What are the best practices for managing a team with flexible working hours? (original) (raw)
Last updated on Sep 19, 2024
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Flexible working hours are becoming more common and desirable in the modern workplace, as they offer employees more autonomy, productivity, and work-life balance. However, managing a team with flexible working hours can also pose some challenges, such as communication, collaboration, and accountability. How can you ensure that your team works effectively and efficiently, while respecting their individual preferences and needs? Here are some best practices for managing a team with flexible working hours.
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Managing a team with flexible hours requires a balance between autonomy and accountability. Setting clear, measurable goals ensures everyone is aligned toward common objectives despite varying schedules. Regular, transparent communication about these goals and expectations is essential, allowing for clarity and consistency. It's vital to ensure that team members fully understand their roles, how their performance is assessed, and what support they can access. This clarity fosters a focused, cohesive team dynamic, where each member can work independently yet contribute effectively to the team's collective success, irrespective of their working hours.
Best practices for managing a team with flexible working hours include establishing regular communication and feedback channels. Maintaining open dialogue fosters trust, collaboration, and rapport among team members, facilitating problem-solving and support. Encouraging peer-to-peer communication and celebrating achievements cultivates a positive team culture. Leveraging tools like instant messaging, video conferencing, and online surveys ensures efficient communication and feedback exchange. By prioritizing regular communication and feedback mechanisms, managers can effectively manage flexible working hours while promoting teamwork and productivity.
1. Set clear and measurable goals for each team member to prioritize work effectively. 2. Communicate expectations consistently through various channels for alignment. 3. Provide support and resources for team members to succeed in their roles. 4. Real story: A team improved productivity by setting clear goals for remote workers. 5. Real example: A project met deadlines successfully due to transparent communication of expectations. 6. Regularly evaluate progress towards goals to ensure accountability and progress. 7. Encourage open communication and feedback to address challenges with flexible hours. 8. Celebrate achievements and milestones to motivate team members working flexibly.
Having a simple playbook may sound too obvious but most companies won't have laid out a series of principles, building a framework for teams to then build upon. It should cover very simple and practical things such as team hours, async work guidance, communication principles, knowledge and information access and management, preferred channels depending on the type of work.
Managing a team with flexible working hours will force you to have clear goals, deliverables and deadlines. Once all you do is results based and not efforts based then everyone is aligned and have the same objective despite not working simultaneously.
Establishing regular communication and feedback is crucial in managing a team with flexible hours. It bridges gaps, builds trust, and fosters a collaborative spirit. Open channels for dialogue ensure that team members feel connected and supported, irrespective of their schedules. Encouraging mutual feedback among team members cultivates a culture of continuous improvement and recognition. By leveraging tools like instant messaging or video conferencing, you create a virtual space for interaction vital for remote or flex-time teams. This approach ensures that the team remains unified, responsive, and aligned with collective and individual goals despite physical distances or different time zones.
Regular communication at a team level helps build a sense of connection and shared purpose rather than feeling a being a group of individuals. Establish check in points that are set through the week - start, mid and end that reflect the core team days and hours. For teams working across 5 days that may be 2 or 3 check ins, teams that collectively work less than 5 days maybe only 1 or 2. Regular in person get togethers are essential As a manager be fluid - if you need to ask a question try a quick call rather than email, so much more personal and a chance to connect in a more human way
Change your mindset: do not see the flexbile hours as something you have to accomodate. See this as an opportunity to work differentely. For instance, tap into a longer span of working hours, leveraging async work as much as possible to let people focus more efficiently on their work. However, to make this work, you have to support your team members to manage being autonomous. They may need to be more self-sufficient over time. It is down to their skills and potential, but also your support and the knowledge and information sharing structure you put in place.
From my perspective, managing a team with flexible hours is about giving people the freedom to work in ways that suit them, while ensuring alignment on shared goals. Flexibility thrives when there's trust, and trust is built by focusing on results, not micromanaging schedules. Regular communication, both formal and informal, keeps everyone connected and ensures the team stays cohesive despite different working patterns. This balance fosters a productive, motivated team where employees feel supported and empowered to perform at their best.
It's about empowering team members to take ownership of their tasks while maintaining high standards of quality and timeliness. Trust is built when team members feel their autonomy is respected and they're empowered to make decisions. This autonomy and clear roles and responsibilities promote a sense of accountability. Regular feedback and recognition reinforce this culture, acknowledging achievements and addressing areas for improvement. Constructive support and coaching further enhance this environment, ensuring team members have the guidance they need to navigate challenges. This approach boosts productivity and nurtures a positive, responsible team dynamic.
The key mindset shift for a leader here is to move from inputs to outputs. Put it simply, frame the objectives in the form of actual and tangible deliverables, breaking these down if needed, to make it as measurable as possible. This then drives the right discussion with team members about the time, support and resources they need.
When managing a team with flexible hours, your team should have tools that support both asynchronous and synchronous communication. This is because this type of communication tool allows the team members with the same work timings to communicate in real time. In contrast, for those who are working in different shift timings, it records the communication and shares the information. Collaboration tools like ProofHub can help you with that. It has features like task comments to help you collaborate with the team both in real-time and asynchronously, project discussion for live discussions and record the communication, chat for real-time communication, and announcements for sharing information company-wide.
In a flexible working environment, fostering collaboration and innovation becomes a unique challenge and opportunity. Utilize digital tools to bridge the physical gap, encouraging brainstorming and idea-sharing sessions accessible to all, regardless of their working hours. Encourage using collaborative platforms where ideas can be posted and developed asynchronously. This approach nurtures an environment where time zones or schedules don't bind creativity. Recognize and celebrate innovative solutions and collaborative efforts, reinforcing that flexibility doesn't hinder teamwork but can enhance creative synergy.
Review and improve your practices
One of the best practices for managing a team with flexible working hours is to review and improve your practices regularly. This means that you evaluate the performance, satisfaction, and engagement of your team members, as well as the results, efficiency, and quality of your work. You should also solicit feedback and suggestions from your team members, as well as from other stakeholders, such as customers, partners, or managers. You can do this by conducting surveys, interviews, or focus groups, analyzing data and metrics, or holding debriefs or retrospectives.
My favorite value from my time at Netflix was the idea that there should be no process for the sake of process. Ideally this means you're frequently reviewing all the ways you do things, finding ways to improve them - but also eliminating ones that no longer serve you. That's critical for managing teams with flexible hours.
When managing a team with flexible working hours, it's still important to have a sense of when, where, or how people are working. Simply asking your direct reports their working style and preferences can be a great place to start. Do they prefer morning meetings to start after school drop off? Do they work best on decks after hours, when they have time to focus? Getting a sense of what work is being done when helps you plan out team meetings, collaboration, and deadlines for asycronous projects best.
It is about when and where we work, it is how we work. This should be your guiding principle as a manager, should your team work flexible hours or not. You will then see that having flexible hours is an opportunity, not an inconvenience.
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