Time to think about time

Our working patterns in the NHS following the COVID-19 response have fundamentally changed. In light of Government advice to work from home where possible, and the increased use of digital meeting platforms, the move towards more of a ‘homeworking’ pattern across the NHS is one that many colleagues have adopted. Giurge and Woolley (2020) suggested that the recent global shift to remote work due to the COVID-19 crisis risks the breakdown of formal boundaries that separate work from non-work, with employees potentially feeling conflicted about what time is and isn't meant for working.

The NHS England and NHS Improvement and Health Education England (HEE) (2020)People Plan for 2020/2021 includes metrics in relation to flexible working. This heralds a significant systematic change to what I would previously have described as an extremely varied approach in the NHS. In the future, we should see a number of changes and will be measured against the following 11 metrics: