What does 'agile working' mean in this context?

[Nowanextraone]

On the job advertisement it says

'We are offering agile working arrangements with a base in or *'

It's a post for a professional role in the council where I'd be visiting service users in the community and then writing reports, reccomendations etc.

Does 'agile' in this context mean work from home too?

My current job (same role) is described as 'hybrid' - I do a mixture of visits, wfh and office depending on how I plan my week.

Hmm. 'agile' in our office just means no-one has their own desk.

Hot desking?

It's often used for 'hot desking', may or may not include wfh. Probably means there isn't enough space for everyone to be in the office.

I'd just ask- you could always think of something a bit more job specific to ask and slide in the 'agile' question after that

I'd think it means chaotic. Perhaps more positively it could be described as you needing to be flexible around service needs.

You’re not guaranteed a seat

We literally have an 'agile working' policy. It's basically a stupid way of saying hybrid working. It means you can choose to work some of the week from home and some from the office. In my organisation, you only get your own desk if you work 3 or more days a week in the office.

I would say that meant you won't have a designated desk in the office. Sometimes you will be out on visits, sometimes you will be working form home. And if you are in the office you will use a hot desk. My team of 5 have two desks. One member of staff hates WFH so if he isn't out on a site visit will be in one of the desks. The rest of us use the other one if we are in the office and if more than one of us are in we can use communal hot desks.

I work in local authority- agile working means no working hours, completing your hours at your convenience- although there may be core hours.

No- in my industry this means you can choose to base yourself at office base A or office base B and vary it- if A suits you some days work there, if B works better for you other days work there, and if you legitimately don't need to be in office, wfh some (but not all) days

'Agile with a base in' working in my LA means based in a named office (hot-desking) with the choice to work from home. Depending on which team, there's a set percentage of time that you're expected to be in the office, and usually a named day so that the team can gather together. For example, expected to be in the office 40% of working hours, with every Tuesday being an office day.

Difficult to know.

At my place, it would be that your base location is X but there are also locations Y and Z that you may need to work out of as required, and also some wfh.

Some places it means that you have an office base and a desk but can work remotely as well for some of your week. Other jobs it seems to mean there's an office base, not enough desks so you're hybrid working with hot dealing.

I work for a LA, agile in ours is that the ‘base’ is our main council office but people also work from home and smaller council offices around the city when it’s more convenient for visits etc. it works really well as we have ‘hubs’ in each area of the city so reduces time travelling and getting stuck in traffic etc

For us it means hybrid working and having a hot desk.

For us it means officially based at HQ but there's not enough desks so we all WFH mostly and are in once or twice a week when necessary. We also have our team meetings off site as we are a fairly large team.

So to summarise these responses, the meaning of "agile working" seems to be rather agile.

And the staff are required to be agile - physically, as it means no workstation assessments, no specialist chair to address spinal or joint health, no screens at the correct height as you'll have to find somewhere to set up your laptop, whether that's the staff canteen, a cupboard/windowless meeting room/Starbucks, picking up everything you own and carrying it home with you every night...

You need your call them and ask as it could mean a variety of different things.

Agile, as you probably know, means a working methodology with sprints, stand ups, flexible teams etc.

I think they are confused and used it to mean a combo of office and WFH or hot desking? Sounds confusing to me.

It means they're using a piece of jargon in an inappropriate way.

@NeverDropYourMooncup now now, it'll be the employees' fault when they are off sick with back pain from sitting at an inappropriate workstation. I'm sure there will be some bollocks about it being their responsibility to perform a dynamic risk assessment of their work area each time they use it (and spend 10 minutes adjusting everything as needed- assuming everything is in actual working order....)

Yes, now it just means responsive to your workload ad meetings and includes hybrid and hot desking in our LA.

Agile = bending over backwards to accommodate/ cover poor management or absent colleagues

Yes 🤣

I have emailed to clarify! I will update when I have a response