FE colleges should let their teachers work from home

Allowing staff to work remotely gives FE colleges an advantage over schools in the battle to recruit and retain workers

Allowing staff to work remotely gives FE colleges an advantage over schools in the battle to recruit and retain workers

28 Jan 2025, 6:00

The Boomtown Rats did not like Mondays. Kylie had the Monday blues, and Monday found the Mamas and Papas to be cryin’ all of the time. In contrast, South Essex College really does not like Fridays – despite there being no anti-Friday supporting discography.  

Back when Liz Truss was/was not crashing the economy (sub editors – please check for libel), South Essex College announced that rising energy bills meant that they would close most of their campuses and not teach on Fridays, with staff working from home on that day. Their opinion piece last week highlighted some of the benefits the switch had brought. 

With a caveat I will get to later, this is basically a good idea and others should follow in their footsteps.  

We know that people like working from home. A lot. When a large US tech firm offered half its workers (decided randomly by birth date) the chance to work from home on Wednesdays and Fridays, that group were 35 per cent less likely to quit than those who had to come in every day. They worked fewer hours on Wednesdays and Fridays, but did more work at the weekends.

In fact a lot of Americans, given the chance to “work from home”, play golf in the afternoon, and make up the hours in the evenings and at weekends. Afternoon golf course use has more than trebled.

Turns out playing golf in the light, and working after dark suits a lot of people. And work they do – those workers randomly allowed to work from home produced 8% more code than those who came into the office.

People worry about being seen to slack, and they appreciate the saving of commuting time, and they work harder.  

Now whether or not my readers play golf, being able to sort your own work routine is likely to appeal to most people. I am quite literally writing this at home, in the early evening. There is a whole lot of prep-work, marking, report writing, end of year summaries, all sorts that can be done at home perfectly well.  

Offering this flexibility matters more in the UK than elsewhere, because working from home is 40 per cent more common in the UK than in other English speaking countries, and it is particularly common for graduate workers.

Workers expect it. Since workers like it, employers offering flexibility can offer lower pay and still recruit well, and have happy staff. Turns out that employees value the flexibility at about 8% of salary.

Given the cash constraints on colleges, that seems like a win-win for South Essex, and others. We can’t pay you more but we can give you flexibility.  

Many, although not all, further education staff could work in schools. Schools will find it much harder to offer this level of flexibility – they pretty much have to be open five days a week in term time.

Colleges pay less well, but hopefully this sort of flexibility will help them attract and retain staff who might otherwise choose to work in a school.  

So three cheers for South Essex. I have only one quibble – and it is a quibble. They shut campuses on Fridays. But if you have enough floor space to do your teaching on four days, it sounds to me as though you have too much floor space.

It might be sensible to reduce the size of the campuses by about 20 per cent, then assign each member of staff to a different day working from home. That way one fifth of workers would no longer find their Mondays manic.

Even better, they should ask their staff what their preferred work patterns are. Maybe lots want Fridays off. Maybe others want to be on campus five days a week, but for fewer hours each day.

It isn’t just working from home that people value, it is flexibility as to when you work from home. South Essex is scoring highly on the former, but it would be even better if the right to work was more flexible.  

author avatar
Jessica Hill
Jessica is commissioning and investigations editor at FE Week, responsible for deep-dive features, profile interviews and our opinion pages. Before that, Jessica was deputy news editor for Local Government Chronicle covering all things council-related (including unpicking their financial woes), and with a particular knack for nailing devolution deal exclusives. She has also co-written a book about culture in the UAE where she lived for seven years. During that time she worked as a freelance journalist in Abu Dhabi, covering a wide range of issues mainly for the National newspaper – from hypnobirthing to local ambitions to send astronauts to Mars. Jessica lives just outside Ipswich and is a keen runner. She is hoping against all odds to conquer a 62k race later this year.

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