This not only prevents downtime, but it also prevents your team from applying themselves to any of their important work in a thoughtful, undistracted way. If email is ever used to communicate urgent and time-sensitive communication, you’ll force your team to have to check every new message as it arrives, which is every few minutes for most people.
The classic clip of Lucy and Ethel at the chocolate factory illustrates this problem perfectly. No one is capable of monitoring every message in real time, and to attempt it is an exercise in futility and a sure path to stress, overload, and eventually, burnout. This treats email as a “synchronous” communication channel and it can never be that. For example, email should never be used in the case of urgent or time-sensitive communication. You should continue to practice and enforce these guidelines even after stay-at-home orders are lifted and people come back to the office. Second, establish clear guidelines about which communication channel should be used in which situation. Provide guidelines for communication channels But it will have a positive impact on your culture in the long term. It may be tempting to refrain from giving this implicit instruction, especially if your organization is negatively impacted by the pandemic. Depending on your role, there may be times when more hours are required, but we expect and encourage you to balance busier times with intermittently lighter schedules.” The message can be something like this, “We believe that downtime is important, and we recommend that you track the hours you spend working, and limit those to roughly 40 hours a week. I recommend making these leadership communications on a regular basis, and repeating the importance of downtime frequently for reinforcement. These can be live or recorded messages from the CEO and senior leadership. This can be done in a “virtual town hall,” which is a useful practice to keep everyone connected if your team is remote.
Disadvantages of flextime how to#
Here’s how to improve the odds of success when implementing this policy: Address the problem head onįirst, explicitly acknowledge the problem and emphasize the importance of downtime. In fact, your team won’t handle the increased stress well without appropriate downtime. These challenging times don’t make downtime any less important. The act of having to call or text someone is usually enough to give the sender a pause to think, “Do I really need this person now, or can the communication wait?” This allows everyone on your team to work whenever is appropriate for them, but not feel like they have to work all the time to accommodate everyone else’s schedule. This way people can comfortably close down all other communication channels like email, Slack, instant messenger, etc. If any correspondence must happen outside of the set communication hours, such as for urgent or time-sensitive issues, make them phone or text only. Outside of those hours, employees should be encouraged to change their settings to “Do Not Disturb” and to use the “schedule send” feature of their email client so that messages only get delivered during communication hours. So how can you accommodate your employees’ needs while still protecting your culture and your team’s work-life balance? The key is to embrace and encourage flex time while also defining clear “communication hours” (for example, 8 a.m.
I’ve been helping clients implement policies that prevent this for years, but it’s even more important now that employees are suddenly thrust, unprepared, into this unfamiliar work situation. It might cause even the most dedicated employees to consider other offers. It increases pressure and quickly turns your company into an unpleasant place to work. But once this takes root in your company culture, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to “reset” later. That might be necessary in some industries during these challenging times, but certainly not in every industry and not for everyone in any industry. If everyone on your team is working different hours, you may be getting emails and messages at all hours of the day, night, or weekend - which can quickly create an always available, or “always-on” environment. Still others are starting late and working late. Others are working early and hoping to quit early. Remote work, especially in a world affected by Covid-19, naturally leads to “flex time.” Employees with small children might be getting the majority of their work done at night after the kids are in bed. To get all of HBR’s content delivered to your inbox, sign up for the Daily Alert newsletter.
Disadvantages of flextime free#
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