Not sure how to Worksmart-er? Training available

Not sure how to Worksmart-er? Training available

Many teams across the council are already working flexibly, using the Worksmart principles to reduce business mileage, help employees enjoy a better work/life balance and improve service delivery by revisiting processes and making these more flexible and efficient.

Now, Chief Executive Jim Savege wants to encourage more teams to see the benefits, saying: “This is more than simply adopting a new work pattern, it’s a real shift in thinking to move away from the idea of ‘my desk’ to ‘my work space’. It helps teams to look at their business information and how they access it, to use technologies to improve processes and to help the organisation to be more agile and efficient.”

In Planning they have been able to use Worksmart to improve their performance as a team. Planning Manager Mairi Stewart explained: “The recruitment and retention of staff has been a challenge for us, particularly in the more remote areas of the Shire, so becoming more flexible as a team has been really beneficial. We now have team members based in Edinburgh and Tayside who spend part of their week in the areas they look after planning applications for and part of the week catching up with admin from their bases further afield.

“We’re also now dealing with all planning applications electronically and as a team we’re almost paperless. As planners we’re always under pressure from the Scottish Government to improve turnaround times and we’ve been able to go a step beyond that in improving performance with Worksmart – we’re working more efficiently, more sustainably and more flexibly.”

Several training dates for managers to find out more about Leading Worksmart  and also Tools to Worksmart are now available. Find out more on the Worksmart website.