PHA announces launch of new flexible working charter
Shelley Frosdick & Stuart Skinner
Striking a good work-life balance for our employees and having the opportunity to manage the working week flexibly has always been important to us at PHA.
The global pandemic opened all of our eyes to new ways of working and overnight turned our homes into our offices and demonstrated that our teams could work effectively from anywhere, showing huge adaptability and focus at a challenging time.
As we started to look forward to summer 2021 and the lifting of restrictions, it was important to us that we recognised the positives and learnings that working from home over the previous 18 months had given us, and communicated in advance to our staff our position.
We have all adapted to working from home because we have had to, and during that time we have experienced the many benefits this different way of working offers. But as we move out of lockdown, and the instruction to work from home is lifted, we are again able to exercise choice about where we work.
On 19th July, we launched a Flexible Working Charter to our staff, making clear to them our approach to working flexibly, giving them the ability to choose where they want to work from. We wanted to empower our staff to choose the location to work from that’s best for their clients, their careers, and their colleagues, rather than the default of working from home because we have to.
The new flexible working charter asks all staff to attend the office for a minimum of four days per month, and for the remaining days of each month we are empowering our staff to make the decision on what the best working environment is for them, and the work they have to complete.
Our aim is to provide clients with the best possible service and to provide staff with flexible options that blend homeworking with the positive opportunities that office working brings.
We know that over the last year staff have found many benefits in the increased flexibility of home working, and we want this to continue, but we also recognise the huge value in working together, in an office environment where face-to-face conversations can prove much more productive than hours of video calls, as well as ensuring that our company culture stays strong.
Our new charter enables our staff to have more choice on where they work from, ensuring we all continue to perform to the best of our ability. We hope it demonstrates the trust we have in our staff to manage their workload and careers in the best possible way and shows our support for achieving the ideal work-life balance.