Uses of Time

The winners of the Barcelona Award for innovative companies in the organization and use of time were awarded on May 3 at an event designed to recognize the efforts of companies that facilitate greater flexibility in time and work space.

As every year since 2012, the award aims to contribute to making innovation efforts in this field visible..

The jury, made up of experts and representatives from the city's economic, business, trade union and academic sectors, awarded prizes to companies that are implementing innovative measures such as guaranteeing the right to digital disconnection or the four-day work week.

In this tenth edition, 16 nominations were presented in four categories. The winners were:

• Advantage Consultores S.L. (company with less than 10 employees): for taking a courageous and innovative step in improving working time by implementing a four-day working week without reducing employees' salaries.
• INGECAL, Ingeniería de la Calidad y el Medio Ambiente S.L. (company with more than 10 and up to 50 employees): for implementing a wide range of measures for the organization and use of time and especially for the implementation of the digital disconnection protocol.
• SOM Fundació Privada Catalana Tutelar (company with more than 50 and up to 250 employees): for the range and diversity of improvements in self-managed flexibility of the working day and especially for the effort to extend them to all employees of the organization, also for those who occupy positions that require presence and proximity.
• Webhelp Spain Business Process Outsourcing S.L. (a company with more than 250 employees): for the range of measures and for the creativity in finding solutions to meet the circumstances of the people who are part of the organization, such as the Social Parentive measure that facilitates the creation of support and care networks beyond the family environment.

All the award-winning companies agreed that flexibility is increasingly important for all people and especially for younger people and has become an essential requirement for attracting and retaining the talent that companies need.

In any case, the positive impact of these measures on the well-being of individuals, the company's results and society as a whole was underscored.

The tenth edition of the award coincides with the declaration of Barcelona as World Capital of Time Policies.

The awards ceremony will be held as part of the conference "Leadership of hybrid teams: doing business with people working in different environments and at different times".

In the wake of the pandemic, a significant number of companies have implemented different versions of what we call the hybrid model, where people are in the office only a few days a week. Managing teams that do not overlap in space and time introduces a new layer of complexity to the existing dynamics of any team and poses new challenges for leadership.

Sílvia Cóppulo, director of the Observatorio del Liderazgo en la Empresa and professor at the UPF Barcelona School of Management, opened the discussion on the leadership skills needed in this new scenario.

He then led a round table discussion with the participation of Anna Vilar, Head of Labor Relations at Henkel Ibérica; Óscar Bermejo, Business Development at Softmachine, and Ana Mayor, Operations Director at Kim Global.

They all emphasized that this greater autonomy over when, where and how work is done is a key dimension of the new work culture and shared recommendations on strategies, technologies or practices to strengthen cohesion, collaborative capacity and team involvement in this scenario.

After presenting the awards, Raquel Girl, Commissioner for Employment Promotion and Policies against Precariousness of the Barcelona City Council, closed the ceremony by highlighting the ten years of the Award and recalling the importance of identifying references to motivate change.

The Time Pact and the NUST Business Network

The award is part of the Time Pact, a strategy promoted by the City Council of Barcelona, which aims to promote the commitment of the municipality and the city's social and economic organizations to act together to achieve a healthier, more egalitarian and efficient social organization of time.

The Time Pact promotes actions aimed at raising awareness that time is a key factor for people's health and well-being and the adoption of more efficient and sustainable time management models.

It also plays a leading role in the promotion of these awards and in raising awareness of the NUST Network (New Social Uses of Time), which brings together more than 130 organizations from different fields, sectors and sizes that share the same purpose: to promote a work culture and management of working time that involves a better balance between the needs of the people who are part of it and the requirements and needs of the organization.

All of them have implemented innovative measures for flexible working hours, co-responsibility or remote work, and they all agree in highlighting the results generated by these actions.

Some of the benefits are increased employee and customer satisfaction, increased productivity, talent retention, improved work environment and reduced turnover, absenteeism and stress levels.