Disruption to UK businesses caused by recent severe weather conditions, in addition to the wider straitened economic climate, has spotlighted the need for companies to have an adaptable workforce that can function with equal efficiency both in and outside the office. In this episode of www.smallbusinessadvice.tv presenter Sean Walsh will be examining how small businesses can make flexible working hours beneficial to their general productivity.

Joining Sean in the studio will be Mark Dixon, Group Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Regus Group plc, and Vivienne Bailey, Board Director of Vital Creative Communications. They will be discussing the merits of mobility in the workplace and offering their top tips on how best to incorporate flexible working plans and digital technology into your company’s structure – in order to make them work for both you and your team.

As always, we will also have our regular round up of all the latest small business news from the British Chambers of Commerce.

If you have any questions for Mark or Vivienne, please use the form to send them in early and we will do our best to answer them live during the show.

H: Sean Walsh, host
M: Mark Dixon, CEO, Regus Group plc
V: Vivienne Bailey, Co-Founder and Deputy MD, Vital
P: Peter Thomson, Wisework and Founder: Future Work Forum

H: Well hello and welcome to the Smallbusinessadvice.TV brought to you by the British Chambers of Commerce and Dell in collaboration with Intel. I’m Sean Walsh and in today’s program we’re looking at the often complex but increasingly topical subject of Flexible Working. Now while some employers embrace the concept, others view the idea with real suspicions. And the rise in digital technology has increasingly been making the case for an adaptable workforce and an adaptable working environment.

Well I’m delighted to be joined today live in the studio by Mark Dixon, Mark is the CEO of the Regus Group, and Vivienne Bailey, the Co-Founder and deputy MD of Marketing and Business planning agency Vital. Well thanks very much indeed for joining us and I hope we have a very interesting discussion, because I know we’ve got a lot to get through.

Now before we proceed, let’s go over to the newsroom first and join Sara Beirne for the business news headlines

News headlines

“Thank you Sean, here are the latest headlines. The Bank of England has just announced a half percent interest rate cut, taking the base rate down to a historic 0.5%. The BCC’s chief economist David Cairn welcomed the move, saying that while the effectiveness of lowering interest rates as a weapon is diminishing, the cut will still stimulate the economy. The BCC has launched its strategic framework, outlining the policies required to foster business growth in the short term and lay foundations for economic stability in the long term. Highlights include measures to help with cashflow, such as a freeze in the national minimum wage in 2009, a reduction in small companies’ corporation tax rate and reversing the planned increase in national insurance contributions in 2011. And finally, the BCC has welcomed the move by Brussels to abolish rules which oblige small firms to submit audit reports to national authorities. But David Frost, the BCC’s Director General says that with cumulative costs of regulation on UK businesses now standing at £66 million a year, the UK government should go even further and announce a moratorium on any further legislation. That’s all for now, back to you Sean”

H: Thanks very much indeed Sara. Before we continue I’d just like to get your quick reaction to that Bank of England rate cut decision, half of one percent – now Mark, you’re immediate thoughts on that?

M: Well my immediate thoughts are that every little helps and I think the combined actions of the government and the Bank of England will help move things forward, but I really do believe that businesses in the UK need to work harder at creating new revenues, be more flexible and overall the government has to get behind new business start-ups. You can’t just subsidise large companies and try and get out of a recession that way, it has to start bottom up

H: Yes this is a little piece – is it enough do you think?

M: Well there’s not really much further to go, I mean you’re nearly at the bottom and I suppose the government can print some money and so on, and all of that must have an effect

H: Sure

M: I’m not sure how one pays for all that in the future, but at least the government’s doing something, at least the bank’s doing something, and I think that’s important

H: Vivienne do you welcome the cut?

V: I mean I would agree with Mark but I think for small businesses there is the other side, there are a lot of small businesses in the UK which have been very prudent over the last 5, 6, 7 years and therefore for those businesses, you know they rely quite a lot on the interest they get from their money, that they’ve got saved, and I guess if you’re a business like that you possibly feel that you’re losing out because the drop doesn’t really benefit you, and actually the money you’ve invested for your business is seeing a reduction, so I think it’s a positive step but there are some comebacks as well.

H: Indeed well thank you for your thoughts on that. Now let’s drill down into flexible working, because it’s a very interesting and topical issue at the moment. Mark, I’d like to start with you – flexible working – what’s it all about? What does it mean for you?

M: Well I think flexible working for our company, for Regus, has been very popular, the whole subject’s been very popular amongst our customers, and we’ve developed products over the past 6 months really to satisfy a huge increase in demand from companies both large and small for flexible working solutions. So I think most of all I think flexible working’s very much something that works in today’s difficult business environment because it substantially lowers costs, if done well it benefits both the company and the employee, and the employee will benefit in many ways with the ability to work from home some of the time. Less cost of fuel, I mean fuel prices have come down now but they’re likely to go up again in the future. It’s easy, it’s productive, technology allows it, and everyone can be a winner and it can be very good for a company if the company invests time and energy into making it work properly

H: And Vivienne what are your experiences of flexible working?

V: I mean generally on the whole I think Mark’s point is the one that’s really valid, as long as it’s done well. The nature of our business as a marketing business, you know we’ve looked, we’ve introduced flexible working a long time ago and we’ve used it to recruit good staff, and we’ve used it to keep them because they feel it’s a real benefit. But I think the key is rather than having a sort of broad brush approach which is, you know you can have every other Friday off, or you can work from home one day a week, I think it’s about understanding all of your staff and what it means to them as individuals, because what works for one person, so you know if I think about our business, you know we have quite a lot of women who have got young children, now what would work for them is being allowed to come in, take the children to school and come into work a bit later. That wouldn’t necessarily work for other people. So I think when flexible working works at its best is when the employees feel it’s something that really makes a difference to their life. They don’t take it for granted and they feel you as an employer are actually giving them something back. So I think for us the key has been to actually find out what is the thing for those individuals and try and make it work for them

H: Indeed Mark, because there’s quite a lot of different approaches to flexibility aren’t there? There’s things like extended hours, flexible working, working from home – what are the kind of range of tactics that you’ve come across?

M: Well certainly the biggest increase we’ve seen in terms of our customers using us has been people working from home. We’ve seen about a 40% increase in that business over the past 6 months, with a lot of companies again trying to lower costs and satisfy the workforce at the same time, so losing conventional office space where they may have rented space with a desk and so on, and replacing that with a work-at-home policy with occasional use of an office. And so basically in doing that, the increase in that is really around trying to get more productivity from the workforce whilst lowering costs and whilst improving perhaps the job satisfaction of those individuals

H: Yes I mean I can see real benefits being an employee by having that flexibility, but for an employer – what do you identify as some of the benefits for an employer to adopt this kind of policy?

V: I think the biggest benefit is that because a lot of companies talk about flexible working but actually the reality is they don’t necessarily offer it – if you do it properly it really does give you an advantage over other potential employers and I think that’s important, it helps you attract good staff, because they really feel it’s a reason to join you as opposed to other people. I think the other benefit is if you get it right and people feel happy that they’re being trusted to work at home, you know you’re – they’re not checking in and out, they know that as an employer you trust them and as long as they do their job, you know that they have the freedom to make it work for them, then I think the staff you have feel you understand them, they feel a real sense of value and therefore it can play a huge part in staff morale, team building, and I think, you know, that’s when it works well, and I think it’s important to say it doesn’t always work well, but as an employer when you get it right, it really can build up quite a lot of loyalty. And also what it can mean is when times are hard, or you need people to give a bit extra, they’ll absolutely do that because they feel you’ve given something to them. So I think that’s probably one of the biggest benefits for the employer.

H: Indeed. I mean Mark the old impression used to be in flexible working of people staying at home and not being very productive, but evidence shows that people are pretty dedicated and value the ability to be flexible.

M: Absolutely. I think it’s really in some ways one has to protect against people working too hard, I know that might be counter-intuitive but you can get people that will get up in the morning, turn their computer on over the breakfast table and still be on their computer at 10 o’clock at night, and that may be – and in some circumstances they can overwork and lose productivity. So again it’s important that a company changes the way it operates, it needs a new set of guidelines for people that may want to work flexibly, and a company has to put some – as I said earlier – some time and effort into working out the best way of doing it, and then it’s got a much higher likelihood of working for both the company and the employee

V: Yes

H: Ok well let’s pause things there for a moment because I’d like to hear now from Peter Thomson. Now Peter is an expert on working practices, and he’s recently been working on a report for Plantronics which looked at the rise of the super SME. Well let’s look at what he had to say about flexible working

P: Flexible working actually is a very good way of saving money. A lot of people don’t see it that way. Typically it’s promoted in organisations as being an HR benefit. You look at what government promotes it as, it’s family-friendly policy, so surprise surprise businesses think well it’s nothing to do with saving money, whereas actually you look at how people are more productive when they’re working flexibly, you look at the saving in real estate costs for example because people don’t need a desk, don’t need the same office space, so there’s some significant savings, but unfortunately it never gets promoted as that, it gets promoted as some sort of HR benefit, and the problem is that in a recession people want to revert back to old habits as opposed to do something new, because maybe they think it’s a risk, whereas actually all the research and the evidence – and there’s lots of case studies – showing that it’s a time for businesses to introduce more flexible working, which allows them to attract and retain good people, and become more productive. I think there is some evidence that businesses of all size are cutting back, and unfortunately that means often reviewing what they want to spend on technology. Now where they can’t easily justify that expense, and they can get away with using the old stuff, then maybe that’s ok. The problem often is seeing technology just as an expense when actually there’s a return on that investment. If the return is people work differently, people work more productively, and you can actually keep people who might otherwise have left, then it’s a good investment. But you have to be able to see that return which sometimes is less tangible than the cost, which people focus on. (Go to www.be-a-super-sme.com/advice for more information)

H: Some interesting points there. Now Mark I’d like to pick up on what you referred to earlier really about planning ahead to be able to implement a policy – now clearly there could be some cost implications here – we’ve had a question in from Nicki, her question says “How much money do you think someone would need to set up remote working solutions?” I mean that’s a bit of an open-ended question, it depends where you are, how many people you’ve got, but clearly there is a financial commitment in terms of IT if nothing else?

M: Well in terms of setting up from home, the costs are very low. Most of what you need is probably already there. So it’s quite a low cost, if you’re a small business and you’re setting up you know literally in your garage, really there’s little you need. But you can add things to that, and many companies when they’re starting up may want to add an address, a business address in their local town, a good address, so that they don’t have a home address on their business card.

H: So how do you get round that – what do you practically do for that?

M: Well you can order one of those from Regus,

H: Right

M: I mean it will cost you somewhere around £30 / £40 a month

H: So that’s what you would describe as a virtual office?

M: That’s a basic virtual office. You can add to that a telephone number, you may want to have, you may be working from your home in Surrey but your office address and your telephone number may well be a London address and telephone number. So it’s a question of image and the way you present your company. I don’t think your customers would be yet used to, or comfortable with working with a company that they thought was based at home, all of the time.

H: Yes. I mean we’ve got another question in here, just come in from Graham Smart, he says “My team and I, about 15 of us, have to visit and consult many businesses across the UK and sometimes abroad and find signing up for an office in each region too expensive, especially seeing as we spend only a few days in each region. Isn’t there a better way to operate than from hotel rooms, cars and coffee shops when not on site at clients?” I suppose a perfect question for you really then Mark

M: Well again we have a perfect product for that which is something we launched about 6 months ago particularly for this type of requirement, and that is, it’s the equivalent of an Oyster card that you would use on the London underground, so a plastic smart card, which you can load up with days, and then use those days anywhere in the world. We’ve got a thousand locations all over the world, 150 across the UK, and you can book over the internet or book over the telephone or just turn up and get an office, so it’s extremely flexible and very economical.

H: Yes so the benefit really is that you’re not carrying the burden of that infrastructure

M: No

H: You can outsource those services if you like

M: Yes

H: To someone like you or some of your competitors perhaps

M: Absolutely

H: There are opportunities out there

M: You just use it, it’s very efficient, because you use it when you need it, it’s sort of an on-demand service as opposed to having the infrastructure just sitting there in case you might want to use it

H: Right ok, so there are benefits and practical capabilities of implementing a flexible working policy. Now Vivienne if my staff are coming to me and saying look, I now want to work flexibly – what kind of things as an employer should I be looking at, would you say?

V: I think it’s something we touched on earlier, is that a lot of that’s driven by trust, and one assumes that you know if you’ve employed someone that trust begins and what I would say is that until that falls over I think you have to believe that you know both parties are happy to work together and deliver the best job, so you know when people need a flexibility, I mean in our situation they might need that flexibility because of children, they might need that flexibility because of elderly parents or simply sometimes I think the challenges of a demanding full-time, conventional job, which requires you to be in the office combined with running a home and you know that particularly applies to women, people feel the need to look at that differently and what sort of flexibility they can give, and I think as an employer if staff come and ask you those questions, I think what you need to do is find out what it is they need, what is the problem, why do they want the flexibility, you know, is there a particular pressure and if you take that pressure away from them, then the likelihood is they will actually work much harder for you and be much more productive. So I think the first thing if someone actually asks you the question you need to find out, you know have their circumstances changed, do they need it for a particular reason and I think as an employer you then have to be flexible and say as long as they’re going to do their job, then actually why would you not consider that.

H: So do you mean then it’s a win / win situation for both sides of the equation?

V: I think it is, if someone genuinely requires that flexibility to continue to do a good job and to continue to provide maybe the support and do the things at home, and you know we’ve certainly had people who’ve come to us, their circumstances have changed and we provided them with the flexibility and actually their work performance has absolutely gone up because I think there is always a danger that if you don’t solve that problem, the individual will feel actually they can’t do a good job at work and perhaps they’re not able to do the work that they want to do at home, so if the member of staff is someone who genuinely wants to work for you, and they’re asking for flexibility as a solution to a problem, then absolutely I think you have to consider it, because the reality is if you don’t and you want to keep that person, you will lose them.

H: Now in talking of losing people, we’re not in a hiring economy at the moment, we’re in a firing, or losing or shedding job situation at the moment Mark – does flexible working– does that really work for a company in times of challenging economic circumstances?

M: Absolutely. I mean for some of the reasons that Vivian’s brought up – now is the time really when your workforce needs to do their best work. And where you as a company need to do the best work at the lowest cost, and selective views of flexible working will allow you to operate at a lower cost, and if you can manage, and it does require a new style of management where you’re managing a workforce, not by how many hours they spend at a desk but by what they produce, and it requires a very, very clear set of objectives about what we need to achieve as a company, what is your part, what is your responsibility for that and you know how long is it going to take you to deliver that, I’d like it by then – I think that trust that Vivian’s been talking about very, very important in this difficult economic environment. It is only by all the individuals in a company, whether they’re managing or whether they’re working for those managers, or working together with a common goal which is survival in the best shape possible – that companies will be successful.

H: Exactly

V: And I think there’s just one point that if you already operate flexibility and you’ve done it in that sort of proper structured way, then what you hope is, I think we all need to be realistic, if you’re a business where a lot of people – you’ve got an office but people work from home, if they go to meetings they don’t have to come back to the office, they can go back to their home, you know hopefully if you’ve got the right team of people they will recognise that the world now has changed, and there might be some occasions now when we actually have to say to people you know can we re-negotiate this, I think we all have to be realistic that I certainly don’t think you should not offer that flexibility but within that, if people feel it’s a perk and something they value, I’m sure then that there will be times when actually – they might have to change the parameters of that to accommodate the world that we’re in

H: Indeed. And it sounds like flexibility both in working arrangements and management approaches is a key word going forward

V: Yes

H: Well look we have to leave it there, thank you very much indeed for joining us in the studio. Well that’s all we’ve got time for, I hope you’ve enjoyed our program. For further information on the rise of the super SME you can go and visit www.be-a-super-sme.com/advice. Now if you want to be in with a chance of winning a top-of-the-range Dell Vostro laptop in our next show, please go to our website, that’s www.smallbusinessadvice.tv. That next show is on March 26^th, when we’ll be looking at how effective marketing and PR tools can really help you in these tough economic times. Do join us then. Goodbye