The following was ghost-written for a salesperson.
June 3, 2019
Sometimes, the most banal conversations can open your eyes to your own workplace practices. I was recently having a pint with a good friend, and we got onto the subject of work/life balance vs pay. Now, my friend is in what most would describe as a more senior, high-pressure position, and he was quite frank about the financial rewards of that situation. But while I feel, within Capita, that I’m trusted to get on with my job and to choose my own working hours, my friend had a different experience. In his own words, he ‘wouldn’t get away with it’.
Now, let me be clear: both of us feel that flexible working has, or would have, no actual effect on our output. If anything, I’ve found that being trusted motivates me to work harder – and means that I’m not interrupted by or worried about anything personal at an inopportune moment. But at my friend’s place of work, the results-driven expectations revolve around office visibility, or presenteeism, if you prefer. I’m sure he was joking when he said he’d ‘kill for a bit more balance’ – but there are probably plenty of us who know how he feels!
It’s clear that there’s still a distinct divide, and it’s hard to see why. It’s not that we all want to work from midnight to 8am or avoid coming in for meetings – instead, it might mean creating time for important personal commitments, like dropping off kids at school or making a hospital appointment. Or, it might result in staff being able to work at their most productive times: believe it or not, some of us can be divided into chronotypes, like morning-focussed ‘larks’ or night-productive ‘owls’. Given that recent research has found that disrupted sleep patterns can lead to ‘unethical and deviant’ workplace behaviour, why would any employer want a ‘lark’ working late or an ‘owl’ getting in early?
What’s more, employees with flexible working arrangements report greater productivity, and therefore, wouldn’t want to go back to the ‘standard’ 9-5. Recent Aviva research found that work/life balance was the most important reason for people to stay in their jobs – and actually, salary becomes less important than while job hunting. Of course, offering flexible working doesn’t necessarily mean a balanced approach, especially if it ends up meaning you regularly work until midnight. But it creates opportunities for employees to rebalance their lives, and when it comes to retaining the most talented workers, it might make all the difference. This is especially true in light of Capita’s Wellness Report, which shows that 45% of employees across differing businesses have considered leaving a job due to stress.
Why are some employers, and/or managers, resisting? I don’t really think there’s a good reason, except for a rigid attitude: a Forbes article neatly summed it up as laziness and viewing staff as machines, rather than the highly valuable yet imperfect human beings we all are. An example of this is the 46% of participants in our report who felt their employer did not care about their health as long as they came into work. Of course, the Forbes article may have been generalising, and that 46% might have just been caught on a bad day, but individuals feeling that way or having those experiences is hardly a workplace motivator. Hopefully, we’re all on the path to a more flexible, trusting and productive future. If you’re not, it’s time to catch up!
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/working-9-5-still-way-make-living-ryan-hall/
Grace Thiele 