Moving away from traditional workspaces is delivering significant benefits for managers and employees. For efficiency and fast-moving dynamics, you need workplace flexibility. Employers who are ready to adapt to employee needs benefit from greater respect, better productivity, and higher morale levels.
How is your workplace performing? Is flexibility now part of your overall strategy for managing people, projects, and teams? Ensuring that your workplace culture evolves to support your team is crucial. Let’s break this down.
Being Workplace Flexible
Workplace flexibility is as much about preparation as anything. Understanding that circumstances can change for employees and a willingness to work with them is a great asset. Our potential for flexibility hasn’t been more evident than in our reaction to the pandemic over the last 2 years. Despite health crises, isolation, remote working, and significant loss, managers have had to continue managing operations to keep businesses afloat.
Now that we’ve seen a hint of our flexibility, it’s time to use it to our advantage instead of using it out of necessity. If there’s anything that we’ve learned during 2021, it’s not to take things for granted; in 2022, a renewed focus on your work-life balance may be top of mind.
Why Employers Choose Workplace Flexibility
So, what are the advantages workplace flexibility provides for your business?
Workplace flexibility, when implemented correctly:
- Increases employee morale.
- Increases employee engagement regardless of location (home or office).
- Creates a reputable public image in that you are supporting your workers.
- Has the potential for more extended worker periods.
- Increases the probability of acquiring and retaining the best talent.
- Provides cost savings.
- Offers greater flexibility for accomplishing tasks.
Why Employees Value Workplace Flexibility
Employees will appreciate the following benefits, giving them a more significant reason to improve productivity and remain loyal to their employers.
- Flexibility lets employees know management supports their personal needs with a willingness to align operations reasonably with their needs.
- It allows employees to work when and where they may be most productive.
- Workplace flexibility eliminates pressure and stress from various sources, which therefore avoids burnout.
- Employers can foster and promote independence and autonomy, improving how employees perceive their service to the company.
- Flexibility saves employees on transportation costs and gives them more time to focus on work-related endeavours instead of transportation.
- Reducing rush hour travel for many can also alleviate stress.
Nothing’s Set in Stone
Designing a flexible arrangement with your employees doesn’t have to be set in stone. All parties should understand the policy is viable only if employees meet conditions and performance.
As situations evolve, management changes may be required that impact scheduling. Communication here is the key. Employees and employers need to maintain their obligations to each other to ensure that workplace flexibility meets the needs of all parties.
Create an Environment Employees Crave to Be In
As a business, have you considered what a flexible workplace arrangement can do to boost overall morale, increase employee engagement, productivity, and efficiency? You may also find that flexibility results in a decrease in absenteeism and maximises loyalty.
When employees can work from anywhere and choose the hours that work best for them, productivity increases. Your team will be able to aggregate their hours accordingly to meet project demands. Telecommuting and working outside of an often-stressful work environment can also be inspiring for creatives and is very attractive to job seekers.
From a recruitment perspective, workplace flexibility can encourage top talent to apply for positions within your organisation as workers take advantage of the new normal. But no hiring manager should feel the arrangement has to apply to everyone. For example, some positions do require an on-site presence. Finding that perfect mix and balance is what flexibility is all about.
Majer Recruitment
At Majer, we foster a collaborative and flexible work culture. We believe this generates passionate teams who know how to adapt for everyone’s benefit. Furthermore, we are here to support your talent acquisition, recruitment, and career development. Contact us; we’d love to invigorate your teams with the finest human resourcing tools.
