2,500 O2 employees left with their own devices

Ben Dowd, Business Director for O2 in the UK, explains why our Slough HQ looked a bit on Wednesday morning...

For one day, we turned off the lights and shutting the doors on our Slough HQ, to try out a really big experiment.

For the last two months, a team of 20 people has undertaken more than 50 hours of meticulous planning to deliver O2’s first ever fully flexible working day. They've been ensuring that 3,000 employees have access to the necessary technology tools, services and support to enable them to work completely remotely, for the entire day. We think was is the biggest flexible working initiative of its kind.

The pilot aimed to push the boundaries of what is possible through flexible working and will underpin our contingency plans to manage expected travel disruption and delays during the summer’s Olympics games. With one third of the UK’s businesses expected to encourage their staff to work flexibly this summer, O2 will share learnings from the pilot with other organisations, to support them in their plans for managing the impact of a range of events during the summer months.

We want our day to showcase the wider economic business case for flexible working in helping to drive efficiency, productivity and innovation. Now the day is completed we are going to take a look at the numbers. We will evaluate reductions to electricity usage, CO2 emissions and travel time as employees swap their usual journey to work in favour of working from a remote location. These learnings will be applied in line with our three year sustainability plan, in which we pledge to help over 125,000 business employees work flexibly, and collectively save over 500,000 miles of travel and over 160,000 thousand tonnes of carbon emissions.

A cultural step-change is underway affecting staff and businesses, as work increasingly becomes something we do, rather than a place that we go. Flexible working has become an increasingly important aspect of British business culture, with a growing number of organisations and employees adopting a more flexible approach to working life. As new technologies make it increasingly easy to conduct business from beyond the confines of the office, we want everyone to be ready.

Did I mention we left over 2,500 employees to their own devices for a day...?

Update: And look what happened while we were away - 3RUN came to show us what they call flexible working.

 

For more pictures of 3Run in action, visit our Flickr stream.

Comments

[Welcomebrand]

That's absolutely fantastic. Can't wait to see the results. Kudos to giving it a go.

[ann Chaplin]

Well done 02. I have been home-based for the last decade in 3 different jobs and it is the ideal way to maximise your productivity. I go to face-to-face meetings as necessary, but the time saved on commuting means I get more done. When I do travel, it is often off-peak, meaning costs and discomforts can be minimised, whilst there is space to work on the train. Travel time should not be dead time and with mobile technology we can all achieve more.

[Robert Gower]

This looks good. I'd be interested in seeing the results of your exercise. More companies are allowing staff to use their own devices (iPads, iPhones, Android, etc) and it will be interesting to discover how this works in practice.

[Stewart]

Sorry to be pedantic, but shouldn't that read "2,500 O2 employees left TO their own devices"

Whatever happened to grammar checking?!

[Darryl]

Stewart, I think you're missing part of the point here.

[Adam Downing]

No. I believe that it means that they left with their own devices, such as laptops with HDD encryption and whatnot.

[Scott Gibson]

This is a big step in the right direction and hope it can stem into all reaches of Telefonica.
I worked for a company in Canada who were into this for many reasons. Others not mentioned above would be from a possible pandemic or should something happen to the building that customers would not be affected.
We have many people in our department ready to sign up to this scheme should it make it our way.

[Fiona Baxter]

@ Stewart, no it means they took devices home with them to work from home. well done O2 can i have a job please, where do I send my C.V.

[David Claxton]

Stewart, I think that was the pun... *facepalm*

[nancy]

Stewart - isn't the sentence meant to mean they were left to use their devices (i.e. phones and mobile broadband) hence the way it was written?

[Simon Leyland]

Looks like a great idea, hopefully you a planning a follow up blog on what findings came out of the day.

[Chris Silk]

Flexible working is very positive for the environment and for staff work/ life balance. The culture of 'presenteeism' in the office and travelling accross the country for an hour's meeting belongs riht back in the 80s so it's great thatO2 have taken this step of setting up a resilient infrastructure that can support so many staff working remotely at any one time. A great step forward in sustainability.

[Intrested]

So what happened was it a success ?