9. Your office is where you are, Harvard Business Review, March-April 1985 edition
10. Case study supplied by RBS
4.1.2. The Activity Based Working wave
Back in 1995 the insurance company Interpolis, then owned
by Rabobank, introduced a concept called activity based
working (ABW) in their new headquarters in Tilburg in the
Netherlands. Based on principles outlined in an article in the
Harvard Business Review
9
, for the first time the office was
created through a granular understanding of the various
activities employees undertake – and creating spaces and
environments suited to carrying out each of these tasks.
Ownership of space became collective rather than individual,
all employees had mobile technology and were able to move
to different working environments throughout each day.
Quiet concentration areas, buzzy café areas, open areas,
RBS Choice: introducing agile working to RBS
10
In 2007 RBS set out on its journey to develop their bank-wide
agile working initiative, RBS Choice. The programme, initially
driven by real-estate efficiencies, has evolved into a broader
proposition encompassing technology, HR and property.
The goal of the programme is to create an inclusive, flexible
working environment and culture where RBS can respond to
the needs of its customers with agility, and, at the same time,
provide employees with influence and control over their work
life balance.
Choice has enabled the exit of nine office buildings in
central London, with significant associated cost savings.
From a people and customer perspective the benefits are
also significant. The bank’s 2013 employee opinion survey
results substantiate this with flexible workers showing more
favourable responses in all categories.
For customers, the flexibility delivered by Choice means that
RBS can meet the flexibility their customers want in how,
when and where they interact with them. It also helps attract
a talented and diverse workforce.
The built environment plays an important part in RBS Choice
and, over the years, there has been a change from a very
traditional, rigid format in the way the bank creates and
occupies offices into a more organic one. The way people
work is changing and the days of everybody coming into the
office each day to sit at the same desk is not the way RBS
sees their workplaces evolving. With technology making it
increasingly possible for work to be done anywhere, the role
of the office is to become a destination that people come to
and collaborate with colleagues.
Since the initiative was launched, RBS has rolled out
Choice projects across several of its businesses. They have
continued to engage with employees over an extended
period, and have developed a suite of management and
HR policies in response to employee feedback. In addition,
RBS have developed a range of analytical metrics to better
measure and understand the dynamics of flexible working
so that outcomes of Choice benefits the business and RBS
customers, as well as individual employees.
Tim Yendell, Head of RBS Choice, foresees a huge change
with the workplace becoming less corporate and more
human and social with more interaction and fewer people
sitting at a desk working at a desktop PC because they’ll be
connected via WiFi using smart devices.
Key impacts:
•
In 2013 RBS Choice enabled a further 8,500 people to
work flexibly
•
There are now 25,000 RBS employees working flexibly
•
Choice has enabled the exit of nine office buildings in
central London.
enclosed areas, spaces for meeting and collaborating in
different ways all supported the work being done, enabled by
technology that was not place dependent.
This radical departure from the factory-like office, based
on the time and utilisation management approach by
Frederick Taylor, was so successful that Interpolis has
not significantly changed the original concept over 20
years. Instead it has expanded it as the business grew
and developed the approach into a more ambitious
extension to their space several years later. Now, under new
owners, ABW is still alive and the space accommodates
3,500 people in an environment of trust and agility. They
have become one of the Dutch employers of choice and
received huge brand awareness for their approach.
39
The future of the financial workplace
|
September 2014
