Embracing Flexible Working: A New Era for NHS Wales

Every year, NHS Wales sees valued colleagues leave their roles, their organisations, and sometimes the NHS altogether due to inflexible working arrangements and lacking work-life balance, creating a challenge in the NHS that we can and must address together.

Why Flexible Working Matters

Supporting colleagues to work flexibly isn’t just a “nice to have”, it’s essential for colleague wellbeing and the sustainability of services. Providing colleagues with opportunities to work flexibly have been shown to:

Enhance colleagues personal and professional lives
Enable a healthier work-life balance
Improve health, wellbeing, job satisfaction, engagement, motivation and morale
Boost service and care quality and productivity
Attract, recruit, and retain talented colleagues
Reduce sickness and absenteeism
Expand our available workforce
Making changes to how we approach flexible working can revolutionise the impact on the overall care delivered throughout NHS Wales.

A Shared Commitment

NHS Wales is committed to promoting and encouraging different ways of working to attract, recruit and retain excellent people.

Already, there are many positive examples of flexible working in practice across NHS Wales, but we know there’s more to do. By building on these foundations, we can create a culture where flexibility is the norm, not the exception, where colleagues can thrive and ultimately choose to stay.

Resources to Support You

To help and support you in navigating flexible working approaches, two new guides have been developed:

These guides are packed with practical information and resources to help individuals and managers to work together to develop flexible arrangements that fulfil the needs of the individual, the team, and the service. Both are available within the National Retention Hub on the Gwella HEIW Leadership Portal for Wales.

What’s Inside the Guides?

For Individuals: Guidance on how to request flexible working from day one of employment, regardless of your role or grade. The guide encourages open conversations about what flexibility means for you, and how to balance your needs with those of your team and patients.
For Managers: Practical advice on supporting flexible working requests, including how to be open, proactive, and adaptable while ensuring service needs are met. The guide also covers the importance of fairness, transparency, and regular review of flexible arrangements.

Find Out More

Explore the new guides and the full range of resources on the National Retention Hub.

By embracing flexible working, together we can create a more supportive and productive environment for all our colleagues, ensuring that NHS Wales remains a great place to work, thrive and stay.