This blog is inspired by a piece I wrote in June 2021 for ACEVO (the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations), talking about the high-trust, high-flex approach to leadership that I took during my time at Primary Care International, and which I advocate for in my work with teams today.
I’ve been lucky to have worked flexibly ever since I had my first child in 2011, first with an organisation where I was office-based, then with one which we operated on a virtual basis, and now as a freelance consultant. And yet, before I share how and why I have been determined to make it work for myself and the teams I’ve worked with, we must acknowledge some home truths.
1. Even if you work part-time or flexible hours, it doesn’t mean you have special insight into the motivation of any other person to work flexibly. What works for me may not work for you. I might not mind being pinged outside of work hours if it resolves an urgent challenge and enables us to move on. Others might find this stressful and intrusive, and they should feel perfectly within their rights to protect their non-working time.
2. The part-time worker in the social impact sector is unlikely to be a clock-watcher. They are likely to put more hours in than they are paid for. There is a constant risk that their organisation takes them for granted, resulting in burnout and disillusionment. We would not be telling the truth if we claimed we had never got it wrong, however well-intentioned we are.
3. Working flexibly goes both ways. To be trusted, to enjoy full autonomy and to work when we want or are able to work, it requires some give and take. To prove ourselves, we often try to squeeze too much in and fail to make time for learning and reflection. Things like blog writing are often done late at night or, in my case, in between the kids’ gymnastics drop-off and the football training pick-up in a rainy car park!
So despite the challenges, what opportunities are there for employers willing to take the plunge and invest in flexible working patterns?
There is a huge pool of exceptionally talented people out there for whom 35-40 fixed hours each week is not an option. Embracing the flexible or part-time worker not only means tapping into all of that talent, but it also means that you can attract a wider and more diverse pool of expertise – let’s say across a team of seven part-time workers – than if just two-three full-time workers were tasked with that same work.
To make this work when I led a flexible, high-performing, impact-driven organisation, we all worked flexibly. It was not a special favour afforded to those with specific (visible) caring responsibilities. It was a way of working which extended to everyone, and enabled those whose needs may be less visible (perhaps neurodiversity, mental health struggles or a disability) to access the same ‘benefits’ of working in our team. We made it the norm rather than the exception.
I don’t believe that anyone was ever made to feel guilty about leaving early on a particular day, dipping out of a working session to attend to a pressing matter in their personal lives. We always took our annual leave at times that suited our individual circumstances; as lots of our team were parents, this usually meant limited ‘office’ cover during school holidays. Still, we made it work with careful planning. This flexible, human approach goes both ways. When you offer a lot of flex, your team will almost always offer flex in return. In volatile times, this flex from your team to do a few extra hours (always compensated with time off in lieu later) or work a different pattern for a few weeks can make or break an organisation. By actively leaning into this flexible model, we make it the default position rather than the minority position.
In a flexible working team, it’s especially important, however, to learn about one another and respect people’s boundaries. I picked up a great tool during an Action Learning Set a couple of years ago which I’ve used with my team really effectively called One Page Profiles, and which I’ve already begun to use with consultancy clients since launching Pragmatic Radicals. An exceptionally simple concept, it invites the team to reflect on one another’s strengths and then to share their thoughts on what is important to them and how best to support them.
It so happens that my flexible team in my last role was also a 100% virtual team. Pre-pandemic, people were attracted to the organisation partly because they could work flexibly from home (rather than being forced to work from home) with monthly co-working days when we would come together as a team. In many ways, this meant we were well prepared for lockdown. There were a few quirks to our virtual part-time working, which were already well-established. One of these was recognising the value of asynchronous exchange of ideas. Personally, I love to communicate verbally, and I like bouncing ideas around and thinking on my feet. Others much prefer to reflect and react after giving more careful thought to a subject. Teams actually thrive when they have a diverse mix of personalities and preferences and whilst virtual part-time working can slow us down, it also helps us make better decisions. In turn, it even gives us insight into how our service users / clients / project participants might feel interacting with us asynchronously in the virtual world.
You might think I’d recommend every tool under the sun to facilitate this way of working. Whilst I’ve dabbled with Trello, Slack, SamePage, Basecamp, Monday, Teams, Zoom, Skype and many other tools over the years, I always advise that that sticking to one or two (definitely no more than three) communication tools works best. Otherwise you add stress by creating accounts to be monitored across numerous platforms – equally as painfully as an overloaded Outlook inbox!
On a more practical note, I love to share my top tips on calendar management. It’s one of my superpowers! As my team used to know very well, I would manage my time ruthlessly by plotting every last task into my Outlook calendar. Knowing I only had an hour to review and edit a document before I need to move on focuses my mind, and mapping everything out visually helps me to be realistic about how much actual work I can squeeze in around my meeting schedule. Again, others might find the constant ping of reminders stressful but personally it helps me to progress pieces of work as well as to intentionally to de-prioritise other pieces when something more urgent crops up. Even as a freelancer, I follow these practices. It helps me communicate my availability to clients and ensures that I am realistic about deadlines without compromising on quality.
In this challenging and unequal world of ours, I do believe that the opportunity to balance doing work we believe in deeply with time during our week for the other things that are important in our lives, is a privilege. I don’t think any of us really have all the answers when it comes to mental health and well-being in the workplace, but actively offering flexible working as a core part of your strategy for effective organisational performance has got to be a good first step.
The blog which inspired this piece was originally published by ACEVO Part-time as the norm rather than the exception – ACEVO