Let Employees Choose When, Where and How to Work

• Nathaniel Koloc

NOVEMBER 10, 2014

A sense of freedom — the ability to choose what you work on, as well as how, when, and where you perform your work — is a growing priority for talented professionals across sectors and industries, and one of the core elements of a fulfilling career.

According to a 2009 Forrester report, by 2016, 43% of the U.S. workforce — 63 million people — are expected to work from home; 34 million people already do. This trend is driven by a number of factors, including professionals’ desire to have control over their day-to-day work life. Millennials are especially keen (as many as 92% in one survey) to eschew office life for more freedom about where and when they work.

But it’s not just workers who benefit from freedoms like working at home. Companies that officially allow employees to work remotely at least three times per month were more likely to report revenue growth of 10% or more within the last year, compared to firms without such policies. And some companies, like videogame maker Valve (valued at $3B just two years ago), attribute much of their commercial success to their open workflows, i.e. arrangements where employees get to choose which projects they work on and which roles they play on those projects. Valve also cites this level of autonomy as one of its primary competitive advantages in recruiting and retention (check out the company’sEmployee Handbook).

Many large companies track and report the efficiencies and benefits they gain from remote work policies. For example, Cisco estimates that it saves $277 million each year from productivity gains related to telecommuting employees. An LRN study released at the World Economic Forum in Davos found in a deep longitudinal study that companies in which employees displayed “high levels of freedom” in their relationships were 10-20 times more likely to outperform companies with low freedom scores. These findings speak for themselves.

Here are a few examples of companies that prioritize a strong culture of self-care and freedom:

• At The Gerson Lehrman Group’s global HQ office in New York, employees don’t have assigned team work areas, but rather work in “neighborhoods” ­— flexible working spaces that have various amenities (conference rooms and tables, phone booths, even overnight lockers) and are free to pick up and relocate to another neighborhood when they see fit. They also work under highly autonomous workflows, especially their engineers. Engineers choose their own projects, engaging with business operators across the company directly — no project management, no product management.
• At my company ReWork, all of our employees have four weeks of paid vacation each year, as well as four weeks of remote work eligibility and unlimited sick days. We’ve had employees do extended work trips from Colombia, Brazil, Uganda, and cities across the U.S. We adopted these policies after months of research and observing similar policies at organizations, such as Reasoning Mind, a Houston-based educational software nonprofit that also encourages its employees to take 4-week remote work stints each year.
• Employees at NationSwell, a new media startup focused on telling the stories of American citizens, business owners, and ventures changing the fabric of our country for the better, work together in their New York City office on Mondays, but are free to roam the city and work in coffee shops or wherever they please for the rest of each week.
• Firms like 37Signals, Mozilla, UpWorthy, Universal Mind, StackExchange, GitHub, and Treehouse are known for having fully or largely distributed teamsfrom day one — and they use that to their advantage in recruiting the best talent wherever they live.

These policies are examples of results-oriented management thinking. That is to say, policies shaped based on outcomes, not process. If someone can do their job and do it well while absent from the office, more power to them.

Here are three things you can do to bring more freedom into your workplace:

1. Ask your employees which kinds of freedoms they want, and be prepared to act on their requests.

Depending on your industry, the product or service that you sell, and your geographic location, your employee’s needs will vary. And it’s impossible to know what they want unless you ask them. Employers have many options when it comes to increasing freedom: remote work, work-from-home, and paid vacation policies are some of the more commonly known. But you can also let employees choose their work and managers, select their own professional development opportunities, or provide incentive-based compensation for particularly good performance on key projects.

In-person facilitated discussions — not faceless surveys — are the best way to hear from people as they are more likely to give you authentic responses. Work/life balance is a very personal thing and to get the full picture it’s important to listen carefully. If your organization is too large to hear from everyone in person, make sure to at least flesh out survey results with a few facilitated discussions from different functional teams.

2. Spend time understanding remote communication tools.

Companies like Slack, Hipchat, Yammer, Trello, and Asana are bringing fantastic new tools to the marketplace that make it easier than ever before for remote team members to communicate and work together, as well as interact with company stakeholders. (I think that Slack is especially fantastic, but don’t take my word for it.) Professionals who use Twitter and other social networks for professional reasons are always a tweet away from their teams.

If you’re not sure what team communication tools to use, get in touch with either a startup founder or folks who work in your local startup ecosystem. They are more likely to know of the latest offering that has been fairing well with early adopters.

3. Be vocal about your work policies related to freedom.

Adopting high-freedom policies is a competitive advantage in the talent market. The more nuanced and relevant your policies are, the more competitive your hiring brand will be. If you have great benefits but don’t have a dedicated (and concise) section of your careers page or job descriptions that explains them, or you don’t talk about them during candidate interviews, you’re missing an opportunity to leverage that asset.

It’s much easier to recruit and retain great talent when you are giving employees what they want while helping them excel at their jobs. More and more people want the freedom to decide where, when, how, and with whom they work. Do your best to provide that freedom.