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WORKABLE is an Agile Working framework made up of guidance, policies and support to help you work in the most productive way possible. It focuses on your health and wellbeing, your work/life balance and delivering the best possible work for your clients. It will enable each one of us to work in inspiring and innovative ways, helping all of us to succeed.
JON RANDALL Partner, Head of Transformation
It has never mattered less where people work, and - as a result - it has never mattered more. WORKABLE means being in the right place at the right time... to do the right thing for everyone.
PAUL EAGLAND Managing Partner
At its core, WORKABLE is a trust exercise. It's about giving people the freedom to be their best selves, living their best lives... and relying on them to turn that into an opportunity to deliver their best work and their most inspired creativity... to the benefit of the client, the firm, their teams and ultimately, themselves.
Guidance for Streams, PMDs & SBUs
Guidance for People Managers
Hybrid interactions; when & where
Team and client collaboration
The best location for your task
Our WORKABLE policies
Your responsibilities
and how to use the framework
What is WORKABLE
...find out more
Working at a client site
Working in a hub
Working from home
Booking travel
Booking a space to work
Learning in an 'agile world'
Tools to support you
Succeeding through change
Taking care of your wellbeing
Answering your FAQs
WORKABLE is our approach to making work work for everyone at BDO.
It gives you choice and flexibility around how, when and where you work in order to achieve the best possible outcomes for you, your team, your clients and the firm.
Checklist for trainees
This content has now been archived All of the latest WORKABLE news, updates and advice are available on Insite
60% feel their work/life balance has improved
81% said their productivity had improved or stayed the same
48% would prefer to work mostly at home
49% have continued to develop and learn from home
11% will visit the office to focus
Source: Nov 2020 PULSE survey C:19 What matters to you
WORKABLE is our response to the changed world we all find ourselves in as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Building our Agile Working vision
Between March 2020 and the summer of 2021 we all discovered that we could work from home, and many of us found we were even more productive without the stresses of commuting each day. In fact 81% said their productivity had improved or stayed the same working at home while 60% described an improved work/life balance. As a result, we are not looking to return to a pre-COVID working arrangement but instead are offering you the chance to work wherever - and whenever - best suits the needs of your clients, your teams and you.
This vision has been created in response to the changes that we are seeing in the market, the changes our clients are experiencing, advice from external experts and what we heard from you in the pulse survey (November 2020). These insights have told us that whatever we do in the future needs to offer agility, flexibility and choice. So, at the heart of our Agile Working vision is flexibility and choice. This involves more choice around ‘when’ and ‘where’ we work balanced with ‘how’ we work, so that we can continue to ensure we deliver high quality service to our clients, and remain connected to our teams and our firm. It also involves how we put this into practice to ensure that we continue to create a consistent experience for everyone in BDO and considers the health and safety of our people.
As part of this vision, we want to reassure you that we remain committed to offering shared spaces (hubs) where we can gather, collaborate, connect, learn and focus. We are in the process of looking at the design and layout of our shared spaces to ensure that they fit our future agile working needs. Technology also plays a critical part in our continued ability to work in an agile way and forms part of our innovative thinking. We have built policies and processes to support you and your teams with agile working. Ultimately we want to take the best of what we had pre March 2020 and build on this by adding the best of what we’ve learnt over the last 18 months. Although we recognise the importance of choice and flexibility for our people, this has to be balanced with business needs, so that we can continue to deliver high quality service to our clients and evolve with the world around us.
Our Agile Working roadmap: The Journey So Far
Working towards WORKABLE We shared our agile working framework; WORKABLE with you in August 2021 for you to explore and familiarise yourself with. Where we are right now: On 1 November 2021, we formally adopted WORKABLE as the way we work. As part of WORKABLE we offer our people choice and flexibility about how, when and where they work which will be determined by the task at hand to deliver the best possible outcome. This should always be balanced out by individual preferences, along with those of the team, our clients and the firm. This means that from 1 November our working practices will be guided by the WORKABLE framework and policies, including the requirement to attend and work across all locations including your contractual home hub and client sites, when the task you need to deliver requires you to do so. We appreciate COVID-19 isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, therefore should there be any government led changes in relation to Covid over the winter and beyond we will, of course, review and take appropriate action. What’s coming The evolution of Agile Working: We’ll ask you for feedback on how this is working, so that we can continue to evolve and improve. We expect it to take around 12-18 months before we get to a final Agile Working Framework - this will be the Future of Work at BDO.
video content created in February 2021
Your People Manager, your colleagues, and your team will all have their own particular styles. Your family and living situation may present you with challenges and of course, your clients will will need to be a strong focus of your attention. We can help and guide you to make sure that you've planned your days (and weeks) in advance so as to be certain that you're in the right places at the right times... doing the right things.
To successfully 'make work work' we're going have to give it a go and find out what works best for everyone involved.
WORKABLE guidance The purpose of the guidance is to provide clarity and ensure we all individually and collectively continue to deliver high quality service to our clients, remain connected and collaborate with each other. We must remember that we are a regulated business and, even though we will have flexibility and choice about how and where we work, there are some tasks that we will all need to continue to deliver in a particular way or place. In addition to this, we want to look after what makes us special and having a consistent BDO experience is part of this. Nobody is better placed to promote our values and culture than our people. Our people share a spirit which goes beyond background or the jobs we do. We are bold and collaborative. We do the right thing, even when it’s not easy. And we make our firm what it is, by genuinely being ourselves. These qualities are the secret of our success. We are all different, we all have different needs and work in different ways. For WORKABLE to work, we have to work together. The guidance provided is to help us achieve this.
A team is not a group of people who work together, a team is a group of people who trust each other
Simon Sinek
Henry Ford
If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself
Great things in business are never done by one person; they’re done by a team of people
Steve Jobs
Phil Jackson
The strength of a team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team
Download the WORKABLE Agile Working policy
Please download our WORKABLE YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED document for the answers to your most common questions.
Download 'Your questions answered' the WORKABLE FAQ
Whether you're working from home, at a client site, or visiting a 'hub' (our new name for our offices), we can help you get the most out of your working environment. We continue to invest in the design and fit-out of our offices to support our new agile ways of working and we are also incorporating sustainable solutions in line with our ESG strategy. Designed by leading external consultants, we’re creating vibrant ‘hubs’ where you can collaborate, connect, gather, learn or focus
WORKABLE means being in the right place at the right time to deliver the best quality output.
The WORKABLE Pilot Scheme A pilot will run in the Baker Street and Bristol offices to help us make sure we use our new office space in the right way. As part of this, we have updated technology to ensure we have the right kit to enable effective collaboration. View the latest 3D tour of the Baker Street office here
Enabling you to work from a variety of places, at any time, will mean finding some WORKABLE solutions
Help is at hand Whether you're looking for guidance around
Microsoft 365 (M365) provides a suite of tools which enable all of us of to work in increasingly agile ways. Please download our WORKABLE IT Tools guide to find out more about the MS 365 suite available.
Working in an agile way is new to us all and will require time, patience and a focus on mutual support if it's going to work well.
wellbeing for yourself or your colleagues taking part in our succeeding through change programme, or exploring and using all of the tools available
We are here to help and support you - so please don't hesitate to get in touch if you spot an opportunity to make WORKABLE work even better for everyone!
