Juggling life and work
Our hybrid working policy helps us balance busy lives
We’re balancing remote work with connecting in person
At Deloitte, we’ve been making the most of what used to be known as agile working since 2014.
Today, we call it hybrid working.
Juggling our varied interests and responsibilities can be challenging. And most of us wouldn’t say no to a few extra hours in the day. So, it’s no surprise that our people love the flexibility of hybrid working.
Having experienced and seen its benefits, we’ve introduced even more policies that help our people balance work and home.
For example, we can flex our public holidays, taking the days at a time that suits us. And by offering 26 weeks’ fully paid leave for all parents we’ve equalised parental leave, which you can read more about in our ‘Modern Family’ story.
For us, hybrid working can offer the best of both worlds
A few years on from officially adopting our hybrid working policy, it’s become second nature to our people as well as our clients.
The golden rule of this policy is that our people are trusted to decide how they work, in a way that also works for our clients and colleagues.
When making the decision about whether to adopt the hybrid model permanently, this trust and flexibility were important factors.
“As a leadership team, we did a lot of thinking about the kind firm we want to be and were guided by our firm’s values in our continued commitment to hybrid working,” says UK managing partner for people and purpose, Jackie Henry.
“Looking after each other means trusting and listening to each other. And when we asked our people in the UK what they wanted, over 90 per cent said that choice and flexibility should be at the heart of how we work in the future.”
It’s important to remember that hybrid means just that: our people work at home, in our offices and at clients’ offices. And we’ve found that leading the way on this issue has helped clients to do the same, where it works for their business.
“For me, hybrid means I can split my time between Belfast, London and home, which helps me spend quality time with the teams I work with as well as my family,” Jackie continues.
“I love hearing from colleagues and clients about how hybrid working is having a positive impact on their lives and wellbeing too."
Idyllic summer adventures
Every summer, for six weeks, Deloitte partner Nysia Sewell embarks on exciting adventures with her two children, aged 11 and 7.
Visiting family in Pembrokeshire and travelling in their trusty campervan, they have the freedom to spend the summer together, exploring and making memories. Nysia’s husband Ian is able to join them for half the time.
These summer escapes are made possible by Nysia’s work arrangement. For the past six years, she’s worked under a term-time contract, covering only 38 weeks of the year. Supplementing this with additional purchased leave gives Nysia the number of days off needed to accompany her children throughout their entire school summer holiday.
Nysia adopted this work pattern when her eldest child started school, transitioning from a four-day work week to 92% of a full-time contract (or 0.92 full-time equivalent).
Now, she works five days a week during term time, dividing her work time between the London office and Surrey home, sharing school drop offs and after-school-club pick-ups with Ian.
Flexible options like this can be requested by any of Deloitte’s people.
For Nysia, who was promoted to partner two years after switching to term-time working, it’s an essential part of supporting and retaining people with caring responsibilities.
Most importantly, the children, Nysia says, love having their mum around full time for the summer, creating a magical family experience.
Ways of Working: how we collaborate
Hybrid offers us an opportunity to redesign our days. Or, like Nysia, even to reorganise our work pattern.
With greater flexibility and trust come new ways of working. Like deciding together how we’ll collaborate effectively when we’re not side by side and agreeing the principles around practical matters, like digital collaboration and how often we’ll plan in-person meetings.
To help us agree all of this and more, we have a useful Ways of Working framework. Our people use the framework to organise the basics of how we work together in our teams and supports open and honest conversations about working preferences.
For our clients and anyone else who, like us, is navigating a new future of work, we’ve made our free-to-use Ways of Working tool available to download.
It includes “My Manual”, which helps people specify their preferred working methods.
“When it comes to balancing work and personal lives, one size does not fit all. We trust our people to make the right choice in when, how and where they work.”
Richard Houston, senior partner and CEO, Deloitte UK and Deloitte NSE
