As the modern workplace continues to change and adapt, there’s a lot of talk about how to make remote conditions work for your employees. Much of this talk revolves around productivity, but scheduling is a key component as well.
As we explored in our guest post on remote-work productivity, it’s important right now to allow employees to enjoy more flexible working hours. This is because it fosters a sense of trust and helps you to acknowledge that the employees may have other considerations or obligations when working from home. Empowering your employees to enjoy a sense of autonomy in their work can yield a multitude of benefits, and encourages them to complete their tasks on a schedule that suits them.
While this is unquestionably a valuable idea, it still presents challenges. This kind of flexibility with remote employees only works if productivity doesn’t take a hit, and if the team as a whole continues to function as needed.
With these challenges in mind, our guest writer, Riley June, explores a few ways we can ensure flexible schedules work for everyone.
Redefine “productivity”
This is an idea we’re borrowing from Jane Parry’s piece on flexible hours for Fast Company, in which Parry argues that “flexible work demands a shift away from seeing productivity in terms of being present for fixed working hours.” This is a concept many of us may not have considered, but it’s actually one of the reasons that employees feel overworked.
We’ve come to think of hours as production. But remote working conditions give teams the opportunity to break away from this model, and measure productivity in a more literal sense. In other words, you might start thinking of productivity in terms of what gets done. This fundamentally enables more flexible working hours, encouraging the whole team to feel more relaxed about working remotely.
Set up a communication hub
This may well be something you’ve already done if you’re managing a team remotely. If not, it’s another idea you might consider implementing.
The idea of a hub — be it a team chat in a workplace communication system, or even something as simple as an email chain — is to enable employees to stay on the same page.
For one thing, this will make it easier for them to collaborate, when necessary, even if they’re not working the exact same hours. For another, it gently creates a system of accountability. If employees have somewhere to track and update their progress, they’ll be further incentivised to get their work done, even if they’re not pressured to do so within a rigid set of hours.
Encourage “smart” work
The mantra to “work smart, not hard” is not a new one, however it’s all the more important these days, as we adjust to new schedules and circumstances. Holly Dempster's blog post about working smart cited a Stanford University study that addresses smart working. The study indicated that working 70 hours per week is about as productive as working 50 — meaning that past a certain point, employees aren’t really being productive anyway.
By this token, working “smarter” means working only necessary hours, and employees can then make use of proven productivity tactics, such as scheduling tasks, taking regular breaks, and so on. Altogether, encouraging this sort of approach could lead to employees getting the most out of their flexible working schedules.
Allow various starts and finishes
This final idea fits into a lot of what we suggested above, though it’s worth singling out. Another article on flexible work schedules in 2019 - even before the workplace changed for so many of us - noted that different employees prefer different starting and finishing times. This assertion was based on survey results showing that some would prefer to start work at 7am, some at 9am, and so on.
With a flexible work arrangement, you can allow and even encourage these varied times. This can be a very helpful first step toward encouraging remote teams to set up flexible working hours to suit them.
Over to you
It can be challenging to adjust to new, remote working conditions, and it's natural to take time to find what works for you. Flexibility is important in order to ensure happy and productive employees, and I hope these steps can help you and your teams to achieve this.
For more helpful working from home tips, take a look at Working from Home: The Complete Calmer Guide to Remote Working – full of evidence-based research, experiences from remote workers and a five-step programme for your ideal remote working set-up.
Riley June is a blogger with an interest in following the latest business trends. Her main focus in recent years has been following the shift from a traditional office work setup to the remote setup now favoured by many businesses. She hopes her articles provide tips for managers and business leaders on how to adapt to these changes, as well as how to lead a remote team. In her free time, she loves to play tennis.