Hi Anna
I've been reflecting on your question over the weekend. I work for a group of museums. Obviously we need to have enough staff in at certain times to open the museums and ensure visitors' health and safety as well as giving them an entertaining and educational experience. To that end, we have set shifts that we need people to work. However we offer a range of shifts across different days of the week - and people are free to take on extra shifts or ask to drop shifts (as long as we can cover them with someone else or recruit to backfill). This does lead to quite a reliance on casual staff to fill the gaps though. So in some ways we try to be as flexible as possible but what we can't offer for visitor facing staff is a flexitime arrangement where they choose their start and finish times. Is that the sort of scenario you were thinking of?
Kind regards
Jackie

In reply to Jacqueline:

Thanks for sharing your experience Jackie.

TBH I didn't have anything particular in mind. My own experience as a specialist in this area is that there is often more scope for flexibility than we first imagine. I was simply intrigued that Timewise believe there are sectors with specific operational barriers and wanted to explore this further.

Anyone else willing to share their thoughts?

I work in a school. While I'm trying to break down some of barriers to flexibility here that are to do with mindset, the challenge is real in relation to making genuine flexibility work in practice. The nature of the school day, timetabling (a proper art-form), and the need for consistent pastoral care across the week, combine to mean that flexible working in teaching roles is the exception rather than the norm.

In reply to Nina Waters:

Hi Nina
Do you work in a primary or a secondary school? I'm a governor at a primary school and we have certainly embraced flexible working requests - we have a high proportion of job share teachers and it has worked really well. We've retained good teachers, particularly after maternity leave, the children get the benefit of two different skill sets and approaches and it means that we rarely need to rely on supply cover as usually the job share partner is able to come in and cover if needed. We have found as time has moved on that several of these teachers have now made the move back to full time in leadership roles, so we really have benefited.

Kind regards
Jackie

In reply to Jacqueline:

Hi Jackie,

I agree - and am similarly a governor at a primary school where it's certainly helped keep some fantastic teachers in post.

My job however is at a secondary school, so timetabling is a lot more complicated - as subjects are blocked together, so one teacher with reduced day commitments for example impacts on when those lessons can be timetabled for all the other teachers of that subject. Job shares can work, but more individual flexibility is trickier.

I do think there's an "it's complicated" barrier that needs to be overcome, but there are real logistical issues here too.

Nina

I work in a creative industry and the only area I know we've rejected flexible working applications (in their original form, we've gone back with counter offers) are copywriters as the nature of the work and client base is that it's not workable for one cw to start something and another finish it. We can accommodate part time for a certain number of employees as there's some work that can be fit into that working pattern but job share or going up a level of experience isn't manageable, and hasn't been where it's been trialed in the past or if, for example, someone is off on annual leave that replicates that pattern. However we do counter offer with what is manageable and we allow wfh or staggered start/finish times so it's not an absolute no.

In reply to Meg:

I work for a manufacturing organisation that runs 24/7, our manufacturing staff work 12 hours shifts.
We really struggle with flexible working for our manufacturing staff as each area must be manned with a specific number of people in order for the processes to run. I am very aware we need to do more to look at job sharing and shift swapping across this area as we could not accommodate part-time working if the rest of the shift was not covered.
Would be great to see how other manufacturing organisations have build flexibility into their processes?

In reply to Nina Waters:

I know schools are one area where progress in offering more flexibility has been made over the past few years Nina. As you say there are logistical issues and also retention benefits. (I believe there is a shortage of teachers at present?)

I've recently come across these people who are promoting flexible working in teaching: https://returntoteach.co.uk/

In reply to Meg:

Thanks for sharing Meg. Presumably copywriting could be done at home and a working mum (for example) might be able to fit it around her children?

Great that you counter offer - which shows commitment and a willingness to explore possibilities.

In reply to Hannah Hopes:

Thanks for sharing Meg. Shiftwork is one area that's often cited as difficult to allow flex in but presumably your shifts don't need to be 12 hours long do they?

I'm thinking about a conversation I had last year with someone from Royal Mail whose short hour shifts make it possible for parents to work around school hours.

Here in the Falklands I would still say the biggest barriers to flexibility are attitudinal, but when I think across our workforce there are a lot of areas who would struggle to offer flexibility for operational reasons, mainly because of drastic skills shortages (almost zero unemployment).

Most of our hospital departments are staffed by 1 or 2 professionals - there's such a shortage of people with the necessary skills that finding anyone they could job share with in their same profession would be very difficult. We couldn't really afford to bring down two overseas contract officers to do the same job, unless they were willing to split the relocation allowance and house share too as there is a massive housing shortage and it would put up costs.

Our road builders, quarry staff, construction workers etc. work long shifts in summer to make the most of the longer daylight hours and better weather so they can make as much progress as possible each season and also get the most out of the extremely expensive machines. Allowing people to do shorter shifts would reduce progress and increase costs. They can't do the job anywhere else - they need to be on the road/site/quarry.

That said, the skills shortage also creates flexible opportunities at times - for example, our bin collection is done on Saturdays because it's a second job for the bin collectors - we couldn't do it in the week as we wouldn't be able to find staff who would work 1 day a week.

Anyone that wants to work, can - there are opportunities in tourism, cleaning, catering, childcare, bar staff etc. that do offer flexible hours.

The challenge is really around professional work - this absolutely could be offered on a part-time or flexible basis, but instead most people work the standard five days a week, 8-12, 1-4.30pm hours.

In reply to Anna:

Yes, and we do allow that as far as is possible however it's also a very collaborative role and (again from experience) needs face to face 'creative thinking' time.

In reply to Lesley:

Hi Lesley - what's the situation like for women returners/carers who need to combine work and caring? In many places flexibility both supports them and is the answer to skills shortages.

In reply to Meg:

Presumably some of the creative thinking time can take place over Skype or other virtual meeting arrangement Meg?

In reply to Anna:

As with many things down here, "it depends who you are".

If you're a valued local worker, employers will usually find a flexible approach that works for the individual if they want it - for example I have a part-time colleague who was a returning mum and our director would rather have kept her part time than lose her completely.

Most women don't really take any significant leave here though so there's less of a need to support "returners" - there is only 12 weeks paid leave and although up to 40 weeks leave is allowed, many parents take much less than that.

If you're an overseas contract worker though, most people tend to end their contracts and leave the island before a baby comes along, but this is partly because there is less flexibility offered for overseas workers.