Flexibility At Work Is the New Norm

It wasn’t all that long ago that businesses who could offer some sort of ‘workplace flexibility’ to their staff were at a distinct competitive advantage when it came to attracting and retaining top talent. We weren’t talking about total location independence, or complete control of hours either, we were talking things like maybe starting and finishing an hour later than others, or maybe working from home one day per fortnight.

This sort of flexibility driven competitive advantage to win the war on talent was largely played out in the large organisations, corporate world, heavily but not exclusively in the tech sectors. Small businesses were simply not able to envisage how they could possibly offer this kind of flexibility without losing complete control, without having some of their small teams feeling disadvantaged and whilst being able to maintain their consistency, productivity and control over outputs.

And not that long ago you can remember why the technology just didn’t lend itself to flexibility around location in particularly, I personally remember taking both of my babies from hospital direct to the office, not home, because I needed server access to process my teams payroll!

But my how things have changed….

Yes, the tech changed, and so much more became possible. It was at this point that we started to see the big corporates introduce strategic workplace flexibility models into their businesses. The possibility had been uncovered, and staff weren’t going to turn a blind eye to it. They knew it was possible to get their job done from somewhere other than a CBD office, and they also started to see that the traditional 9-5 wasn’t essential in terms of their ability to get their job done. Led by global corporations who were traversing time zones anyway, the pressure started to increase on organisations to adopt and offer flexible work arrangements to their people.

Slowly we started to see the rise of working flexibly. But slowly really was like a snail’s pace. Yes, it was happening, sure it was growing in popularity, naturally more and more businesses were bowing to people pressure and offering options, but the progress was slow, a lot slower than what employees wanted.

And then everything changed – overnight – in March 2020 when the COVID-19 Pandemic hit, and businesses were mandated to have everyone work from home.

It was a complete culture shock, but we adapted, and many businesses realised that, actually, everyone could work productively from home. That in many cases people could still get their job done even working flexile hours, around home schooling and care commitments, and that in fact in some cases things were more productive and efficient.

And whilst many organisations resisted maintaining this flexibility when restrictions were eased and returning to offices was a possibility, the push back from employees was strong and unanimous. They wanted a choice on how, when and where they worked. They had proven that they could do this without loss in productivity, and with increased efficiency, so why should they go back to how things used to be?

What this has ultimately resulted in is that workplace flexibility is no longer a ‘perk’ that can be used to lure in talent, and act as a competitive advantage, it’s now an expectation, it’s the ‘new norm’ and businesses that aren’t offering it are finding incredibly difficult to find great staff, and even harder to keep them.

Of course, the flexibility measures I have referred to here aren’t possible to all businesses, or all roles, you can’t have your Electrician staff working from home, or your Warehouse Team only working evenings if your orders need to be out by 3pm daily. But that doesn’t mean you can’t look at other forms of workplace flexibility, maybe around mixing up part-time and full-time roles, creating different shifts, it’s really about thinking laterally about what sort of flexibility is important to your people, and how you can make they happen for them.

The research from Gartner, Gallup and others consistently shows us that flexibility leads to increased engagement and loyalty which in turn results in productivity increases.

So, if you were hoping that the flexibility movement would be a passing thing, unfortunately as the new norm, it’s here to stay. If flexibility is not already on your agenda, this is the time to be seriously thinking about what you can do to include a workplace flexibility strategy to help you attract and retain the best talent for your business.