The other week I tweeted a link to a post titled ‘Why employees shouldn’t have hours‘ and how I believe and agree with every single bit of it. As suspected it got a few comments so here is my slightly longer than 140 characters view on the topic.
The post I was referring to starts out by saying how work isn’t about clocking hours but about accomplishing goals and how the traditional 9-to-5 40 hour work week is just that – traditional. It then goes through four reasons why you should end set working hours:
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1. Set hours are are productivity killers
The key point made here is that having set times when the employee have to be in the office ties their productivity to those hours, not if or what goals that have been met, which after all should be the focus.
2. It doesn’t build trust
This point is about ownership and how if an employee is given freedom under responsibility they are more likely to be passionate about achieving their goals and do their best, so employers should provide them with this trust.
3. It’s distracting
The third point talks about the dual nature of flexibility and how it’s highly unlikely that an employee’s task will fit a 9-to-5 schedule, as well as how there will be times when you inevitably want to avoid the employee leaving the office dot on the clock.
4. It goes against teamwork
The final point is about how set hours can have a negative impact on team work and productivity, if the focus is on the hours that you work together rather than the goals you’re trying to accomplish.
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My main reason for putting such emphasis around that tweet is that I believe that enforcing set hours does very little for the company and for the employees. In fact, I believe that it can actually be detrimental to both productivity, employee happiness, company loyalty and quality of work. But more importantly I believe that flexible working has the potential to make us both happier and healthier, and that companies have everything to gain from it.
Trust in the work place
As someone who’s grown up in Sweden where the focus is more on life than work, I’ve always struggled somewhat with working in London. The long days and general culture of everyone having to be in the office from some time around 9am – 6pm makes me both unhappy and frustrated at times. Particularly when coupled with long commutes that are wearing me down. Few places offer flexitime, or have an open culture where working from home is generally accepted as the norm. Instead many treat it as an exception where permission needs to be asked and by all means, it can’t happen too often. That would be bad. Herein lies the problem.
When an employer hires a new employee to their company and team it’s done with an underlying expression of “I trust you enough to work for us and with our clients“. But if you think about how many workplaces are set up, the actual trust that the employee is given, once they starts working there, is often quite limited. Or rather, there is an underlying doubt that if you allow the employee too much freedom they will inevitably try to get out of doing their job and do something else instead. So in an attempt to avoid that, rules are put in place and expectations set that between 9am and 6pm you should be in the office.
My argument against this starts with that each and everyone of us have been hired to do a job and that job is based on tasks, roles and responsibilities. Not to be sat at our desk. It’s the actual work we do that matters. Everyone knows that a lot of other non-work related things happen when we’re sat at our desks, or generally when we are in the office for that matter.
Hours and actual work
The other week Amelia Torode wrote a post titled Working mums and the myth of “part-time”. In it she says:
I do a four day week but like every other professional working mum that I know the focus and dedication that I have during those 4 days (and evenings) means that I achieve more in those 4 days than I ever used to in 5.
– Amelia Torode
She’s talking about something very important. Hours does not equal actual work time. Just because your employees are in the office between 9am – 6pm doesn’t mean they work the whole time. We waste a lot of time at work. In most workplaces there are way too many meetings and those meetings are often longer than they have to be.
Then there the number of minutes and hours that cumulatively are spent ‘Cyberloafing’ e.g. watching YouTube videos, being on Twitter, Facebook, Amazon and other non-work related sites. Though there is nothing wrong with that per se as long as it’s in moderation – some studies even show that it can boost productivity – it gets a different perspective when combined with the expectation that you have to be in the office between 9am and 6pm. These expectations make people feel that they can’t leave the office until a certain time, which is normally after the official office hours. Even if the employee isn’t busy they stay and attempt to look busy by e.g. doing other things online. I’ve done it and I know numerous other people who have experienced the same. But I also know that rather than sitting off time, I’d much prefer to leave the office and enjoy life outside of it. After all, there will be times when I’m needed to work late.
To Amelia’s point of efficiency and how we use our hours, not everyone would prefer to work compressed hours and do a 4 day week with the same responsibilities and tasks as a 5 day working week. But there is a strong case for it and I know many people that would, and who, like Amelia Torode, would get more done in those days than the five days a week they currently spend working 9 – 6pm. The challenge that those people are facing is that our work culture isn’t set up for such freedom. It’s still based on hours rather than workload and responsibility. As a result, if you cut your days to 4 days a week, you also cut your pay by a day a week despite doing the same amount of work, if not more. It does not make sense.
Ownership and planning work
In Sweden it’s common for parents to leave the office mid-afternoon to pick up their children from day care and to then do a few hours at home in the evening. Usually this resorts to answering emails and do other tasks that can be done outside of the office. It’s not without compromises but it works and is accepted in many workplaces. As a result everyone adapts and knows that meetings can’t be scheduled after certain times, if you need to get hold of certain people.
Allowing this flexibility acknowledges the life and commitments that employees have outside of work. It also puts freedom under responsibility at the core of the workplace by extending the trust that was first given when the employee were offered their job. And that’s what flexible working is about – trusting the employee to make a decision on how to best plan out their work to fit both their and the company’s needs.
One of the arguments that is often given against not having set hours is the negative impact this should have on being able to plan in meetings, reviews, team work etc. This argument assumes that the employee, if given freedom, can’t be trusted to be in the office when they are needed, but that some form of control is required to ensure their presence and hereby that they do their work.
If your manager knows what you’re doing all the time, you’re not doing your job, and he’s not doing his.
– Hew Evans, Sony HR director in Asia
Of course there is a need to be able to plan for certain things, like meetings and reviews. But removing set hours does not rule out that some things are scheduled in, or that certain hours of the day, or days of the week requires that people are in the office.
Flexible working is not about creating an environment where everyone does what they like. Instead it is about creating a culture where shared ownership and responsibility to get the work done is at the core. One way of achieving this is by involving employees more in planning out their work and by setting clear expectations in terms of tasks, deliverables and goals. By trusting them and giving them the responsibility of ensuring it gets done, ownership and commitment increases. That goes for team work and collaborative working too and it minimises the need to monitor and control, both the individual and the team.
Work and the body clock
One of the biggest problems with the current office hours setup is forcing the same structure to work for everyone. None of us are the same. We are all different. There are however, broad patterns between people when it comes to preferences of work arrangements and hours when we are more or less productive.
Some people are early risers and some late snoozers. Forcing a late snoozer to be in at 9am most likely means that they waste the first few hours of the work day by being less productive, or simply doing other things. It’s also quite likely that making them be in early is having a negative effect on their whole day. If they are a night owl they’ve probably gone to bed past midnight and being in at 9am means that they didn’t get the sleep they need, which in turn has a negative impact on their ability to focus and be productive. In other words, to do their job.
I known what times of the day that I do my best work and it’s never ever been between 9 – 6pm just because that’s when I’m told I need to be in the office. It’s not that I don’t or can’t work all of those hours, but I know my body clock well and what times of day that I’m most productive as well as what times of the day that are best suited for what tasks.
If I had more freedom around when and where I carried out the tasks and responsibilities that had been given to me, I would get more out of myself. I’d be more productive when I was working, happier as a person and healthier. And, as a result, the companies that hire me would also get more out of me. It’s all related and a win win situation for everyone.
I would prefer to have flexitime and be able to come in early and leave around 4pm. Hit the gym and get a quick nap in before dinner. And that no questions where asked if I, when my calendar and work commitments allowed it, was able to go for a run when I was stuck on a problem. Or, allowed to pop down to a nearby cafe where the light was streaming in and the buzz from other people and fresh smell of coffee surrounded me. It’s where I do some of my best work, and where I’m the happiest. And that touches on something else.
Office environments
Not only are there certain tasks my brain prefers to do in the morning and some that are better suited for the afternoon, but time of day is also related to when I need more visual inspiration and light around me. Times where I’m more productive outside of the office environment.
I’m one of those people whose focus, creativity and happiness is greatly impacted by the environment I’m in. But of course, we don’t always choose where we work and we aren’t always able to influence the actual office environment that we work in, or where we are sat. There are so many aspect to consider when it comes to office setups and what constitutes a good work environment for the individual. It’s not the same for everyone. Some people mind less about the way their desk is faced, others don’t like it when people look straight at their screen. Some are fine working in a sterile, call centre like environment. Others slowly die inside and with that their inspiration, creativity and quality of work goes down. And here in lies a key part of flexible working – acknowledging that as employees we all need different things. Some people like music in the speakers. Others tear their hair out and can’t get their work done. For them, allowing flexibility around working from home some days, or part of a day, or to go and sit somewhere else can make all the difference. It would make the employee happier and help them get their work done.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to have everyone in the office. It makes popping over easy, reviews easier and it avoids long email trails. But constant “popping over” and meetings can also be a great disruption to the work day when you actually need to get into heads down mode and get something done. This is one of my main reasons for favouring flexible working. Not all tasks are best carried out in the office. The employee who is doing the task should be trusted to make a decision around this, obviously taking their other responsibilities and commitments as well as the needs of their team into consideration. The point however, is that getting the task done to the best it can be done does after all lie in the company’s interest.
In summary
Removing set hours and introducing flexible working is not about employees getting out of doing the work. It’s about ensuring that the work environment is set up in a way that works better for the employee and as a result for the company. It’s about enabling the employee to get more out of work as well as the other aspects that matters to them. Aspects that makes them happier and less stressed as a person and as a result as an employee. That can only ever be good for the employer and the company as a whole.
There are many variations of flexible working. The types I’ve mostly talked about here are flexitime, working from home and compressed working. These types of flexible working are not the answer for every industry, company or person. Nor were they intended too. There are many industries and jobs that rely on employees being in a specific place between certain times and where these setups are less suited. But, for creative industries in particular it just doesn’t make sense to force a rigid setup on people.
Employees who want to game the system are going to do so inside or outside the office.
– Tony Schwartz, Want Productive Employees? Treat Them Like Adults
As the quote from Tony Schwartz references, there will always be people taking advantage of it, but these employees are most likely harder to manage in the office as it is. To simply brush off the idea of flexible working and immediately assume that it will result in employees skipping out of work at their earliest convenience, or that the work that needs to be done can’t be done just because people aren’t always in the office, that I regard as old fashioned. How and where we do our work matters less and less. It’s what we do that counts and quite often the best place for that is not in the office.
There is a lot to be gained from expressing and extending trust to employees as well as helping them find a balance where they can move away from juggling work and life outside of it, to better enjoying both. Freedom, targets and expectations rates high on the list of what matters to employees. I firmly believe that we could be happier and healthier if work allowed for more of a life outside of it, as well as if we were given more trust, ownership and flexibility whilst working. And, I’m convinced that companies that embrace this will see a positive effect on their bottom line. Both as a result of increases in creativity, quality of work and productivity, but also in terms of fewer cases of stress related issues and absence due to illness.
The good thing is, this is not just something I believe. Studies after studies agree. And, as of April next year in the UK, everyone who has been with their current employer for more than 26 weeks will have the right to request flexible working. Something that is currently limited to parents.
After all, life is not just about work and work, as the post I tweeted about pointed out, is definitely not about sitting off a set number of hours a day in the office. Nor is it the job of leaders and managers to count those hours.
The job of a leader or a manager […] isn’t to tell people how to get their jobs done, or when and where they do their best work. Rather, it’s to free, fuel and inspire them to bring the best of themselves to work every day.
– Tony Schwartz
I’ve put together a 5 minute survey on the subject that I’d love to get your response to – Your thoughts on flexible working
Image source: www.flickr.com/photos/oblongpictures/5250948891
