How To Maximize Workforce Productivity With Flex Time Days & Weeks
Cultivate Integrity Through Flex Scheduling
Scheduling can be a formidable source of agency and freedom for you and your team, or it can be a constant source of dread and conflict. Mastering a schedule that works for your business and your workforce in this day and age requires you to accommodate the valid individual needs of everyone who works for you, which can be challenging.
In this episode of Digital Marketing Made Simple, I will show you several approaches to scheduling you can use to ease the strain of accommodating individuals in your business and keep everyone happy and the lights on!
Today’s Podcast Overview
Today I’m going to cover several of my important tips for managing scheduling within your workforce in the modern age. You can click on the link below to jump to any section that you’d like to learn more about:
- You’re Not the Only Game In Town
- But Don’t We Need to Be Together for the Meeting?
- Workin’ 9 to 5 is so 1980s
- Respect When People are Off the Clock
- My Challenge for You
- So What Did We Learn?
You’re Not the Only Game In Town
In this modern age, the people you employ cannot be reasonably expected to devote time beyond their workday to your business. It wasn’t fair in the 80s, and it’s not acceptable now. What you must do as an employer is ensure that the time your team is spending at work can be spent focused on the task at hand. How can you do that? By flexing to the best of your ability so the imminent needs of your team are met! And how can you possibly do that, you ask? By enabling your teams’’ flexibility; they need to organize their daily schedules to suit THEIR needs!
When you empower your teams to make the best decision for them as to how to plan and carve out their workday, you’re allowing them to flex their integrity. When you place that power and responsibility in your team’s hands, they will prioritize their workload beside their family and personal commitments and set themselves up for success! Don’t be scared to trust your team with that level of control and workforce. It’s also a quick way to see which team members shine when weighted with real responsibility and which ones falter.
But Don’t We Need to Be Together for the Meeting?
Discussions and meetings are inevitable, but they’re not the be-all-end-all for solid communication, team-building, or task management. If your business requires a hands-on meeting regularly, it is essential to untether absence from those meetings to lack of interest, integrity, or competence. Life does not run on the employer’s clock anymore! Families are working multiple jobs to make the same money (counting for inflation) that a single breadwinner used to supply for their families some thirty years ago. The more accommodating you are to your workforce, the more present they can be when they’re in the trenches with you!
Workin’ 9 to 5 is so 1980s
Let your night-owls work late and sleep in and the parents of sports kids flex their days off around their kids’ games. Let your team members who would prefer not to commute work from home! There’s no valid reason to keep up the appearance of a functioning workplace by forcing everyone to their desks in an office downtown. Wasting a national average of an hour every day just getting to and from work. What difference does it make to productivity in your workplace? Whether someone would instead work 5 8-hour shifts or 4 10-hour shifts? What does it matter if a workday is split into 4 two-hour chunks between personal errands and responsibilities?
Respect When People are Off the Clock
Don’t chase team members with questions that can wait till tomorrow. You’re cutting into their time and stunting their recovery from the workday. By showing your workforce that their time is sacred and respected, you can expect the same respect during the workday. People with integrity naturally want to bring their best to their work. They deserve the chance to recoup free from work stress during their off-hours. Hounding people after they’ve clocked out for non-essential work-related needs is the quickest way to lose talent to competitors who will respect their time.
My Challenge for You
Take a look at your workday. Whether you are the sole employee in your own business or you have a dozen people working under you, take a look at how you structure your typical work week and use the “magic wand” approach: if you could wave a magic wand, what would your ideal work week look like?
Are there personal joys, errands, or relationships that you constantly push to the side to accommodate your work schedule? What would your schedule look like if you allowed yourself to work AROUND those things and people you are so used to pushing aside?
So What Did We Learn?
- Rigid schedules are a source of unnecessary workforce stress
- Empowering your team to make their own schedules improves productivity during the workday
- Take advantage of digital connectivity, but only when team members are “on the clock”
- In-Person meetings are rarely for the benefit of team members
My team at Jennie Lyon Digital Marketing Services Inc. and I are passionate about taking your business to the next level. Set up a free call with me anytime. I’d love to see how we can improve the productivity of your scheduling! (I’ve got an excellent primer for organizing your schedule, by the way!)
Links for this episode:
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