24 lessons and pieces of advice on going flexi on purpose

In Culture (& Coffee) Collective, we talked about how to help your business go purposefully flexible.

Thanks to Stella Green from Be Confident and Jacinta Sarsfield for sharing their wisdom.

Do your early prep to reap rewards later

For you:

1. Educate yourself on what flexible working means, and different models.

2. Look around at others and what they are doing. 

3. Reframe the situation from simply solving a problem to an opportunity to inspire - e.g. how can we inspire and engage people through/during a change to more permanent flexi working?

4. Have someone you can rely on through this, as it can get a bit stressful.

Sponsorship & early support

5. Consider having joint ownership for the project, e.g. HR and property, or HR and Tech.

6. Onboard a sponsor to the cause to help get this through. The more senior the person the better.

7. Focus on selling the vision at the top table. 

8. Recruit change champions to evangelise about the change. 

Start of a project plan

9. Predict the challenges within your team and front foot them. You can work with the team to identify what these challenges may be.

10. Choose the right sequence to roll this out for your team based on your priorities and challenges.

Coming up with a solution

11. Consider the three spaces - mind space, physical space and permission space in your solution.

12. Consider what you actually NEED vs what you think you need.

13. Bring the team in early to ask what they need. Getting input at the grass roots level helps inspire and excite people. If you can't do this, definitely check in frequently.

14. Co-create the workplace principles on which the change is based.

15. Plug into the mindset of the team. It’s more about the mindset than it is about the technology, etc. 

Communications

16. Choose a positive frame to communicate the change, e.g. instead of “taking away” as desk, choose to communicate “giving you 200 desks to choose from”. 

17. Start comms and influencing at the top with the leadership team. It’s OK if you don’t get all of them onboard, but having a few keen supporters will help your cause.

18. Be super clear on the “why”. 

19. Remember that even if people are mumbling about the message, they appreciate the comms.

20. Ensure at all times you allow people to be heard. 

21. Weekly comms are good. Ensure they don’t drop off soon after the change. Communication is like a heartbeat, keep it going.

Pitfalls

22. Common pitfall is the budget. Ensure you have one, you are clear on how you can use it and how to prioritise it based on strategic priorities, likely challenges, etc. Define what flexi means and how it relates to the budget. 

23. Realise that it is possible that you will design something that you don’t really use all that much - be it space (physical or virtual) and if that is the case, acknowledge the mistake an move on. Don’t dwell on it. It’s common to not get it perfect. 

Measurement

24. Use engagement metric as a good metric to track.