Client case studies

Nationwide – bespoke homeworking training

How Xpertise provided unique homeworking training to Nationwide, the world’s largest building society.

The challenge

Homeworking enables organisations to employ large workforces without suffering many of the associated infrastructure issues – while also providing employees with a better work/life balance. However, it is notoriously difficult to implement successfully. Not all people – and organisations – adapt well to homeworking, and without training and orientation people can feel unmanaged and become unproductive.

The solution

Determined to make a success of its homeworking initiative, Nationwide enlisted the help of Xpertise’s soft skills training division. Xpertise began by interviewing several of Nationwide’s employees to understand their perceptions and experiences of homeworking. From this early analysis, it became clear that two levels of training were needed: one for the homeworkers and one for their managers, who faced considerable challenges and behavioural changes in managing people who were based out of the office.

Pauline Henderson, Nationwide’s homeworking project manager, believes that training issues assume a greater level of importance for homeworkers. “Since they are detached from the workplace,” says Henderson, “contact is often limited and managers need to make sure that homeworkers are provided with the necessary support and tools for the job.”

Xpertise developed the two courses for Nationwide, ‘Working Smarter at Home’ and ‘Managing Teams that Work at Home’. For homeworkers, the course covered time management, managing interruptions, maintaining motivation, communications issues, organisational skills, detached working, health and safety, the advantages and drawbacks of homeworking and planning ‘your day, your way’. For managers, the course covered understanding the demands and challenges faced by homeworkers, the impact of working with a remote team, developing communication strategies, performance management, managing homeworkers’ daily schedules – along with health and safety.

Following a successful pilot programme, the courses were rolled out to both the homeworkers and their managers. The highly participative course was designed to pass responsibility for learning to the attendees – helping them become self-starters. The course was designed to adapt to different learning styles, so it would work equally well for theorists, activists, pragmatists and reflectors. The course was especially successful for the managers, who had to develop a whole new skill set.

Nationwide now had over sixty homeworkers, a number that is expected to grow steadily – and almost all of these have attended Xpertise’s courses. Everyone involved in the training has been extremely positive about it and about the move to homeworking – by Nationwide, the course is regarded as a cornerstone of the homeworking project.