Awithers

In a viable redesign of work in an office or other environment, the decisive constants are the work tasks to be performed according to well-specified standards and within budgets.

Determining the work tasks requires identifying and analysing the goals and subgoals of any department or section;  it's not unusual for this to entail some activities that have become outdated as well as some not formally specified but which have emerged over time to meet reasonable expectations.

The stimulus of introducing flexibility offers an opportunity for such changes. A good, readable description of the kinds of analysis that has worked well in many settings (not simply those explicitly referred to in the title) is provided in 'Human Factors in the Chemical and Process industries', edited by J Edmonds, published by Reed Elsevier this month and available from the Amazon website.

Self-evidently, those leading the changes to flexible working are required to be both smart listeners, speakers and writer and politically aware of sources of barriers to change.  For the issues involve more than 'health and safety' technicalities, in particular they involve leading a coalition dedicated to achieving fair and realistic goals with available resources (which may be a lot more than those allocated initially by senior management).