Network for Time Use Reform in Girona

Good Practice

Efficiency, Equality, Health

Network for Time Use Reform in Girona

A multi-organisation network that has shaped a committed space for time use reform.

Girona City Council

Spain

Local policy

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

Policy's Website

Gloria

Plana i Yanez

Deputy Mayor for Economic Promotion

dalsina@ajgirona.cat

Good Practice