Fair Work - economic inactivity: flexible working project report

2. Progress and Learning with Merson Group

Merson Group is headquartered in East Kilbride where they employ just under 200 people.Their business includes industrial guttering and cladding, and large-scale signage production and installation (for retail, stadiums, etc.). Much of their signage production is also now done at their factory in Poland, following their acquisition of a company in Basildon that came with that factory. The East Kilbride site focuses mainly on prototypes and cladding/guttering production. They have a mixture of office-based workers and frontline staff.

Merson Group began the project at a very early stage in its flexible working journey, with no formal framework in place across the organisation and mixed views about flexible working across the leadership team (Board).

An initial project ‘group’ was established - comprising a representative from HR and two members of the executive team. The group identified that flexible working was a key and current priority due to growing interest from staff and need for further consideration and discussion around flexible working was needed at senior and board level.

This group met regularly and practical activities included the following:

• Listening and Evidence-Gathering
• A leadership perception survey was designed and completed by all board level colleagues (9 responses), establishing a baseline and prompting strategic reflection
• A company-wide employee survey received 71 responses out of a potential 190. To boost completions from factory based colleagues, Flexibility Works was based on site to support workers to complete the survey. The company was pleased with this level of response particularly the participation from factory workers which is always challenging to secure.
• Four Focus groups were held onsite to capture diverse frontline and operational perspectives.This included discrete groups of managers (frontline and office based)

Based on these findings, a report including clear recommendations was provided to the Project Group about how to improve access and understanding of flexible working – this report was cascaded to the Board.

Leadership Engagement and Cultural Shift

A facilitated session was then held with the senior leadership team, not only to present findings of the listening exercise, but also to inform them about the wider role of flexible working in relation to their business and supporting their workforce. While some resistance to more formalised or consistent flexible working was evident, the discussion was constructive and intensive and the group began to set out some ‘principles’ around flexible working.

We were encouraged to see early shifts in thinking with leaders beginning to challenge assumptions and consider flexibility more strategically. For example, some further time-based flexibility being built into frontline roles, the option for more consistent approaches to working from home where roles allowed, ‘popping out’ for appointments and the option to reduce your working hours in frontline roles.

Across all roles it was identified that greater confidence amongst managers to support flexibility was required and further support was needed, once the leadership team had agreed their approach.

We held subsequent meetings with the Project Group to support their thinking and development of approaches and as a result, through the project, we have seen a developing understanding of the business benefits of flexible working, what can be possible and some changes in day-to-day approaches.

We have provided example flexible working frameworks/ policy and Manager FAQs to support the team’s thinking and approach. Further work is required to make the overall approach clear, consistent and communicated across the business.

Cultural change takes time, particularly within sectors and businesses where there still remains quite a traditional mindset by some of the leaders. We are committed to working on an ongoing basis with this company to continue embedding these changes and we will commit some of our time pro bono in 2026-27 financial year to further complete this process.

Due in part also to a major new customer and increased operational pressure, final implementation is ongoing. We have committed to:

Continuing work pro bono beyond April 2026 to finalise the launch of a new flexible working framework Delivering line manager training to support embedding the organisation’s refreshed approach. When and with whom will be based on discussions with the leadership team.