For flexible working to really succeed, everyone needs to be on board. The rest of the team need to be supportive of their colleague’s arrangement, and feel confident that it won’t impact their own workload. But how do you make that happen?
We often hear that managers are to blame for poor take up of flexible working, but recent feedback has suggested that, in some cases, it’s the flexible workers’ colleagues who are unsupportive. Here’s how to get everyone on board.
Any flexible working strategy worth the laptop it’s written on will include training leaders and line managers to manage flexible employees. And it seems that the importance of having a flexible culture, led from the top and taken seriously by HR and middle management, is increasingly understood.
But, while it’s clearly helpful for flexible workers to have their managers onside, that doesn’t guarantee a supportive atmosphere. Some of our recent projects have highlighted that it can be full-time colleagues, rather than bosses, who are having a negative impact.
We’ve heard stories of team members grumbling about having to take notes at a meeting that a part-timer couldn’t attend. We’ve been told of regular, snippy comments such as “Doing a half day again?” to a colleague with early start and finish times. We’re also aware of ‘Friday envy’ from full-time colleagues towards part-timers, even though the day or days off are unpaid.
And while this can be a real downer for the individual, it can also have a serious impact on the flexible culture that these organisations are trying to create. As our research into exclusion in the workplace showed, feeling isolated from the team can affect a flexible employee’s performance and progression. It can even have an impact on an organisation’s gender pay gap.
For flexible working to really succeed, everyone needs to be on board. The rest of the team need to be supportive of their colleague’s arrangement, and feel confident that it won’t impact their own workload. But how do you make that happen?
If a full-timer feels that they’re being given extra work because a colleague has gone part-time, it’s understandable that they might feel resentful.
So, instead of expecting the rest of the team to pick up the slack, you need to invest in proper job design. That means thinking carefully about when, where and how much work a particular role requires, and how any outstanding tasks can be allocated. Getting your team involved in the process will improve your chances of a successful outcome.
In shift-based organisations, you also need to take care that workers without a flexible working arrangement don’t always get allocated unpopular shifts. Using a team based approach to rostering is a great place to start.
If your team dynamic is competitive, rather than collaborative, your people are more likely to be territorial about their workload, and unwilling to support their flexible colleagues. Instead, create shared objectives for the team as a whole. This will encourage a sense of everyone being in it together to achieve a common goal.
There is so much evidence about how flexible working supports both businesses and individuals. So a robust flexible working strategy should include training to get all employees up to speed. Yes, it’s important that managers and leaders are trained in how to manage and support flexible workers. But you’re more likely to get buy-in from the whole team if they understand the benefits too.
It’s all very well having a flexible working policy, but sometimes people need to see something in action to believe it. The more employees you have talking about their flexibility, and how they make it work for themselves and their team, the more normal and accepted it will become.
Finally, it’s an obvious point, but if people want to work flexibly, and aren’t allowed, they might well be less than supportive of colleagues who are. Our research has shown that 87% of full-time employees either work flexibly in some way or wish they could. So opening flexible working up to everyone is a sure-fire way to make all your employees feel positive about the concept.
The fact is that, for flexible working to thrive, you need a flexible culture. Tackling the lack of peer support for flexible colleagues head-on is a critical part of this process – and will have a huge impact on its success.
And how do you do that? That’s where we come in. We’ve developed a series of workshops on topics such as embedding flexible working into your organisation. So if you’re not sure where to start, do get in touch.
Published June 2019
