisation to a thriving private sector company operating at the cutting edge of work practice. We’ve learnt by experience, and we lead by example. That’s what puts us in our unique position – after all, would you buy a car from someone who’d never driven?
