Flex managers
If we had to name the SINGLE biggest factor influencing an employee’s flexible work experience, we’d say: their manager.
A forward-thinking, empathetic manager can prevent burnout and unlock people’s best work selves.
68% of people say their flexibility is dependent on who their manager is.
How to manage a high performing flexible team
According to Gallup, managers who thrive in an outcomes-based culture, know their team members, match talent to task, trust people to do their best and then get out of their way. There are 3 key things that will enhance your team’s effectiveness and make your job easier.
1. Build a culture of trust
Trust has always been at the heart of high performing teams, but in today’s work environment where many people are working remotely, a strong focus on building trust has become absolutely essential. Read more in the Senior leadership section.
2. Apply the right systems
Flexible teams require specific systems and processes. Getting these right can be the difference between a high performing flexible team and a dysfunctional one. Read more in the Team work section.
Systems can help us monitor progress against business performance metrics
It is so important to be clear on your team’s priorities, then to connect each team member’s role and responsibility to those priorities, and finally, to be able to measure their performance against them (get the systems in place to measure!). This will give you the comfort that the right work is being achieved, regardless of when, where or how the work is being done. Coming soon: Beam’s work planning tool
3. Focus on outcomes
Jobs exist to deliver an outcome for the organisation and this is how a manager should measure success.
Traditionally, time in the office or effort have been incorrectly used as the measurement of success — if someone arrives at the office at 7am and doesn’t leave until 7pm they must be kicking goals, right? Not necessarily!
In a flexible work environment, where people might be working on different days or from different locations, managing to outcomes is not just desirable but essential.
How to talk the talk on managing flexibly
As a flexible manager, it’s not only critical to measure performance on outcomes, it’s important to talk about goals this way too. Language matters.
1.
When talking about what defines good performance, say things like “you really delivered an excellent result for the customer” and avoid saying things like “I’m really impressed with how many hours you put into this project”.
2.
During your 1:1s with your team members, provide constructive feedback on what the person has done well in relation to their goals and what could be improved. Always keep the feedback focussed on outcomes and impact, and steer away from providing feedback on how, when or where the work was done.
3.
If there’s a performance issue, isolate the issue to the quality of the work, not how, when or where the work is being done. Removing flexible work as a punishment for underperformance is not going to fix the problem. Underperformance is underperformance, no matter how or where the work is done.
4.
Get part-time goals right. Make sure that you adapt outcomes for part-time professionals. If someone is working 3 days (and being paid for 3), what is the 60% version of the target? Set them up for success so they can demonstrate the value of their work. Read more about flexible role design.