Flexible work schedules = awesome employees!

Gone are the days when our lives revolved solely around work. Perfect work-life balance is the state we aspire to achieve today. We all have a bunch of responsibilities to take care of. We have passions to nurture, talents to develop and relationships to foster. Then, how do you bring out the best in your employees at work? Well, the answer to this is not that complicated. When you suffer from pain in your joints, you are advised to exercise to make them more flexible and remove stress in them. The same logic applies at the workplace as well. Flexible work schedules spur the productivity of your employees.

Arriving late to work and facing an angry boss is never the best way to start a productive day. Let’s put it this way. Imagine your boss telling you:‘you may not be the boss of this organisation, but you are the boss of your work’. An employee’s motivation and energy to work reaches another level with just these words. If the time needed to complete a certain work is defined and the employee doesn’t need to answer questions like ‘when and where’, it creates a sense of intrapreneurship in him. He feels more responsible for his work and is more likely to produce better results.

You may not be the boss of this organisation, but you are the boss of your work.

Cali Ressler, co-author of Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It and co-creator of the human resource management strategy Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE), says companies need to hold employees accountable for results, not face time. Flexible timings always present a win-win situation for both the employer and the employee. While the employee feels more enthusiastic and less stressed about work, the employer saves money on the training and development of frustrated employees or on the recruitment of new ones.

The benefits of flexible work schedules do not end here. It also builds a mutual trust and bond between the employee and the corporation. When work seems more of an excitement and less of a burden, an employee becomes more productive and leads a healthier and happier professional life.

Work flexibility doesn’t end at bending the time protocol of an employee, it is about freedom in choosing a workplace as well. For example, a writer may be more creative if he gets a calm and scenic place to work from. Women employees may be more relaxed and productive when they work from home while keeping an eye on their household responsibilities. The idea of flexibility is, thus, simple and effective--get your work done in the surroundings and time best suited to you. In this way, employees start to enjoy their work a lot more. Although, it might appear differently, they have actually taken fewer days off when they have flexible schedules. It also results in better teamwork, faster growth and increased prosperity of the company.

By adapting a flexible work strategy and ensuring that employees don't slack, you could also save on the infrastructure and facilities which would otherwise be used to confine an employee to a desk with a tight schedule.

It is, therefore, fair enough to say that while an employee’s physical presence at desk contributes 70 percent to business development, his physical absence from office alloyed with fresh and innovative ideas contribute 20 percent more to his efficiency and the organisation’s growth. Former or latter, the choice is yours.