About Future Ways of Working

We’ll be focusing on embedding blended working within our staff community, to ensure we can create a culture of collaboration and effective work / life balance at LSE

Our School Management Committee collected feedback from the 2020 and 2021 Pulse Surveys, our unions and networks, and staff at Town Hall events on wellbeing and workload. It was clear that we needed to develop a set of policies which redesign our workplace and our working lives.

As a result, Future Ways of Working was created to bring together people, technology and space to help Professional Services Staff at LSE thrive within their roles - whether they're working on campus or remotely.

The aims of the programme were to:

Enable a more inclusive working environment through our Blended Working framework
Ensure employee work/life balance and staff satisfaction levels from staff surveys is maintained and improved
Increase our ability to collaborate through new ways of working, enabling office design and technology
Enhance our ability to recruit talent and improve staff retention
Save 154 tonnes of carbon emissions per year, via our Digital Smart LSE plan
Make significant savings in lease each year to reinvest in our community.

Our key achievements

Since launching in October 2021, we’ve completed three phases. These involved moving divisions and teams out of rented buildings and into LSE-owned spaces, which were refurbished, redesigned, and given new technology.

A table for the three buildings involved in fwow and which divisions were involved with each one
Phase 1: Clement House	Phase 2: Pankhurst House	Phase 3: Lionel Robbins Building
- Extended Education - Residential and Catering Services (RCSD) - Philanthropy and Global Engagement (PAGE) - Estates Division	- LSE Research and Innovation - Academic Registrar’s Division - Communications Division	- PhD Academy - Human Resources Division - Finance Division - Library - Planning Division - Equity Diversity & Inclusion Unit (EDI - Business Improvement Unit (BIU) - Data and Technology Services (DTS)

Below are key statistics and successes:

An average of 73% of staff prefer their new working environment across three buildings
Saved 154 tonnes of CO2e per annum equivalent of 3% total emissions from LSE non-residential buildings
Increased ability to collaborate through new ways of working, enabling office design and technology
Relocated and/or refurbished spaces for 25 divisions and over 1,500 staff members
89% of our divisions and 62% of our professional services staff were part of the FWOW programme
Made lease savings of £2,146,373 per annum for reinvestment
Published the Blended working framework enabling a more inclusive working environment.

Next steps for FWOW

FWOW will be closing as a programme in November 2022, which means there won’t be a central team to lead on any space, tech, and relocations for future moves. However, we are empowering leaders from other areas who weren’t part of the programme to deliver FWOW-style changes at a local level using our toolkit.

The statement below is from Andrew Young, Chief Operating Officer, on the successes of the programme and what's next for our community:

Over a year ago we set out to make blended working an embedded part of our culture - building on our experiences of the pandemic and your feedback shared in the pulse surveys carried out during that time. What has been delivered since then through Future Ways of Working has been a combination of developments across policy, technology and spaces involving 25 divisions – a huge undertaking for those delivering the change, and those adopting this new way of working. The spirit of collaboration involved with FWOW is a testament to the commitment we have in delivering better staff experience for all colleagues in our community, and I’d like to thank them for their continuous hard work and dedication.

While the core delivery phase of the programme will close in November, we now have a strong foundation which will allow us to continue improving how we work together. I know some of you are interested in implementing similar initiatives in your area. Once you’ve had conversations with your staff about taking this forward, we have a toolkit for leaders which explains how the process of enhancing your technology and office space can be implemented successfully. A new iteration of the programme may happen in the future, but for now we’ll be focusing on embedding blended working within our staff community, to ensure we can create a culture of collaboration and effective work/life balance at LSE.