Ergonomics, In the office

6 Ways to Add Employee Flexibility to Your Work Environment

A flexible workplace is a productive one. This helpful guide will walk you through six simple strategies for adding employee flexibility to your business.

In a post-pandemic workplace culture, fewer than one in five employees want to return to the office full-time without flexible scheduling. Most employees would like the option to split their workweek between remote work and in-office time to maintain a better work-life balance. Employers that don’t provide employee flexibility may struggle with retention and attracting top talent for future openings.

In addition to employee satisfaction, today’s work environment continues to fluctuate. From variant outbreaks and self-quarantine requirements to new software that advances digital capabilities, we’re seeing lots of change. Employers must be intentional about workplace flexibility in order to be prepared for situations that challenge traditional office culture.

This guide looks at how employers can prioritize and optimize employee flexibility for their team members. Keep reading to find out how to incorporate flexible work arrangements into your company culture.

Benefits of Workplace Flexibility

A flexible workplace has many perks, for both the employer and the employees. Here are some of the ways your business can benefit from making room for employee flexibility:

Ability to move to a smaller office space for cost savings
Better employee engagement
Boosted morale and productivity
Improved employee retention
Improved job satisfaction for existing employees
More interest from job seekers
Prepared for future emergency circumstances that require remote workers (e.g., pandemics or natural disasters)

Hybrid workplace models can provide a template to guide your business in making changes to the workplace arrangement. It’s best to involve team members in the decision to implement employee flexibility. This allows them to make suggestions for the flexible options they’d like to have available, so you know that your employees’ needs will be met before you make the shift.

6 Ways to Implement Employee Flexibility

Adding employee flexibility doesn’t look the same for every employer. Businesses have unique needs to consider when implementing flexible options for employees. A healthcare clinic has to handle different work schedules, while an investment bank requires secure access to low-latency networks and powerful systems. Before you jump into a hybrid workplace arrangement, think about what will work for your business when you make the change.

Here are six ways to accommodate employee flexibility and optimize your business for the new normal.

1. Try Flexible Work Hours

Removing strict rules surrounding arrival and departure times provides employee flexibility without making a dramatic change. In addition, it allows employees to tend to personal needs and family obligations, showing that your company culture is adopting a more flexible mindset.

Here are a few ways you might handle this:

Hours worked: Replace specific work hours with general office hours that allow employees to arrive and depart at times that work for them. Your employees would simply need to work their required number of hours, and they could do that however they’d like.
Deadlines and goals: Shift to a deadline-oriented company culture and eliminate requirements for hours worked. As long as employees meet their deadlines, they can come and go on their own schedule.

Implementing flexible work hours shows that your company cares about employee flexibility without requiring you to make a full shift to a hybrid workplace. You can use it on its own or in conjunction with other strategies. Additionally, you could require employees to schedule their custom work hours ahead of time to keep collaborative work running smoothly.

2. Add Flex Days

Many employers opt to add flex days or flex time to employee schedules every week or every other week. For example, you might pick a specific day of the week — Friday is typical — on which employees are allowed to work remotely instead of coming into the office.

Another option is providing a certain number of hours per week or month as flex time, which employees can use to work from home. Both methods of offering schedule flexibility can be enticing to job seekers and make existing employees feel valued.

3. Move to a Four-Day Workweek

Instead of providing flex time, some companies prefer to move their schedule to a four-day workweek. Ideally, this moves your employees over to a 32-hour week with no change in deadlines or productivity.

While this might sound impossible, employees have plenty of idle time in the average office and can often handle the same amount of tasks with one fewer workday in the week. In addition, having less time to complete their assignments can boost employees’ motivation and productivity.

The four-day workweek is already gaining popularity around the globe in a post-pandemic society. Japan has recommended four-day workweeks be adopted nationwide, and many U.S. companies have also jumped on board.

It can help to run a trial period to get employees accustomed to the idea. And if it doesn’t work for your employees, you can find another way to add employee flexibility.

Another option is a compressed workweek, which condenses a traditional 40-hour schedule into four workdays instead of five. The most common way to schedule this is known as the 4x10 schedule, which consists of four 10-hour days per week. This can also work well with flexible work hours, allowing employees to choose when and how they clock their required time.

4. Allow Remote Work

Telecommuting has more than proven its worth as a viable work option. During the pandemic, it allowed employees to complete their tasks and meet deadlines while working remotely.

If you allow remote work options to the employees who prefer this work style, you can reduce the office space required to keep your business running. In turn, this decreases your real estate costs and improves your bottom line at the end of the year. The lowered costs mean that remote work can also help companies scale.

You might need to shift to a hybrid or hot desking workplace arrangement, allowing employees to come into the office when they need. Or you could support your remote workers through telecommuting, so they never need to come into the office.

To ensure your employees remain productive from their home offices, consider providing a stipend to help them get set up to work remotely — to cover things like technology or office supplies. If your employees have what they need from day one, the transition will be smoother. For example, providing ergonomic furniture can improve productivity and employee satisfaction.

Pro Tip: Ergonomic furniture in your on-site location provides the same benefits while making employees feel valued.

5. Implement Job Sharing

Two part-time co-workers will share the same position and duties with job sharing, splitting their workload between them. This can be useful for employees who are parents and caregivers, and it can reduce your employee turnover rates because those team members won’t come up against workplace and time restrictions.

Job sharing is also useful in challenging roles where shared knowledge is advantageous. It’s not something that you can force on your workers with good results, though — let your employees know that you’d like to explore job sharing and explain how it would work.

Then, invite them to explore how this would work in their own schedule and discuss their options with human resources when they’re ready. You may need to start with a pilot group of volunteers to observe and troubleshoot before rolling out this flexible option to everyone.

6. Provide Unlimited PTO and Sick Days

If you’re not up for shifting to a hybrid workforce, you can provide employee flexibility by reevaluating your paid time off (PTO) and sick day policies. Employee benefits often allow limited days away from the office, which can increase absenteeism and employee dissatisfaction.

You probably don’t need to worry about your team members abusing this policy. In fact, employees with unlimited PTO take fewer days off on average than those with limited PTO. But knowing they can take time off when they need it will make your employees grateful to have this policy, and it’ll help your company attract top talent for future roles.

Finding Your Balance

Every business works differently, so it’s essential to find your balance with employee flexibility. Whether you add several of these adjustments or just one, remember to communicate with your employees during the process.

Providing workplace flexibility can make your team members feel valued, save you money, and boost your business’s overall productivity. It's hard to argue with a change that benefits everyone.

Whether your employees are working from home or on-site, try adding another change to improve your company culture: ergonomic office furniture. It can boost productivity and help your employees produce higher quality work. You can use our Design My Office feature for personalized recommendations for your commercial space and to make it easier to order home office equipment for your employees.

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