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When we ask what people desire in their careers there can be a long list of things they name – but one word that crops up time and time again is flexibility.
But when that can be interpreted so many different ways – and by so many different people who influence your career – what is it about flexibility that matters, and what are the pros and cons?
Flexible hours
For many, flexible working hours is the first issue that comes up; some people – in fact, a surprising number – are happy with the 9-5, standard office hours, and the familiarity that comes with that.
But what about those who aren’t?
Flexible working hours can mean beginning earlier and leaving earlier, freeing up your evenings if you’re someone who performs well first thing. It can mean beginning later and burning the midnight oil if you’re not a morning person. It can even mean fitting your 40 hour working week into three days instead of five, giving you more days away from the office.
But is this as good as it sounds?
Sure, flexible working means that you can pop away early to see the kids in a school assembly, or to head to the gym for a workout on your own schedule – but for business leaders it can lead to headaches trying to track who is where, whether they’ve clocked up as many hours as they’re contracted to, and whether the time that they are in the office is actually valuable; if you have a worker squeezing 15 hour days in the office, are they going to be performing at their peak towards the end?
If you are in a leadership position and you have an employee requesting flexible learning, by law you have to consider their request; we all have that right – but if you truly believe that it wouldn’t work for your business, for the kind of work that you do, or for the environment that you manage, you can refuse – as long as you give good grounds for the refusal.
If you’ve never considered it before though, it might turn out that flexibility in the working hours you offer to your team brings a new lease of life to your brand – and can even open opportunities for you to work with a wider market.
Flexible office space
If our team have been in place for a number of years, and everyone knows their role and gets on with their work without much interaction, it could lead to stagnation, and may even mean that the world outside of the office has moved on faster than you realise, leaving you behind.
If everyone has their own space in the office, their own desk where they’ve settled in, made themselves at home, and personalised it to the extent that they have become territorial, it might be time to shake it up a little!
Flexible office space – and concepts like hot-desking – means that everyone moves around regularly, shaking up the status quo; this not only means that people are more alert and on-the-ball, away from the soporific comfort of being ‘at home’ all day in their own space, but can also bring a new zest as people find themselves positioned near other members of the team, sparking new conversations, new ideas, new teams within the team, and can lead to new ideas, new projects taking off and a growth in the business as people try new things and push their own boundaries.
Our approach to workplace learning is flexible, and tailored specifically to meet the needs of your organisation, and the people who make it tick; for more details on this visit our website or call one of our advisors on 01234 757575
