A few months ago I wrote a post on why we don’t need offices which sparked some interesting discussion both in the comments section, in emails I received, and on social media. Ultimately, the questions and discussions stemmed from trying to figure out what steps organizations should take to implement or move towards a flexible work environment. From what I’ve observed, it appears that the value of flexible work is starting to become more clear. However what many still lack is an approach on what to do next. So, that’s what I want to talk about today; the 5 steps to making flexible work a reality at your organization.
Step 1 Understand flexible work
Flexible work typically consists of three things; allowing employees to work anytime, anywhere, and focusing on outputs instead of inputs. Now most organizations are typically comfortable with adjusting to one or two of the above things but it’s rare to find an organization that embraces all three. One of the most crucial things for understanding flexible work is simply researching and exploring what other companies are doing and how they are doing it. All you need to do is Google “flexible work examples” or “flexible work case studies” and you will find plenty of them. I encourage you to email them to set up some time to speak with whoever helped role out their flexible work programs. You will learn an amazing amount of information this way. You don’t need to make this a year long research project; just a few weeks of phone calls and research is more than enough. In a report that my company Chess Media Group published (sponsored by Citrix) we found that employees perceived they would be more productive, have greater work life balance, and job satisfaction (among other things).
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