The 9-2-3 Summer Outing

The fabulous 9-2-3 team all work remotely (from Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Surrey). We catch up all the time via GoogleMeet, calls and emails - and have developed a really wonderful team spirit and culture (you can find out more about how we've done this by coming along to our "Flex:A Whole New World" event in September) which means getting together in person is really special!

This year our summer outing involved a delicious brunch at Balans West followed by an opticians appointment which was not all that it seemed...  We found ourselves being recruited for Mycroft Holmes' new spy network under the watchful eye of Sherlock himself! We solved the mystery and thwarted Moriaty with just 2 seconds to spare! So we were released from the Official Live Game ready to carry on with some recruiting of our own!

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Charity Party!

Our Helen had a brilliant time at a party in March celebrating all the fantastic achievements of the charity Pregnant Then Screwed!

There was lots to celebrate - during the Covid-19 pandemic they managed to change laws so that parents could continue to use informal childcare and so that children under the age of 5 were excluded from the guidance - ensuring new mums could meet with others.

They continually campaign to end the motherhood penalty so that pregnant women and mothers have equal access to the labour market.

Plus charity founder Joeli Brearley has some very funky star shaped glasses as well as her brilliant book - The Motherhood Penalty - now out in paperback.

https://pregnantthenscrewed.com/

RESET: The Festival of Confidence and Work

We were really pleased to take part in the brilliant "RESET: The Festival of Confidence and Work" over the summer, which was the brainchild of the award-winning charity Pregnant Then Screwed , in partnership with CIPD.

9-2-3’s Founder Helen Wright was on a panel being hosted by Anna Whitehouse (AKA Mother Pukka), with Aideen Whelehan (flex working advisor at PTS) and Michelle Gyimah from Equality Pays - all about how to get a job on your terms, while earning the pay you deserve.

Pregnant Then Screwed is a charity working to end the “motherhood penalty”. They campaign on the issues that impact pregnant women and working mums, and offer free advice while working for meaningful change.

More than a thousand people took part in the RESET Festival and all the feedback we’ve had has been so positive. Here’s to more events like this one!

Silver linings...

Here at 9-2-3, we like to look for silver linings, and so as 2020 draws to a close, we've been thinking about the positives we can draw from this strange, strange year.

Back in March, flexible working became an overnight necessity for many businesses, whatever their views on the matter. It wasn't always flexible working as we know it here at 9-2-3. In all our campaigning over the years, none of us had ever envisaged running conference calls whilst cuddling toddlers. Juggling our jobs and home schooling was never part of the plan. But the months rolled on, schools and nurseries opened once again, and we settled into the "new normal". Suddenly, we found ourselves in the midst of the largest flexible working experiment the world had ever known. What had at the beginning seemed to some like an impossible set of working circumstances began to feel much calmer. It blossomed into something which gave us much more balance in our lives, at a time when we desperately needed it. Whether it's enabled us to take our children to school without constantly chivvying them to move more quickly, or being able to set the alarm for 7am rather than 6, this new pattern feels much more sustainable for many of us - like a breath of fresh air. No surprise, then, that 44 per cent of us want to ask for permanently flexible working arrangements once this is all over.

And what of employers? What's their take on this monumental shift? Well, a huge number of businesses have seen that flexible working can and does work for them, and are determined to carry these incredible changes forward beyond the end of the pandemic. Even some of the world's biggest and best-known companies are joining the agile working revolution - Twitter and Dropbox have both announced that their employees will be able to work from home permanently. Many organisations are reducing their bricks-and-mortar footprint and with it, their overheads. That's not to say that there's no place for physical offices - the 9-2-3 team all agree that getting together once a week used to spark our imaginations and give rise to great ideas - but the most popular model emerging out of the pandemic mists seems to be a hybrid one. It seems likely that in the future, many employees will be spending part of the week working remotely, and part of the week travelling to offices, or local hubs, to join their colleagues. At a time when most companies are acutely aware of their environmental reputations, this seems like an easy way to reduce our collective carbon footprint. It improves employee retention, and raises the possibility of attracting the best talent from a much wider geographical area - something which could pay huge dividends in many sectors. Overall, this seems like a no-brainer, and there are suggestions that those companies who revert back to the old ways could find it harder to recruit the best people.

Ultimately, only time will tell. That said, we're hopeful that there is something positive that we can take away from 2020. The next 12 months are going to be an interesting road for all of us, and one of great change. We can't wait to travel it with you.