This is Lesson 4 in the boot camp 'How to help your team ‘build back better': A boot camp on flexible working’.

In this week’s task, it is time to draw together all of your reflections and conversations to date to agree your new plan as you return to your workplaces (or make a plan to do so in the future). What sort of flexibility does everyone want to use? How has it changed?

It’s important at this stage to ensure several things:

  • The flexibility/way of working proposed will ensure (as much as you can reasonably anticipate) your team continue to meet (or have the opportunity to improve) the business, team and individual outcomes you defined in Activity 2
  • Test your thinking – are there any opportunities to do things differently – whether by work share, or swapping tasks, that can open up even more choice in the way you all work? Similarly, is there any work you can collaborate with another team to complete?
  • Reflecting back on Activity 3, are the options being proposed going to make the most of the things you have all valued and found effective, while addressing the challenges?

If you're completing this boot camp with your team, there may be some differing views in this week's conversation – encourage everyone to make constructive, respectful challenges, and ensure everyone gets a say. People may have really different views on what they want and need – remember, the idea is democratic access, while maintaining or improving access. No one needs a reason to ask or a hierarchy of need (unless someone’s preferred option would genuinely affect someone else’s workforce participation). In our experience, however, people are very pragmatic about what’s possible for their context, and can have quite creative ideas they may have feared expressing previously because of stigma.

Your goal here is to develop a team flexibility plan that is inclusive, practical and cost neutral (unless your organisation has said otherwise). It will need to abide by existing industrial parameters, and find an equilibrium between the needs of your clients/customers, your team and the individual’s within it. Make clear any plan is a pilot only for three moths minimum, to see how it will go, and encourage a spirit of being prepared to test and experiment, and try to make it work – but be prepared to change it if it does not.

This week's activities

1: Watch video (2 mins) Watch this video to hear from Catherine Coghlan about what to expect from this week's lesson.

2: Complete activity 4 (10 mins) Complete activity 4, to make your team's new flexibility plan. You'll reflect on what changes you've made throughout Covid-19 and consider what you want to change, continue, modify or stop. You can print the PDF, or write your answers down.

3: Compare your answers (10 mins) If your team members are taking the boot camp with you, compare your answers with theirs. You can also compare your answers with this example for reference, or if you're completing the boot camp on your own.

Picture Credit: Unsplash

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