Several recent worker surveys indicate that flexible work schedules and opportunities are key to attracting and keeping good people. Use these tips to create flex-work policies that existing and potential employees alike will find appealing:
- Start by understanding real employee needs. Look at how and how well your team works together, how well you’ve been able to arrange cross-functional collaborations, and what tools, information, or other supports would help improve performance and teamwork.
- Ensure alignment with your own employer branding. For instance, if you’ve been promoting your organization as being ‘like a family,’ make that promise real to accommodating workers’ needs for scheduling changes and new ways to work.
- Find out what your employees have missed about not being together. Determine how you can re-establish these things while providing scheduling flexibility.
- Be open to suspending pre-pandemic rules and establishing new policies. Make it easier for employers to juggle work with family caregiving responsibilities, seek mental health or other care they need, practice self-care, and establish or maintain financial health.
- Avoid overstressing self-care in messaging. You don’t want to look like you re putting the onus for their wellbeing solely on them. At the same time, you don’t want to send a message that work is so stressful and toxic that everyone needs self-care to survive at the organization.
- Don’t mistake physical presence for loyalty. Don’t assume that people are coming to work because they are content with their job or the organization. Check in with them and work to address their individual needs so that they don’t take their dedication to another employer.
