We’re all familiar with the benefits of a flexible work policy, particularly for employees juggling increasingly busy lives. But without the traditional nine-to-five routine, how can you keep your team on track and make sure your business interests are still being met?
Gone are the days when flexible work was seen as purely the preserve of working mothers. Making workplaces more flexible and aligned to employee needs is increasingly recognised as a great way to attract and retain top talent, regardless of gender, age or level.
Today, over 70 per cent of Australia’s private sector organisations have flexible work policies in place giving employees a greater say over where, when and how they work, and a number of large corporations, like PricewaterhouseCoopers and Westpac, are now flexible by default. In addition, a host of others have informal flexible work arrangements with their employees on an ‘as needed’ basis.
If you’re one of those businesses embracing this shift, you’re undoubtedly helping your employees manage their lives. But, if everyone’s working in different places and at different times, how can you best manage your employees?
Here we look at a number of effective ways to manage your team wherever they are and whenever they’re working.
Building the right foundation
Creating a company culture that supports flexible working is a good first step to moving away from the traditional nine-to-five office-based set-up. This means embracing values such as accountability, transparency and trust, which all resonate well with today’s workers, and honouring their freedom.
So rather than micro-managing team members and scheduling in endless catch ups, employers are encouraged to give them space to get the job done their way, and focus on outcomes not activity as a means of measuring performance.
By building a strong foundation that’s based on treating people like the responsible, capable beings they are, employees are more inclined to do the right thing and put in their best effort.
Consulting firm Inventium is one Australian company committed to this approach. Having established a culture around mutual respect and trust, it began offering employees not just flexible work schedules but unlimited paid annual leave.
Three years on and the model has proven a success. While employees take an average of five and a half weeks of annual leave, sick days have dropped to two and a half days. At the same time, engagement has increased and employee retention has doubled.
Setting clear expectations
Of course, for employees to do a great job they need to know exactly what is required of them, and this is particularly the case when they’re separated from their team members by time and/or distance. It’s worth bearing in mind that some workers are more self-motivated than others, too.
Depending on the role, clearly outlined tasks and/or deliverables with set deadlines will help to foster a sense of ownership and keep employees engaged. It’s a good idea to set milestones along the way to motivate team members and maintain momentum. Issuing reminders can be helpful, too, especially when employees are juggling multiple priorities.
It’s also important for employees to know how their work fits into the bigger picture and what other team members are doing – regular video meetings are a good way to keep everyone informed. This transparency will help to support a productive team culture, ensuring all members are focused and working towards the same goal.
Turning to technology
Just as technology has enabled the move to more flexible work practices, team collaboration software is now a major growth area, with the global market poised to reach USD$16.6 billion by 2025.
You may already be familiar with Google’s Docs and Sheets products, which allow teams to edit files simultaneously and automatically save their changes, but you can take your pick of more sophisticated collaborative tools to keep your team connected and on track.
Popular platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams, for instance, are essentially digital versions of an open office space, supporting group chats organised by topic as well as private messaging, file sharing, video calls and more.
Meanwhile, for more in-depth project management needs, you can turn to tools like Asana and Trello, which help businesses plan and manage projects from start to finish, including assigning tasks and checking progress, ensuring everyone’s on the same page wherever they are.
And if you think productivity needs a boost, or suspect a particular team member is letting the side down, time tracking software such as Time Doctor can sync up with other applications and show you exactly what everyone’s spending their time on. There’s even a monitoring feature, which can be set up to take screenshots of your employees’ screens at specified intervals and identify distractions and inefficiencies.
Delivering something for everyone
If you’re embracing flexible working for the first time it’s a good idea to start small and consider what kind of flexible arrangement will work for your business as well as your employees.
Offering one day a week as a ‘work from home day’, for example, could be a good place to start. From there, you can build up to a more ambitious flexible policy when you’ve established the right environment to support it.
And whatever platforms or processes you do set up to help manage remote or flexible workers, it’s vital that you keep all team members up to date with your decisions and, where possible, ask for their input. Keeping people in the dark is a fast way to extinguish their enthusiasm and dampen productivity.
Providing expectations are clear and you’ve established a level of trust and openness on both sides, a more flexible work environment can work in everyone’s favour. It not only provides your employees with the opportunity to balance their lives, but it can deliver real competitive advantage for your business, both in terms of attracting employees and ensuring they’re committed to your cause.
This article was first published on the Business Australia website (formerly NSW Business chamber) in Nov, 2019.
