It’s time to take a strategic approach to flexible and hybrid working – and make them smarter!
That’s the message of the new edition of the Smart Working Handbook launched at the Herman Miller showroom in London on 5th December 2023.
The Smart Working Handbook is an authoritative summary guide to implementing a strategic and integrated approach to Smart Working. It has been used by thousands of people to support their workplace transformation projects.
The first edition was published in June 2011. We produced the updated second edition in 2015, with a launch at the UK Department for Business. Over the two editions, there have been tens of thousands of downloads from Flexibility.co.uk and the sponsoring partners, in addition to an initial print run.
The Smart Working Handbook has not only been influential in the UK but has been downloaded by people from around the world.
It has also been adopted as the internal guidance for numerous organisations, including the UK Cabinet Office as guidance on Smart Working for the Civil Service. It also underpins the British Standards/Cabinet Office guide PAS 3000 (2015) Smart Working Code of Practice.
Time however moves on, and the need for a revised edition.
This 3rd edition has updated data, new case studies and new material reflecting both evolving experience and the issues now taking centre stage in the post-Covid environment – in particular how to move beyond simple hybrid working and the binary home versus office debate, to achieve the many benefits of real flexibility plus transformation.
What’s inside?
The content covers the central principles of Smart Working, and brings together the changes needed in the core areas of People, Workplace and Technology. Plus there are sections on maximising the benefits for Wellbeing and Sustainability. It also includes an outline of a strategic and integrated implementation programme.
The new edition also puts the spotlight on people-centred workplaces, improved acoustics and sensory environment, better ergonomics, biophilia – and a section on best practice for work settings at home and coworking centres. It also addresses the impacts on different kinds of work across sectors, and the question of flexibility and fairness for people with more ‘hands-on’ or site-specific roles, and the emergence of new kinds of work.
There’e a new set of international case studies, reflecting the post-pandemic context and the innovations organisations are making in their ways of working. These cover organisations in different sectors, and with differing takes on how more dynamic forms of flexibility are applied.
The production of the Handbook by Flexibility.co.uk has been supported by Saint Gobain Ecophon, MIllerKnoll, and CMI Architecture.
