There are Zooms for pub quizzes, Zooms for dinner parties, Zooms for work meetings and now there is a Zoom for sitting together and not talking at all. Behold, the silent Zoom!

On paper, the practice of logging on to a video-conferencing site to sit with strangers for an hour without communicating may hold limited appeal. In practice, silent Zooms have become a lifeline in lockdown for users trying to focus on writing, reading, meditation and more.

Author Anne Penketh has been retreating to “a virtual monastic retreat” for an hour every day to work on her novel. Initially, she struggled to understand the concept: what would be the point of Zoom without conversation? Finding silence to write in was not a problem for her, so Penketh was sceptical about what would make silence so productive in a potentially awkward group setting. She became a convert from the very first session.

“[My friend] Carola said: try to imagine it as working in a library, and now I’m completely hooked,” she wrote. “Three of us continued our silent Zoom sessions over the weekend as they’ve proved so productive for us all.”

I’d like to share the early observations and lessons from our flexible working policy – which allows employees to work from home and use personal devices to access business data, a trend known as ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD).

1. Flexible working is an investment: As wallets tighten it can be tempting to simply cut staff, but making the decision to increase agility in the workforce should be seen as a long-term investment. We are investing time and resources to deliver greater efficiencies. We are making flexible working a reality by updating our technology, infrastructure and changing the work-life culture of our organisation. This investment is worth it in the short term too: cost savings have been achieved with workers returning council laptops, smartphones and other devices.

2. Find the right technology and safeguard information: A successful flexible working policy requires high-quality technology. It’s essential to shop around for a solution that suits your needs. At Solihull, we deal with a lot of data, many containing sensitive information and concerning vulnerable citizens. Security is of paramount importance to us.

3. Offer staff members choice: To give staff the most efficient environments we found we needed to offer choices for hot desking, private computer access and mobile device access.

Hot desking allows staff to access information from different devices. Someone can be working on a document in the south of the borough in the morning, head up to see a resident in the north in the afternoon and drop into an office to carry on working at a hot desk.

For staff who want to use private mobile devices to access email and other information on the move, there are now many secure mobile device management solutions on the market.

4. Use your own device at home: Your own device at home (YODAH) is a scheme we have found to be extremely effective in boosting productivity and motivation. Staff members are often required to access council systems from home infrequently in case of an emergency.

But staff are, understandably, reluctant to carry a laptop to and from work. Before YODAH, people might have requested a laptop to keep at home. Now access to council systems can be provided remotely. This means some staff regularly work from home. By not making employees travel we can save time and reduce our carbon footprint.

5. The results might surprise you: When we launched a ‘bring your own device’ scheme we were concerned that it would create an increase demand in reactive IT support. So far this has not been the case.

At Solihull, nobody is forced to bring their own device – but if they want to, we have secure options they can, provided through our technology partners. All devices crash from time to time and if this happens people who have brought their own device will restart and try again while those on corporate devices become quickly frustrated. In some ways BYOD also reduces support costs as well.