The answer to the issues of flexible working? Even more flexible working
"Britain risks becoming ‘couch potato nation’ under flexible working rules" says a headline from the Telegraph. Here's how to prevent that from happening.
When flexible working - whether in the form of chronoworking, working from home, a four-day week, asynchronous working, Workstyle - comes up, the same sort of worries tend to come up over and over again. But how will workers get to collaborate if they’re all working in different places and at different times? How will I know people are being productive? How will the work get done? Won’t everyone get lonely? Won’t everyone get lazy*? Won’t this tear our culture apart and make us a bunch of lazy layabouts who don’t want to work?
*This week’s newsletter is in part inspired by a Telegraph article that warns “Britain risks becoming ‘couch potato nation’ under flexible working rules”.
When these concerns arise up, our natural inclination is to tighten our grip on the way things are. Change is unsettling. Our comfort zones are, you guessed it, comfortable. So as these questions and worries pop up around flexible working, it’s little surprise that, faced with the uncertainty of an uncharted path forward, companies and bosses opt to hold rigidly on to the way things have always been done.
That’s clearly not the answer, though. Holding on to the norm is the enemy of progression, and we don’t want to stay stagnant, right? But how do we navigate the issues of flexible working, then? How do we make the route forward smoother?
The actual answer? Even more flexible working. Or, to put it plainly, flexible working that’s actually flexible.
You’re worried that the ability to work from home will make people lazily lounge on their sofas all day. Easy solution: make the work more flexible. Give workers the ability to shift their work hours to suit physical activity, whether that’s the freedom to take a longer lunch break to fit both eating and a walk around the park or starting later so they can go to a gym class. Encourage the idea that you don’t need to be sitting to be working; doing some exercise so you can think up solutions to an issue ‘counts’ as working, joining a meeting as a phone call while you’re rollerskating is totally fine.
You’re worried that workers won’t be able to collaborate. You’re worried they’ll be lonely. Encourage collaboration that’s actually beneficial. Scrap the pointless meetings. Allow for asynchronous communication. Reframe the office as not somewhere everyone ‘has’ to be to get stuff done, but as a place to find an area to chat stuff through. Understand that social connection isn’t a needless distraction, but an essential component of creating good work, and create space to do that.
You’re worried that people aren’t being productive if you can’t watch over them, if they’re not visibly at a desk five days a week, 9am to 5pm. You guessed it, embrace more flexibility, this time in your view of what productivity even is. Let go of presenteeism and focus on results. Give workers the freedom to work when and where suits them, and judge their performance entirely on what they produce.
You say this is going to destroy our culture and life as we know it. Why not make our culture a little more bendy? Softer, more supple? Able to move around without shattering into tiny pieces? That seems like a better way forward than just keeping everything perfectly still.
It’s true that flexible working won’t work if we try to slot it into a society that’s immovable. But that doesn’t mean we should just chuck out flexible working. Instead, we need to open up our minds and let our approach to work take on a new shape. Let’s at least try, and see how it goes. If it doesn’t work, no worries. We’re resilient enough to bounce back, right?
Work-related reading recs:
Gen Z workers *can* take criticism, you’re just doing it wrong
Interesting idea around creating ‘work zones’ at home
I’m a big fan of this research around the benefits of work ‘rituals’
Boomerang jobs! What’s it like to go back to a role after quitting?
“Should I have to work the same hours as my inefficient colleague?”
Got a work woe?
If you’ve got a work-related issue, I want to hear it (and try to resolve it, with additional expertise when needed). You can ping your problem to workingonpurposenews@gmail.com. Don’t worry, you will remain anonymous.