Tech tools & common sense rules: 6 tips for a flexible working culture that makes your team more imaginative, productive, and diverse
If you’re put in a box, you’re likely to come up with stuff that’ll fit in it.
When it comes to designing solutions for new problems, there’s rarely a set formula and it requires a lot of flex and experimentation to find answers. But think about the work environment we expect that to happen in: a fixed location, with fixed hours, and a fixed set of stimulus and interactions throughout the day.
One way to break that is with a flexible working culture. It’s more than just different work hours and locations, it’s a mind-set that lets every team member own how they set out their goals and achieve it by hustling in the way that works for them and their projects. A flexible working culture also creates more diversity in terms of team work styles and life stages: people can work early/stay later and work where it suits the task and it helps minimise things like London-centricity and excluding people with caring responsibilities like parents.
I know I’m probably preaching to the choir when I talk about flexible working so why don’t more organisations do it? Maybe it’s a worry around dropping productivity or about not knowing what people are up to. Or maybe it’s not having the tools so it’s easier to work flexibly.
Action for Children have a great flexible working culture and it’s allowed the Digital and Innovation team to really maximise it with the help of tech tools and common sense rules.
Now, people can design their work week (hours, locations etc) on a daily/weekly basis depending on the tasks they’ve got. We’ve learned how to run creative workshops on Skype so more people from outside of London can join in. And we’ve worked out how to keep everyone in the loop of where people are, what they’re working on, and what they’ve accomplished on a daily basis.
6 practical tips on building a flexible working culture you can start asap
- Have a clear conversation on expectations across the whole team
Make sure it’s clear how you all plan to work, how you keep in touch, and what your expectations are. For example, work out agreements for the core hours meetings can be scheduled and what can be run remotely and what needs people in a room together.
2. Let people be responsible for their outcomes and be accountable to the team
Get people in the habit of setting intentions at the start of the day and reflecting at the end of the day on what they’ve accomplished. It’s a great way to focus the mind (intention) but also account for what you planned to do vs unexpected tasks and spot patterns (reflection).We do Monday updates on “what we’re working on this week” on Basecamp so everyone knows workloads, what’s going on, and can offer ideas/help. On a daily basis, we do stand-ups saying what we’re working on and post updates at the end of the day on what actually happened. It takes time to build the habit but it’s really helpful, even in your normal everyday life.
3. Encourage matching flexibility with purpose
Let your environment inspire your work. If you need to write something in-depth, then do it at home. If you need inspiration, work in a museum. If you need to immerse with the audience, work in a children’s center. If you need to wait for a package or look after your kid who’s sick, work from home.
4. Have a way to communicate regularly and encourage “over” communication
Because you don’t see each other regularly, you need to build the culture of “over” communication to make up for the lack of visual cues or reading between the lines you can get from sitting beside each other every day. We use Slack and Whatsapp to keep in touch and we’ve introduced a traffic light system (using emojis of course!) so people can say on their daily updates if they’re having a busy day and need help or having a balanced day and can offer some support.
5. Equip the team for flexibility
You know all the stuff you have in your normal life so you can keep in touch, buy stuff and get things done anywhere? Get all of that, but for the office. We’ve got work phones and laptops and we use Skype a LOT for meetings etc. Aside from that we use things like Slack, Mural, Sharepoint, Basecamp etc. Basically, keep things on the cloud so you can access it 24/7 anywhere you want.
6. Be human and considerate and don’t assume (just ask!)
Remember tip 1? Always check in and make sure everyone is still on the same page. Be human and when things seem off, check in to see if people are okay. Another thing is to make sure people work their reasonable hours and are taking TOIL (time off in lieu) when needed and not checking work all the time. Things like Slack and Basecamp have “work hour” features so pings are snoozed out of hours.
