Making flexible work inclusive for all in Camden
Organisations: Camden Council and Timewise
Camden Council is on a mission to bring the benefits of good, flexible work to its staff and residents across the borough.
Creating good quality jobs and widening access to them is essential to raising living standards. Flexible working is widely regarded as a feature of ‘good’ work and a means to unlock jobs to people who would otherwise be excluded from the labour market, such as caregivers and people with a disability or health condition.
In collaboration with Timewise - a social enterprise dedicated to supporting employers to establish more flexible working practices - Camden Council has been able to adopt a two-pronged approach to broadening access to flexible work locally:
By focusing on its own workforce, the council has been able to increase the number of council employees who have access to good quality flexible work
By focusing on its wider role as a place-maker and local anchor organisation, the council has identified levers it can pull to influence a wider number of employers across their locality
Background to project
In 2022 - as part of their Future of Work programme - Camden set an ambitious goal to provide fair and good quality flexible work to all employees across the organisation - regardless of role or level.
Timewise worked with the council to complete a diagnostic of their existing employment policies and practice which informed an action plan containing key priority areas for the Council to focus on to improve flexibility for all staff, especially those working in operational and frontline roles.
Camden Council’s role as an employer
Three core areas of the plan were taken forwards by the council - focusing on their role as an employer:
Work with frontline services to challenge assumptions around flexible working
Developing a learning offer to improve manager capabilities to design flexible job roles
Internal communications – i.e. how the council will share stories and experiences about flex working organisationally
A key principle underpinning these priority areas was a commitment to a broader definition of what flexible working can mean, not just limited to where someone works or the hours that they work. This broader approach supports flexibility in roles traditionally seen as “hard to flex” - such as frontline and site-based ones.
Steps taken by the Council to make progress against these priority areas include: piloting flexible work with a group of Repairs Staff; collaborating with an Adult Social Care (ASC) working group to co-create a localised set of flexible working principles for all ASC staff; and creating a managers toolkit focusing on establishing best practice approaches to flexible working in teams and services.
Camden Council’s role as place leaders
As part of this work, and to recognise the level of Camden Council’s commitment to this agenda, Timewise and Camden Council have worked together to establish a “Fair Flexible Council Framework”; a model to inspire and support other councils to step up their activity to widen access to flexible working, for their own employees and for the benefit of residents and for social justice.
A key part of this framework is its focus on the wider levers councils’ have at their disposal to influence and promote flexible work in the community more widely.
In Camden this has resulted in a number of initiatives to widen access to flexible work across the borough, including: building flexible work expectations into their procurement processes; promoting flexible working through their business support services and in their Inclusive Business Network; and training work coaches to support job seekers to understand their rights to flexible work and to request them in their conversations with employers.
“These recent years we have really been getting under the skin of what true flexibility means in Camden, the different forms flexibility can take, the role flexibility plays in supporting staff to bring their best self to work and the foundations we need to have in place to make sure that we are able to continue delivering the best possible support to our communities.” Camden Council
What’s the impact of this work been?
The impact of the programme of work has been widespread, cutting across People and Inclusion and economic development teams. The action plan co-developed with Timewise has focused the Council on key areas of action to maximise impact. For instance, it has developed a ‘commitment’ for all employees to ensure that flexibility is an opportunity for all and for continuing Camden’s journey to create a truly inclusive organisation where everyone has an opportunity to contribute equally, connect and thrive.
It has strengthened its expectations through the procurement process that suppliers must offer good flexible work and thereby grow the supply of opportunities for people at risk of being economically inactive.
What have the key lessons been?
Key to the success of the Fair Flexible Council programme was the level of commitment for it among senior leaders, including the Director of People and Inclusion and the Director of Strategy, and their on-going involvement in its development and direction through their participation in the steering group. It was an initiative led from the top that engaged and inspired colleagues across the Council.
“We have always been proud to be a flexible organisation. We want staff to be able to build and sustain a successful career at Camden. We believe this requires a combination of deliberate actions and ensuring that we provide an inclusive culture and an agile, flexible working environment for people to work in.” Camden Council