Many companies feel uneasy about introducing flexible working into their business. The fear is that the whole process will become too complicated and employees will lose their drive and focus.
However, despite these fears, it's been shown time and again that flexibility with working hours and location is a vital part of business growth, with many benefits to all involved. It keeps employees happy and in turn drives up output, making flexibility not simply an 'office perk' but a key business strategy.
1: Morale Strategies
A simple, yet easy to overlook concept. By giving employees autonomy over their working hours, you also ensure you're getting the best out of them. When people don't feel held ransom, by being told they need to be in an office between certain hours, they are much more likely to do their best work because it's on their terms.
Most people have optimum hours in which they produce the most output and by offering flexibility within your company, you're allowing your employees to work at the best time for them. What's more, flexibility needn't just be about hours, but also location. By permitting employees to work in an environment they are most comfortable in, whether that be home or their local coffee shop, means that once again, you're offering autonomy and this is a sure way to get the best out of your staff, rather than keeping them chained to a desk.
2: Money
Fewer people in the office is bound to cut some small but worthwhile costs. Perhaps you have fewer computers all churning away, or you might even go as far as to shut the office down for a day or two a week. Either way, you'll notice the general costs of keeping a business ticking over on a practical level, slowly diminish.
3: Commute
Some people are lucky and can walk to their workplace which is a mere ten minutes away, for the rest of us, the commute can be anything from half an hour to two hours, especially those of us in London. By being flexible and taking away the need to be in the office everyday at 9 sharp, you radically reduce the stress of your staff. Commuting is very often 'dead time', especially if you're driving, you can do nothing in that time but reflect on how hideous the commute is!
Taking this daily frustration away from your staff is bound to put them in much higher spirits and when people are happy, they do the best work, plus you can sleep soundly knowing that fewer people travelling to work means you're encouraging greener living.
Wait, There's More?
The big thing with flexibility however is that the technology to make it easy is already very much in place, between systems like Slack, Skype and Dropbox, working anywhere at any time has never been easier. Even more compelling though is what this means for your business in terms of talent. When you throw the net wide to reach people who can't be tied to 9-5 Monday to Friday, you suddenly find there's a whole demographic of previously unused talent, that may well place you miles ahead of your competitor.
Flexibility is the big buzz-word of business and we suspect more and more companies will turn to this system of work for a very simple reason: Everyone wins.
Try it and let us know how it benefited your business.
