New ways of working

Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire Clinical Commissioning Group has introduced new ways of working, which means our jobs are not fixed to one location. They are mobile in nature and we can successfully carry out activities from a mixture of appropriate locations. For example, staff are able to work from home, attend meetings in an office location to meet with others or collaborate with colleagues according to the needs of the job.

Our new ways of working include taking steps to ensure that the office buildings we work from support more sustainable working practices.  One of the primary components of the carbon footprint of work relates to travel.

• Every year UK workers clock up 80 billion care miles commuting to the office.
• The typical carbon footprint of a worker in an office is 1.5 tonnes of CO per year.
• Organisational travel accounts for around 70 trips per worker per year, with an average distance of 20 miles. 60% is by car.
• Mobile workers using company cars clock up an average of 6000 miles per year.
  (Source: Department of Transport and RAC Foundation).

The CCG becoming a sustainable organisation is not just about engineering property solutions and complying with new building standards. It involves changing the behaviours and assumptions about how we work. Travelling thousands of miles each year for meetings that can be carried out remotely using video conferencing capabilities is unsustainable. Decisions we make on a daily basis about where we work, where we expect our colleagues to work and the ways in which we communicate can increase or reduce our need for travel, our energy consumption and consumption of physical resources. This saves the CCG tens of thousands of organisational miles and increases productivity as well as playing a role in saving the planet and helping to protect public health by reducing pollution.

Working in an agile way can also bring benefits to society by:

• Extending working opportunities into more remote areas and to disadvantaged groups.
• Enabling people with disabilities or caring responsibilities to work in places or at times more suitable to them.
• Indirectly supporting local communities and services by enabling people to work at or nearer to home.