It pays to be flexible
Want to drain an extra 2 days’ work out of your staff each week? Let them set their own start times and embrace workplace flexibility.
Flexibility helps attract and retain staff, as well as boost discretionary effort by encouraging employees to go the extra mile.
“Managers in SMEs know the cost of losing an employee and the cost of recruiting again, and building someone up. If flexibility can help you retain a person for longer than you otherwise would have, then you have to put it onto the table,” Aequus Partner Juliet Bourke says.
Aequus combine “psychology and the law” to provide strategic advice to businesses on issues including diversity and flexibility.
“A study by IBM estimates you can get up to 2 days greater productivity, but certainly half a day. The flexibility was changes to start and finish times and working from home,” Bourke says.
Research also reveals a layer of secondary benefits for workers.
“People with a level of flexibility tend to do things like exercise and take doctor’s appointments to maintain their health. Sometimes the impacts aren’t as obvious as the 2 days a week productivity gain, but it’s the long term build up,” Bourke says.
Which one are you?
As the title suggests, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to flexibility.
Bourke says individuals fall into 3 broad categories in terms of how they prefer to manage workloads.
“(US academic) Kossek found people have different personal styles. Some people are separators. They are very boundary driven, so they work hard all week but weekends are for family, and they don’t want their family time disturbed.”
“Other people are very fluid, integrators or blenders. They would be happy to take a phone call from their kids at work, or a work phone call at home. It doesn’t really matter, as long as the job gets done.”
“The third group are volleyers, sometimes they separate and sometimes they integrate,” Bourke says.
Take a creative approach
Bourke encourages managers to think beyond part-time or working from home to create flexible environments.
“Other ways might be jobshare, or sharing work amongst a team. Flexibility might be annualised work or hours, as opposed to something more confined to part time hours per week. The focus needs to be on getting the work done in a way that is sustainable,” Bourke says.
“There’s always flexibility in any job, doesn’t matter what it is. If you’re a pilot maybe you can’t jobshare, but you might be able to change your rosters around. Ask how can you make it work for both sides,” she says.
The more the better
Bourke says it doesn’t matter how you stitch it all together, the more an individual has going on, the better off they tend to be.
Individuals with more than one “domain” or interest in their life – such as family, community or sport – are calmer than those solely focused work.
“The research has shown those employees that are dual-centric, that is they have two domains in their lives, they tend to be less stressed. You would think if you are juggling more balls you would be more stressed, but actually the research shows you can draw energy from one of those domains on the downswing,” she says.
“It doesn’t matter what that other domain is, it’s about bouncing between the two domains. You may be really involved in sport, and find a good training session helps balance out a bad day at work, or vice versa,”Bourke says.
For more: Aequus Partners
