Flexibility in Our Own Words

Ah, more hand-wringing and agita over return-to-office mandates and remote work wars. From Bob Iger at Disney to Vanguard and Paycom, Fortune says employers are not having an easy time of it. This morning it was Starbucks.

In November, I wrote about saying goodbye to RTO and setting our own rules; in October, new ways of working, and still the notion that we are going back to how it was in 2019 persists.

The flexibility genie is out of the bottle and the office as we knew it is a thing of the past. Returning to it is going to be different, and while I suppose every leader has the right to say, “I give you the paycheck and in exchange you work by my rules,” that’s not a great motivator. Free will, the human spirit … it’s like mother nature. It’ll win every time.

Flexibility, predictability? It’s a simple ask in this day and age, and employers ought to be able to deliver it. Why? I asked my team what flexibility means to them. Here are their answers in their own words, unedited and unabridged, men and women alike.

1. I appreciate the flexibility of working how I work best, which to me means working at my own pace at various spots around the house and the freedom to get up and move around when I need to. I also like that the work is project-based, which keeps me more focused than I would be if I had to sit at a desk during specified, arbitrary hours.

Personally, flexibility has also meant successfully balancing family and work. I highly value that I was here every day when my daughter got home from school, that I went on nearly every one of her field trips (only missing a couple that I didn’t want to go on 😊) because I could work around them, then later had the flexibility to move her to and from college many times, to this year spending six weeks with her while she was between jobs and I was on the sabbatical (what timing!). There’s so much I would have missed out on if I had a more rigid work environment.

2. Having flexibility at work means I can spend more time with the people I love and doing activities I love. Without a long evening commute, I have time to cook and enjoy a healthy dinner with my family, and instead of a 15-minute break at the office, I take my dogs out for an afternoon walk through the neighborhood. Flexible work arrangements allow for a much healthier, happier work/life balance.

3. The quality of life most look for is balanced between work, home, and personal/family and equilibrium between them. During previous employment at other firms with in-office policies, there was always a trade-off — most times it was home and family that had to sacrifice. Allocation of time that was often uneventful and unproductive commute to and from office in large metropolitan areas taking away from family time.

With work-from-home flexibility, I have found the necessary balance and it has improved my overall quality of life.

In our industry, Sometimes the best ideas and aha moments occur outside of traditional hours. It’s great to have the ability to just roll up the sleeves regardless of time of day.

Some days family and life situations command some extra attention to help a sick partner or to take a child to an appointment. It is great to have flexibility in the days whereby the hours can flex to accommodate life. Whenever I am on my laptop at 9 or 10 pm, it is because of choice, and it feels great to have that kind of flexibility.

Work from home and the flexibility Outsell has provided enables a highly productive and enjoyable environment for me.

4. The practical advantages of working flexibly from home are fairly obvious, benefitting us individually and the company as a whole. I can tailor working hours to suit personal circumstances and commitments and, generally, cope with the unexpected. I can also adapt my hours to suit clients and colleagues in the US, which a rigid timetable would make more difficult.

Even more important than these benefits is the message that remote and flexible working sends: we are trusted. The company, and you personally, trust us to get our work done in the way that suits us and our clients. You don’t monitor or scrutinise everything we do, you judge us on what’s delivered. That means a great deal.

5. Here are my thoughts on working from home, and thank you for enabling this: My parents had to move countries for work that matched their skills and while they liked their jobs, it was only in retirement that they got to return home and live where they wanted. At Outsell, I get to flip this and live where I love and have a great job come to me from the other side of the world. It’s also allowed me to watch my children grow and have a bigger presence in their lives. Finally, there’s the health benefits. I can fit in a session in the gym around my workday (even if I don’t take advantage of that enough), and it’s easier to follow a celiac diet at home than in an office.

6. It’s been much easier to achieve the work-life balance with the WFH arrangement, not to mention being there for family (e.g., with sick-at-home kids) when I can still work. Just being around means everything: even if they’re in bed, I can take two minutes to get them water if they ask for it. This reduces parental stress tremendously.

WFH drives a deadline-oriented culture. As long as one knows when something is due, having the flexibility to work beyond 9–5, means not having to miss a school play or soccer game while still being able to hit deadlines. This is work-life balance. With a toddler at home, sometimes I feel like the best time to write is from 7–10 PM, when the child is asleep, and the quietness of my surrounding puts me “in the zone” to power through.

Coincidentally, this also enables me to answer critical Slack messages or emails sent from my West Coast teammates, as they close their day with recommended actions for the next day. This is productivity as its best. It is a pleasure to watch my family and my company grow concurrently, and never having to feel like I’m sacrificing one for the other. This is the Outsell way!

7. At its core, Outsell’s flexibility means that the company trusts its employees. In return for this flexibility, there’s the expectation that we work hard to hit our targets and essentially pull our weight as part of the larger whole. The knowledge that flexibility is there when you need it is a great motivator. As a corollary to that, being trusted means that we’re treated as adults. We don’t need to prove that we have medical appointments or provide a reason why we’re going dim lights for an afternoon — it’s assumed that we’ve made a mature decision that this is necessary. So many companies seem to treat their employees like children (my husband used to work somewhere where you weren’t allowed to wear brown shoes or a brown leather belt), so being treated as an adult is a blessing, even though it should really be a given!

From a personal perspective, flexibility has enabled a solid work-life balance. It’s never been a problem to take a couple of hours off to attend a child’s school assembly or take them to an orthodontist appointment — having that as a given rather than feeling you have to ask for time off as a favour on each occasion is much appreciated.

From an Outsell perspective, flexibility mirrors one of the core tenets: that something is fine so long as it’s OK for the company, the client, and the individual. It’s a simple rule and therefore easy to abide by. I’m assuming that no-one has ever taken advantage of the flexibility, but I imagine that most people wouldn’t because they’re so grateful to have it in the first place!

8. Flexibility means to me that my personal priorities doesn’t have to wait until 5pm or only on weekends. At the same time, my work priorities don’t have to be bounded by 9 to 5 schedule. So having an option to prioritize and balance between work and personal commitments is freeing. For example, having an option to hit the gym or go for a run in the middle of the day when the weather is beautiful is great! Thank you for this opportunity!

9. Flexibility means:

Taking a moment from your work to greet a child as they walk in the door after school and ask them about their day…

Being at the dinner table, not sitting in your car with a commute.

Knowing that if you’ve hit a wall and productivity has stalled, you’re only wasting your own time. Get up. Change the scene and focus and come back to your work when the focus returns. And yes, that might mean evening time, but you get that mid-day break in return. I could go on.

10. Having spent my career either on the road or in an office, the Outsell virtual work environment is very appreciated. It shows Outsell has faith in the professionalism of staff to accomplish their goals and a focus on the person and their family. Case in point, my wife watches two of our grandkids during the week. Sometimes when she needs it, I’m able to offer a little help during a workday. This takes a lot of stress out of work and home life.

11. Outsell has always been a glowing exception to working in the 9–5 box. Nobody wastes 1–2 hours a day commuting to an office. I treasure the ability to create my own work “day,” dive into work in the evening or the weekend, and then having the choice of scheduling an important personal appointment or task during the day. Anthea, you rethought what a work week should be 25 years ago, and it took over 20 years and a pandemic for the rest of the world to “get it.”

12. I remember my daughter used to be stuck at before & after school care every weekday. So she was at school from 7am–6pm from 11 months old to 6 years old. She recently said to me that it meant the world to her that I made that change. It makes a huge difference for the next generation when they get that quality time with their parents. Thank you, Anthea!!

13. Besides saving the considerable time spent on my old commute, flexibility has meant a more relaxed frame of mind when it comes to working. I can now roll out of bed and go straight to work almost at the same time as the earlier time zones. In the past, I always felt like I was playing catch-up by the time I got to the office. The internet and cloud computing have really made virtual work/flexibility the new paradigm for many people, which significantly contributes to work/life balance in ways that were unimaginable before.

We have team members who have retired from Outsell staying with us the entire four quarters of their careers. We’ve had numerous team members (a high percentage for our size) return after leaving. We call them the boomerang club.

We have those who are still with us after 20 years, 12 years, 10 years, 8 years, 5 years. We get a lot of work done; most people are amazed. We have a very definite corporate culture, and it’s clear to new team members, too. In fact, they sense it in the interview process, where there is consistency in what they hear, values alignment, and congruity about who we are and what we stand for.

It’s a long post but worthy of the topic, because I can’t say what my team said in the way they said it. And their words stand up for the benefits of flexibility and freedom. And nowhere does it say they don’t collaborate, can’t create, aren’t there for their clients or each other, or that our culture suffers.

I would say this is a different way of “doing corporate,” one we adopted in 1998. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. In fact, I encourage all leaders out there to really lean in and give it a go! RTO? So yesterday.