Earlier this month, O2 announced the findings from a pilot scheme the company launched into flexible working. The scheme was a one-day initiative, which saw 2,500 employees work away from the office and resulted in an extra 1,000 hours spent more efficiently.
The aim of the task was to test O2’s contingency plans for the Olympics when it is expected there will be high levels of travel disruption and delays. The statistics O2 have produced, however, show that flexible working shouldn’t just be used to overcome travel disruption, but is hugely worthwhile anyway.
2,000 hours of commuting time were saved, and most chose to work through that time instead. Importantly, 88% of the 2,500 employees believed that they were just as productive as if they had been working in the office, and 36% believed they were more productive.
Just as we were about to get out our emissions calculators, we realised O2 had already revealed the magic environmental number – an enormous total of 12.2 tonnes of CO2 emissions, which is the equivalent of 42,000 miles in a diesel car!
From all the statistics revealed – about productivity, savings, IT infrastructure, and the environment – it seems like an unprecedented success.
This story should be useful for any other companies considering taking up similar initiatives, especially if you have employee productivity concerns.
Based on calculations from our Anywhere Working calculator, the average person could save 23kgs of CO2 emissions, two and a half hours of travel, and £17 each week if they were to commit to Anywhere Working. To put that into perspective, the average person’s emissions saved each year is roughly equivalent to the amount of methane a cow produces in the same time.
Finding a case for regular flexible working will no doubt take a lot more planning, and one of the reasons that O2 were able to operate so effectively was the steps and preparation taken beforehand for the experiment.
It is often presumed by many businesses, employers, or employees that flexible working simply isn’t going to work for them. But we disagree and we think that this O2 scheme is a great example of how a large-scale business can take part in projects like this.
We’re running our own Anywhere Working Experiment to hopefully demonstrate that six workers with regular nine-to-fives, commutes to and from work, and who are in-and-out of meetings all day, can work flexibly and effectively.
If your business is planning on doing anything similar, we want to hear from you so that we can understand how you’re going to implement the experiment, and what preparations you’re making for the day.
