When it comes to running a business, having dependable employees is crucial. What a single person can accomplish is extremely limited. When the time is right, a happy and productive team will almost guarantee that your business will thrive, and when it isn’t, it will survive.
However, keeping a team happy is no easy task. Managing employee morale can be difficult, especially on a tight budget or in the midst of a pandemic. Individuals have different strengths and weaknesses, as well as different needs. You can’t please everyone, and bringing out the best while restricting the worst is extremely difficult.
It is critical to have the appropriate work environment. However, it’s one of the more difficult accommodations to meet, as everyone has their own idea of what constitutes a good workplace. In this case, you might want to think about implementing work-from-home or work-from-anywhere policies to help employees be more flexible.
What is Employee Flexibility?
Employee flexibility refers to allowing your employees to be flexible with their workspace and schedule. This entails comparing long-term performance to short-term performance, i.e. trading in a consistent and monotonous, albeit mediocre, schedule for a more flexible schedule that may include better breaks and longer leave, but has a long-term impact on productivity.
It means seeing better results at the end of the month, even if an employee needs to take a day off for personal reasons. It entails allowing employees to work from home or in a location of their choosing for a few days, and then watching as the quality of their work improves.
It’s not just about being lenient with an employee’s whims and wishes. There must be some structure – but even a little flexibility and compromise shows your employees that you value their well-being, even if they understand that it may be for the company’s benefit in the first place.
Options for Employee Flexibility
Adjusting your workspace offerings is one of the most significant changes you can make to help accommodate employee requests for more flexibility.
Giving employees the option to work from home is by far the simplest way to increase workplace flexibility. Many businesses that survived the pandemic had to do so through home office measures anyway, so incorporating a hybrid workspace model isn’t a novel idea.
Those who prefer to work in the office can do so, and those who prefer to work from home can do so as well.
Why limit yourself to just one office if your employees prefer to work in one? Especially if some of your employees find the commute to be too much.
Getting a second office, of course, is prohibitively expensive. Incorporating a coworking space, on the other hand, isn’t. By looking for coworking options near them, you can greatly expand workspace options for employees who prefer the office environment but can’t always make it to the office on time.
Coworking spaces are office spaces that are owned and managed by businesses that rent out space to a variety of tenants such as businesses, small teams, entrepreneurs, and freelance contractors.
They are well-known for their diversity, providing ample opportunities for natural networking, cooperative work, and unexpected partnerships.
Even large corporations with ample resources to open new offices use coworking spaces to bring employees together in a satellite office in new cities or regions without incurring the expense of leasing a dedicated space.
Coworking spaces, like other monthly subscription models, are far more flexible than traditional office leases, allowing businesses to opt in and out of different spaces as needed.
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