How flexibility drives productivity

Flexi work models can go a long way in retaining talent

The term "work-life balance" often triggers an exasperated eye-roll amongst old-style managements. That's because it advances the notion that time given to work ought not to hollow out one's quality of life. But for legions of men and women who have allowed their personal lives to leak away at the altar of their professions, work-life balance sounds more like a catchphrase than an HR imperative, more workplace Neverland than something practical and doable.

Millennials think differently. They place a high premium on life after work and tend to stay longer in companies that offer flexible work options such as working from home. Happily, companies are slowly coming round to the realisation that flexi work models go a long way in retaining talent.

Last month IT firm Cognizant announced that its employees in corporate functions, such as those in HR, finance and so on, would be eligible to work from home two days a week. It's a win-win prospect for both the employees and the employer: it improves the quality of life of the former and enables the latter to free up office space for coders and those in client-facing roles.

Lenovo India, another tech company, has introduced yet another measure to provide a flexibility bounce to the work lives of its employees. It has stopped keeping tabs on the number of hours they spend in office. The idea is that as long as the work gets done, it doesn't matter how many hours they put in doing it. Last month media reports quoted Lenovo India director (HR) Rohit Sandal as saying, "Employees can decide for themselves what timing they wish to maintain… We don't track how many hours an employee clocks up. We want to operate on the basis of trust."

It's a revolutionary step, no less. For it turns the prevailing workplace culture on its head, a culture where you not only have to put in the mandatory 9-5 (and then some), but also have to hang around your desk, marking "face time" till your boss packs up and leaves for the day. It's a culture where efficiency and speed is good, but a slavish adherence to the straitjacket of office timings is better. The Lenovo model, on the other hand, seems to be based on the belief that what counts is productivity and respect for deadlines - even if part of the work is done from home or a neighbourhood Cafe Coffee Day.

There are a number of studies to show that flexi work options that free you from gruelling commutes or give you time to take care of an infant or a sick parent score high on employee satisfaction. A paper published in American Sociological Review in February 2016 goes one step further.

Its authors, Professor Phyllis Moen of the University of Minnesota, and Professor Erin Kelly of MIT, showed that a group of employees of a tech company who had complete freedom to choose when and where they worked met their goals as ably as those in another group whose flexibility options were at the discretion of their superiors.

What's more, the study found that the workers in the first group were not only happier, healthier and were sleeping better, but that three years on, they were less interested in leaving the company.

However, experts say that most people are so conditioned to be physically present in the workplace that even if flexible options exist, many are loath to exercise them. Job insecurity also plays its part here.

Again, even if one is remote working, one is always under pressure to check one's emails, to attend to the next directive, the next must-do-it-right-now that pops up on one's device.

Indeed, the very technology that makes flexibility possible also chips away at it. But that, as they say, is another story.
Twitter: @ShumaRaha