Managing a Flexible Workforce an interview with Anne Dickens

Managers can find themselves between a rock and hard place, with demands from above and demands from below. They have to act as broker of individuals’ needs and desires, lead and manage those individuals as effective teams, and ensure that performance is in line with business needs. Very often these demands appear to conflict. The trick is to make sure they coincide…

Anne Dickens shares some hints and tips about how to make the strategic link between people, performance, and flexibility.

SP - Do you feel there is a link between flexibility and performance?

AD - Definitely. At the end of the day, any organisation’s performance is down to its people. So a strategic investment in your people is always going to pay off. This may come in a number of different forms. But creating a more flexible workplace is one of the routes to go down. And it can be a catalyst for more strategic and sustained change.

As a manager, your role is about helping your organisation to succeed through its people. Increasing flexibility in the workplace in turn leads to individuals having more control over their working lives. Trusting that people know best the work they are required to do and devolving responsibility to them to make this happen, within a flexible workplace environment, will lead people to taking more taking more responsibility for producing the goods.

Ultimately, more control means greater happiness. If an organisation’s people are happy, there is more space for creativity, communication, review and reflection. This will encourage efficiency and productivity which, in turn, has a positive impact on all round performance. Increased commitment to the organisation leads to greater goodwill, generating better customer service.

Increased happiness and commitment results in less sickness absence and reduced turnover.

SP - How does an increase in flexibility for individuals benefit teams?

AD - Self-evidently happier individuals are very likely to make happier teams, with consequential benefits which are obvious.

Beyond the obvious, one vital change is that each individual in the team has a vested interest in making their new flexible workplace work. Because there is something in it for them, people take time to understand each others’ needs, instil new communications mechanisms, and review and revitalise work systems to make them more fit for purpose.

It is likely too that to make the flexible work schemes work, better time recording systems are needed which provide better management intelligence for the whole team.

Managers need to change their own behaviour and management style to support teams to make the necessary changes. And then to trust them to make it work, within a set of agreed guiding principles. Understanding their team’s needs, helping the team to develop its own flexible working solution, supporting it to create a set of groundrules, and then delegating the means to make it happen, all call for a change in leadership style.

SP - How are these benefits measured and understood?

AD - One of the key things that needs to change is how performance is measured. Traditionally people are often measured for how long they are at work. What’s more important than this, is what they are putting in whilst they’re at work and what the outputs and outcomes are. Each job is different, but managers need to work with staff to identify the most appropriate ways to measure performance.

This may include new appraisal systems and team evaluation mechanisms. It may involve considering things like whether customer service has improved, whether financial savings have been made, whether results are being produced more quickly, or more accurately, or to a higher quality, and how all these things could be measured.

Options for flexible working fall broadly into four categories:

1 - Flexible working time - where a person’s total hours are worked at different times in the day e.g. flexitime, compressed hours, annualised hours etc.
2 - Flexible working hours – where the total number of hours someone works is varied e.g. part-time, shift working, term time etc.
3 - Flexible career – where someone takes time away from work, but remains an employee e.g. sabbatical, study leave etc.
4 - Flexible place – where a person is based somewhere other than the organisation’s office to do their work e.g. home working.

It is possible to combine two or more of these working patterns.

Take Responsibility by Damon Lawrenson and Simon Phillips

“If you overheard a conversation about you, would you like what you hear? Are you waiting for things to happen, watching what’s happening or making thing happen?”

Who's responsibility is it anyway?

At various times in our life, we look back and reflect on our journey. Positive feelings are aroused when we recall making significant progress and not so positive feelings when little progress is evident. Right then, we can decide to either become bitter or to become better!! It has been said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results – if we are wise, we review what has happened and search for ways of improving our results through changing our actions.

We live in a society where “entitlement” and “litigation” are twin dictators ruling a “nanny-state”, brain-washing us into believing that someone else will always provide for us, protect us and nurture our family. However, buying into that way of thinking will virtually guarantee you a life of mediocrity. You will get through it, one way or another, but at times it may seem like an endurance test, a struggle to survive. Journalists and marketing agencies are always keen to identify the Mr & Mrs Average and the majority of the population live an ok life with an ok wage with ok experiences – but who wants to be ok?

The only thing you can fully control in life is how you decide to respond to your circumstances, your environment and the people around you. You can determine your thinking and, ultimately, your income and lifestyle. You are responsible for this, no one else. As they say, the best helping hand is the one at the end of your wrist.

Your new mantra “If it’s to be, its up to me!”

No excuses - Who are you trying to convince?

We are all blessed with 24 hours in a day, certain skills and a resource knowledge centre that is free and priceless – the World Wide Web. You can learn new skills, develop new habits, replace old programmes and develop a new you, capable of achieving your dreams. It’s time to stop making excuses, you are not too old, too young, too tall, too short, too black too white, too educated, too uneducated. You are you; and the minute you stop making excuses of why you can’t and turn these into why you can, you have entered a new world of possibility.

Excuses are a way of making you feel better about your lack of action. Don’t rationalise, when all is said and done, these are rational lies. Why not just be honest? When you make excuses for not doing something that is important, there will be regret. The price of regret can be weighty when all it needed was some discipline to do it. Okay, there is the price of self-discipline, but it is far less than regret. How would you feel if you lived a life of no regrets?

Your new mantra “No excuses. No regrets”

Are we pointing any fingers?

The minute we say; “It’s their fault” we have empowered someone else to determine our level of success. Granted, there may be influencing factors, however with self-discipline, and by being prepared and proactive, we can reduce and eliminate most issues that have influenced lack of progress or failure previously. When we point a finger, 3 are always pointing back at us - for a very good reason. It means that the onus is on us for not moving on – think, what could I have done to have avoided, alleviated or even caused this problem? Look in the mirror – take responsibility. Even if we cannot see beyond the possibility that it is someone else’s fault, we can still choose to keep moving forward. It’s your right to influence how you feel, no one else’s.

Your new mantra “ I take total responsibility for my actions”

Knowing you can trust yourself

We all know people who commit and never follow through? Some people cannot say no, even though they have little intention of following through. They are constantly letting other people down and, more importantly, they are letting themselves down as well. Eventually, their reputation precedes them and the trust dries up. How do you feel when you say you are going to do something and you do it? Taking action builds character. It’s self-discipline; it’s doing what you know you need to do when you don’t feel like it. You are constantly building your reputation.

“Learn to say No and, when you do say Yes –follow through!”

Just Do It

Following through will become a habit and you will enjoy committing to action. Your attitude, actions and intention will foster a character that will be admired and respected. You will set goals as a blueprint of your life, as possibilities become inevitabilities. You will take the steps necessary to make progress in life in each and every way. With every action your fears will be crushed as you build a reputation as someone who follows through, who just gets on and does it?

Become a doer!!

Working for Life Balance
Almost without fail, when I mention to people that one of the things we do is help individuals and organisations to achieve a better work life balance through new ways of working, the response I get is “I could do with some of that.” Work life balance can sometimes seem like an elusive ideal. When the pressure is on at work and deadlines are tight it can feel like our lives are given over to work-work balance. So what can we do about it? The reality is that if you wait until the workload is beginning to overwhelm you before you attempt to make a change, it is almost too late. Start the discussions with your colleagues when workloads are more normal and they are not feeling stressed.

You need to approach work life balance with two hats on – the CEO’s and your own selfish one!.

At a corporate level it is important to realise that any effective work life balance solution will require the collaboration of other people but will ultimately come down to you – what are you willing to do to ensure that your work life balance needs do not adversely affect your colleagues? Flexibility is key. Organisations have needs too, they need to deliver products, provide customer service and meet demands. For managers tasked with delivery and aggressive performance targets, an individual with a “work life balance request” can appear to have a big label stuck to their head saying; “I AM YOUR PROBLEM”. We need to remove that immediate impression by thinking more like the boss to find a suitable solution that works for now, with a commitment to a constant review to account for unknown changes that may lie ahead. We have implemented this “piloting” approach successfully in organisations as diverse as local authorities and multi national retail giants, so we know it works and we also know the benefits for all concerned in terms of increased retention, improved morale and enhanced teamwork.

On a personal level we need to be honest with ourselves and see beyond the immediate problem and think more strategically. So, how do we go about achieving a better life balance? Well, the best place to start is by answering a couple of questions. The first is a question that many of us usually don’t spend much time thinking about – what exactly do you want out of life? What do you hope to have achieved in your lifetime? We often call this the “tombstone test”. What would you like to be written on yours? To help you access some things that your conscious mind might lock away I’d like you to imagine for a few minutes that time and money are no object. Grab a piece of paper and start writing, just let your mind wander. If you are familiar with Mind Mapping, use this excellent tool to plot your thoughts. The idea is to write down as many things as you can within just a few minutes – essentially a list of all the things you would like to do, have, experience, learn or share with loved ones if you had a limitless supply of both time and money?

The purpose of this task is to remind ourselves of some of the dreams we have that “real life” obscures and sometimes buries. Once you’ve written them down, you can now start working on them as goals. At this point I am often reminded that this list is made up of items generated under the unlikely scenario of unlimited resources. However, my favourite definition of a goal is a dream with a date on it. So, let’s get one or two dreams down on the page, put a date on them and transform them into a goal that is going to motivate us to make some fundamental changes in our lives.

Of course, this whole process has a secondary motive – to give you a reason to work on things other than your “day job”. Analysis of individuals working extra hours consistently shows that many of them do so because they don’t have a good reason to get away! Of course, that’s fine if your job is your life’s work and there is nothing else that fires you up more. However, if that is not the case, then this exercise is, hopefully, just the start of a new course for you. Don’t worry that these non-work goals will detract from your output and effectiveness in work. Research has shown that individuals with reasons to live beyond their work exude more energy, happiness and drive when they are in work. You will be doing your company a favour!

In summary, working to achieve life balance is a constant activity that involves great teamwork, devolved leadership and a truckload of personal responsibility. But if you have applied all of that and your company still refuses to work with you, then you always have the final choice and the ultimate control – you can leave and find a more forward looking employer, or change your lifestyle completely. Whatever you decide, it’s your life; spend it wisely and focus on your objectives; no one else is remotely interested in meeting them for you.