Supporting Flexible Work Habits

I worked on a project with an interesting character named Eddie.  He was a nice guy, but he had difficulty getting to our team meetings on time.  I called Eddie aside one day and asked him why he was always late in the morning.  He explained, “There are seven people in our house. There’s tight competition for the bathroom”.   I was tempted to suggest that he might look into buying a house with an additional bathroom, but I suspected the real reason why Eddie was always late was that he wasn’t a morning person.

Your technical team is likely to have individuals like Eddie, experts with a unique way of doing things. Technical people are frequently highly creative, which is what allows them to devise solutions to solve complex business problems. Leading or managing a technical team means encouraging creativity while maintaining focus on your business objectives.

You can encourage creativity by enabling flexible work habits to get the most out of your technical team.  Some tips include:

• Allow flexible work hours. Team members can choose to start later and work later or start earlier and finish earlier according to their personal preferences, so long as that is not disruptive to team goals. Technical team members are often required to provide off-hours support or emergency response overnight support, which can also contribute to their need for flexible work hours.
• Consider your office layouts.Some people need a soundproof booth to work effectively, while others would rather have a team around them. While we rarely can go to these extremes, do your best to allow people to make workspace choices that best suit their work style. Equipment such as headsets can also give people a bit of their own space.
• Focus on what has to be done, rather than on how something is done. Allow people to use their own work style to generate results.  Measure their performance based on the results, not the work style they used to develop them.
• Ask your technical staff to apply their creativity to business rules.They may devise viable solutions to balance conformance with the need to produce results.

There is a delicate balance between letting individuals “do their own thing” and not giving special preference to one individual over another. Whatever you allow, ensure you are even-handed, fair, and aligned with corporate standards’ objectives.

Do this, and you will enjoy a team that is more committed to success and does not lose focus before the game is won.