Good Practice
Network for Time Use Reform in Girona
A multi-organisation network that has shaped a committed space for time use reform.
POLICY OBJECTIVE
Promote worker health through more rational and human schedules, and greater productivity and flexibility in organisations, where work can be done outside the office. In short, achieve a healthier, more efficient and more conciliatory time organisation.
The aim is to achieve a basic timetable organisation that allows for individually agreed upon flexibility based on personal needs and decisions. The basis should be an adequate timetable for the vital demands of improved public health and social wellbeing, which favours a rational organisation of economic activity while at the same time increasing personal free time.
CONTEXT
Timetable disruption in Catalonia is the result of superimposing old manufacturing timetables subsequently altered by transformations in the economic growth model during the years of Francoist “developmentalism” and more recently by the demands of years of growth in the service sector.
The persistence of a workplace culture of presentism and the poor flexibility of agreed work models is also significant. This situation has created obstacles for business competitiveness; increased psychosocial risks; a persisting gender gap; health problems; low academic performance, and a decrease in the general well-being of society.
POLICY DESCRIPTION
The Network for Time Use Reform in Girona was created in 2016. This network is the first of its kind in Catalonia and, together with various partner organisations, including companies, shops and associations, built a committed space for time use reform. Currently, it has more than 65 organisations of varying sizes and productive sectors such as metallurgy, tourism, NGOs, pharma, food and more.
The Network has collected good practices on time use organisation in companies, shops and associations, including value-led and goal-oriented management, schedule flexibility, productive meetings and healthy mealtimes, among others. To promote the values of time use reform, the Network organises trainings and experience exchanges. It also organises the Girona network’s Time Use Reform Awards, of which there are three categories: healthy habits, equality/work-life balance and efficiency.
KEY ASPECTS
The main ideas to consider in companies are:
- Making work schedules more compact and less spread out
- Making the work day more flexible
- Increasing productivity in organisations
And in shops:
- Humanising commercial timetables (7am to 7.30 pm) –
- Promoting shopping habits in line with the new timetables
- Adapting shopping habits to a diverse society
RESULTS
The main results and benefits are:
- Earlier bedtime
- Recovered hours of lost sleep
- Reduced stress among workers, particularly women
- Definition of a healthy mealtime in organisations
- Greater number of agreed labour flexibility mechanisms
- Increase in teleworking
- Shortening of company lunch breaks to a maximum of one hour
- Earlier end of the workday
- Increase in organisations’ competitivity
- Fewer unjustified absences
- Implementation of a compensation mechanism for time
- More workers eating at a healthy time
In shops:
- More compact schedules at shops
- Consolidation of a responsible consumption schedule