The Smart Working Handbook points the way

Post author:Andy Lake
Post published:29/10/2020
Post category:Case Studies / Smart Working

(Probably) the world’s most influential guide to Smart Working

Our Smart Working Handbook has been enormously influential in helping to shape the way that organisations work. Business, public sector and non-profit organisations across the world have found this strategic and business-focused approach to modernising working practices and ‘flexibility as normal’ is a powerful way to achieve benefits for employers, employees, the environment and wider society.

The Handbook has been adopted or adapted by many organisations as their internal guide to Smart Working. The first edition was published in June 2011. Since then, as well as the original print run, there have been some 20,000 downloads from Flexibility.co.uk and its partners. The current (2nd) edition was published in 2015, and launched at the UK Department for Business in London,

A 3rd edition is now in preparation for 2021, to take into account the game-changing impacts of extensive remote working during the pandemic

The Smart Working Handbook has also been adopted, or adapted with help from us, in numerous organisations as their internal guidance.

This includes the UK Cabinet Office, where the Handbook was adapted as the official guide to Smart Working for the UK’s 440, 000 civil servants. The Way We Work: A Guide to Smart Working in Government, has played a central role in the government’s roll-out of Smart Working across departments.

Much of this guide, and its structure, also informs the British Standards guidance PAS 3000 (2015): Smart Working Code of Practice. In the UK, all central government departments and agencies are required to meet the specifications in this guidance by 2022.