Make Your Office Schedule More Flexible in 2019

Deadlines are important. Right now, your entire company might be feeling the stress of impending holiday time crunches and quarterly deadlines. This is the most important quarter of the year for most businesses, but it’s also the time when everyone is out of the office and hard to track down. If you’re trying to organize some last minute meetings and sales, it can be frustrating. But don’t let that persuade you to enact strict office attendance policies for next year. Here are two ways flexible scheduling can help tight deadlines:

1. Have loose start times so employees have shorter commutes.

Sometimes your employees have to come into the office, and telecommuting just won’t work out. If this is true for your company, relax the 8 a.m. requirement. If your office’s workday starts at the same time as everyone else’s workday, then that leaves your employees sitting in hours of traffic. Not only is that a bad way to start off the morning, it means employees will start to come up with their own solutions.

Ask if your employees want staggered start times. Some of them will want to come in later once traffic has died down, and some of your employees will happily come in earlier as long as they can leave early without stigma.

2. Don’t attach accountability to time.

If you measure productivity by how many hours an employee spends in the office, you’re not measuring productivity. That penalizes employees who work quickly and encourages everyone to just wait out the clock. Instead, give your employees the responsibility to get their work done well according to their own preferences.

This also helps employees manage personal events that take place during typical work hours. Instead of work falling behind because people had to go to the bank or pick up their child from school, you can just measure results. This freedom also means inflexible meetings won’t be such a chore.

Go to Tangram for the best ways to incorporate flexibility into the schedule next year.