Editor’s note: Patty Yan is the EMEA product marketing manager for RingCentral Office, a provider of cloud communications solutions.

During a survey of 1,583 professionals by the Harvard Business Review, 96% of respondents said they need more flexibility in their work schedules. However, only 47% of the respondents have access to the flexibility they want.

The need for workplace flexibility is now more apparent than ever before. The COVID-19 pandemic caused a series of extended lockdowns, culminating in months of us all staying home. The lockdowns had many people working remotely – and quite effectively too.

The pivot to remote work shows that humans can be productive anywhere with the right resources. It has also come with an increase in the clamor for workplace flexibility as we make the shift back to in-person work.

Employees want to have a healthy work-life balance. Most employees no longer believe in the workaholic lifestyle and they appreciate employers who recognize that. Many workers in the U.S. consider flexibility an essential factor when looking at job offers.

As a business owner, it’s now more straightforward than ever before to provide workers with the flexibility they want. For instance, thanks to advances in technology, you can automate tasks and reduce an employee's workload.

What does workplace flexibility entail?

Mangers sometimes confuse flexibility with freedom, thereby allowing room for complacency. While flexibility includes some level of freedom, it's more about adaptability to changing circumstances. Flexibility is your willingness and ability to adapt to changing situations on the job. On the part of the organization, this adaptation must happen without putting employees in uncomfortable positions.

Note that, for an organization, flexibility involves prioritizing the well-being of employees over policies. You’ll take into account that employees also have a personal life outside of their jobs. You don't want their jobs to affect your employee's personal lives negatively. As such, flexibility involves compromising for your employees in a way that doesn't affect the company's profitability.

Workplace flexibility considerations

So how do you compromise for the happiness of your employees while maintaining the company's profitability? You can start with ensuring effective communication. Sometimes, something as seemingly small as implementing voice recognition tech can make your employee’s workflow more streamlined and allow them the flexibility to spend less time on admin tasks. 

Know your flexibility arrangements

2020 showed that for specific jobs, productivity is achievable from home or any remote location. Therefore, it's not always necessary for employees to be physically present at the office to do their work. If they have the resources, they can still do their jobs effectively from a remote location. However, unlike cloud engineers, not everyone can do their jobs remotely. As such, you need to know the different types of flexibility models and how they apply to your workplace.

Finding the correct flexibility model for your business is crucial to keeping your employees happy and your business working. The standard model has to do with time shifts and work duration schedules. You can adopt a part-time or half-day work schedule at your workplace. Other models include:

  • Micro-agility: Giving employees the freedom to adapt.
  • Location variety: Encouraging remote working and location independence.
  • Travel time: Managing travel space you give to employees.

Improve your workplace culture

Many times, the workplace culture may be too rigid and suffocating for employees. Some workplace cultures create unspoken rules which may not allow flexibility for the employees. If this is your company’s situation, you have to first improve the workplace culture in your bid to improve flexibility.

Establish open communication channels that enable employees to voice their opinions. Consider employee’s views when formulating new policies that favor job flexibility. Doing all of this can make the employees feel empowered. When employees feel this way, their positivity will extend to their jobs and they'll be more productive.

Provide appropriate facilities and resources for employees

Tools, facilities and resources are available to make processes more flexible for you and your employees. There are RPA tools for automation that can reduce employees' workload. There are tools to handle communications, project management and many more processes.

Another option is to hire third-party services to handle specific tasks. For instance, you can have a cloud solution architect oversee your company’s computing strategies.

Also, provide a work environment that promotes a healthy balance for employees. Manage the number of hours staff put in at work. Studies show that a person's productivity per hour decreases significantly when they work more than 50 hours a week. That indicates that clocking in long shifts doesn't necessarily translate to increased productivity.

Workplace flexibility isn’t rocket science

Workplace flexibility isn’t difficult to implement – it all comes from understanding your employees. When you know their preferences, setting up a flexible work schedule will be easy.

But this doesn’t mean that you should encourage complacency from your workers. You should be enabling flexibility, not laziness. Set rules to prevent misconduct and duly enforce them.