Hi - our 5 strong H & S team have been earmarked to moved from our current 'fixed office' arrangements to a new 'flexible working' approach that will see major changes to our working practices and an element of 'hot desking'. Basically we will no longer have our own office / desk and (among other issues) will be left with very limited storage facilities for reference materials, training preparation etc. We would be interested if anyone else has went through a similar process and would welcome any advice / tips that could assist us in this Thanks FH

The brave new (retrograde) world of flexible working and hot desking! Clear desk policy, no handy personal hard drive or PC wallpaper. Storage - H&S bods don't fit the model for storage because we've got kit bags of PPE, instruments and meters, traning materials etc. Open plan protocol - no more cosy tea breaks (too noisy) and you have to 'find a room' if you need to discuss anything personal or controversial. Special arrangements for those with DSE special chairs, but not for custom mice or footrests.

We moved out of an office last year and all I can see is benefits. My team don't have to come into the office unless there are meetings or they have work to complete so can be really flexible supporting our business which is spread geographically. I have made many work connections and feel part of a wider team, before we moved I knew no one as I was new to the business. With regard to storage most reference materials are on the internet so we download the latest version and save it on our shared drive. We are all provided with laptops with desks provided with appropriate equipment. I also think that we often have too much unnecessary equipment. When we moved from our office we went from 2 large cupboards and some crates to 1 small cupboard which I only use to dump stuff in. We have made additional storage arrangements for teams that have PPE etc. If I was asked to go back into an office I would not be a happy bunny.

I am already part of a team of 6 H&S 'flexibly' working - once you find storage space for the 'must haves' (measuring eqpt and hard copy files) we found the rest is usually personal stuffs. Overall it doesn't really cause much of a problem as long as everyone else in the area you are flexibly working with sticks by the same rules. Having said that, we are still scratching around for space for keeping hard copy records. My top tips for flexible working - keep on top of your paperwork, do as much electronically (with backups) as possible and the free downloads from HSE are good if you have no space to keep all the ACOPS. Finally, if you really want - keep on top of your work by sitting on your desk...