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Work Wise Week is great time to reflect on all the different ways in which employers can create smarter, wiser ways of working. One of the strands of this reflection needs to be about how to ensure that the workplace and workforce are healthy, so that employees are able to give of their best and achieve high performance.

In 2012 the city of Hodonin started to prepare a project on promoting of teleworking in the region of south Moravia, Czech Republic. Through this project contacted Phil Flaxton, the CEO of Work Wise UK.

In the Czech Republic smarter ways of working are still not very common. Our country has a population of about 10 million inhabitants; half of them live and work in the cities, the other half live in country. The average daily commute time to work is about 80 minutes a day; in some big cities it’s even more.  Unfortunately, there is still a widespread belief that “to work” means the place or location, not the activity or production.

There is both good news and bad news on National Work from Home Day 2013. The good news is that home-working has been steadily growing, despite the UK’s long-running economic troubles.  The number of home-workers increased by 469,000 between 2007 and 2012, up by 13.1 per cent.

The arguments for teleworking simply seem to get stronger and stronger.

With the UK population set to increase by ten million people in the next twenty years or so, the number of cars to rise by about four million over the same period and delays on the roads to jump by more than 50%, there has to be a better way of doing business. And it is technological advances which are offering up the opportunities.

In April 2010 Wokingham Borough Council embarked on a project that looked at how we could work more flexibly.  The aim at that time was to reduce expensive office space across the organisation. We decided that we would apply a 2:1 desk policy, where there would be 2 staff to any one desk within the civic offices.  This policy would allow us to free up enough space to move staff into the civic building from our other sites. These sites could then be sold, raising us capital receipts and on-going savings on maintenance costs.  Money was at the forefront of our minds.

The Smart Working Project was born……

Twenty years ago, flexible working was the exception and not the rule. When I started my career there was a general attitude that flexible working was a perk for new mums. The response to suggestions that it could be applied more widely was 'it won't work here' or it's 'for other people, not us'.

The benefits of remote working are so vast that it is hard to argue why you wouldn’t want to offer it as an option for your business. With an increased pressure to perform on time-poor staff and global workforces, remote working allows workers to stay in touch no matter where they are in the world.

In late 2008 my wife Jennifer and I set up TEFL Scotland Ltd., a TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language) course provider, from our garden shed in the Highlands of Scotland. Since then the organisation has undergone rapid growth and development, with the formation and enormous success of the TEFL England, TEFL Wales and TEFL Courses Ireland brands.

For many years now, Work Wise Week has championed smarter working in the UK. Whether it’s mobile or flexible working, the not-for-profit initiative believes that smarter working is good for businesses and employees alike. And they’re not wrong!

As witnessed last summer during the Olympic Games, workforce flexibility was a key contributor to business success and continuity. Employers and employees who prepared and planned were rewarded, with easier travel arrangements, less hassle, less absenteeism and greater productivity.

Well, much to the surprise of many commentators and some well known cynics, this year’s great sporting moment, The Olympic Games, delivered a roaring success, not just from the athletes who brought home the medals, but from all the successful business operations that ran like clockwork.

The TUC campaigns on all the big issues at work.

But these days, with rail season tickets prohibitively expensive and petrol hitting around 140p a litre, the amount of time and money spent just getting to and from work is a pretty big issue in its own right.

The lot of the commuter is rarely a happy one. Often it is distinctly miserable. On the railways there are overcrowded trains and sky-high fare prices increasing above the rate of inflation. On the roads there are... well essentially the same things: jam packed roads and escalating running costs.

The dark mornings and evenings are with us again and Winter is on its way so, its time for me to launch Commute Smart Week, which starts our annual campaign to raise the awareness of implementing smarter ways of commuting during the winter months.

It’s strange that within the business world senior executives are constantly analyzing business models, challenging the ways in which they conduct their business, constantly striving to become the best in their field in regard their products, their marketing and sales strategy etc.  Yet when it comes to people strategy (the very mainstay/core of their business) it gets completely overlooked

Everyone has been telling us this week in Blogs, Tweets, Facebook and simple E mails that the world of work has changed and continues to do so at a very rapid rate. We know this all too well as Work Wise UK has been pioneering smarter, flexible working across the UK, for the last 7 years. 

This week was the seventh annual Work Wise Week, which included National Work From Home Day on Friday. It’s a fantastic initiative run by Work Wise UK, an organisation set up to encourage smarter ways of working including introducing more remote working.

Picture the scene. More people. More cars. More traffic. More congestion. Welcome to a vision of the UK in the not too distant future.

It’s good to develop your own routine when you work from home, even if only loosely, as it helps get you into the frame of mind to start work, to pace yourself to stay alert and productive throughout the day and to be able to switch off when you finish.

The TUC supports Work-Wise Week and National Work from Home Day. They are important reminders that improving work organisation can generate mutual benefits. Many employees certainly have a strong appetite for change. The previous government’s Third Work Life Balance Survey found that about 1 in 5 employees wanted to work from home but could not do so, whilst similar numbers wanted to work flexi-time.

In the midst of all of the hype and headlines about the Tanker Drivers’ dispute and Public Sector pensions, being asked to reflect on the ever evolving world of work is a welcome respite.

In a recent survey, Regus reported that the UK was “not as keen” on flexible working as other nations. Maybe it was the way the question was posed, because whilst the benefits of flexible working are often applauded by people within a business, from a commercial view, it’s also better for the customer - and of course the two are inter-dependent.

To herald the start of Work Wise Week 2012, and our new blog, Work Wise UK CEO Phil Flaxton reflects on 7 years of smarter working and invites UK PLC to play its part in a smarter, greener, working UK.