Gifts of Time and Place

 

One of the oft-cited reasons for return-to-work resistance is the time and effort of commuting, which, for many employees, constitutes their least favorite part of their work week. After having worked from home, the daily stress of racing for a train, waiting for a bus, or sitting in backed-up traffic strikes a lot of workers as a foolish use of their resources, which are, after all, finite. Whether it is the cost to their wellbeing of stress-triggered cortisol coursing through their bodies as they rush to get dressed, grab a bite or swig a quick cup of coffee, and get themselves  (and anyone else for whom they are responsible) out the door, or making the return trip, conducted after a full day of labor, through the crowds and the traffic, many employees report the sense of watching the sands of their precious time running through the hourglass twice each day. They know the commuting routine consumes valuable time and generates a daily level of unwanted, unhealthy stress.  

Commuting is an invisible cost of doing business for employees. They are not paid for their time en route to and from the office, nor are their travel expenses reimbursed. For the most part, employers have taken a “hands off” approach to the issue of their workers getting to or from work. Until the pandemic, it was understood as a condition of employment, an unavoidable attribute of the requirement that work be done at an organizationally identified location. Employees were free to apply for work at any organization they chose, so it seemed that it was an individual decision and the attendant costs were the responsibility of the employee electing to work for a particular employer. 

SmarterWisdom has a slightly different take on the issue. Even prior to the pandemic, the notion that employees had to be prepared to shed idiosyncratic qualities such as clothing preferences, beards or moustaches, body piercings, tattoos, etc., as a condition of employment, was a given.  As the workforce became more diverse, some of these requirements began to be viewed as punitive: why should a company be able to dictate the color of one’s shirt? Or the choice to have/not have a goatee?  The press for employees to be  able to bring their “whole selves” to work had begun.

While the shift away from the one-mode-fits-all approach was initially employee-driven, organizations also began to recognize the value of that orientation for their own needs. Larger population pools from which to draw applicants was a talent recruitment advantage, as was a move into cafeteria-style benefits which allowed employees to select the combination of benefits that best fit their lifestyle. Overall, the shift by organizations to offering more individually-focused options for work-related choices (bye bye, dress code!) correlated with higher employee engagement scores and enhanced performance. 

In some ways work scheduling and location requirements (including the dreaded commuting regimen) are among the last remaining vestiges of the old one-size-fits-all model of working. The fact of the matter is, the point has already been made: work that adapts to employee needs and wants is a factor on the plus side of the ledger when it comes to how work is conceptualized. The notion that the option to commute or not is now on that list has been a long time coming, and that is not without reasons (both real and presumed.) 

Some work must, obviously, be performed on site, or at a particular time (at least at present). Traffic crossing guards, for example, need to be at their posts when children are heading to and from school. But many types of work are less clearly tied to their physical location, and that is ever more so with the passage  of time. Radiologists used to be located at the hospital where the images they were viewing were taken. Now those images may be viewed 24/7 by radiologists around the globe. Increasing technological sophistication has created a wider range of roles which can reasonably and effectively be performed asynchronously and where the employee, not the employer, is located. 

At the same time, employers recognize that there is value to having employees on-site, at least for a portion of their working hours. The issue of overseeing certain aspects of employee performance, encouraging creativity and teamwork and other key, yet amorphous, elements of management, remain a challenge and an area of centralized---and localized---organizational concern.

Workers, too, even those most vociferously pro-remote advocates, when pressed, admit that there are downsides to aspects of more fluid arrangements. For the ambitious, “being visible” beyond the immediate circle of individuals with whom the off-site employee works regularly, is a conundrum when one is remote. So is getting informal scuttlebutt, or getting better acquainted with co-workers over lunch. For newly hired employees, getting a feel for the culture, the office pecking order,  and local organizational protocols is simply harder when it is being assessed from afar. 

It is clear that the debate over remote vs in-office work arrangements is best resolved using a both/and rather than an either/or approach. But SmarterWisdom believes the real impediment to employers truly feeling that remote work is positive is that it is simply not fully so. It has plusses and minuses for organizations, and organizations have been hard put to come up with ways to feel totally good about a fully remote for the workforce. Employers know that they do not (yet at least) have ways to fully compensate for the remote-work or asynchronicity-related negatives. At the same time, control over one’s working conditions---and schedule is a key element of that situation---appeals to employees; in a time where there are too few great employees available, and employers are struggling to figure out how to attract the best and brightest to their organizations. Offering a potential employee the option for work from home may bring that new hire on board, but in some real ways, doing so simply trades one set of challenges for another. 

Thinking differently about that conundrum, however, opens the door to a new set of options that might increase employee attraction and engagement without sacrificing much of the requirement to perform the job  on-site or at a specific time: instead of considering the issue of work and schedule categorization as solely driven by job description what about factoring in the workforce’s idiosyncratic preferences? Just as broadening working locations to include an array of remote options engaged workers who were seeking some degree of geographical flexibility, thinking more expansively about the different categories of time-related preferences among employees could move the question of scheduling from highly limited proscribed working hours to one of an array of potential scenarios enhancing time flexibility. Ultimately, the end result is a considerable range of new options for work scheduling that could lead to more specific (and satisfying) win/win matches between employers and employees.

For example, consider the idea of offering a remote-feasible role in both remote and non-remote versions. That would give increased breadth to the potential talent pool and allow the organization to determine the right mix of arrangements among individuals performing those functions. If there is value to radiologists working on site, hire both site-specified and remote versions of that job. The idea is that the employee would make the choice, based on the overall “package” of what the job entails, including remuneration, benefits, promotion opportunities, location, etc., and opt for the package that best matches what the worker is seeking. If the goal is to hire for great performance, the more idiosyncratic organizations can be in tailoring jobs to individual needs, the easier it will be for them to achieve the talent management scenarios they are seeking for optimal outcomes. The workplace will truly have made a significant leap into this personalized approach to jobs without giving short-shrift to the benefits of on-site work. 

The trick to doing this effectively, however, will lie in making non-remote jobs more appealing. Right now, remote work is so much more attractive to so many folks that jobs requiring on-site, in-person performance are going begging. SmarterWisdom believes that one route to increasing the pool of those willing to return to the office lies in increasing our depth of understanding what time means to those who covet it so dearly, and using that information to design work in ways that respond to that particular sort of time arrangement. The trade-off is that the employee agrees to perform their job on site in exchange for that accommodation. 

In many ways, this option is an extension of the proven approach to personalizing benefits. It is a simple equation, really: Along with the skills and energy to do the work well, the workers employers desire also come with personal preferences regarding their work arrangements, from location to scheduling and organizational culture. The more an organization can align with the key preferences of an employee, the more roadblocks to hiring (talented new employees) or engagement (of continuing talented employees) are cleared and the likelihood of higher job satisfaction, even better performance and increased retention are raised. 

In an informal survey of why individuals want their time back, we learned that “time” truly needs a more granular definition if it is to become an effective lever in the talent management cycle. And, in looking at the array of specific time accommodations employees reported desiring, they are not actually asking for very much of a “give” on the organization’s end. One client mentioned that his special needs daughter really benefits from having one of her parents pick her up at the end of the elementary school day, and he is committed to doing so twice a week at 3 pm. Another noted that there is an annual three-week writers’ retreat every July in Northern New England that she looks forward to all year. Is it really so difficult to envision ways to work out ways to accommodate these sorts of employee priorities?  

We live in a world where products and services are increasingly bespoke. From the opportunity to order custom sneakers on-line to almost-instant grocery deliveries of a customer-specific list of products,  individuals living in 2023 have raised their expectations regarding how much idiosyncrasy the world will afford them. It is truly a competitive advantage for employers to take note and to tackle customization of employee time and location options to a much greater extent. Being able---and willing---to do so will be one more competitive strategy in the toolkit of organizations that understand the cost/benefit of fitting the work to the employee along the dimensions of time and space. 

If an organization is being offered a magical mechanism proven to enhance its ability to hire the best and brightest, engage and motivate its current workers and successfully retain them in the face of wooing by aggressive competitors, all without increasing the amount they are paying them, would that not be “magic” worth considering?

Organizations, you are being handed the requisite wand. Just wave it. 

 

 

 




ADDITIONAL BLOGS THAT COULD BE OF INTEREST