The desire of the Shaw Gibbs leadership team has always been to offer the team an engaging and enjoyable place to work. As part of this, we have always wanted to offer more flexible working and this has been incorporated in to our strategic plan for a number of years.

The Covid pandemic thrust homeworking upon us and there have certainly been beneficial aspects of this such as increased job satisfaction, employee motivation and morale, as well as an improved balance between work and personal life. These in turn provide the business benefits of greater productivity, higher levels of output and generally, a happier and healthier workforce. However, we have also seen some drawbacks and some individuals have found living in a household not conducive to home working and others have struggled with the isolation being based at home.

Over the past few months, in anticipation of social distancing measures being removed from 19 July, and with the benefit of 16 months experience of home working, we have revised our flexible working policy and added in more agility. The aim is to try and take the best bits of both home and office working and ensure our teams benefit from both.

The main points of the policy are that:

• We have core hours which need to be adhered to in order to deliver the best possible service to our clients however, as long as employees work their total contractual hours in a week, they are able to work some longer days in order to benefit from shorter days during the same week
• We will continue to offer employees the option of ‘blended working’ which means that they can choose to work in the office or at home. This is being offered to all but a very small minority of workers who have roles which are not suitable for home working

Our new flexible working policy has been designed in consultation with managers and each department has already thought through the practical implications of this policy. For me, the success or failure of this policy will be supported by feedback from our employees and we are therefore launching this policy from the 19 July as a trial. We are fully prepared to flex this policy further, provided it meets the needs of the majority of the team and meets the needs of the business and our clients.

We’re always keen to meet talented professionals who share our passion for business and finance, therefore if you are interested in discussing a career at Shaw Gibbs and how our flexible working culture will work for you in practical terms, please phone our friendly HR team on 01865 292260 or send your CV and covering letter to recruitment@shawgibbs.com