Time to flex: Embracing flexible working

The behaviour and attitudes of leaders was seen as one of the biggest enablers or barriers to flexible working by an overwhelming number of the people we spoke to. While many are increasingly committed to flexibility, fears around losing control, complexity of creating policies, and concerns about fairness, consistency or ‘getting it wrong’ mean it is easier for leaders to fall back on what they know.

Building cultures of trust, running small pilots, empowering teams to trial and develop their own solutions, sharing stories about what has worked and the benefits of flexible teams, and less over-working ‘at the top’ is key to moving forward with flexibility.

Ultimately this is about leaders actively ‘leaning in’ to provide individuals with structural and systemic support to make flexibility work, as well as championing the importance of flexibility for building inclusive, diverse, highly impactful teams — with wellbeing at their heart.

Flexibility isn’t just about ‘working from home’ or a four day week. It is not about expecting people to do a full time role in fewer days with less pay. It is about leaders and mangers truly thinking differently and creatively about how they organise our work and design roles, and focussing resolutely on outcomes above hours worked.

The fundamental starting point - but so often the hardest thing in mission driven charities - is to prioritise and write a business plan which matches the resources the organisation has available.

This might mean making difficult decisions about what the organisation does not do, or at least not until additional resources are available. With this in place manageable jobs can then be designed and realistic objectives set for individuals.

There is a real risk of ‘fake flex’ - where roles are part time in name, contract, and pay but full time for workload - unless charity leaders make bold, purposeful decisions about priorities, focus, capacity, job design and saying ‘no’. By setting boundaries for themselves they give permission for others to set boundaries too.

The priority is to start job design with flexibility as a first principle and to ask managers to proactively consider how flexible working could be possible for every role.

For example, say you are open to job shares, part time or different working patterns. This also helps take the anxiety of ‘having the flexible conversation’ away from the candidate and opens the role to a much broader and more diverse field.

Advertising all roles as flexible is the next critical step for creating a mindset of ‘flexibility first’ in organisations. It encourages everyone to have an open mind from the beginning.

Job shares, or multiple part time roles, can be very helpful options where a job is really too big for one for role but there isn’t enough budget for two full time post. They help avoid building overwork into positions at the start.

Really good practice involves employers actively supporting individuals to think about how their specific roles can be done differently and stepping up to put proper support and back-up in place for them. The onus absolutely should not all be on the individual to make things work.

All too often, lack of flexibility, and the challenges of ‘ juggling’ the different elements of people’s lives can feel like an insurmountable barrier to career progression. At a time when we need a diverse pool of exceptional, motivated, passionate people working in the charity sector more than ever before, it is even more important that we shift our mindsets about how work can be done.

Offering proper flexibility can be a very important way to attract and retain talent - supporting people throughout their career and at different stages of their lives so we don’t lose the skills of people who can’t do ‘standard’ hours.

This is particularly important for the charity sector, which needs the best people but often has less budget headroom to attract and retain high quality talent. Crucially, this isn’t about old systems of flexibility that rely on behind the scenes overworking and burnout.

This is about properly designed flexible roles, supported by truly flexible and high trust cultures, that mean flexibility happens in practice and not just on paper.

The pandemic has opened our thinking about roles where flexibility seems harder. Even though large proportions of frontline delivery roles may need to be carried out in a certain place at a certain time, it’s likely that a proportion can be done anytime, anywhere. Maybe you can’t do the whole of your job remotely or flexibly, but perhaps can you do part of it.

The pandemic has opened our thinking about roles where flexibility seems harder. Even though large proportions of frontline delivery roles may need to be carried out in a certain place at a certain time, it’s likely that a proportion can be done anytime, anywhere. Maybe you can’t do the whole of your job remotely or flexibly, but perhaps can you do part of it.

For front line staff, rather than location flexibility, it might be about hours worked and working patterns. Working in shifts has a similar outcome to any job share — there are two or more people who can do the same role — so it is essential that managers talk to individuals about their own personal goals and preferences.

Measures such as phased shift start times to avoid rush hour, staggered hours, and breaking up shifts are all ways to offer flexibility. Enabling front line staff to swap shifts or self roster also offers autonomy, demonstrates trust, and allows a greater degree of flexibility on a week by week or even day to day basis. The key is to think creatively and be open to alternatives, to find an option that works for everyone concerned.

It is also important to ensure equity once flexible working is in place. The pandemic has presented

opportunities to work differently which has benefited people who want more flexibility. Yet, the concern is that as people do start to return to offices, those who choose to remain as home based may be overlooked for promotion and other opportunities. This has highlighted a long term challenge for people who work flexibly if organisations do not put the right support in place.

Leaders and managers have a critical responsibility to overcome the creation of a two tier workforce where flexibility is concerned. Fairness and equity should be at the heart of all decision making. For example, full-time, office based staff should not be always the ones asked to do a new project. For bigger decisions, an equality impact assessment can ensure that people who work flexibly are not inadvertently disadvantaged.

While having a strong flexible working policy can be an important starting point, it is just the start of the journey for a truly flexible culture. Ultimately, flexibility isn’t about policies or rules. It is a mindset and culture of trust and empowerment, that focusses on outcomes and impact over hours worked, that will build a successful flexible working culture.

Building a culture of trust isn’t easy and takes time, honest conversations and a concerted effort to bring people with you. Forever Flex, a report by Mother Pukka, found that fear of loss of control over outcomes, working patters and habits is a key barrier to leading with trust around flexibility for many managers.

For charity managers required to deliver complex, sensitive, critical work with vulnerable people in a highly regulated environment — often at increasing volumes with decreasing resource post pandemic — the desire for control, and being able to ‘see’ your team, can understandably feel even more acute. It is not easy to think differently and creatively when there is so little time to get the work done.

Often, this fear of what you might lose can lead to a default position of creating rules, policies and

handbooks that can appear so complex that it seems easier to do nothing at all and default to ‘standard’ ways of working.

It takes trust to have the conversation in the first place, and again to explore new ways of working and allowing those to flourish.

Managers need to listen to the experiences and needs of others to understand people’s different working preferences and strengths. Only through safe and honest conversations can we make the most of individual talent and individual work styles.

Within all these considerations, putting outcomes and impact ahead of fixed ideas of when and where work should be done, will make all the difference to mindsets and help maintain focus on what really matters.

Role modelling from leaders really matters when it comes to flexibility. Choosing a work pattern that promotes your own work/life balance sends a strong message that this is how you do business, and gives others confidence to make a request.

Just make sure you communicate clearly that this is a working pattern that suits you and not additional, unpaid working hours on top of your core hours. Otherwise, you could unwittingly set an expectation that all staff work longer hours.

Yet it is not as simple as leaders just deciding to work ‘more flexibly’ themselves, especially in smaller organisations where leaders straddle both strategic and operational roles. It is not unusual, especially since the pandemic hit, to hear leaders say that they spend the working day in back to back meetings. Everything else — report writing, administrative work, thinking time — must take place outside of their working hours.

When need and workload is so high, the pressure to do more, lean in, and shoulder the load can feel overwhelming.

There is potential for flexible working to lead to a negative impact on wellbeing if it is not carefully managed.

There is a risk that, if people are empowered to manage their own time, it may actually be more difficult for them to give themselves permission to stick within their contracted hours. This is particularly true in charities — when staff are highly motivated by the cause they are supporting.

Wellbeing considerations can be very different depending on roles, circumstance and life stages: a working from home arrangement that works for a working parent, might not work for a younger person, people in shared accommodation, or someone delivering complex support roles like counselling or helplines.

Establishing strong peer networks of other supportive leaders who also work flexibility can be incredibly helpful in moving away from defining worth and status by ‘busyness’. Such networks provide opportunities to share good practice, give each other ‘permission’ to balance and show their ‘whole selves’, all of which can be incredibly helpful. Visibly setting aside time for school pick up, going for a walk and setting an out of office on holidays are simple but important places to start.

In our research, the organisations that were most advanced in terms of a flexible working culture were the ones in which flexibility was the default position.

This starts from the point of advertising roles as being flexible but it’s important that high expectations and the courage to do things differently are set at the top of organisations, to support consistent practice. The senior team needs to ensure that flexibility is seen as normal practice and available to everyone in some way: it’s not a benefit or an exception, but just the way work is done

Trustees have an important role to play in setting up the conditions for CEOs and executive leaders to work flexibly. Trustees also have a role in thinking carefully about what organisational support leaders need to work differently and challenging the executive to set realistic goals and plans.

Beyond support specifically for leaders, the board has a wider role in overseeing a flexible working culture.

This doesn’t mean reviewing all flexible working requests — something we came across in our research — but rather taking a scrutiny approach. The board’s role is to ask the right questions: what is our approach to flexible working, how many people are working flexibly in practice, what else can we do?

Perhaps most importantly of all, leaders — both executive and trustees — need to be vocal and visible champions of flexible working. They should be advocating for why it matters, walking the talk through promoting flexible cultures, sharing their experiences, experiments, and learnings, and speaking out about what works. The more we normalise flexibility, the less stigma and exclusion will exist.

It is so easy for line managers to be put off flexible working as it feels too complex, too policy heavy, too difficult to be fair and consistent, and too easy to get wrong. Many are taking great strides, but it is easy to feel overwhelmed by complexity, loss of control, aversion to change, or a fear of ‘getting it wrong’.

Some managers are more inclined towards flexibility, others run services or teams where flexible working options seem more straightforward to implement. Differing attitudes and team circumstances can lead to different practice in different teams. Managers told us they feel the pressure of needing to balance providing equitable access to roles, ensuring that flexible options are fairly available for all staff and making sure workload is shared equally across roles and teams.

The detail and complexity of implementation can make it all-too-easy to lose sight of the huge benefits of flexible teams in terms of productivity, impact, wellbeing, talent and inclusion.

It’s vital that leadership provides not only high expectations about flexibility being for everyone, but also practical support for line managers to implement flexibility in their teams. Coaching, training, encouragement to experiment, story sharing, access to examples of good practice, workshops, and the time to have conversations with other managers about what’s working are all key.

Managers need support to understand the different types of flexibility available, have honest and empathetic conversations that respect people as individuals, think creatively about job design, tackle proximity bias, and think about good practice that supports teams who are working flexibly.

For example, it is good practice for managers to support their teams with clear flexible working protocols that the whole team can sign up to: this is how we will communicate, this is when I am available, this is how I will take responsibility for asking for help with my wellbeing if I need it, this is how we use our tech etc. This helps create a level playing field — and gives a clear structure for new team members too.

Managers shouldn’t feel pressure to come up with perfect or fixed model. No organisation will come up with something that will work for everyone all the time. And no one has yet found the ideal model for balancing life, work, community and productivity. But that shouldn’t stop us trying.

There isn’t one solution, different approaches will work in different situations. The best solutions come from having the courage to experiment, take small steps, make mistakes, adjust, learn and improve, be honest about what is and isn’t working, and focus on individual needs.

When transitioning to new ways of working we need to be willing to test, consult and regularly review. Otherwise, we risk either finding a new form of inflexibility or excluding people in new ways.

Sharing stories about different approaches widely is critical for building confidence and knowledge.

Smaller organisations may find it easier to rapidly test and implement new models of working, while larger organisations may have more resources and capacity to draw on. Often it is teams themselves, who are experts in their areas, who are best placed to develop and experiment with flexible ways of working that work for them, and the outcomes they need to deliver

Both organisations and individuals need to understand that it’s OK to say ‘no’, to set boundaries, and to suggest different approaches to how flexibility can work. Sometimes there are practical constraints and organisations providing services need to balance the needs of both the people providing and receiving the service.

Not everything is possible, and everyone involved needs to be open minded.

It is also important to consider other needs in the workforce, for example younger people whose learning may benefit from working with colleagues in person, and the benefits face to face connections can have on team culture, moral, mental health, and creativity. Within all these considerations, putting outcomes ahead of fixed ideas of how work should be done will make all the difference.

Below we highlight what we heard in our conversations with leaders and managers about the most common barriers and misconceptions about flexible working and how to overcome them.

1. Our productivity will suffer

There is a concern that people will work less in a less controlled structure, but statistics show that offering flexibility can actually result in higher levels of productivity, but also retention (Forbes, 2016). Flexible working increases morale and loyalty which can lead to more, and better quality, output.

2. It won't be fair on frontline staff

Flexibility needs to be viewed as not just about geography and hours. That is the starting point. It also needs to be seen in terms of adapting to individuals’ changing needs and scope for autonomy alongside business needs. One form of flexibility is also unlikely to work organisation wide, or consistently across all teams and roles, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t scope for a different form of flexibility to be offered in its place.

3. I am so overwhelmed with how much I have to do, I don't know where to start with role modelling flexible working.

Role modelling can feel daunting and difficult, especially when leading an organisation. But ultimately it is one of the biggest enablers of change. Leaders and managers need to think about how they meaningfully demonstrate flexibility on their own terms. Setting boundaries around availability and respecting the boundaries of others sends a strong signal that enables others to do the same.

4. It's too expensive

Sometimes flexible working can be seen as an expensive luxury. Additional costs often cited are costs related to technology or home working spaces, and the perception of extra costs for extra head count. Yet flexible working reduces absenteeism, improves performance and reduces staff turnover (CIPD 2018).

Alongside opportunities for cost savings from reduced office footprint, can we really afford the hidden costs of being inflexible?

5. There is too much work to do — our beneficiaries depend on us

Often the hardest thing in the mission driven charities is to prioritise, accept you can’t do everything, and write a business plan which matches the resources the organisation has available. With this in place manageable jobs can then be designed and realistic objectives set for individuals. It is understandable for hiring managers to default to one full time role — if they have the budget and work to match this.

But offering flexible or part-time roles does not need to mean that less work gets done. The organisation and system need to lean into planning where the rest of the work should go. Is another part time role required? Is it a job share?

This avoids having an individual being asked to do an impossible role that is too big for contracted hours, or a team that is having to absorb an unreasonable workload.

6. It won't be fair on staff who don't work flexibly

A key message here is that flexibility is open to everyone, and working patterns and practices that treat everyone as humans and individuals can benefit us all. It’s key to have proper planning and protocols in place so that ways of working are clear to everyone, and any additional work is carefully allocated within the organisation so expectations are fair.

7. It is too complex — I don't know where to start

Don’t feel pressure to come up with perfect or fixed model. No organisation will come up with something that will work for everyone all the time. The best solutions come from having the courage to experiment, take small steps, make mistakes, adjust, learn and improve. Be honest about what is and isn’t working and focus on individual needs.