The single biggest legacy our working generation will leave the next – beyond hopefully equal pay – is flexibility in the workforce. There’s no denying that technology and digital has been a force for good in enabling such flexibility.
However, over the past couple of years I’ve come to realise that it’s simply not enough to tell someone they can have flexible working conditions, instead it is incumbent on us as leaders to actually give our teams the tools and techniques to make flexibility in the workplace a positive experience.
For all the good that technology has brought about, particularly in helping keep working parents in the industry, it also has a dark side that if left unchecked can result in a workforce that is burnt out, stressed out and not performing at optimum levels. It's the good, the bad and the ugly.
It is good due to flexibility, bad because people are always accessible and for some that means responding no matter what time of day, and ugly when it can result in stress-related diseases.
I have a few practical solutions. The first is to switch off. My biggest piece of advice to my teams is to create your own rules of engagement when it comes to switching off from work. Whether you turn off work at a certain time of night, you have two phones or you turn off email on the weekends.
Whatever works for you, you absolutely need to be able to articulate what your rules of engagement are and when you will switch off from work.
Contrary to popular belief, being a slave to your job doesn’t make you better at it, not when your job requires fresh perspectives, creativity and energy to get the job done.
The second is to be overt with your approach.
Flexibility is great but for some reason we don’t seem to want to talk about it. Tell your teams or your bosses that you turn your email off on the weekend or that you leave at 5pm to pick up your kids, but that you go back online at 7pm to finish emails. Whatever it is, just be overt with it so everyone knows the status quo. It is also important that future generations see this flexibility playing out in the workplace so that they know it is possiblefor them as well.
Finally, look for lateral solutions for working offsite. If the future of our workforce is to become more flexible then it is important that we are teaching our youngest staff how to work offsite so they can be highly productive when not physically in the office. Not everyone has a home office, access to the servers or even wants to work from their home. We need to empower people to look for solutions that will best suit them when working away from the office.
I know in the cold light of day these all sound incredibly obvious but from my personal experience, since coming back to work having having my first little one, no matter how obvious, it takes constant discipline to ensure that you are using technology as a force for good in the workforce as opposed to becoming a slave to it.
By Katie Rigg-Smith, CEO at Mindshare Australasia.