To increase employee flexibility on their teams, managers need guidance and support — otherwise, they could burn out on the job or check out to find a new one. Here are four ways managers can offer their teams flexibility without breaking under the coordination costs or significantly stalling progress.
Rethink When Employees Work Together
- For complex tasks that require teamwork, it’s not feasible to provide employees with complete flexibility (i.e., the ability to work for any duration at any time).
- Managers will need to think differently and deeply about project requirements and schedule accordingly.
Revisit What Employees Are Working On
Map out each part of the task and how they’re connected to one another to determine when scheduling bursts will be needed and when you can assign discrete pieces of the project to smaller subgroups. Record and update all of this information in a shared location.
Rethink Who Works Together
- In workplaces with less physical and temporal overlap between employees, managers may also need to reorganize their larger teams into multiteam systems of smaller, empowered, and interconnected groups.
- Converting your team of nine into three teams of three empowers them to make decisions and makes it easier for employees to help coordinate their work.
Rethink Information Sharing
- When employees were co-located and working roughly similar hours, it was easier to keep everyone on the same page with meetings and learn about important issues by walking around.
- Long waits for status updates or answers to questions can kill productivity.
- Managers should consider dusting off some classic project management tools such as the RACI matrix.
