Flexi-place

opportunity : Flexible Workplace :
Flexi-place (alternative work location)

Tips and Tools

Model administrative arrangements: flexi-place

Model administrative arrangements:
flexible working hours

Tips for working at home

1 Some staff may work more efficiently or experience less conflict between work and their other responsibilities if they can undertake part of their work away from their office location.

2 Assignments requiring long periods of concentration, such as data analysis or writing, may be easier to tackle where there is less distraction and interruption than at the office. In addition, reducing commuting time may increase the amount of time and energy staff can devote to work.

3 Flexi-place policies that allow for alternative work locations permit staff to schedule either occasional or regular work times outside the office. New information and communication technologies make it possible to access datasets, information sources and people without being at the office. Examples include e-mail, Internet, computers with remote access, video-conferencing and voice mail.

4 Unless there are overwhelming reasons to the contrary (e.g. service delivery needs), all employees should have access to flexi-place, i.e. working from home or another alternative location. Requests for approval for working from an alternative location should be dealt with primarily on the basis of feasibility. Nevertheless, there should be clear justification for all requests.

5 To be successful, flexi-place arrangements require the staff member and her/his manager to be clear from the beginning about expectations. It is also necessary for the staff member to ensure that all responsibilities will be covered.

Alert:
Facts about staff members who work from home
… and their productivity

Will a person working at home be less productive because she/he has more distractions than at the office?

“Though interruptions from family are commonly assumed to be a problem for at-home workers, off-site workers actually experience fewer work interruptions than on-site workers, who are frequently interrupted by on-site colleagues.”

(from “When the Workplace is Many Places: The Extent and Nature of Off-Site Work Today”, by Amy Richman, Karen Noble and Arlene Johnson; WFD Consulting)

6 Flexi-place can be implemented in a variety of scenarios:

small-scale flexi-place – might involve occasional short periods (a few days or even a few weeks) of working from home or another alternative location (e.g. to write up material for a specific report or scientific paper);
medium-scale flexi-place – might involve regularly scheduled work times outside the office (e.g. one or two days per week); and
large-scale flexi-place – might involve lengthy periods (a few months or even a year) working from a different country to accommodate special personal situations, such as to permit the staff member:
- an extended visit with a spouse who does not live at a Center location, or
- to live with a child requiring lengthy medical treatment in a different country.

7 Another example of a large-scale flexi-place arrangement involves allowing a staff member to hold a regular position in a location that does not have a CGIAR office. This has already been established across some CGIAR Centers with great success. These arrangements, agreed to be in the mutual interest of the Center and the staff member, typically specify the number (and duration) of visits to the staff member’s nominal “home base” duty station each year. While these arrangements are fairly exceptional, they have been critical to the Center’s ability to attract and retain valuable staff.

Developing a policy framework for implementing FLEXI-PLACE
8 The development of a flexi-place (alternative work location) policy would normally be guided by the following basic principles.

Access to flexi-place
9 Unless there are overwhelming reasons to the contrary (e.g. service delivery needs), the policy should provide all employees with access to flexi-place. Requests for approval for working from home or other alternative locations should be dealt with on the basis of feasibility. Nevertheless, there should be clear justification for all requests.

Options for working from home/alternative location
10 Several options exist for working from home/alternative location. These typically will be defined with the following dimensions:

the length of time each day to be spent out of the office: this should be an agreed part of every day (which may include the whole day);
the period for which these arrangements are approved: this can range from a few days to a number of weeks or even be approved on an on-going basis;
the period/frequency for which the staff member is required to visit her/his official duty station: this can be the number of hours per day or days per week or month, to attend specific meetings, etc.; and
responsibilities for communication while at the alternate workplace, such as being reachable via phone or e-mail.

Typical circumstances justifying working from home/alternative location
11 Working from home/alternative location may be considered in circumstances such as when:

the nature of the staff member’s current task requires considerable concentration in an environment that will allow uninterrupted work;
a staff member needs to accommodate a short-term personal/family need;
a staff member needs to accommodate a long-term personal/family need;
a staff member is physically unable to get to work;
a staff member is undertaking a return-to-work program following medical treatment; or
a staff member’s absence from her/his normal workplace (except in the case of accident/injury or return-to-work program) will not unduly affect productivity.

Circumstances when working from home/alternative location should not be considered
12 Working from home/alternative location must not be approved if medical opinion determines that the person is unfit for work.

Consideration of requests
13 There should be mutually agreed objectives for the work to be undertaken at the alternative location and clear criteria for assessing the success or outcomes of the arrangements.

14 The following factors need to be taken into account when considering requests for working from home/alternative location:

suitability of the task or activity for working from home/alternative location;
potential to set clear tasks/deliverables for the activities to be undertaken from home/alternative location;
extent to which the staff member’s working from home/alternative location may impact the performance of a team or of work with partner organizations, etc.;
adequacy of communication and interaction when the staff member is working at home/alternative location; and
assurance of security and confidentiality of information stored or accessed at the home/alternative location.

15 When considering requests for flexi-place arrangements, it may be necessary to weigh the costs and benefits of approving the requested arrangements. Many flexi-place arrangements have short-term costs that typically are modest but deliver significant long-term benefits.

Other issues
16 Home/alternative location working environments used on an ongoing basis must comply with all workplace health and safety requirements. In addition, it is necessary to ensure that appropriate insurance coverage is in place and that all necessary permissions have been obtained for the location (e.g. from a landlord or mortgage lender).

Operating arrangements
17 The extent of approvals required for staff requesting to work from home/alternative location depends both on feasibility and on the reasons for the request.

18 In the initial implementation, controls regarding approval and oversight may be fairly closely defined. With experience, some of these controls may be relaxed in certain circumstances. For example, occasionally working from home for up to a day may require only informal approval from the supervisor.

19 As with other flexible workplace practices, managers should base appraisal of the staff members working from home/alternative location on their output rather than their working patterns.

Putting these principles into practice
22 A model set of administrative arrangements for flexi-place is provided in Tips and Tools. Note that these arrangements are intended only to be a model, rather than a comprehensive plan. We recommend that they not be adopted until the Center has checked every paragraph in detail for acceptability and feasibility. There may be important local considerations not reflected in this model that should be incorporated into the final arrangements.