Background
The job of the Peak District National Park Authority is to conserve and enhance the natural beauty and cultural heritage, promote its enjoyment and understanding and - while doing this - foster the well-being of local people. The Authority employs over 300 staff in a variety of posts, with a decision-making body of 'Members', some of whom represent the local and parish councils while others are appointed by the Secretary of State for their special knowledge about the issues that affect the Park.

Over the past few years the Authority has been going through substantial change, including the move to Single Status and the introduction of Best Value performance targets and monitoring.

As part of the move to Single Status and the harmonisation of conditions of service, the Authority decided initially to develop a family friendly policy that was subsequently broadened into a full work-life balance initiative.

The Authority adopted an approach that, right from the start, set out to place responsibility with the individuals, teams and managers concerned. They produced a set of clear overall objectives that spelt out how personal needs could be balanced with the need for the Authority to operate efficiently and effectively.

These are:

• To improve the quality of life and well being of all staff by helping to build a culture of flexibility and creativity;
• To improve the morale of staff, with consequential improvements to sickness absence rates and employee satisfaction and commitment;
• To help the Authority become an 'employer of choice' with a record of attracting, recruiting and retaining quality staff;
• To provide training and guidance for managers and staff in working together to identify workable work-life balance solutions;
• To identify the financial costs, savings or more effective use of resources of any different approaches to the way we work;
• To ensure that the work-life balance initiative is integrated with our work on best value and social inclusion;
• To enable improvements to service delivery.

Based on these objectives, a business case for the introduction of work-life balance practices was prepared for and approved by the Members.

Establishing the Framework
To provide a framework for staff and managers a set of detailed principles was also established. In summary these principles were:

• All changes in employment practice on the work-life balance initiatives are voluntary;
• Nothing can be guaranteed. Changes that do not address maintaining or improving service provision may not be agreed;
• Staff, teams and managers have a shared responsibility for identifying work-life balance solutions;
• Every initiative will be subject to a trial during which time any affected party can demonstrate benefit or detrimental effect.

Based on the feedback from staff and these governing principles, a range of work-life balance options were developed that reflected best practice whilst meeting operational needs and legislative requirements. The options currently include home working, flexible hours, compressed hours (including nine-day fortnights and annualised hours), Saturday working, reduced hours and various forms of leave, such as carer leave and adoption leave. Each arrangement is subject to a detailed review after an agreed trial period.

With the onus clearly on individuals, teams and managers to come up with ideas, a clear process for initiating and deciding upon work-life balance requests was developed. "The initial request may come from an individual or from a team. The process we developed is intended to ensure that the employee and the manager work through with the rest of the team all the possible implications and examine alternatives and review the costs and benefits," says Sharon Davison, Administration Officer in Personnel Services. "If everything makes sense, the length of the trial period and the criteria by which it will be judged are agreed. Through the process, personnel works closely with the manager and the team."

Clear Communications
With the policy and processes in place, the Authority went through a training and communications exercise.

Managers were initially taken through the underlying principles and attended workshops on implementing the process. Staff were invited to attend discussion groups on the work-life balance initiative and team meetings were held to give staff a chance to explore the implications of work-life balance in their local environment.

A comprehensive booklet on the Authority's work-life balance principles, options and processes was provided to every member of staff.

Successful pilots
A number of people opted for regular or occasional home working. To help them, the Authority purchased a number of laptop computers and instituted a booking-out system for them. Staff can divert their telephones directly to their home numbers to maintain seamless communication. Chris Tomson, Upland Birds Project Manager for the whole of the National Park, lives 25 miles from the Authority's offices and his job often requires him to be in the field. He now works from home on Tuesdays and Thursdays. "I now save an hour and a half each of those days travelling to and from work, which frees up my spare time and also has an environmental benefit," he says. "I like to start work early in the morning. Now I can be doing my paperwork at 07:30 instead of sitting in a car. It's just so much more flexible. I keep all my current papers in a box so it's not difficult to manage the change of location. I transfer my phone when I leave the office and customers call me at home. I've had no adverse comments from the rest of my team or my manager and for me it's working really well."

Many people opted for flexible working hours. "I work flexible hours and I can carry forward up to 15 hours credit or 7 hours debit in any four week period. If I want to I can take these accrued hours as two days holiday," says Sue Smith, a Minerals Planner. "This means that when we have a very busy period and I'm working long hours I can use the extra hours I've worked to take leave at a later date. It also means I can make early morning visits to quarries and other sites which is appreciated by the operating companies. We organise our flexible hours as a team, and we've found that working flexible hours has spread our service delivery over a longer day, benefiting our customers… I regularly run the five miles to work,it's very helpful not having a fixed time by which I have to arrive! I think the work-life balance initiative is wonderful. It's made a huge difference to my life and to how I feel about work. I'm encouraging my colleagues to become more flexible in their approach to work as well!"

Others wanted some sort of compressed hours - nine day fortnights and annualised hours. "I hate travelling to and from work in the dark and prefer to work fewer hours in the winter. At the same time, the workload of my team has a big peak from April to June while between December and February we're quieter. So it made sense for my to adopt an annualised hours scheme where I work a 32 hour week in January and February, 37½ hours during the two weeks either side and 38 hours for the remaining 40 weeks," says John Sewell, an Historic Buildings Architect. "I've been through my first winter using the scheme and I've found it really liberating. It suits my natural rhythms and it also matches my workload pattern."

"I moved to a nine-day fortnight because I was consistently working long hours but never taking any extra time off. There always seemed to be too much work to do. Now, I am committed to taking that additional day off and I really feel the three-day break has made a difference to my life outside work and to my attitude to work itself. It suits my working pattern because I like to work in a concentrated way during the week and completely switch off at weekends. In fact, my ideal would be a four-day week with even longer working days!" says Phillip Naylor, Finance Services Manager.

Other options selected included a variety of different leave arrangements.

Key Outcomes
A portfolio of new and refined work-life balance procedures and policies has been developed, in consultation with staff, building on the business case and on staff ideas.

Pilot schemes have commenced involving about 65 staff across the organisation covering the following:

• Regular and occasional homeworking;
• Extended flexitime: three different models;
• Compressed hours: nine day fortnights and annual hours;
• Reduced hours;
• Saturday working;
• Different leave options.

The biggest impact so far has been the enthusiasm and take up from staff which is still growing. Other examples of impact include:

• Extension of service delivery hours through early starts, late finishes and Saturday morning working;
• The introduction of electronic time recording mechanisms for the different options;
• Increased use of / interest in technology to support home working;
• Use of annual hours to better fit staff time to service delivery peaks and troughs;
• Use of work-life balance options to solve current specific staff problems e.g. sick case, childcare, stress issue.

Summary

This project clearly demonstrates four key features of a successful work-life balance initiative:

• Programmes that involve cultural change are more likely to be succeed if they engage people on a personal level. The role play situations with managers provides one example of how this can be achieved;
• Projects must have a 'champion' within the organisation who will take the initiative forward in its early stages;
• It is important that the business benefits of work-life balance policies are made clear to managers and staff to overcome any initial scepticism;
• Staff and management should have ownership of policy development. This can be achieved through raising awareness and ensuring that there are routes through which staff can feedback their thoughts about potential work-life balance initiatives.

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