How the Future Works summary

Imagine you’re an executive calling into a meeting remotely, only to find that all the senior executives appear on one screen from the board room at HQ. This signals that you should really be on-site, even if your company’s flexible work policy says otherwise. It’s behaviors like these that sabotage messaging about equality in a flexible work model.

If you want to implement a flexible work policy effectively, it’s crucial that there are clear expectations about behavior – including that of your senior executives. These expectations act as guardrails that help everyone live the principles you’ve established in Step 1. Guardrails ensure your new policy is executed meaningfully. Remember, there’s a reason you’ve introduced this policy – the why you identified earlier.

When a CEO dictates how flexible work plans operate – like Tim Cook did at Apple – they assume that everyone in their company has identical needs and that their work practices can be optimized uniformly. But we all know this isn’t the case.

The needs of a sales team are wildly different from those of an engineering department. And that doesn’t even account for differences in personality. An introvert might need a quiet, private space to do their best work, while an extrovert might excel in a more dynamic environment. And then there are the needs that belong to our personal lives – caring for others, maintaining our fitness and health, and pursuing our hobbies feed our vibrancy and social connections. All these elements mean a blanket policy will never work.

While most of us spent the better part of the pandemic working from home, making flexible work the norm is still new terrain – and one that has many executives nervous.

It’s important to remember that – like anything new – we all need to keep an open mind and experiment with how our new workplaces operate until we can determine best practices for our specific organization. 

No matter who you are or what you do, connection is a fundamental human need we all share – one that serves an evolutionary purpose to keep our species alive and functioning.

Many executives have concerns that flexible work models will erode an employee’s sense of connection and that innovation and collaboration will suffer as a result. But this begs the question: When it comes to creating connection, is meeting in person crucial?

Prior to the pandemic, managers mainly served as “gatekeepers,” ensuring that their teams delivered on targets and monitoring productivity using metrics like hours spent at the desk. But this approach to management isn’t possible in a flexible work environment because micromanaging and in-person supervision aren’t possible.

This means that the role of managers needs an overhaul so that it still has value in a flexible workplace. The manager must leave their gatekeeping days behind and become an empathetic coach.

Transitioning your managers from gatekeepers to empathetic coaches causes another need for change: the metrics you use to measure success. If you’re no longer using hours logged or physical presence in the office as a way of evaluating performance, how will you know that your employees are actually being productive and not watching TV or cat memes?

Take a moment here to think back to your company’s most recent annual report. In the “achievements” section, did you celebrate the collective number of hours everyone worked or did you highlight outcomes – like a new product being launched or a research breakthrough? So, if we’re using company outputs to evaluate organizational success, why aren’t we doing the same with our employees?

Successfully transitioning to flexible work practices requires planning, change management, and a shift in mindset.

Adopting a flexible work strategy isn’t just something that helps employees achieve a healthier work-life balance; it can help your company thrive by attracting talent, increasing productivity, and unlocking potential.