New way of work

Flexible working is perhaps the trendiest employment practice for organisations looking to improve staff wellbeing. 4-day work weeks are becoming increasingly adopted, and working from home has become commonplace following the pandemic. The traditional 9 - 5 in the office is becoming outdated, much to the benefit of employees looking to better manage their work-life balance.

Our philosophy

At Jamescape, from Day 1, we had the philosophy of ‘work how you work best’. We genuinely believe in empowering our staff to manage their work in a way that suits them best. Our employees should come to work when they are ready and willing to give us their best work, and that’s how we get the most out of a small team.

To enable this, our flexible working model allows staff to work where they want, when they want. Outside of a small set of Core Hours for full-time staff, our team (particularly our part-time staff) have complete autonomy to choose their working hours, patterns, and location. That means if you have a dentist appointment, a haircut, or need to pick the kids up from school, you can just block that time out in your calendar and go without needing to deal with the hassle of requesting it or booking the day off. In fact, we find that annual leave is less used in our team due to this enhanced flexibility.

James founded Jamescape while at University, so this flexible working made the most sense for a team of busy students, however, we’re proud to have maintained this model as we’ve grown into a team with full-time staff.

The disability lens

During our work on Disability Confident accreditation in 2023, we realised that this working model was particularly good for disabled staff who might have flare ups of their condition, or a higher number of hospital appointments to attend. This working model is a great example of employment practice that benefits disabled and non-disabled staff members, making work life balance more manageable for everyone. We never would have realised this without taking the time to work through the Disability Confident scheme and listening to input from people with lived experience of disability.

That said, we have had some disabled staff who have struggled to maintain a consistent work schedule due to the lack of structure. Interestingly, the high degree of flexibility became too much and was actually made their role more difficult. This is why it’s important to constantly review and evaluate employment practices because even a seemingly ideal working model might not be best for every single person, and no two people, even with the same disability, will have the same support needs.

Sound interesting?

If your employment practices could benefit from a review from a disability lens, to improve employee wellbeing for your entire team, then book in some time to find out more about our Disability Confident consulting services.