Good Practice

Barcelona Business Network for New Working Time Arrangements

A network and learning community to improve working time arrangements that benefit workers, employers and the city.

Barcelona City Council
Spain
Local policy

POLICY OBJECTIVE

  • Raise awareness about the benefits of better working time arrangements by enlisting the power of experience and narratives from companies about:
    • Increasing productivity
    • Attracting and retaining the right talent
    • Promoting gender equality
    • Promoting health and safety
    • Improving work-life balance
    • Improving job satisfaction and commitment to the organisation
  • Support change through learning opportunities. Help managers develop and implement better working time arrangements through:
    • Information exchange
    • Good practices dissemination
    • Workshops
    • Mentoring and peer-to-peer support

CONTEXT

Barcelona City Council is committed to promoting citizens’ quality of life with impactful time policies, a key dimension of which are working time arrangements. The pandemic has heightened the importance of greater degrees of choice and influence over the context in which we work. Companies face a window of opportunity to make progress developing new ways of organising work time to be more efficient, healthier and more egalitarian.

POLICY DESCRIPTION

The network brings together HR managers and executives from more than 130 organisations and companies in every sector and of every size and experience level: from those with significant experience to those that are just starting to work on this issue.

KEY ASPECTS

  • Clear purpose: What is the network’s reason for being
  • Attracting leading companies to act as catalysts
  • Allow network membership to expand through members’ connections
  • Establish a solid technical unit to manage communication, coordination, events organisation and other issues relevant to the network’s infrastructure

RESULTS

  • More than 130 companies
  • The NUST Network has been operating in Barcelona for 15 years
  • Publications (Application guide for more productive and healthy schedules; Guide to implementing better work-time organisation in companies)
  • Creation of an annual award for innovative companies in time organisation (10 years and more than 40

Emilia Pallàs

Zenke

Executive Director of the Local Socioeconomic Development Area

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