Council to cut costs through flexible staff

Wakefield Council is expected to save more than £1m by implementing technology that allows staff to work flexibly, it has been reported.

Alan Kirkham, the council’s ICT service director told Computer Weekly that nearly half of all office based staff would become “flexible workers” in the next two years, with the council set to save £1m in property costs and an extra £100,000 every year in reduced telephony spending.

With more than 1,000 staff already working from home, the council was said to be investing £1.5m on new IT, including servers and end-user devices, in order to facilitate greater flexible working.

“We still have quite a long way to go with flexible working,” he said. “We want to look at all other services to see which ones could benefit the most from taking a more flexible approach.”

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Flexible and home based working is becoming increasingly popular across the public sector. In central government, transport minister Norman Baker has said remote working can not only reduce costs, but that it could be a solution to heavy congestion in London during the Olympics.