The words ‘agile’ and ‘smart’ working have been banded about a great deal in recent years. From management consultants and financial institutions to publishers and communications businesses, more and more organisations are being driven to considering new ways of working.
This has been due to a myriad of factors such as the changing needs of today’s workforce, from CEOs realisation that agility and flexibility is linked to business success and through a simple necessity to control operational costs. Whatever the driver, the cabinet office has emphasised the need for the UK to move away from ad hoc flexible working initiatives to a ‘systematic cultural shift’ in working practices. This has resulted in agile working gaining much traction and more publicity.
Before we go any further, some clarification of what is meant by agile or smart working.
‘Agile working is a way of working in which an organisation empowers its people to work where, when and how they choose – with maximum flexibility and minimum constraints.’
When we talk about agile or smart working there are some fundamental principles to consider in order to ensure that this new working culture gets off on the right foot and becomes embedded in the organisation.
Trust and Autonomy
A common barrier to introducing an agile culture effectively is the lack of trust that management may have with employees. A lack of trust in the fact that they will get their work done in their own time and lack of trust that employees will actually be working at all when allowed to work outside of a traditional office environment. Once this barrier is overcome agile working is much more likely to flourish. Ultimately organisations need to allow individuals to be more autonomous. A useful tip is for management and executive teams to lead by example. If they are seen as embracing agile working themselves, others will follow.
IT
For employees to work ‘where and when they choose’ they need the right resources to do so. This usually comes down to simple things such as availability of laptops and mobile phones but also more complex IT requirements such as shared filing facilities and web conferencing. Fundamentally if these technological resources and services aren’t in place, agile working will not be able to function for practical reasons alone.
Team Dynamics
The sense of ‘team’ can change when organisations move towards agile working. Research has shown that this tends to impact on younger members of the workforce more as well as new starters – particularly in industries that put a lot of emphasis on sociability and networking. Everything from team meetings to team nights out can be affected. The sense of camaraderie can suffer and there is a lot of responsibility on team managers to ensure teams connect for work purposes physically as well as socially on a regular basis. Time should be spent upfront strategically planning on how to manage a team that doesn’t always sit together BEFORE the move to agile working commences.
Communication
Another ramification of not working in close proximity with others in your team, department and organisation is that there is an obvious reliance on technology for communication purposes. Instead of asking questions and discussing projects or issues face to face email is the main medium. Good written communication skills are essential when you don’t have body language, facial expressions and voice to use and to ‘read’ in others. The ability to be able to tailor and flex your communication to others needs and preferences is essential in order to maintain relationships that are in the main conducted virtually.
Outcome Based Performance
Hours spent at your desk and ‘being seen’ to be working is replaced with getting tasked completed well and on time. Being judged by your performance alone rather than hours spent working is a big shift culturally in a lot of organisations that still reward staff who get in early and stay late. There is much evidence to suggest that by incorporating things you love into your working day, be it going for a run, taking a yoga class, Awatching comedy or reading a novel you become more productive and effective. Taking a look at staff performance reviews and appraisals to ensure they are in line with the move to agile working would be worthwhile. Some organisations change reviews completely with the change in working culture to reflect a review system which is more continuous and future facing such as monthly one-on-ones focusing on robust goals and objectives.
Processes
It is often only when teams work in a more virtual capacity that issues arise over processes. Agile working means it isn’t as easy to pop over to someone’s desk and ask for a particular file or to have a conversation face to face about progress on a project at the exact moment you need to. Particularly on large projects it becomes important to look at what processes are in place in terms of allocating roles and tasks as well as deadline management and reporting. Luckily there are many helpful tools that originate in the world of project management that can come become really useful such as RACI http://racichart.org/the-raci-model/
There is accumulating evidence on the benefits of agility and this evidence demonstrates that the top traits of any agile business are linked directly to people management practices. Practices such as having a high performance culture, a workforce that is collaborative and first class communication skills. As an accomplished training and coaching consultancy, Thrive can work in partnership with organisations and help set agile teams up for success. If you want to know more about the work we do with teams contact charlotte@thrive.sosdev.co.uk