Introduction

Most of this book is about the how and why of wellbeing at work but this chapter will look at the when and where of work. A key to wellbeing is developing a partnership between people and, often, an organisation's attitude to the when and where we work and how it is implemented is fundamental to this. If you don't trust your staff to manage their own time (beyond the structure of rotas), you will find it hard to say you trust them elsewhere. This chapter will explore the future of work, looking at flexible, remote and hybrid work.

I was lucky that in my first library role at the University of Brighton, we had true flexibility (we could accrue flexitime and use it how we wanted) and it applied to all, so I have always struggled with the arguments that flexibility isn't able to work in libraries because the frontline teams can't do it and so it won't be fair. We did and loved it; it was fair and nobody took advantage. Stepping from a presenteeism culture of 9–5 to total flexibility is a big step. The compromise which we had at Royal Holloway and which I introduced at the University of Westminster was to have core hours (10–4) and then people had flexibility on how they managed their 35 hours over the week; there was also Time off in Lieu (TOIL) that could be accrued for work-related extra time, although unlike how we managed it at Brighton this TOIL had to be pre-agreed and generally related to events/teaching/projects.