How flexible is your organization ?
How flexible is your organization ?
Continuingwith the theme of the last few articles and blogs which are centered around theidea that “the future of culture is the future of work”.
This articleconsiders the need for the cultures of the future to be fundamentally focused oncreating flexible working environments. This is not around the bean bags in themeeting rooms or the table tennis tables and most certainly not about hotdesking and open plan offices.
A cultureof flexibility goes far deeper than the material artefacts. In fact, it goes to the core ingredients ofemployee experience and engagement.
Let meshare some examples.
Over thelast 18 months I have interviewed in excess of 80 companies spanning 25countries around their current and future cultures. I wanted to revisit part of one interviewthat I have previously highlighted in my blog.
During the interview with a manager of an engineering andconstruction business he described the employer as “inclusiveand knowledge sharing”. He said that they have an attitude of “Thereyou go, we’ve employed you because you’re good enough, here are the tools. Goand do what you need to do. Come back to me when and if you’ve got a problem.”
The part of the interview that really resonated with thistheme of was around life work balance and flexibility. The manager commented “TheCEO gives people that freedom. He believes in work-life balance”. This CEO toldmost of the workforce that in the period heading to the Xmas holidays that hetrusted them take time off to attend their children’s concerts and sports daysand were not expected to take leave for a few hours off. The implied andexplicit counter side to that is that the employees would not abuse the systemand would still deliver on whatever their role required.
There have been several articles written lately discussinggenerational attitudes to work and work environments and how the millennials arethe most outspoken group in this regard. One summary of the millennial workculture was paraphrased as “They will join your organization, and work like atrojan for a few years. They will want to start work at 10am after gym andbreakfast and work till 8pm. But after a few years they will leave for anotherjob, not for any other reason than needing a new experience”. This is where themore flexible environments will capture the hearts and minds of the nextgeneration of workforce.
Until recently, I had always assumed that in the callcentre environment, particularly in Asian sub-continent (where many call centresare located) there was very little flexibility in terms of work hours andconditions.
A recent trip to the region was quite eye opening andmanaged to knock my preconceived notions out of the park. There are still manycall centres where the employees are expected to be at their desks during specifictimes of the day. (These are often the calls we receive when you can hear ahive of activity in the background)
However, the rise of high-speed reliable internet connectionshas allowed many of these employees to now work from home or other environments.The power of technology has created a new dimension of flexibility that for along time was reserved for executives and managers.
All these examples that are being used daily by companies, are leaning to the flexible workforce and place of the future. All these ideas reinforce the idea that “the future of culture is the future of work”
The image above represents the ultimate idea of flexibility (yoga) combined with the idea that yoga is a never ending search for perfection and continuous improvement