Phoenix Group

Phoenix Group, a long-term savings and retirement business, sees its approach to flexible working – termed Phoenix Flex – as a “key enabler to our purpose and cultural ambitions”. As a business, it hopes to “help people secure a life of possibilities” and wanted to reflect this when developing its flexible working offering post-pandemic.

The company realised it needed to develop its colleague proposition to “meet a wider range of needs and generational preferences, considering not just where colleagues work, but when and how much” and began by tracking flexibility drivers in the company’s monthly colleague engagement survey. It carried out a flexible working survey to gather targeted views, gathered feedback from colleagues through dedicated sessions on flexible working, reviewed external practices and spoke to other organisations.

It wanted to “make Phoenix the best place our colleagues have ever worked, offering the best possible work-life balance [to] attract and retain the best talent”. 

Phoenix Group also partnered Timewise to review its existing practices. Timewise interviewed senior leaders, ran focus groups and supported leadership discussions to provide recommendations. Cross-functional working and steering groups were established, and a refreshed flexible working policy, a new home working policy and a working outside the UK policy (to permit short-term working from a small number of countries) were developed.

At first, leadership resistance and lack of confidence were obstacles. However, sessions were delivered and comprehensive guides developed to address questions and concerns, for example, a compressed hours guide to support leaders in dealing with requests and a “meet the experts” session on the implications of working abroad. Recognising that working flexibly could lead to prolonged working hours, the team created a right to disconnect policy and supporting materials to empower colleagues to switch off, and ran controlled flexible working trials. IT and premises functions were also involved to develop virtual and physical workspaces to support flexible working. 

Since the company launched Phoenix Flex in June 2023, the employee engagement survey has indicated employees feel they have more autonomy, balance and flexibility: 95 per cent feel their manager is supportive of them flexing their working week as they need to, and 20 per cent now have a formal flexible arrangement in place. 

The PMAs judges praised Phoenix Group’s “impressive and passionate storytelling”, the way Phoenix Flex put “customer and business needs at the heart of the model” and the “very strong range of success measures and evidence”.