0 Introduction

0.1 General

Organizations face the central challenge of doing more with less. This means delivering more or better quality products and services while managing the inputs as efficiently as possible. Smart Working provides methods for meeting this challenge through the modernization of working practices while at the same time providing improved work environments and benefits for employees. Employees benefit by having greater choices about their working pattern and opportunities for improving the way work interfaces with the rest of life.

Smart Working takes a strategic and business-focused approach to flexible working, combining benefits to the employee with benefits to the business and benefits to the environment. It does this by adopting a strategic rather than a reactive approach to workplace flexibility. So rather than making decisions about working patterns on a case-by-case basis in response to individual employee requests, it embeds flexibility as the norm in the way work is organized.

It does this by basing work flexibility on the activities within the work, rather than on individual roles. Using new technologies and new forms of workplace design, work becomes something that can be done in a wider range of settings in the workplace and beyond, and at different times. The new technologies and new work spaces form the platform for work, and a new culture for work is developed that focuses on results. This allows employees more autonomy about how they organize their work, subject to any constraints intrinsic to the nature of the work.

The result is a form of working that enables organizations to reduce their property requirements, travel and other resources used for work, while increasing efficiency and productivity.

0.2 Smart, flexible and agile working

The terms “Smart Working” and “flexible working” are sometimes used interchangeably within organizations to describe a programme of changes to working practices, workplaces and technologies. However, flexible working is often used to describe a range of specific working patterns defined within Human Resources (HR) policy. Typically these are particular patterns of work (such as part-time working, compressed hours, homeworking) for which an employee can apply and can be approved as a change to the previous or established pattern of work.

NOTE Attention is drawn to the Flexible Working Regulations 2014 [1]; it enables all employees to request flexible working after 26 weeks continuous employment with an employer.

Flexible working under the statutory process and in many organizational policies requires initiative on the part of the employee to request an exception to a normal way of working. Smart Working by contrast is business-focused in enabling a wide range of flexibilities based on the nature of the work being done, rather than on individual requests from employees. Flexibility becomes the norm, rather than the exception, subject to the requirements of the work.

“Agile working” is a term also sometimes used as a brand for programmes of Smart Working within organizations, as are other terms such as New Ways of Working or Better Ways of Working.

NOTE 1 The term “agile” can also refer to agile project management, a method of managing engineering, IT and new product or service development in a highly flexible and interactive manner. The use of the word “agile” in relation to Smart Working does not include this sense of the word.

NOTE 2 The Agile Future Forum has defined agile working as allowing an organization to establish an optimal workforce to support an organization’s objectives in terms of time, location, role and the sourcing of labour (Agile Future Forum, 2012 [2]).

Smart Working incorporates the benefits of increased flexibility and organizational agility by introducing the changes to working practices, working environments, processes, technologies and organizational culture that are outlined in 3.1.

0.3 Smart Working across sectors

The benefits of Smart Working are not confined to particular sectors. As increasing amounts of work move to digital platforms, it is important not to think rigidly of sector requirements. For example, the traditional image of retailing may be of shops and other retail outlets that customers visit to view and buy goods, and it might be thought that Smart Working is not suitable for the sector. However, retail now includes online shopping which can be operated from a range of locations using digital platforms. It may even be entirely third-party based for fulfilment, with retailers not involved in directly handling goods. So the working environments in such instances are less constrained by traditional retail requirements. Increasingly, retail involves a hybrid of digital and physical activities. The same is also true for many forms of manufacturing.

Most large organizations across all sectors also have many functions such as marketing, design, HR, fi strategy, IT, etc. that work in similar ways. The adoption of Smart Working is therefore relevant to all sectors. The existence of particular requirements that act as constraints on fl and mobility for some types of work are not seen as ruling out Smart Working for the whole of the organization. In delivering services, organizations in all sectors can still review how the delivery of these services can be improved, particularly by utilizing the potential of fl working arrangements and reviewing the physical environment in which the staff operate and the tools and processes they use.

Embracing the Smart Working principles (see Clause 4) does not imply doing everything recommended in this PAS that is relevant to an organization all at once. A Smart Working organization is one that has embarked on a journey, not reached a destination. A culture of continued change (see 10.9.5) means that even small steps taken on a regular basis should give rise to accumulating benefits. It remains essential, however, to develop an integrated strategy for achieving the benefits.

This PAS is intended for leaders and managers in all employing organizations. It aims to help them to understand the range of actions that need to be taken across the people, property and technology functions to implement Smart Working successfully.

PAS 3000:2015

Smart Working. Code of Practice

Published:

30 Nov 2015

Withdrawn:

16 Nov 2022