The Fundamentals of Flexible Working

What the research tells us

The latest Survey of Working Life, conducted by Statistics NZ between October and December 2018, tells us that more than half (51 per cent) of employees in New Zealand have flexible work hours, allowing them to start and finish work at different times each day.

According to Ryan Ghisi, Xero’s GM of Global People Programs, flexibility is not a benefit anymore. “You’re simply at a competitive disadvantage if you’re not offering flexibility to your people.”

Xero has grown rapidly over its 14-year history: from one to 24 offices, 25 to 2,800 ‘Xeros’ (employees), 200 subscribers to over 2 million, and expansion across over 180 countries around the globe. This rapid growth has meant that flexibility became part of the employee experience organically, almost out of necessity and because of its perfect complement to Xero’s growth strategy.

It’s for this reason Ryan calls it Xero’s ‘silent enabler’. Flexibility at Xero has evolved into an embedded part of the culture, with undisputed, measurable win–win benefits for both Xero and ‘Xeros’ alike. These benefits include increased productivity, efficiency, workplace agility, employee satisfaction and engagement, increased wellbeing and balance, reduced stress and a stronger sense of belonging, to name a few.

Adding structure to flexibility may sound like a contradictory concept; however, the more structured the approach, the bigger the benefits and impact of flexible working. Every organisation should have fundamentals in place to enable a genuine culture shift. I boil them down to what I like to call The Culture Change Trifecta.

1. Vision and values

Once leaders commit to shifting company culture, the opportunity exists to better articulate vision and values and to bring them to life. Having a clear vision that everyone understands and can connect with gives people a shared purpose and can go as far as to energise and inspire change.

Core company values define and guide the behaviour that you want in your business as you work towards achieving your vision. They set the tone and behavioural framework for the kind of company culture you want to shape. So ask yourself, ‘what is The Why and does everyone get it?’ Because if they don’t get it, starting from a place that lacks shared connection and purpose will likely result in the impact of any people and cultural enhancements being very short lived.

Electric Kiwi has a humming flexible working culture, which can be partly attributed to its entrepreneurial mindset of maximising automation. Its flexible working culture has also grown somewhat organically – a sign of the new era of working. The business started its journey five years ago as a small start-up in Auckland. In 2018 it was the winner of the Consumer NZ People’s Choice Award and overall winner of the Deloitte Fast 50 Award for New Zealand’s fastest-growing company.

Huia Burt, co-founder and Director of Electric Kiwi, says they’ve focused on automating daily business processes as much as possible, to ensure their people are working on high-value activities that enhance customer experience.

“This means we’re not tied to manual process timetables. We give everyone space for critical thinking, which can be done at different times and in other locations,” says Huia.

2. Performance

It takes confidence and trust to manage a team of flexible workers successfully, so having an effective performance development system is essential. A sound performance management system is one where your leaders can set clear expectations with their people, practise collaborative goal setting and provide live feedback so that you can be sure of your people’s performance, no matter when and where the work gets done.

This is important at Xero and Electric Kiwi. Electric Kiwi also has a globally dispersed workforce, with offices in Auckland, Brisbane and India, and one employee based in Tauranga and three in Newcastle, Australia.

“Even when our team member from Tauranga comes to the Auckland office he is still working remotely from the perspective of our teams in Australia and India,” says Huia. This goes to show the power of technology in an era where work is more about what you do rather than where you do it.

“Being a retailer, we need to work to customer volumes, so our service team are on shifts to ensure the needs of our customers are always being met. That being said, we are fully cloud-based, so our people can work from anywhere. It’s good for them, it’s good for the business, and it’s good for business continuity planning too,” says Huia.

3. Leadership development

It’s not uncommon in many businesses that people have progressed through their area of expertise only to find themselves in a position where they’re responsible for leading and inspiring others, with no formal management or leadership training.

It is no wonder then that leaders can feel apprehensive about managing flexible working and other culture-enhancing initiatives. Whether it’s one-on-one coaching and training, group or workshop training, peer discussions or a fully fledged leadership development programme, source the support for your leaders to transform them from managers to coaches, primed to get the best out of their people and to drive cultural change with confidence.

Ryan leads by example with his team of six millennials, who are spread between Auckland, Wellington, Toronto and London, proudly referring to it as the ‘Poster Team’ of flexible working at Xero. Ryan not only works flexibly himself, working from home when he needs to and fitting his start and finish times in around other commitments, but he also supported a couple of his team members’ decisions to work abroad.

Electric Kiwi’s culture of flexible working is also led by the business owners and managers, which sets the tone for the rest of the team. People have a choice of where they work, but mostly their team prefer to be in the office.

“There are several reasons people choose to be in the office. Given the younger demographic of a large portion of our team, some of them prefer the social aspect of being in a team environment, some of them live close by, so our CBD location is ideal for them, and some don’t have the space required to work from home. They also know that just because they’re in the office doesn’t mean they have to stay until 5 pm. What’s important is that the choice is theirs. It means that when people are in the office, they’re engaged and happy, which is good for collaboration and knowledge sharing,” says Huia.

Size doesn’t matter

Whether it’s a business with eight employees, 88 or 3,000, the journey to building a great company culture is remarkably similar, with the same challenges, building blocks and strategies to get there. Just because you’re bigger, doesn’t necessarily mean you’re better.

Take Rose Barbarich from General Collective, for example. Her inspiring business-growth story of humble beginnings started in 2014 with the joining of forces of ‘creative’ friends with lovely home and fashion wares to sell. Over the next five years, her concept snowballed. She now has an ever-growing following, with thousands of market-goers at each event and attracting over 380 independent designers and creatives from across New Zealand to secure their event stalls.

Working flexibly wasn’t necessarily a conscious choice, but instead a natural consequence of growing a business with fluctuations in busy periods, where contractors are engaged to pick up the overflow.

The only major difference that strikes me is organisational maturity and the degree of readiness that businesses have for cultural change – this means, how well established the people and culture fundamentals are – if at all. And if the fundamentals aren’t in place, what I see and hear is that these organisations aren’t ready to make lasting, impactful cultural change – like becoming a fully fledged flexible workplace, for instance, embracing a wellness programme or becoming truly ‘agile’.

However, with The Culture Change Trifecta in place, well supported by robust internal communication and ways of seeking regular feedback from your people, you’re ready to tackle embedding and enhancing your company culture. Start by talking to your employees to find out what motivates them. From there, you can start to shape your flexible working strategy and the supporting framework.