Formerly a fund manager and President of Beauchamp Financial Technology Ltd. (now a subsidiary of Linedata Services SA), Clare is now focused on helping companies improve financial returns and individuals improve quality of life by embracing flexible work practices. As Managing Director of FlexPaths, Clare drives new product development and UK sales of the company’s software products, including FlexPaths Educate (a configurable portal for centralizing and communicating consistent, legally-compliant flexible working policies, tools and resources) and FlexPaths Enroll (a system for tracking utilisation of different workstyles in order to measure ROI).
Clare is the founder of the Equilibrant Network for senior executives interested in flexible work (see LinkedIn group). She also consults for Elsworthy Associates and is Non-Executive Chairman of Grasshopper Porridge.

Why is it that, so often, HR teams “see the light” when it comes to encouraging flexible work practices, but CEOs don’t?  Most companies today are engaging in flexible work, whether their leaders fully recognize it or not.  Some have formal policies in place.  Most consider it to be an employee benefit that they may be required to offer, by law or in order to attract talent.  Few actually embrace it as an actual competitive advantage in business.  As a former CEO myself, and someone who deals with senior leaders regularly, I’d like to use this opportunity to dispel some common myths that I know hold CEOs and other senior executives back from making flexible work a strategic business imperative:

Myth #1:  Flexible Work Means Less Work

People often confuse flexible work with “flexi-time,” a term that commonly refers to part-time work.  Flexibility around HOW MUCH work that gets done is one type, sure, but there are several others:  
Flexibility around WHERE work gets done:  Telework and other forms of remote work are becoming more and more common, having been spurred on by technology as well as by the economic downturn, which has made many companies re-think their spend on corporate real estate.  No one is saying that face-to-face interaction is not important, but do you really need to be paying for all of your employees to be sitting at desks in your offices 8 or more hours a day, 5 days a week?  On average 60% of corporate desks are unoccupied at any given time.  Not surprising, then, to see what was once called “hot-desking” on the rise again, under more palatable names like “agile workplace”.  From a CEO’s point of view, getting your employees to pay the bulk of your rent for you is genius.

Flexibility around WHEN works gets done:  ”When” is different to “how much” - it’s an important distinction.  For many workers, their ability to do a good job does not necessarily depend on them doing their work between 9am and 5pm.  Given the choice, many would choose to start earlier and end earlier.  Or start later and end later.  Or start at the standard time, take a few hours in the middle of the day to deal with other things, and then work again at night.  Most senior leaders do that anyway.  So why not proactively make it part of your company culture?  As long as you are getting your work done well and your customers are satisfied, and your job doesn’t literally rely on something that happens during certain hours (like store operation, or equity trading), why should the company care when you do it?

Flexibility around HOW work gets done:  Most people don’t think about flexibility in terms of the contractual relationship between companies and their workers.  Using freelancers or contractors instead of employing the resource is a form of flexible work, and a very useful one, for many companies.  There are pros and cons that go with it, like with anything else, but in a lot of ways, this is the purest form of flexible work - it allows the company to flex its cost base alongside its revenue base.

Myth #2:  ”If I Can’t See You, You’re Not Working”

Seriously?  More CEOs and senior managers feel this way than would admit it - it’s a by-product of how the last 2 generations have been raised in industry and it takes some cultural adjustment to get over.  I liken it to how a toddler thinks that if he covers his eyes, you can’t see him.  If whether you can see an employee or not is the only thing that controls whether he or she is working, you’ve got bigger problems.  Studies show that flexible workers are actually more productive than workers without flexibility:  when we have more control over our time, we are less stressed and hit our “breaking points” later.  Meanwhile, just because you can see your employees does not mean they are working.  A friend of mind who runs a large online recruitment website and I were chatting on the night of the last big snowstorm.  I asked him whether many of his staff had stayed home due to the appalling inability of the UK’s infrastructure to handle snowfall.  He said no, that most of them were set up for telework, but that they’d seen a major drop-off in online job applications on the snow days.  ”How odd,” I said, “you’d think that people who had time off work would apply for more jobs, not fewer.”  ”Exactly the opposite,” he replied.  ”Most people only apply for new jobs from the office.”  So now you know, just because you can see your employees, doesn’t mean they’re working.  Some of them are looking for another job - on your dime.

 
Myth #3: Flexible Work is Women’s/Parents’ Issue

 
Working mothers have led the way on flexible work to date, and flexible work is definitely key to attracting and retaining senior women, but in this day and age, they aren’t the only ones who value it.  Laws in countries like the UK have, to date, mistakenly framed flexible work as a parents’ issue, when really, everyone should have the right to request flexible work - WHY they are requesting it shouldn’t be relevant.  Flexibility is the #3 thing people in general look for in a job in the US, after salary and medical benefits; in the UK, it’s #2 after salary.  Meanwhile, studies show that people who have flexibility would forgo a significant pay increase if it meant giving that flexibility up:  flexibility can, in fact, be more valuable than money.  That should be music to a CEO’s ears!  And with a labor shortage looming in most of the Western world, flexibility is a massive weapon in the war for talent.  Orange, the UK mobile telco, recently did a study of 1,000 people just out of university:  53% said they expected flexible working as standard when they begin their jobs, and 69% said the option to work flexibly was important to them.  They were not disproportionately female, and I’m guessing very few were parents - to Generation Y, flexibility is a way of life. Meanwhile, with mandatory retirement ages being removed and people living longer, Baby Boomers are looking to continue working too, provided they can have flexibility.   Flexible work is an EVERYONE issue.

 
Myth #4:  If I Let One Person Have A Flexible Work Arrangement, They’ll All Want One

 
The fear of setting a precedent is a big one for leaders of smaller companies, in particular.  Here’s the reality: just because a flexible work arrangement is granted to one employee, doesn’t mean other employees have the right to have their requests granted, too. Flexible work is not “one size fits all” thing.  If your process for making decisions to approve or decline requests for flexible work arrangements is reasonably rigorous (eg. If it involves asking questions like:  Is the employee a good performer? Is he or she good at managing time?  Is he or she doing a job that requires a physical presence in the office 5 days a week?  Is it possible for the team to function as well in the context of the employee moving to the requested form of flexible work? and so on) and documented well, you should be able to make the right decisions for your business while mitigating legal risk.  Just because you grant one employee’s flexible work request does NOT mean you have to grant another’s.  Where companies get into trouble is when managers make clumsy decisions, aren’t transparent or communicative, don’t manage the manager-employee relationship well throughout the process, and don’t document their thoughts and actions.

Myth #5:  Giving All Employees the Right to Request Flexible Work Will Create an Insurmountable Admin Burden

We live in the age of technology, do we not?  You don’t need a large HR team to manage flexible work well, and a flexible work initiative can pay for itself immediately, by stopping even one high-performer from leaving in search of more flexibility elsewhere.  Both employees and managers can be educated to make optimal requests and objective decisions, respectively, using online tools and resources. Workflow can be automated, and records can be stored electronically at very low cost. Yes, this making all of that happen is FlexPaths’ business, but there are plenty of ways to skin a cat.  Technology is the catalyst for and the lifeblood of flexible work - if you’re trying to use paper-based systems, or even just email, to run a flexible work initiative, you’re missing the point.  Don’t be surprised when it fails.

So, dear CEOs, you have a choice:  stick with the myths and bury your head in the sand, or be proactive and embrace flexible work to attract talent, get more productivity for less money, reduce real estate costs, and have everyone (including your shareholders) thanking you.  It’s a no-brainer, really.