What is Agile Working?
Agile working is a way of working smarter, in which the organisation creates an environment for its people to work where, when and how they choose. This is with minimum constraints which involve not working in a static location, and maximum flexibility i.e. giving workers the support to work within a multi-purpose office space or from home. (Allsopp, 2013)This has the potential to optimise their output and deliver first-rate value and customer service. It will involve opening up the work space, such as an office, removing partitions, and bringing in desk sharing principles known as hot-desking or hoteling. Hot-desking is where employees share work spaces and the number of employees outnumbers the number of desks. Hoteling is similar to hot-desking but employees can reserve a work space, just like if you were booking a hotel room, hence the name (Haynes, 2008). It was by the mid 90’s that working practices began to change with the introduction of the internet, laptops and mobile phones which allowed workers to spend more time away from the workplace. This then began to highlight to employers how much time their workforce actually spent behind their desk. Frank Duffy, owner of DEGW ( an Architect company), began to monitor how much time his employees spent at their desks during a working day and suggested changes to how workstations were set up, introducing hot-desking, and treating the office more like a club, where staff could visit, book and use the office as if it was a public space. (Statham, 2015)
Agile Working refers to work as an action is carried out and not a place to go. With modern day technology we provide our workforce with the tools to work from any location, reducing the amount of real estate required and this reduces overheads. This has the potential to increase production, due to time saved commuting to and from the workplace and decreasing the amount of reasons to be absent from work, and still meets the customers’ needs....