Summary
What is work flexibility? Against what dimensions is flexibility typically offered?
Preamble
This blog is about work. How and where we work, and why the discussion generated by these questions is relevant to the future of work. The world of work is evolving. This blog will provide some history and context, highlight the push and pull between employees and employers, and sample some Return To Office (RTO) policy considerations. It’s important enough to repeat: The world of work is evolving. Correspondingly, this blog will try to keep pace.
Definitions of Flexibility
The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on how, and where, many people work. Prior to the pandemic, the vast majority of workers spent 5 days in the office every week. The shutdowns in response to the pandemic forced employees to work from home, or not at all, for an extended period of time. Different companies and different industries reopened their offices at various points after the shutdown was enacted. Many companies did not emerge from the shutdown. The current state of work has stabilized somewhat, but companies continue to tweak their policies for how often their employees must be in the office, ranging from fully remote to fully in-office, and just about every arrangement in between. There is an ongoing debate about whether a return to a pre-pandemic state of work makes sense, with a constant push and pull between employees and employers. Before we dive into the debate, we’re going to take a moment to identify and delineate the various terms and options being bandied about.
Presence flexibility
One dimension that an employer may define in their work policy is the amount of time that an employee must be in the office. We define this dimension as “presence flexibility”. Presence flexibility is usually the first, and most often the only, dimension that gets highlighted with regards to RTO policies. It includes the primary options and variants listed below.
Fully in-office
Fully in-office can be characterized as “The employer mandates that all employees are required to be in the office when working.”
Fully remote
Fully remote can be characterized as “The employer allows the employee to work remotely all the time.” Two main variants of fully remote are:
“No choice fully remote” - The company has no physical office and therefore all employees are required to work remotely.
“Employee choice fully remote” - Employees can choose when, or even if, they want to work in the office, i.e. no minimum number of required in-office days.
Hybrid
The dictionary defines “hybrid” as “a thing made by combining two different elements”. Naturally, the hybrid model combines some portion of time working from an office location and some portion of time working remotely. In reality, there are multiple flavors of hybrid work:
Minimum number of days - The company decides that employees must be in the office a minimum of two days every week, and leaves the specific days to each employee. The employee is given the freedom to work remotely for the remainder of the time.
Minimum percent of time - The company may decide that employees must be in the office 40% of each month or quarter. Individual employees can adhere to this rule in their own way. Employee A may opt to be in the office two days every week for the duration of the month. Employee B may opt to be in the office five days a week for two weeks, and fully remote for the remainder of the month.
Specific days - The company decides that employees must be in the office every Tuesday and Wednesday. The employee may be given the freedom to work remotely for the remainder of the time.
Minimum number of days and specific days - A combination of two options above: The company decides that employees must be in the office three days per week, with two of those days being Tuesday and Wednesday. Each employee is free to choose the third day of each week that they’re in the office. The employee is given the freedom to work remotely for the remainder of the time.
Time flexibility
“Time flexibility” is slightly different from presence flexibility. Presence flexibility typically masquerades as time flexibility, with the assumption that the in-office hours are highly overlapping - 9am to 5pm or something close to this window. Time flexibility, in its more pure form, is the ability for an employee to pick not just the days that they work in the office, but the hours as well. Let’s say a company decides on a work policy of 40% of each month, with time flexibility. As described above, Employee A comes into the office two days every week, and Employee B comes into the office every day for the first two weeks of the month and works fully remotely for the next two weeks. Time flexibility provides a third option: Employee C may choose to be in the office from 10am-1pm every weekday of the month, thereby meeting the requirement of 40% of each month in the office.
Location flexibility
Many people assume that “location flexibility” is the ability to work from home. In reality, location flexibility is less restrictive. Possible alternate work locations may include: employer-provided shuttle bus, coffee shop, hair stylist, mechanic’s shop, hotel, beach, pool, cruise vacation, etc. While most companies’ RTO policies imply location flexibility when working remotely, it is important to confirm - some companies may have restrictions for a number of reasons.
On a personal note: The author has worked from all of the alternate locations above, except one. We leave it to the reader to guess which one.
The Bottom Line
The pandemic was devastating for a number of reasons. One silver lining is the sheer variety of work options created as a result of pushing through the shutdowns. Despite the variety of options, the majority of RTO policies are summed up in one dimension only: presence flexibility. We agree that presence flexibility is the most impactful for a majority of employees, but there is definitely a non-trivial minority of workers who would greatly benefit from other dimensions of flexibility.
Up Next
Our Shameless Pitch
Regardless of which work policy your company chooses to implement, The Parking Lottery can help make your employees’ in-office experience more palatable and less frustrating. A more fulfilling in-office experience leads to higher employee retention. It’s also a perk that serves as a differentiator to attract new talent. Contact us for more information.