Charles Dickens Main faculty, in central London, is a part of The Constitution Faculties Training Belief and is without doubt one of the 12 Versatile Working Ambassador Multi Academy Trusts and faculties appointed by the Division for Training to assist faculty leaders implement versatile working.
Emily Crow, deputy director at London South Educating College Hub, shares Charles Dickens’ strategy to versatile working and her expertise of the advantages it has dropped at the varsity group.
Our strategy to versatile working
As an organisation, we perceive that colleagues’ commitments and calls for on their time will change all through their careers, and that it’s essential we’re ready to supply help when wants and needs come up.
We’ve strived to normalise versatile working and have labored exhausting to create a tradition the place we champion versatile working for all.
We’ve achieved actually sturdy retention on account of this strategy, and employees wellbeing has elevated. That is evidenced via surveys, employees conferences, and a wellbeing steering group.
What versatile working appears like in our college
This tutorial yr,13 of our 69 colleagues have formal versatile working preparations, primarily half time and compressed hours, and all our employees profit from casual versatile working.
We now have examples of colleagues working flexibly for caring causes. For instance, a senior male colleague is working half time, initially as shared maternity/ paternity depart, after which a four-day week achieved via versatile PPA and compressed hours to share parenting and to help a piece/ life stability. He coined these “Daddy Fridays”.
In fact, versatile working is not only for these with caring duties. We now have an instance of a colleague who labored flexibly to pursue their subject of examine. This colleague labored half time to finish a PhD in Inventive Arts. She’s now returned to educating full time and this CPD is admittedly enriching her apply in addition to equipping her to supply broader CPD to our college, and extra extensively throughout our belief. This instance highlights that versatile working could be for a hard and fast period of time, if that’s what works for the person.
We additionally supply casual or ad-hoc flex. For instance, inside the Belief, one colleague wished to run the London marathon however was not eager on coaching at the hours of darkness through the winter months. So, we supported casual flex preparations to help her to stability her coaching with educating commitments.
‘We care’ supply
We even have an entire faculty, full time versatile working supply, which we name our “We care” supply.
Each colleague advantages from gifted days, and these may be used to attend a baby’s sports activities day, pursue an curiosity or journey. As of late are a reason-neutral supply and acknowledge the extra dedication, ‘the above and past’ that colleagues make investments into making our organisation wealthy e.g., mother and father’ evenings, faculty discos, worldwide festivals, faculty performances and so on.
This supply extends to all colleagues.
‘Keep conferences’
The headteacher ensures that we’ve one to 1 conversations with employees about methods to help them to remain within the belief, and we name these “keep conferences”. These occur frequently all year long and aren’t a part of efficiency administration, however present a possibility for the headteacher to essentially perceive the wants and needs for every of our colleagues. It additionally helps us to plan staffing and useful resource in a extremely useful, sustainable approach.
An evolving journey
I believe it’s actually essential to say that this tradition change and notion shift hasn’t occurred in a single day. It actually has been a journey that we’ve been dedicated to. And it’s a journey that we are going to proceed on.
I can truthfully say that this has made our organisation richer and has helped us to make higher selections, underpinned by our ‘we care’ tradition.
Hear extra from Emily about versatile working in Charles Dickens, by listening to this podcast
Learn how to entry help with versatile working About | Versatile working in Multi-Academy Trusts and faculties (flexibleworkingineducation.co.uk)
