Back in June I wrote about CTT's plans to work from home during the Olympics and I thought I would update you on the outcome. To be honest, I have struggled to know what to say. Nothing much happened. There were no crises, no panicked phone calls, no complaints from clients. The plan worked!  The indicators we use to see if everything is running smoothly carried on at their usual levels. Each morning I check how many new registrations to the CTX programme have not been progressed (this is the area that manages the charitable donation programmes of Microsoft, Symantec, Cisco, and a number of other technology companies) – there are usually 3-4, during the Olympics, 3-4. Sitting at home watching the client helplines ring, something I hear in the office, it's normally answered within 2-3 rings, during the Olympics, 2-3 rings. Nothing unusual to report.

The office was visited more than we anticipated. This was mainly because some staff still came in to have meetings with clients and partners. Some things are just easier to do face to face, especially if you’ve got several people and you want to draw all over white boards and stick post-its everywhere. We weren’t sure how other, non-CTT, people were approaching the prophecies of travel chaos, so this wasn’t so surprising.

So the verdict on our experiment is that it was a resounding success. We stayed away from London (mostly) and we ran CTT just as efficiently as we do when we’re there. That’s not to say we would work like this all the time. The general human contact, getting to know your colleagues, and picking up on what’s going on that you get from being together in the office is a really important part of creating a great team and an effective organisation. But now we know everything works, we can offer our staff a level of flexibility around working practices that makes a big difference to them and helps us retain the great talent we have in the team, even when their personal circumstances change.