The typical driver for organisations considering flexible working is cost, but there are many other factors, not least sustainability (in terms of reduced travel) and employees’ work/life balance. So, what’s holding them back? Could it be that organisations are failing to fully appreciate their employees’ own reservations?
It’s important to ascertain whether employees will react positively or negatively to spending less time in an office environment and it’s equally important to ensure that workers are adequately balanced between the office and remote locations.
“There are various stakeholders involved in the success of flexible working — employees, managers, HR, IT and senior management,” says Ken Raisbeck, vice president of Global Workplace Strategy, Johnson Controls Global WorkPlace Solutions. “Whether companies identify work done from coffee shops or on trains, for example, as flexible working is debatable — but that is exactly what it is. There are times when people need to be physically together and there are times when people need to be alone to get something specific done without the interruptions of the office. It’s about understanding how people work, understanding their working practices and how they use technology to work in different spaces.”
A 2011 report carried out by ZZA Responsive User Environments, entitled Why place still matters in the digital age, shows that people value the social dimensions of work and that they separately value the contrast that a workplace outside of the home offers. “Our research shows that employees value the scope to work at home, when this makes sense for their activities, but that they predominantly choose to work in a collective workplace,” says Professor Ziona Strelitz, founder director of research and strategic consultancy, ZZA Responsive User Environments. “So, business should not conceive of flexible working as an all-or-nothing pathway.”
A matter of choice
There is an argument that offices without people would lose a sense of corporate identity, and that offices should be a place where employees can meet, face to face. Yet employees should be given the choice and the autonomy to do their job in a way that suits them. “It’s got be about choice,” says Nigel Oseland, director of Workplace Unlimited. “There are certain times when people need to be in different spaces.
“We need to understand which spaces best support an employees’ ability to do their job,” says Oseland. Working in an office environment will allow people to connect and to collaborate, reinforcing in a person’s mind a sense of corporate culture. “The office environment also allows people to act as mentors to less experienced employees, as well as to meet with peers and senior staff,” Oseland continues.
“People are good at following their own needs,” agrees Strelitz. “If their objectives are defined in terms of performance requirements and they are meeting these requirements, then managers need not see their folk in the office to prove that they are working.” Strelitz believes that structured and scheduled time needs to be agreed for teams to meet as teams.
Naturally, however there are potentially negative aspects of working from any space; open plan offices can be noisy and full of distractions, homes are not always suitable and even cafés or libraries can be distracting places in which to work. There are advantages in allowing employees to work outside of the office environment to deliver processed output, but employees must be given that choice.
“Flexible working can be advantageous, but if we were to force people to work outside of the office environment then we would possibly be setting ourselves up for a fall,” says Oseland. “It’s important to consider people’s individual personalities. Introverts might cope well with working at home, while extroverts are social creatures that often thrive in the office environment.”
However, instead of corporations considering these psychological aspects of employees’ psyche, it is often corporate culture and job roles that dictate where and how people work.
A generation game
Offices can be seen as social nodes — employees may require the social environment that the office provides in order to work well. Generational differences may play a part in whether someone is comfortable working from the office, the home, or the ‘third space’. Younger employees may enjoy the social interaction of office based working, while employees with children may welcome the opportunity to work from home.
But how can organisations ensure that the people who work remotely are psychologically capable of doing so? “Some companies simply decide on flexible working as a diktat,” says Nick Dalton, director of Proteus Consulting. “They hope that employees can cope with the new way of working, even down to whether individuals have the actual space and means to work from home if they have children or pets.
According to Raisbeck, “corporations should formalise a way of working and build a flexible programme that can be branded and given an identity that employees can relate to.” He suggests that difficulty often arises from embedding a new way of working, while ensuring that employees retain a connection with their organisation’s values and identity — without the notion of a set office, desk and chair.
“Employees need to be empowered and able to manage their own work/home life balance in order for them to perform at their best,” says Raisbeck.
The consensus is that flexible working is on the rise and that engagement with employees and integration between IT and HR, in order to create a support infrastructure is vital to its success. “If technology doesn’t allow an employee to work from home, or from a ‘third space’, then we shouldn’t push it,” argues Raisbeck. “It’s about enabling, not creating barriers. Companies must engage in a dialogue with their employees to make it work.
“Our research shows that in 2002 the primary place of work for 55 per cent of employees was the office.” His research suggests that by 2007, however, there had been a major shift, with only 18 per cent of employees considering the office to be their primary place of work. The current trend in 2011, however, has swung back to the office with 45 per cent of employees considering it to be their main place of work.
Testing times
Psychometric testing, to ascertain a candidates’ proclivity for working remotely and being managed increasingly by output, is one option for organisations to understand their employees and to help to prepare them for a flexible future. But is this a step too far? “Certain people may be able to work from home, or a third space, more easily than others. Some organisations are starting to look at psychometric testing to work this out, but it’s not mainstream,” says Oseland. “However, before we use psychological testing, we need to use common sense and understand the job role and use communication and engagement to see which people will be happy or not working from certain spaces.”
Oseland suggests that organisations should not force the issue, and give people options. “We should look at the nature of the job and the key work activities and build a space around this. This is the starting point, the personality and psychological aspects come later. It’s the space that drives the way people work.” He argues that if you give people the choice, the problems of suitability are removed.
Psychometrics – Testing times?
We conducted an internal study based on Myers-Briggs psychometric testing and aligned those personality types with people’s workspace preferences. Our study suggested that people with similar personality types tended to have similar preferences in terms of working environment.
While this could suggest that extroverts would not flourish working flexibly or remotely, it’s not necessarily the case. The rise of collaborative technologies, such as instant messenger and Skype means that people can interact as part of a team from virtually anywhere. Most flexible and remote workers have a variety of work environments, but evidence suggests that face-to-face interaction is still very important. Any company looking to introduce remote working should try and provide flexible workers with ample opportunity for personal interaction.”
“We are seeing a redefining of the world of work with far less emphasis on the physical environment and more on people and their preferences. HR departments regularly use psychometric testing, such as Myers-Briggs and Belbin, to analyse the make-up of teams, departments and even organisations. So there’s a huge opportunity for workplace professionals to use that profiling data to connect individuals with the workspaces that they will be most productive in. Increasingly, workplace professionals implement flexible working programmes with help from colleagues in HR, IT and real estate. In my experience, when all these stakeholders are involved the results are often far better and the change is permanent.”
“There’s a huge amount of pressure on the middle band of management. They’re under pressure to implement flexible working programmes, but they’re also responsible for a team of individuals reporting to them who may react to change very differently. They can get squeezed, particularly if they don’t fully understand the reasons for introducing remote working. However, it’s absolutely essential to have this middle layer on board and fully supportive of change to make it work. When we look to introduce alternative working we target these managers. We provide them with a communications toolkit so that they can articulate the rationale with their teams. Some can be wary at the start, but it’s only when they understand the business reasons for change and their role in making the process a success that they can drive it through. Implementation of change is more successful when it’s driven from within the organisation.”
Blackout blinds?
Unfortunately ‘middle-management blackout’ is another frequently reported problem; workplace strategists often find that managers are incapable of dealing with the end of management by presenteeism. Organisational culture has a large part to play in this.
Unfortunately, the truth is that many managers are uncomfortable with remote working. You end up with the bizarre situation where the message from executives is ‘work from home’, but managers only pay lip service to this and do not trust their staff to work remotely. “Staff receive a mixed message,” says Dalton. “The statement ‘I’m working from home today’ is still met with a wry, disbelieving smile. “This is all due to culture and change preparation. For example, managers with remote sales teams are confident managing by outputs and comfortable with staff being away from the office. Many other types of manager are not.”
Insufficient training can be the cause of “middle-management blackout”, continues Dalton, “while a general feeling of insecurity among managers can also present a problem — they can feel they are losing an element of control over their employees”.
Managers may simply not know how to deal with flexible working, and if adequate training hasn’t been provided, then there is likely to be more resistance.
Andrew Mawson, managing director of Advanced Workplace Associates, suggests that the ability to work remotely is often assumed, sometimes wrongly. “Any assessment is usually done in a haphazard sort of way by a manager who has probably never worked remotely for any length of time,” he says. “There can be a loss of trust and a sense of isolation unless the team and the leader learn some new techniques to work together.”
Flexible working is a team, rather than an individual, pursuit, says Mawson “It’s the whole team that needs to enter into the new way of working, even if only a small number of the team are working remotely. There needs to be an agreed way of working and communicating and clear expectations. Suspicions about people’s work habits can rapidly unravel the trust between the manager and employee.”
Adjustment bureau
Craig Knight, of Exeter University’s School of Psychology, says getting used to working from home will take time; the organisation will need to be aware of fluctuating patterns of performance. “There are benefits — the employee is in a space that they can control — but the drawback is clearly isolation.
“Employees should be allowed to come into the office to spark off others and meet colleagues, then they have a space that they can tailor to their own needs and another in which they can converse with colleagues.”
Although it is unlikely that ‘the office’ will cease to exist in the foreseeable future, the workplace is no longer about buildings — it’s about empowering employees and enabling them to maximise their potential in order for businesses to succeed.
