Hybrid home working will be the future for council

A MIDLAND council has decided to permantently move to a system of hybrid home-working for many of its staff.

The majority of white collar workers at Solihull Council have been out of the office since lockdown in March.

In a matter of days the numbers working from their kitchen tables and living rooms went from a ‘couple of hundred’ to more than 2,000.

Seven months on, one of the town centre’s tallest buildings remains eerily quiet, with the multi-storey block at Manor Square only open for essential staff and key business.

And even after the crisis is over, home-working is set to be much more common.

Now the council cabinet will be asked to agree a £490,000 annual package to meet the associated annual costs of home-working.

It is argued that the extra spending will ultimately be covered by the considerable sums saved from reduced printing, stationery and expenses, and being able to do away with some office-based systems. Samantha Gilbert, from the finance and property team, said the council had to “adapt very quickly” when the crisis took hold earlier this year.

“During the summer we have taken time to reconsider what we have learned from this experience and how we might use this to reset the organisation,” she said.

The council favours a hybrid model, where workplaces are redesigned and more people have the option to work remotely. This is seen as a better approach than either making home working the default, with a major downsizing of offices, or returning to the same set-up as before the pandemic.

Cllr Ben Groom (Green) said: “I have been looking forward to agile working coming in. It’s a shame it’s taken such awful circumstances to become a really serious consideration.”