Maximising the advantages of flexible working

Published: 02 September 2024 | by Natasha K. A. Wiebusch, Marketing Content Manager at Brightmine

Flexible working isn’t changing, but how organisations create and manage it is. What started as a necessity during the pandemic has become a normal, sometimes challenging, practice. And in recent months, organisations have noted its mixed outcomes.

Some research showed that flexibility — particularly remote work — was exacting a cost on company culture, collaboration and employee wellbeing. Some research even suggested it could lead to lower productivity and stagnate careers.

Other research was less trepidatious. These surveys found that flexibility led to better talent results, including engagement, productivity and performance. Some lauded the new-found health benefits and improved work-life balance.
These mixed results have many business leaders asking: What makes flexibility good? And, how do you avoid its pitfalls?

The flexible working landscape

To get the most out of flexible working, you have to understand the full breadth of flexible working options. This goes well beyond hybrid and remote work.

Flexible working arrangements allow employees to adjust when, where and how they get work done. Several approaches to flexible working exist; however, they generally fall into four categories:

• Location: where an employee gets work done.
• Scheduling: when an employee works.
• Work duties: what work employees do.
• Total hours: how much work employees have.

Within these categories, you’ll find many types of flexibility you can offer to employees in your organization. Some of these fall under more than one of the above categories. The following are a few examples:

Location	Scheduling	Work duties	Total hours
Hybrid work	Compressed hours	Phased retirement	Working part-time
Remote work	Flex time	Job sharing	Seasonal work

How popular is flexible working?

Today, most employers are offering some form of flexible working. However, some types are clearly more popular than others:

• 63% of employers offer hybrid work, according to SHRM’s 2024 employee benefits survey.
• 1 in 5 employees are engaged in homeworking, according to CIPD’s trends on flexible working.
• 13.1% of employees in the UK use flexi−time, according to CIPD.

Hybrid work has become the most popular arrangement. It offers the flexibility employees need to balance their work and personal lives while not sacrificing in-person collaboration. However, other arrangements are becoming more popular in certain regions.

For example, even though job sharing is still rare, it has been on the increase in the US since the pandemic. Employers may begin to use it more given its popularity with working parents and Gen Z.

Advantages of flexible working

When executed well, flexible working has an abundance of potential advantages. The following are the top proven benefits of flexible working:

Employee engagement and productivity

Studies show that workplace flexibility increases productivity. According to research from Gallup, remote and hybrid employees are more likely to have higher engagement. They’re also more likely to have better work-life balance and less likely to burn out. Higher levels of engagement and job satisfaction generally correlate with higher productivity.

Other research found that organisations with the most flexible policies reported higher productivity levels.

Talent attraction and retention

Flexible working improves employee satisfaction, making it an excellent tool for talent attraction and retention.

First, flexibility options have become a top priority for employees. Only 16% of white-collar employees would consider a position that doesn’t offer any remote work. And, a third of UK employees would take a pay cut to work from anywhere.

Additionally, Gallup found that of the top five benefits of flexibility, reduced burnout or fatigue and retention were numbers one and two, respectively.

Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)

When aligned with your DEI strategy, flexibility can help make your workplace more inclusive. Specifically, some types of flexibility, such as remote work, have resulted in the following DEI benefits:

• Reduced instances of discrimination and sexual harassment.
• Improved mental health for diverse employees.
• Increased accessibility for employees with disabilities.
• Higher quality talent pools with increased diversity.

Flexible working also helps working parents. By enabling caretakers to balance work and home life, flexible working reduces the impact of gender role stereotypes related to caretaking. It also supports employees with unique caretaking responsibilities, such as caring for a parent.

Strategies to maximise the advantages of flexible working

Flexible working is not without its pitfalls. Understandably, business leaders have shown great concern about flexible working’s potential to:

• Harm well-being, particularly mental health.
• Lead to confusion and communication issues.
• Create complex management challenges for managers.
• Spawn inequity by creating imbalances in who gets flexibility.

Though very real, these pitfalls can be avoided with careful planning. To maximise the advantages of flexible working, consider the following:

Leadership and management

Managers are central to employee success, particularly in flexible environments. If a manager isn’t well versed in collaboration software or acts on proximity bias, employees and flexibility will suffer. To avoid these pitfalls, organisations must prepare managers to lead flexible working and support employees.

First, managers need flexible work onboarding. This should include, at minimum, training on how to manage hybrid and remote teams. Managers also need the appropriate resources, such as enabling technology, to manage a more mobile workforce.

With access to resources and onboarding, managers will be better prepared to support flexibility and lead their changing workforce.

Flexibility equity

Every job can have some form of flexibility, but they also have their limitations. Offering flexibility requires leaders to consider not just what employees want, but also what’s possible.

For example, a machinist can’t enjoy the flexibility of working from home. Because of the nature of their job, they must be on-site to do their work. However, they may have more flexibility with their working hours.

An engineer, on the other hand, can probably do most of their work from anywhere. However, they may have less flexibility in hours or work duties.

When implementing a flexibility strategy, consider who your employees are, and what kinds of flexibility are possible for them.

Well-being

Organisations are finally beginning to see what long term impact flexible working has on employee well-being. Though the results overall are positive, recent studies have found that remote work can have a negative impact on employee mental and physical health. Specifically, employees have felt isolated and are more likely to succumb to digital presenteeism in remote environments.

Reducing the negative impacts of flexibility on well-being requires a proactive approach. To avoid what’s likely the biggest well-being detractor — overworking — managers must communicate the importance of rest. This includes encouraging time off, sharing well-being information regularly, and modeling good behaviors. Well-being programming should also be robust and holistic so that it meets individual employee needs.

HR tech

HR technology is essential to successful workplace flexibility. Tech solutions enable teams to connect, collaborate and organise their work. They also provide managers and team leaders visibility over their teams’ progress, which can help lessen productivity paranoia. Popular HR tech solutions include the following:

HR tech solution	Providers
Project management software	– Wrike – Monday.com – Asana
Collaboration software	– Teams – Zoom – Slack
Employee engagement platforms	– Leapsome – Workvivo – Connecteam
Employee well-being apps	– Headspace – Calm – Noom
Employee monitoring software	– Teramind – Insightful

Managing flexible working

Managing flexible working is an ongoing responsibility for HR, leadership and managers. Without continuous effort and monitoring, you can lose out on the some of the key advantages of flexible working. Learn how to manage flexibility and measure performance with our premium resources in the Brightmine HR & Compliance Centre, formerly XpertHR tools and resources. Click below to your free trial.