Together Housing Group have been named winners of the Best for Flexible Working award by work-life balance charity Working Families, as part of the 2021 Best Practice Awards.

The awards celebrate employers whose stand-out cultures and working practices are leading the way in flexible and employee-friendly workplaces.

Head of business change partners for Together Housing Group, Emma Tomkinson, said: “We are delighted to win this award and to be recognised for the work we have done to improve our offer to our staff.

“Flexible working and prioritising the health and wellbeing of our employees is very important to us and is rooted within our culture.

"We’ve always offered flexible working, and pride ourselves on this being one of the main benefits of working for our organisation.

"However, during lockdown we wanted to trial new ways of working to enable people to have the freedom to balance home and work priorities and introduced the ‘smart’ agile working approach across the Group.

“Our new approach offers even greater flexibility, allowing colleagues to work wherever and whenever they need to, bespoke to each service areas’ needs to get their job done to the best of their ability without the constraints.

“The pandemic presented us with the opportunity to expediate this work with a focus on delivering high performance.

"Our vision is to create a culture based on trust and mutual flexibility where people are judged on outputs not hours.”

Chief Executive of Working Families and chair of the judging panel, Jane van Zyl, said: “As we move out of the pandemic into the ‘new normal’, we are determined to use what we’ve learned to benefit more of the UK’s 13 million working parents.

"When employees have more control over their time, we see improved engagement and retention, as well as better organisational performance.

"Our Best Practice Awards winners 2021 are leading the way in making this a reality for thousands of parents and carers.”