Flexible working is generally considered to reduce stress, cut sick leave and increase employee engagement. Online and telephone bank First Direct’s operational development manager Frances Dillon explains why their flexible working practices have had a positive impact on business.





What flexible working measures do you have in place?

“At First Direct we offer flexible working to all our employees; this surpasses the current ‘Right to request’ legislation. Currently around 40% of our staff subscribe to flexible working options, including part-time, job sharing, working compressed hours and rolling shift patterns. We must have a flexible approach because we’re a 24-hour business. There are some areas of our business that allow for home working, such as HR, marketing and finance. For employees who opt to work from home, we can set up a remote IT system so they can access their desktop from personal computers.”

Why offer flexible working?

“Our call centre is open 24-hours a day and it’s important that our customers can call us any time of the day and receive a consistently high standard of service. We have hundreds of call centre shift patterns that our employees can work around. Offering flexible working also allows us to recruit a greater variety of people into the business, such as students, part-time workers and working mothers. It is also an attractive proposition for potential employees.” 

How do you make it work?

“We offer laptops and Blackberry mobile phones to our home and mobile workers and flexible shift patterns to our call centre staff. We also have a very good interactive intranet which helps keep employees up-to-date and includes a database for shift-swapping.

“We have also created a good working environment along with our flexible working benefits. We have found that people are a lot happier if you can take the hassles out of their life. We don’t want employees turning up for work worried about having to do their car tax or somewhere to leave their dry cleaning, so we have a 24-hour on-site concierge service to help. We also have the UK’s largest on site workplace nursery, because of the number of children we can accommodate.”

What business benefits have there been?

“Through greater flexibility at work we have found that our employees are more engaged because they have a better work-life balance – as a result we don’t have the same retention issues as other call centres. When staff are at work they are focused on the job and are able to provide a much better service to customers. Flexible working has a positive impact on staff, and customers can see the benefits.”

What feedback do you receive from employees?

“We hold regular focus groups with our employees to have discussions about work. We know they’re happy because they tell us they are - it’s a by-product of investing in our people. Through the focus groups we’re able to listen to employees’ ideas and take them on board if we can.”

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