Flexible Working

I work with many employers, in all sectors. When I talk externally to their target audiences, they want to know: “What do people want from us as an employer?” and “What puts them off working here?”

I see that Flexible Working/Work-life Balance answers both. Employees increasingly expect it, and would be deterred if they don’t think they’ll get the right balance. You can see the need from recent reports like this one or slightly older ones.

This has quickly developed and become more sophisticated. It used to be structured working patterns (typically to fit round family life) and taking the odd afternoon at home for a delivery. Now it’s a greater breadth of need, more ad-hoc, and with far lower levels of permission. 

But there’s another aspect that comes up in research like this: people with high flex are more satisfied, but perhaps work harder. Is that because they are more engaged, or because flexing like this is new and they lack the skill/experience/role-models to have control?

In my last blog I talked about a connection between tech and flexible working. We can let tech dominate our lives. (And if we don’t take control, then we are in danger of not having moments of reflection, even boredom. And that can mean we don’t think and innovate.)

I think the secret to flexible working is to take control. Often I conduct an internal focus group and hear: “My boss won’t allow that” or “We can’t do that in my team”. Sometimes that’s about not having tech, or having a customer-facing need. But more often I think it’s about perception. It’s not my place in a focus group to say: “Are you sure?”, let alone “That’s not true, is it?” But I don’t think that the controlling manager that they fear really exists much anymore. A lot of managers have got a long way to go, but I don’t think they count the hours people are at desks. I don’t think they have time.

And that’s part of the problem. If they haven’t got time, perhaps they themselves are visibly doing long hours. That becomes the culture. Maybe too they haven’t got the time to spell out what they expect, and their attitude to flexibility. I haven’t heard many managers say “That can’t work here” – and not because they believe it but can’t say it. They want the results and outcomes – but from where or when, I don’t think they couldn’t give all that much of a hoot. So, I think employees need to demonstrate what they can do, in the way that best suits them and their work (which may be Mon-Fri 9-5).

But the question remains, can employees take control? Or do they lack that – very new - skill, and end up taking on more?

The Problem with E-mail

The Problem with E-mail - via Stanley Kubrick and Leonard Rossiter

Mostly I don’t work in a conventional office. Most are larger than my 2.47 m². They have more people in them. But I’m fascinated by office culture. We all are. Because it shows people at their worst. The best sitcoms work by trapping people in an artificial situation. That’s a dictionary definition of an office. Hence we get: Reggie Perrin, The IT Crowd and, well, The Office.

I think people show themselves at their worst worst when using e-mail. I’m not quite sure why – it really is a very useful tool. This article offers some insight, it is useful, just so much so that we try to do everything with it.

Like any written communication, without genuine care you risk being misunderstood. I spend a lot of my time in quiet bemusement as I see people in fury/confusion/damage-limitation as some text/update/tweet has been misunderstood/inappropriately used/taken a massive swingeing kick at some hornets’ nest. As humans – we don’t seem to learn. If they re-made Dr Strangelove (Hollywood; don’t), it wouldn’t be implausible for the Doomsday machine to be triggered by an ambiguously worded e-missive.

When they imagined the future it was always videophones. Of course it was. Spoken word and conversation get two people to the same point. Add visual cues, and it’s unbeatable. They didn’t imagine text on teeny screens. But when we invent the videophone, we go to e-mail before we talk, let alone Skype/facetime. Even for a difficult or sensitive conversation, we’re like moths to a gas lamp, always drawn to this limited technology. 

The problem is that it’s temptingly quick. We can’t break the loop. So we invent ways around it. Every time I open a browser version of my e-mails, it’s introduced a new way to organise them. Or, in my experience, to hide or confusingly re-arrange them. Then companies introduce Yammer or Slack or somesuch to enable better conversation. From my observation, they fail more often than succeed.

For me -– it’s not the tool, it’s the use. I am as bad an e-culprit as anyone, but I self-impose some rules. Max 16 e-mails in my inbox; 10 or fewer is ideal. That requires sub-rules. At times I need to stop what I’m really doing to manage that. But otherwise I’d feel swamped, and/or keep chopping and changing. For the main, I stay off of an evening/weekend. Then there’s a glorious fortnight each summer when I turn off my data entirely. And if the topic is hard or complex; I talk.

My question is, how many take control in in a fluid, tech environment? How many just let it happen to them? Can people do it naturally, or do they need support? And if they need support, where from

There’s a parallel here with work-life balance, and I’ll return to that next time.