Council praises new flexible approach to work
IT and digital bosses have praised a Black Country authority’s new approach to a more flexible and agile working practice – with the majority of staff operating from home due to the restrictions of the pandemic.
Members of Wolverhampton Council's our council scrutiny panel were this week briefed on how well its digital infrastructure had coped under the new method of working.
Councillor Louise Miles, deputy leader and cabinet member for resources, said: “Agile working is about bringing people, processes, connectivity and technology, time and places together to find the most appropriate and effective way of working to carry out a particular task.
“It looks at ways in which people’s working lives can be made more flexible in terms of working from home.
“So in a sense this is an exciting time for the council because although a flexible and agile working life agenda is not the same as working under lockdown conditions, it does enable us to take some of the best practice that has been developed over the past few months.”
Charlotte Johns, the council’s director of strategy, said the approach was all about “harnessing the power of digital for the council in the broadest sense.”
She said: “At the onset of Covid we had to ensure a rapid mobilisation of agile working, but before that we were preparing our mobile working technology in advance of the formal lockdown.
“Councillors may remember the number of test days we had, and as such, we have seen platforms such as Microsoft Teams really escalating in the number of users. At the start of the year about 300 people were using it and now there is over 3,700.
“It’s a critical tool for how we meet and also how we collaborate as officers and councillors.
“But it’s not just about systems. We had to make sure people had the right devices and equipment – whether that be laptops, connectivity or headsets – to enable us to work in very different ways due to the Government-mandated lockdown.
“For example, using new developments in technology to ensure that we can mobilise very quickly in terms of hotlines and phone lines."
Ms Johns said that at the start of the initial lockdown period in May, the council conducted a ‘Life in Lockdown’ survey amongst employees, which had 1,270 respondents.
She added: “Feedback mentioned a lot of benefits from working at home, such as productivity and personal health and wellbeing.
“Many of our workforce continued on the frontline during the global pandemic, making sure our city is kept moving and kept clean."
