How to make flexible work a success

We now know for certain - giving your team control over when and where they work is the secret sauce to productive, collaborative employees (and key to recruiting top talent). But how do you build that perfect mixed-work model? Here are a few tips:

1. Ask employees what they want. While the need to facilitate remote work was total and immediate, now that the dust has settled and everyone has adjusted, you need to understand what your teams really want. And that means giving them choice, rather than blanket solutions or ways of working.
    
2. Keep building culture - even while apart. The pandemic has effectively put many of us in a two-year-long state of emergency. Culture has, in many cases, fallen by the wayside. As the world starts to open up again, there are new opportunities to bring back all the trappings of work culture many employees enjoyed. Leaders make the experience of workplace culture for 90% of workers; yet so many organisations have never really invested in leadership training.
    
3. Share the right collaboration tools. Communication and collaboration are fundamental to any project, workflow or business. If you try to have one without the other, everything falls apart. More than a third of businesses (36%) see a lack of the right collaboration tools as a significant barrier to working remotely and almost half say a failure to collaborate has a negative impact on productivity.
    
4. Innovate, innovate, innovate. Finally, it’s important not to see innovation as a one-off process. Whatever you do to create a flexible working environment, don’t stop improving it. Beyond securing regular feedback, audit your processes frequently, and, if in doubt, hire an external professional to do so.

The above leadership tip...
was sent in response to a question from a participant on our acclaimed 10/10 leadership development and mentoring programme. Whether you're a first time manager or an experienced leader, straightforward, practical advice on best practice is hard to find. Until now. To find out how you, your team or your organisation can benefit, please join us on our next complimentary webinar or contact us.

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