The Nude approach to flexible working

Citation

Reid, G. (2010), "The Nude approach to flexible working", Strategic HR Review, Vol. 9 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/shr.2010.37209bab.006

The Nude approach to flexible working

Article Type: HR at work From: Strategic HR Review, Volume 9, Issue 2

Short case studies and research papers that demonstrate best practice in HR

Gary ReidGary Reid is based at Nude.

Nude is a creative communications collective that has expertise in design, direct marketing, account planning and handling, and delivers leading creative work to a range of brands across a variety of sectors. Clients include Diageo, OyezStraker and Codex.

Our agency is built around the belief that love of work and love of family should not be mutually exclusive and that people work harder and generate better ideas when they work the hours that suit them best. This is demonstrated through our flexible working practices, which include flexitime, jobsharing and remote working – whether that is from home or elsewhere. As a creative business, and due to the nature of the creative process, we sometimes have our best ideas and do our best work outside of the office. For a flexible working system to actually work, an element of non-flexibility is required too – someone will have to be there between nine and five, but it does not have to be the same person.

Why flexible working was implemented

This approach was originally developed due to my personal requirements, but it became rapidly apparent that there were a number of professional advantages to flexible working. I founded Nude in 2005 after a 10-year career as a professional musician (so perhaps it is not surprising that I have taken a somewhat different approach), and five years of experience at a number of design agencies. It was after having my first child that I realized that life in a marketing agency is not always conducive to a balanced family life.

There is a view that a family can be a hindrance to your career. However, my view has always been that if integrated properly, your family life should enhance your working life, and make you more, not less effective. Why should there be a balance between work and life? Work is just another part of life. We officially introduced flexible working in 2007, after a period where our approach evolved as a necessary response to being business owners with a new family, before we even really appreciated the benefits for staff productivity and creativity.

The business case

There are multiple business-related reasons for adopting flexible working practices. In my industry, what is particularly beneficial is the boost it provides to staff’s levels of creativity, therefore resulting in a higher quality of creative output. By giving them the means to work effectively while still being a mother or father, brother or sister, I see on a daily basis that better lives really do mean better ideas.

In addition to the personal and professional reasons, there are practical considerations too. With the improvements in communications technology, it is far more efficient for my staff to work from their virtual offices. It saves time and money on the commute (and avoids an increasingly unpleasant experience) and I have a fraction of the overheads I would normally incur.

There is also a lot of talent out there that is being missed. Right now unemployment is high, but long-term, with an aging population fewer people are going to be entering the workforce year after year. By adopting flexible working practices, the UK can utilize staff that would otherwise be missed. For example, I have incredibly talented senior creative staff, including a working mother with two children and a father of a child who has been unwell for some time, neither of whom I would be able to attract if they had to work a nine to five shift day in and day out.

How it was implemented

To practice flexible working in your business, you must have clear underpinning principles. Nude is a commercial enterprise and everything we have put in place is designed to deliver a sustainable “win-win-win” situation, for our clients, for the company and for employees. We do not grant concessions based purely on personal needs, but develop flexible working schedules as a tool for improving the performance of the business. As an employer, a significant cultural shift is required. For flexible working to work at its best, you have to commit to it, fully and consistently throughout the organization. The most obvious change is the move from evaluating performance, not by input or how much time people are spending at work, but rather by outcomes and what they get done. To do this, you have to establish a culture of trust.

At Nude, we employ 12 people, of which eight regularly take advantage of flexible working practices, but even our staff that work more traditional hours benefit from the extra freedom from time to time. We have two offices, which act as “hubs.” One is in Royston where we have a crèche and where the business was founded, and the other is in London and was set up in 2009. We use the hubs as a central space for client meetings, brainstorms, initial briefing sessions, project kick off sessions and so on. We really operate it in the same way as booking an internal meeting room.

The role of technology

Jobsharing is a necessity, therefore, and to make it work, we invested in a full CRM (customer relationship management) and job management tool. This has been very effective in making handovers quicker and more efficient, as well as providing a central location for all our client and prospect data. These “traffic” systems are widely used by creative agencies that carry out a great deal of project work. At Nude this is overseen by an operations director, who allocates the tasks, roles and rates for each member of a project team, and all our staff can log in, either remotely or at the office and see the status of every job and their tasks, and also log their own work and time spent.

While this cuts down on the amount of administrative communication required between staff members, it is vital to encourage communication and personal interaction in general, and I have also invested in online meeting and web conferencing technology to allow us to carry out face-to-face meetings virtually, whenever we need to. Maintaining communications when one member of our staff works mostly at night, from 6pm to 12am, but needs to speak to a colleague who is not working at that time is a challenge. While they can use each other’s mobile phones if it is urgent, this makes it harder for workers to set boundaries within their lives and switch off when not working.

This is a challenge that will face any self-employed or home worker and there is no easy answer, but flexibility goes both ways and ultimately what makes it work at Nude is that we believe in this model. We enjoy the benefits and so we try hard to make it work for each other. It is a combination of technological and logistical solutions together with the attitude of the team that makes this approach a success.

A strategy for growth

It was a light bulb moment when I first started using freelancers. They wanted to work fewer hours, but I noticed their productivity was better. When we brought in flexible working with all our full time staff, we began to notice an exceptional improvement in the quality of work, speed and productivity. Nude steadily grew as we discovered more and more like-minded people that shared our desire to balance life and family through flexible working. It was due to this growth that we could launch our London office, and we continue to sign more top agency talent who have become disillusioned with the traditional model and are looking for a better quality of life. It is clear that if you look after your people and build an agency around their commitments outside of work, they will look after the work.

While as a smaller company we do not yet have the resources to analyze and produce the related statistics, as a business owner and manager, I have seen huge differences before and after we implemented flexible working, from reduced absenteeism, to greater staff retention and more job satisfaction, for both me and my staff. In addition to all of these benefits, what I have also seen at Nude is that it is also made a big difference to the continuity of the business. With the processes and culture in place, I have far more time to oversee our business strategy and new business activity and spend less time tied up in the day-to-day management and operations.

As an agency, Nude is more responsive, more flexible, more able and more likely to make a difference to our clients businesses than a traditional agency because of the way we work. While we have more than our fair share of awards between us, I believe there is only one true measure of success – the happiness of our people and our clients.

About the author

Gary Reid is MD and founder of Nude. He spent ten years in the music industry as singer/songwriter in indie band “Mouthy.” In 2000 he moved in to marketing and did a part-time MA in Design Studies. Together with his wife, who previously managed a design studio, he set up Nude in 2005. Gary Reid can be contacted at: gary@nudegroup.co.uk