Create a Culture of Flexibility

Flexible work will benefit your business and your people if it is part of your organization's cultural DNA. But that won't happen if:

Telework, flexible hours, compressed workweeks and reduced schedules are stand-alone, uncoordinated "programs."
HR develops flexible work policies and the technology group rolls out products in isolation.
"Flexibility" refers to the toolkit on the HR website that no one knows about or how to use.
Work flexibility is not part of an employee's everyday or potential long-term career path.

This is the traditional, top-down, programmatic approach to work flexibility many organizations continue to follow.

It’s a good start and doesn’t require a lot of people, time or money; however, it won't make telework, flexible hours, compressed workweek, or reduced schedules part of your corporate culture.

To create a culture of flexibility, leaders, managers and employees need to be involved at all stages. Together they define the business case behind a more strategic approach to flexible work. They determine how people at all levels will have to do their jobs differently.

This change management and work innovation--based approach builds broad and deep buy-in that helps an organization:

Discover the current state of flexible work in your business
Create a shared vision of what flexibility will look like for people and the business
Develop a tailored strategy that gets you from your current state to your vision
Build readiness across the organization to embrace strategic flexibility
Conduct “how to” orientation/learning sessions across many platforms
Evaluate and improve your flexibility strategy after initial implementation.

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