Employers have accepted flexible work but are yet to come to terms with it

Written by Aurecon Chief People Officer Liam Hayes and People Experience Leader Amanda Vining

Elon Musk is one of the most visionary individuals on the planet. At just 51 years of age, he has invented or invested in breakthrough technologies which have revolutionised the financial payments system (he founded the online bank X.com which morphed into Paypal), fuelled the renewable energy sector (as CEO of electric vehicle pioneer Tesla), and by 2023 could propel private citizens around the moon (via SpaceX).

Of course, Elon Musk is also the guy who in June 2022 famously told all Tesla employees to show up at the office for at least 40 hours per week or leave the company. “They should pretend to work somewhere else”, said Musk on Twitter.

Advocacy of presenteeism in the new world of works is surprisingly myopic. Having endured two years of COVID, most employers that can offer remote work have by now accepted they should permanently adopt a hybrid work arrangement post-pandemic.

But just because employers have come to accept flexible work doesn’t mean they’ve come to terms with it. Indeed, it’s the terms that companies are now wrestling with. Flexibility is a key dimension of talent attraction, and the decisions companies make will significantly influence who wins the talent war. For many employers, what is most alarming is that rates of resignation are highest among mid-career employees (ages 30 to 45) many of whom are leaving their jobs and fields to pursue a career path which offers greater flexibility.

There still exists a cavernous disconnect between some employers and their workers with research revealing three-quarters of executives wanted a return to the office at least three days per week, compared to just one-third of workers. While most organisations continue to offer flexible working, defining what that looks like long-term is no easy feat.

On whose terms?

COVID gave workers a taste for remote work and they are now unwilling to relinquish that flexibility. Workers want to work on their own terms.

According to Future Forum research, employee experience scores are plummeting for knowledge workers who have been asked to return to the office full time, and those without flexibility to set their own work schedules. A Gusto survey of 800-plus HR practitioners and 700 employees found that 45 percent of job offer declines over the past year were due to a lack of flexibility. Simultaneously, flexibility or work-life balance was the number one reason workers said yes to a job offer, ranking higher than salary.

While flexibility is important for job seekers across all ages, the benefits are particularly important for mid-careers aged 25-39. Multiple studies including the Deloitte Global Gen Z and Millennial Survey show work/life balance to be the principal reason that younger generations choose a new job. It’s no surprise that younger generations are struggling to juggle their personal obligations and work demands with Millennials and Gen Z regularly making trade-offs. For some, it is to balance child rearing or caregiving responsibilities. One in five carers became caregivers for the first time during the pandemic (Embracing Carers Global Carer Well Being Index) and a disproportionate number of those carers are Gen Zs and Millennials.

For others, it is to accommodate education, hobbies, or travel. What we’ve learned in recent years is that flexibility means different things to different people but centres around not just where work takes place but when it is performed. Many companies overlook the critical importance of schedule flexibility yet according to Future Forum, schedule flexibility is more important to employee happiness and retention than location flexibility.

Flexible work practices were evolving prior to COVID however the pandemic advanced their adoption at a revolutionary rate. And whereas in the past employers made decisions based on role, function, or demographic considerations, now they’re expected to accommodate individual circumstances.

Herein lies the challenge: how can employers create a ‘hyper-personalised’ flexible work model which will maintain (if not improve) productivity and not compromise connectivity, collaboration, or culture?

Flexing our point of difference

While most companies had flexible work forced upon them when social distancing was mandated at the start of the pandemic, flexibility was already one of Aurecon’s strengths and is a genuine point of difference.

Because we embraced flexible working in 2016, we had a competitive advantage when COVID hit. For us, flexible work was already the norm across Australia and New Zealand. We were already realising the rewards and had nearly five years’ experience in navigating the risks and challenges.

As an early adopter of the ‘all roles flex’ model, we were already working hard to identify what our employees needed to work flexibly and better manage their work-life commitments. Of course, the pandemic brought new challenges: for example, a greater potential for workers, when remote, to over work and not switch off so like other companies we’ve had our work cut out to manage this and other obstacles.

Now our focus is around how we can aid the exchange of tacit knowledge in a hybrid environment and facilitate flexible working practices in our Asia offices.

Our flexible future

Over the past two years, we have further expanded the tools, training, and resources which are available to help our workforce to stay connected to clients and colleagues.

We’re partnering with talent and work design consultancy Beamible to develop workshops and programs to support flexible workplaces, teams, and roles.

We’ve created a new flexible working online course and have updated our ‘Management Essentials’ training program to assist managers in leading hybrid teams.

Like other forward-thinking employers, we’re developing workforce personas to gain a better understanding of employee preferences beyond the standard demographic and job classification data.

And we’re addressing functional or project-specific constraints on flexibility by encouraging each team to agree to and document guidelines and their expected behaviours - for example, relating to synchronous core collaboration hours. We’re working hard to make our offices a magnet, not a mandate, so that people can find a balance to live life their way. We have team members who want to work flexibly so they can walk their children to school, volunteer fire-fight, surf when the swell is high or learn a new language so they can better communicate with their in-laws. We know that giving our people the space to do what they love leads to better mental health and performance, leading to more engaged and happy people delivering better outcomes for clients.

If this sounds like a workplace you or someone you know would like to be a part of then visit here for more information about joining Aurecon.