Case Study: Flexible Working - John Lewis Partnership

Flexible working at John Lewis is available to all staff, not just parents By 2005 the company had had over 750 formal requests, the majority from women

In November 2005 John Lewis launched a gender forum made up of a cross section of employees (Partners) to help them to understand the barriers, hidden or otherwise, that were preventing women from achieving their full potential in the organisation. The forum identified that, although the flexible working policy enabled staff to do so, there was still a perception that it was difficult to combine a career with parenthood. In order to change these perceptions, John Lewis took a dual approach:

• The continued development of work-life balance policies
• The promotion of senior role models

A Career Break Scheme was introduced to enable staff to take an unpaid break from work of up to 12 months in the knowledge that their service continues and that they have a job to return to. To reinforce the fact that a successful career does not mean a lack of flexibility a number of case studies were highlighted in the internal magazine.

The Gender Forum continues to play an important part in identifying where the company can do more to encourage women to fulfil their career aspirations whilst achieving other personal ambitions, some of which may lie outside the workplace

There has been just under a 14% reduction in the number of women who did not return from maternity leave for the period May 2006 to April 2007 (compared to the previous 12 months). Female turnover fell by 1.2% between February 2005 and April 2007.