Jessica Shakespeare

What is your role?

Team Leader

My team know they can come to me at any time to change their roster so that it suits their workload and their personal needs. I really do "tweak" the roster almost weekly as I find the more flexibility I give my team, the more I get out of them, the happier they are and the more productive we are.

What is your flexible arrangement with FCTG?

I am currently running a controlled case study for my team of 8 on workplace flexibility.

I initially wrote up a survey and sent this out to my team to understand what they thought workplace flexibility meant to them and how much they feel they could adopt it in their role. I asked questions about job satisfaction, moral, workload etc.

Following that, I then ran a weekly business meeting and explained to the team that we would be doing a trial on workplace flexibility. We brainstormed ideas on how we thought it would or wouldn't work, what the challenges would be and then what everyone would like in terms of their own flexibility.

We highlighted that everyone has different requirements for what they want from flexibility and how this would work with our roles and personal requirements. Some staff said they wouldn't want to work from home, some wanted to do extended hours… everyone has a different need which is why it needs to be flexible.

In my team we are currently adopting flexibility in the following way:

• One consultant is a home agent (on the .2 model)
• One consultant works an extended working day until 6.30pm each day then has an
  extra RDO once a fortnight
• One consultant works 2-3 days a month from home
• One consultant is on extended leave without pay due to family issues and is welcome back to the team whenever she is ready. We still touch base with her and invite her to work functions, social outings etc
• The remaining three consultants are all given preference with long weekends using RDO's and are given regular flexi time.