Allows employees freedom to control hours by working weekends, half\u002Ddays or even nights
The new working practice — Work Unbound — was launched earlier this year. It followed three-month pilots in the company’s offices in Queensland, Australia, and Liverpool, U.K., in 2019. Over a third of the professionals involved in the experiments chose to do some weekend work.
It is impossible to return to old ways of working once employees have been given more freedom, says Andy Pennington, Liverpool office leader for Arup. During the pilots in 2019, senior executives were “conscious that in letting the genie out of the bottle” they would not be able to “put a stopper back in.” This is a lesson that is being learnt by employers who try to return to a culture of office presenteeism: workers are resistant, one contributory factor to the Great Resignation.
Diane Thornhill, Arup’s human resources director for U.K., Europe, Middle East and Africa, says work patterns have not altered dramatically but employees enjoy the autonomy. Nonetheless, it is not straightforward culture change. “Letting go of some of the past is a challenge, particularly at a leadership level,” she says.Article content
The approach requires planning around workers’ and clients’ schedules, though Arup also asks that employees come into the office twice a week. “We had to be a lot more organized to orchestrate the week ahead,” says Pennington. Some teams sit down together at the start of the week and plan the days ahead, others share their electronic diaries. “It helped to manage the concern that a deadline would fall just as everyone decided to take the Friday afternoon off together.
“It requires a little bit more in terms of collaboration and to understand other people’s working patterns,” he adds, noting that his calendar looks like the video game Tetris.
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