Killing flexible working?

Swipe back or get fired

The fight has become real and it’s definitely not a stress free one. These are the news we have seen over the last few months

So it seems we have to surrender to the wishes of the big companies and all return to pre-pandemic and be back in the office.

But why are companies demanding employees to be back?

They mostly cite that in-person collaboration is invaluable and it fosters innovation. The reality is, there is probably a political aspect of local governments pushing bigger companies to bring their employees back as it hurts the economic centers and the businesses around them if people work from home.

In my mind there is an aspect of trust too. Let’s face it, for a lot of people they don’t trust what they don’t see and they believe if employees are home they are slacking and not being as productive, even though again and again there are studies that comfirm otherwise.

The impact for the employees

While there are indeed very good reasons to be in the office as a team, to brainstorm together and foster more personal relationships or welcome new joiners into the team, companies have failed to really articulate where it really improves performance.

Working from home ended up blurring the lines between rest and work with many employees struggling to switch off and working much longer hours. Yet it is interesting that despite all of this, the reality is they still prefer to maintain such arrangements. After all flexibility is the key. Being able to make a choice and adapt to the circumstances can be quite invaluable.

However, what they are being told is that if they don’t swipe your card they could be fired (said no motivational speed ever). This adds a lot of unwanted stress, unless you a) prefer to be in the office and b) you actually believe the reasons the company is sharing with you to return.

Sourced from: https://www.usemultiplier.com/blog/empower-employees-to-fight-return-to-office-stresses

The fight back

The reality if employees are not convinced of the ask so they are fighting back. A good summary can be found in this BBC article here

Not even the looming recession or mass layoffs which have been seen in the news the last few months are stopping “the fight”. If you know something works why would you give up on it?

The fight is not new, has just escalated since covid. For years many working parents have tried to get some flexibility to be able to support their families, but it was a long lost battle in which one of the couple (mostly the mum) would give up working to be able to support the kids while the other half would put on all the long hours in the office.

Will be interesting to see how the fight continues and to which extend employees will get united (beyond specific areas where union exists – anyone living in the UK will know of all the strikes we’ve had for more than 1 year). Will they go to the office as asked but then stop adding all those extra hours in the evenings and consequently reducing productivity? Or will they quit and search for places where the flexibility is being offered?

After all, right now we have globalization and the world can be your oyster.

Be careful with what you wish for

As we have seen in several studies, productivity had increased with flexible working and remote working. On average, companies have benefited from increased performance and productivity as the days have become a lot longer even if employees need to do breaks middle of the day (go to the doctor, get the kids from school).

If employees are doing something to tick a box, it won’t certainly make them any more collaborative or innovative, on the contrary. Instead, they will use their commute to search for companies which still offer the flexibility they value. And they will jump out when the opportunity comes.

The companies that will succeed long term, are those that are willing to embrace new ways of working, thinking and collaborating together and are not bound by the rules of the past. Adapt or die.

Further reading

• Time here
• Forbes here
• Multiplier here

Other articles I wrote on the topic

• Leaders of tomorrow
• The great resignation
• Return to the office
• You can’t have it both ways
• I don’t trust you therefore I need to see you
• The future of the office

4 days a week, what’s the hype?

If you are like me, you start your Thursday completely heartbroken because despite being Friday it still isn’t. Well, for some lucky ones in the UK, it can be. (Please don’t mess it up for the rest of us)

In the past, it was common that some people would work a reduced schedule (e.g. 4 days a week) but with less pay as well. From my side I never wanted a 4 days week until now precisely because of the point of the pay. I knew I would end up doing 5 days in 4 but getting the pay of 4 days only. Doesn’t sound like a good deal to me.

So the new deal is now that employees would work 4 days a week but with 100% of the pay. Yap, 100%. The principle being that if employees are given flexibility they will meet their goals without impacting company’s productivity despite having “less days” working.

I’m quite curious as this would work out, as for some people they might prefer to do the same 5 days, but stop earlier / or start later to meet their own personal demands at home (taking care of young children, take care of elderly parents, you name it), whereas for others they might just really want to have a day to deal with everything else which is impossible over the weekend (like dentist, doctor, or just purely decompress).

PROS

So let’s talk about the pros. Overall, it’s the flexibility. It’s about allowing people to get the work done and work around their own personal needs (yes we are not robots) and making everyone to rethink about the current ways of working. Not everyone’s productivity peak is the same, some prefer to start earlier in the morning (like me), others prefer to work after dinner (my brain is long dead by then). Also to fit multiple geographies teams have to cover already a multitude of timezones, so I can see this helping a lot in such cases.

Honestely it should be about meeting goals, how you get there individually or with your team shouldn’t have to matter as much, as long as you fulfill them. Time-boxing our work might even force employees to cut the fat even further – yeah useless meeting without an agenda I’m looking at you – and just prioritizing anything which indeed drives value.

We’ve all been students, we know the hype, if you know you have a few days you won’t stress about it until it’s Friday afternoon and you have a deadline to meet. With less days you are telling your brain this needs to get done now or else you won’t meet your goals. That can be quite powerful.

The main pro for me really is flexibility works both ways. The employee gets flexibility and the companies will end up with more productivity per hour.

CONS

If the working from home has shown anything is that people will end up overworking and reaching burn out. The 4 days might end up becoming really long and 3 days might not feel enough to recover. Still I would be willing to try, anyway I’m pretty sure by the end of day 4 I have already done way more than 5 days, so at least cutting a full day of any useless meetings and emails would feel like holiday.

If not all employees take it, the ones that are “more visible” might end up getting better opportunities that those that don’t. And here’s the word might, as I know some people didn’t had such issues with a compressed work-week.

Additional idea

No meetings during certain times – We had this over summer period and I wish it could be kept forever. A rule of no meetings during at least 1 day to enable employees to focus on productive work. I would say other than a quick 15m scrum meeting in the morning there should be no meetings until after lunch.

Other good article here