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To establish a successful Flexible Work Program, managers, starting
with the CEO, must fully commit to the new policy.
"Without a real commitment to flexibility, you're like
a leaf in the wind, reacting to every complaint or opinion," said
Susan Seitel, president of Work & Family Connection Inc., a Minnesota
consulting firm. "But that's not how most of us want to
do business... Running a company well takes good leadership and
a sense of what you want the future to look like. If, down the road,
you want to see a more committed, engaged, loyal workforce, flexibility is one way to get there."
Managers should also receive training about flexible arrangements.
They need the right tools to make good decisions about which situations
merit flexible arrangements and how to manage them.
Here's some additional advice that can
help employers avoid common pitfalls:
- Managers should start looking at jobs not
so much as "jobs," but
as a collection of tasks that can be divided and exchanged among
different employees.
- Setting clear goals and managing by outcomes,
rather than looking to see if people are at their desks, is key
to a program's
success.
- When rolling out the plan, make it clear that
flexibility is not something that's just for the demands of childcare,
but also for furthering employees' education, volunteering
in their communities, taking a parent to the doctor, etc. Everyone
will probably need it at some time in their lives.
- When an employee requests a flexible work
arrangement, among the factors to consider are: Can the job get
done? Has this employee shown superior work and that they require
little supervision? Will the new arrangement disrupt the company
in any way? "If you
and the employee can satisfy these concerns and if the employee
can make a good business as well as personal case, then it probably
deserves a green light," said Peter Burki, CEO of Lifecare®,
Inc., a Westport, Connecticut-based national employee benefits
organization.
- Once the arrangement's approved, put in writing what the
expectations are on both sides. Monitor the arrangement for the
first few months with regularly scheduled meetings about progress
and how it's going. "The key is good communication,
that both sides understand what the expectations are and what the
deliverables will be," Burki said.
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