Flexi-Working; The O2 Telefónica UK Experience Involving Employees November 2012 Gareth Rice, Head of Environment, Telefónica UK, O2 Ben Kellard, Forum for the Future

Contents Setting out 8 th February; A day out of the office! Integrating further into daily life

Setting out: Policies Technologies Leadership & Comms 01

Our Approach  Flexible- & home-working policies for several years  New technologies helped, but not everyone was confident  Leading from the Top thru Taskforce and at Board-level  Communicating; KPIs to competitions 4

A day out of the office: 8 th Feb 2012: Prove it! Walking the Talk 02

What we did We asked our people to work away from our head office on 8 February people were involved. 38% of our people were infrequent flexible workers or had never worked flexibly before Why do it? To test the concept of business readiness using flexible working. So we’re prepared for any event throughout the year. Without causing disruption to our customers.

A new head office We embrace forward thinking. And flexible working. Our new head office embodies this. Now everyone wants to work there…

What happened? Over 700 people attended training prior to the flexible working day. 82% of head office staff chose to work from home. 125 out of 2500 came in to the office. Only one person who came in to Bath Road on the day didn’t know what was happening!

Results: people 88% claiming as productive or more productive than normal. 93% were positive about flexible working. 79% want to mix home with office working. “Working from home just one day a week would save me £624 a year in train fares” “It gave me an opportunity to clear the backlog and get ahead of myself” “I wasn’t keen at first but my manager’s support made it a success” Twitter buzz – over 200 tweets on the day

The results: IT The peak was 162% of normal data traffic passing across the VPN, with no issues 50% more connections and 107% more data transfers 1356 unique visitors to Lync meetings compared with 1077 on a normal day. The IT helpdesk had a normal day with no more calls than usual

3,000 hours commuting time was saved The results: sustainability We emitted 12,500 kgs* CO 2 than normal less 85% of our people would have commuted to work, travelling 49 milesan average

Integrating into daily life London 2012 Olympics & Beyond 03

What happened next – driving into BAU In the run up to the London Olympics, we pushed the business to appoint a day other than Monday or Friday to be their preferred Flexi-working day Global Action Plan: Supported O2 in terms of engaging & motivating our people Pan-O2 working group; continued to use 8 th Feb approach to agree action-plan with each Directorate Communication; developed innovative comm’s messages/channels to broadcast results

What we learned

Flexible working can improve productivity. You need to invest... but the payback is immediate Preparation is key: Tools: invest in the right tools for the job. Training: on-going and essential. You can’t expect excellence without it. Communication: not just any – the right communication. “Not a stage on a stage but the guide by their side” Mind set: take it seriously. Fundamentally, this is culture change

Questions

Involving employees Ben Kellard

Stephen Fry “Change is inevitable, except from vending machines.”

1. direction what’s the story?

2. performance clear line of sight

3. capability join up the dots

4. involvement making it their own