How has the move towards ‘agile’ and ‘remote’ working arrangements impacted upon friendships in child protection social work, and relatedly, the practitioners’ propensity to remain in the role?

Problem/Objective:
This paper arose from a study which sought to explore how workplace friendships in child protection social work are created and sustained, and what is their impact on the sense of wellbeing and job satisfaction of social work practitioners.
Research questions/Hypotheses:
1. How are workplace friendships in children and families social work created and sustained?
2. What is their impact on the practitioner’s sense of wellbeing and job satisfaction?
3. What are the practical implications that emerge for organisational management and policy makers?
Methods:
The data collection comprised of individual interviews supplemented by ecomaps. The data was analysed using an iterative thematic approach.
Results:
The participants of this study asserted that workplace friendships provided a unique source of emotional support within children and families social work, and positively impacted on their sense of wellbeing at work. How the support manifested, and the type of impact it had, varied between individuals. However, each social worker highlighted that the emotional support afforded by their workplace friendships had enabled them to continue in a highly stressful and often traumatic job – and beyond what might otherwise have been expected/possible. They explained that their workplace friendships provided a forum in which they felt able to ‘vent’, ‘offload’, ‘complain’, ‘seek guidance’, ‘laugh’ and indeed, ‘have fun’ with practitioners who understood the distinct pressures that accompanied the children and families social work role. Additionally, that their workplace friendships developed because of similar day-to-day experiences fostered within shared workspaces and tasks which necessitated close proximity to colleagues.
However, social workers also asserted that working models which promoted remote/and or home-based working, often had a negative impact on the propensity to build and maintain workplace friendships, because they provided limited opportunity for this close proximity to take place. Furthermore, that the ‘cost’ of these models was a perceived reduction in the emotional support offered to/received from work colleagues, a higher sense of workplace stress, and reduced wellbeing. Moreover, several asserted that the feelings of being ‘more isolated’ and thus, ‘vulnerable’ when working at home, were leading practitioners to leave the children and families social work workforce.
National figures continue to highlight how the largest proportion of England’s statutory children and families social work workforce is made up of ‘newly qualified’ or else ‘early career’ social workers; and furthermore, that the biggest group leaving the profession in recent years have been those who were qualified for less than a year. The findings of this study should be considered in this context. They suggest that this cohort of the children and families social work workforce may have been particularly impacted by the move towards agile working that has followed 14 years of ‘austerity’ and the different working arrangements initially necessitated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
An implication that arises from this study is that, in the context of continued endeavours to improve the overall experience of the statutory children and families social work workforce, employers should perhaps move away from models which necessitate ‘agile’ or else, ‘remote’ working. Moreover, that they should instead invest in fixed workspaces that promote close spatial proximity to work colleagues, and therefore, allow cultivation and maintenance of workplace friendships – with associated benefits for the practitioners’ sense of wellbeing, job satisfaction and stress, and indeed, their propensity to stay in practice for longer.