NOW CLOSED: Tell us what you think about the new flexible working contract designed by O2 - you could win a £100 Amazon voucher

[AnnMumsnet]

You may know we have been doing some work with O2 (via our panel) and as part of the Mumsnet Family Friendly programme - and now O2 are excited to announce the launch of the O2 Working Families' Contract.

O2 say "The O2 Working Families' Contract(* SEE ADDITIONAL NOTE BELOW) is a new flexible contract designed with working parents in mind. It allows groups of between two and four working mums and dads to freely decide how they will cover shifts over a month, to which they can make changes at any time, giving them the flexibility to balance their jobs with activities such as the school run, their children's holidays and unplanned emergencies. At O2 we want to make it as easy as possible for our people to be there for their family when they need to be, whilst managing their job responsibilities"

They want to help spread the word about this and also to get some feedback from the Mumsnet community about the concept. we appreciate working in an O2 shop may not be for your or your DH/DP but what do you think about the idea in principle? What do you think is good? What would you like to see in the concept? Do you think it it something you'd like to see your employer offer (or a local employer)? What pitfalls can you envisage? How do you think you/ O2 could work to solve these?

At the moment, this is just a trial - and is being piloted at O2's stores at The O2 in Greenwich, Edinburgh and St Albans.

Do add your thoughts on this thread - and if you think you might be interested in applying, please go to www.o2careers.co.uk and use the following reference numbers: St Albans - IRC126340/ Edinburgh 135 Princes St -IRC126341/ O2 at the O2 - IRC126343

Everyone who adds a comment on this thread will be entered into a prize draw where one winner, drawn at random, will win a £100 Amazon voucher

Best of luck and thanks for your comments
MNHQ

NB: PLEASE NOTE:
The team at O2 have been reading your responses on this thread with great interest and are very grateful for all the feedback as it will help them shape the contract.

They wanted to clarify: "Whilst we designed this with parents in mind, it is absolutely open to people without children. Most of the shifts would be around the middle of the day, as it's the busiest time in store, which should suit parents trying to fit in school runs"

MNHQ

I love that they've taken the initiative, but it is still a bit difficult for those who work shifts in their contact centres.
The idea of allowing parents to 'band together' to cover each other's back is great.
Perhaps rather than letting them dictate their entire working shift patterns it would be easier just to facilitate the swapping of days off with others or shift swaps on an ad hoc basis.
Experience tells me that you don't tend to know about life's little emergencies with a great deal of notice so if they recognise that then that is great!
Surely their trial run will tell if it works or not, but well done o2 for being innovative and not being afraid of the norm as clearly the norm isn't working for many people!

It is absolutely innovative and refreshing. I think that parents are the most loyal and hardworking workforce you can find, so fabulous that this company is testing a new approach. I hope that they can offer roles that reflect the range of jobs and levels within an organisation. There are issues around any job-share and I would suggest that the issues would be present if there were not appropriate processes in place for HR. The issue may come from communication and negotiation, so putting a group of families together with the same age groups may not be a good idea. Might suit couples too. Well done, great idea and will you let us know how it goes?

It's all well and good until you get someone hogging all the good busy parts and putting the less popular hours on the quietest team member.
I think it would need a firm hand to control each groups planning of hours. To me it sounds great at the start but I would envisage it spirralling out of control!

It sounds like an interesting idea, but would only work in practice with a group of people who could easily cover for each other - possibly ok for shop workers but not necessarily for other roles. I would have a lot of questions - would people choose their own groups? Could they opt out of the group if they wanted - or could they kick out other members if they weren't pulling their weight? What would happen if there were shifts that nobody could cover - would a manager step in and make a decision? How would you ensure that everyone was piling their weight over a period of time? Would annual leave and sickness absence be covered by the same group? What happens if someone quits - would the remaining staff suddenly lose their flexible working rights? What about non-parents eg those with caring responsibilities etc - would they also get to use the scheme?
As a working parent, I'd be cautious but very interested - anything that gives staff more flexibility while continuing to meet the needs of the business has got to be good!

As the DW of an O2 manager, I can tell you exactly what will happen. DH will have to pick up the slack as per bloody usual! Working 6 or 7 days a week when things go wrong, or someone's on holiday.
How are they going to manage all this when they don't even have enough staff to man a store once one person is on holiday. DH has had 1 day off in the last 13. Add flexible working for his staff into the mix and I could effectively kiss goodbye to our family time.
Yes their family friendly policy seems great unless your family is on the other end of it!

Perhaps the key is to match family workers in with single young desperate people who really need the money?

Oh wait.....

How would this work though - non-parents would probably be resentful (unless you did something similar for them, and grouped them likewise?).

And wouldn't parents pretty much want the same time off for the school-run, and holidays?

Or, pay everyone a brilliant wage so fewer couples HAVE to have both parents working!

Sounds great on theory but in my experience never works put as ends up costing the company loads. The Nhs did this 'family friendly ' and offered the world, now have taken it all back as in do much debt and have the Moto of "if you can't do the job(as in the correct hours) then leave"!!

As others have said, this shouldn't just be offered to parents. Flexible working can be of benefit to everybody. It would also need monitoring to ensure that the most assertive or manipulative people weren't always getting their own way with regard to getting others to cover for them.

The team at O2 have been reading your responses on this thread with great interest and are very grateful for all the feedback as it will help them shape the contract.

They wanted to clarify: "Whilst we designed this with parents in mind, it is absolutely open to people without children. Most of the shifts would be around the middle of the day, as it's the busiest time in store, which should suit parents trying to fit in school runs"

MNHQ

well thats different then, if people want to share 10-2 shifts it would definitely work.

This sounds like a great idea but why limit it to parents? If you included everyone then the people with other sorts of caring responsibilities and none could all come together to agree how they cover the shifts that need doing and then there wouldn't be a problem with everyone in the group only wanting school hours and holidays during the school holidays.

Sounds like a great idea in principle. It does, of course, depend on all those involved being adult and reasonable and sorting things out between them - so some mechanism must be needed to arbitrate if such a group breaks down / some members feel taken advantage of / whatever. That said, I firmly believe that if you treat people as adults they will act accordingly, so as light a management touch as is practicable would probably work best.

I hope it works out and is not abused - well done O2.

I have to say my biggest worry would be froma mangers perspective what happens when it goes wrong and everyone wants the same day a late start etc... how will team cohesion still be achieved without infighting, or a dominate individual getting the shifts they want?

I think in practice it sounds great (although holidays would still be a problem to cover) the nitty gritty is what will separte it (or not) from other family friendly schemes.

Any company that at least tries to tackle the problem of fitting childcare responsibilities into the working day gets a thumbs up from me. Finding the ideal solution is never going to be easy but at the moment I feel there is a choice of working full time and never having any stress-free family time or not working at all and feeling like you are the plankton at the bottom of the ocean....Between a devil and the deep blue sea then.

I think it's a brilliant idea, the only problem being I suppose if one or two of the contracted people prove unreliable and leave the others to pick up the slack. I wouldn't like my contract to depend on other people doing their bit too, tbh. I'd be far happier with a properly flexible, individual contract. But it is a step in the right direction, so kudos to O2 for actually thinking about this.

Havent read all posts, but I think its a good idea in theory, but should be available to all staff, not just parents. Perhaps everyone has "core hours" and everything else is flexible around it? Thats how it worked for a contract in a call center I used to work at (only needed phone coverage for a set 4 hours a day, the rest was answering emails so could be done at 2am if we really wanted to!)

Id love a job thats 9-5 (or thereabouts) but with school hols off - maybe job sharing with a student.

I think it's a good idea and like others have said should be available to all employees.

I'm sure they'll find some problems with it when they start doing it in practice but hopefully they can work them out and similar flexible policies will spread to other employers.

I like the idea of the flexible contract and it's good that parents are seen as one of the groups that might want to take this opportunity up. I do think that school holidays would be problematic though - at the end of the day if you do have a lot of parents involved they might all want the same time off at Christmas for example - which I'd imagine would be a very busy time of year.

i've already reviewed this as part of the panel.

It's a great idea in principle and could work well for things like doc appts and school plays etc.

personally, i really need to be able to work the same shifts all the time, I would need to be part of a group that could accommodate that.

I think its great that O2 are considering this issue creatively, but feel there is a real risk in allowing individual groups to manage the structure....how would O2 ensure (for example) that a couple of queen bee more assertive employees dont end up bullying pressurising a team-mate into covering for them on their preferred hours? What sort of management system would be in place to resolve disputes? What sort of protection would be afforded to an employee who wanted to whistleblow on this sort of about?

It's great to see a company taking the trouble to think about this.

Would there be a process of people giving in their "desired schedule" and the times that they absolutely could not do, then an independent person working out what shifts everyone would end up doing (even if it wasn't perfect, it would presumably be better than just being given a shift).

My experience of long hour office work was that the people who did have children would help each other out, so if someone had a sick DC, another would pick up for them, no questions asked. Once we all knew we could rely on the others, then we wouldn't say no to anyone else, IYSWIM. It has to be a "virtuous circle" -which might be difficult to set up, rather than happen on its own.

Whatever, I think it's worth a shot.

A more radical idea would be self rostering for all. If some shifts were always more or less popular then you could "bid" for them at differential pay rates. This would be fair and also address business needs. So if nobody wanted to work on the day after a bank holiday for instance the pay for that shift would increase to the level that people did want to take the shift. Smiliarly if everyone wanted to work on Wednesdays then the payable rate for that day would be less. The rates could vary according to the local economy.

Your contract wouldn't entitle you to 38 hours of work per week, it would entitle you to bid for the shifts.

Wow! What a fantastic step forward. Good going O2.

As a family with disbaled kids, something like this that DH and I could do between us would be a lifesaver: nobody else can take the boys but one of us always can iyswim.

In practice unlikely to ahppen but I think the npotion has many ways it could really help people and that's good.

EFa wouldn't that result in the dreaded zero hour contract, scourge of anyone trying to make their way? My single aprent friend is on one of those and it's hell- some weeks she gets nothing and has to make a benefit claim that takes three moths to process and we all have to feed her out of our freezers- woman is doing her best to pay her way and would be better off on benefits in terms of predictability!