Flexible Working at Genesis

Genesis Housing Association is an organisation which embraces flexible and remote working through their Smart Working policy. With over 1300 staff in London, Essex, Hertfordshire, and East Anglia, the ability to communicate and collaborate across locations is essential to their success.

Staff are encouraged to work flexibly, including home working, wherever their job role allows. They are also given the tools for the job, with laptops and secure remote connections replacing desktop PCs. Offices have been redesigned with hot desking and more meeting and collaboration spaces.

Earlier this year Smart Working was put to the test when one of their Customer Relations teams was faced with a potential resourcing shortage. Several team members needed extended time at home. In the past this would have led to a drop in the level of service.

But they now have remote access to everything they use at work, including the dashboards that tell them who’s on a call, who is in the office or working from home, how many calls are waiting and exactly how long they’ve been waiting. So anything they do in an office they can do at home.

The team arranged their team meetings via Skype and coordinated team performance to keep satisfaction results at an acceptable level. They fully embraced Skype messaging as well, with the group communicating through it rather than email. This helped keep those working from home engaged with the team and up to speed with any business changes.

The regular online meetings engendered a sense of belonging and participation in the team, who stepped up their communication and information sharing to meet the challenge.

Neil Wilkins, Marketing Manager, said: “Smart working has allowed us to support the needs of our people without damaging service to our customers or to the business. The team have really embraced technology to keep in touch, to keep the team spirit going, no matter where someone’s working.”

This example from Genesis shows that with the right combination of management support, training, and technology, flexible working can deliver great results for customers, organisations, and staff.