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<\/div>\nA flexible approach to being onsite at work and working remotely is here to stay, say those who research the workplace and advise organizations on best practices. But some employers may be taking too rigid an approach to being flexible, some warn.<\/p>\n
Flexibility is “a great draw for recruitment and retention,” said Radostina Purvanova, professor of leadership and management at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. She was among the speakers at a June webcast on balancing flexibility in the workplace, presented by The Principal Financial Group.<\/p>\n
However, often when employers say “flexibility” they’re not being clear about what they mean with the word. “You can have flexibility in terms of geographic location, meaning remote work,” Purvanova explained, but “sometimes flexibility means time, as in when I am able to work. Sometimes it means how I am able to work and execute my job.”<\/p>\n
When Purvanova talks to employees, she said, “if you listen to what they’re saying, they’re not really talking about flexibility, they are talking about autonomy. That’s an important differentiator.”<\/p>\n
Often, when employers say they are giving employees flexibility, they mean letting employees work from their homes two days a week, Purvanova said, “but then requiring that they come to office for three days. Well, that’s not true flexibility.”<\/p>\n
What employees actually want, she believes, is autonomy in making those choices for themselves and “deciding where to work, when to work and how to work, on their own terms.”<\/p>\n
That prospect can be a scary proposition for employers who question whether they can trust employees, Purvanova said. But “if you’re an employer who is truly interested in recruiting and retaining employees using a newfound love for flexibility, you have to pair that up with a newfound love for trust in your employees.”<\/p>\n
When employees feel that they can make those autonomous decisions, they feel more engaged with the organization, Purvanova advised. “They feel like they have to perform and do their best to earn that trust.”<\/p>\n
Work Schedule Considerations<\/p>\n
During a July webcast hosted by Massachusetts-based MeQuilibrium, a digital coaching platform, Jan Bruce, the company’s co-founder and CEO, recommended defining core working hours when implementing flexible work arrangements.<\/p>\n
Whether people are now working onsite, remotely or hybrid, she said, “we need to know when we can reach them, and that they’ll be present for the part of the workday when it’s likely that everyone is reachable.”<\/p>\n
Also participating in the MeQuilibrium webcast was Jeanne Meister, founder of the San Francisco-based Future Workplace Academy, which provides online courses to upskill talent. She advised giving employees and their leaders “both the flexibility and the autonomy to create the best work schedule that they can.”<\/p>\n
Meister said she has seen talented employees, including senior managers, “leave because in their organization, the policy was top-down\u2014everyone is going to go to work, whatever it is, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Often when you’re arbitrary, it just doesn’t work.”<\/p>\n
She added, “People are saying, ‘Why go in the office on Thursday if all I’m doing is sitting there on Zoom?’ The bottom line here is to give team leaders the authority to be flexibility with their teams.”<\/p>\n
A Hierarchy of Arrangements<\/p>\n