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As more and more high-caliber candidates look for roles that provide greater flexibility, the concept of flexible working has been drawing a lot of attention within the employment and HR areas. This poses a big problem for many managers, who realistically can’t change their existing culture overnight, or create state-of-the-art workplaces to support extreme flexibility, and hence could find their organizations missing out on great talent. However, Activity-Based Working (ABW) can provide a solution by helping businesses to slowly usher in simple and effective ways for their employees to work flexibly, without harboring substantial expenses. Read on to find out how.

What is Activity-Based Working?

Traditionally, work environments were tailored to people’s role and not the projects or work they were working on. In essence, if you were an executive, you were likely given a private, quiet office. If you weren’t, you would be in an open-plan environment, but open-plan didn’t necessarily mean higher productivity.

Some employers then began to shift their focus to getting the most out of their employees by engaging them with the task at hand. To that end, ABW was designed to enable people to decide how, when, and where they worked depending on the project or task they needed to complete. These could include spaces for hot or stand-up desks, project rooms, and quiet and break out areas, or enabling people to work from home or in any one of your offices. ABW isn’t simply about working from home or a remote location though, it’s about encouraging people to use collaborative strategies and technology, such Trello and Slack, combined with shared workplaces and external locations to deliver the best possible outcomes.

How Can Activity-Based Working Benefit My Business?

There are many benefits to embracing ABW. A report from Samsung on ABW in Australia found that employers that adopted flexibility had better team collaboration, less need for organized meetings, more knowledge sharing and innovation, improved project management, better customer-engagement and less office leasing space and costs. All-in-all, the combination of these benefits will help promote your business as an employer of choice and boost your ability to attract exceptional candidates and retain top performers, all whilst cutting operational costs at the same time.

That being said, the same report also found that the two biggest roadblocks to ABW were staff preferring their own desks, and conflicts with existing company culture or hierarchy. So, if you’re looking to bring flexibility to your workforce in any capacity, it’s important to consider the human element. For any initiative to be successful, a culture of trust and empowerment is crucially needed.

The first step in bringing ABW to your business is to evaluate your current work environment and identify potential challenges and resistance. ABW requires different working practices and policies so your staff will need guidance through any changes. For example, some employees may require fixed desks and resources to perform at their best. So, if you plan to replace the traditional working style for a more fluid approach by introducing hot-desks, project rooms and quiet areas, these people might become concerned that their desks and resources will be taken away from them. One way around this is to introduce “neighborhoods”, where certain teams or departments are kept together to some degree (however loosely that may be is entirely up to you). This enables a more fluid approach, but ensures that it doesn’t become “too flexible” – a common criticism of ABW – giving people a happy medium between flexibility and consistency.

Successfully introducing flexibility requires buy-in from your people. So, engaging your teams through workshops and surveys can help you to discover what concerns and issues they have with your proposed changes. Addressing those concerns by adapting your plans will help to build trust and empowerment throughout its implementation. Afterwards, using engagement surveys can help to identify how your staff are getting on with the changes and keep that trust and empowerment strong. Finally, constantly reviewing your ABW strategy against your business’s changing needs can ensure it continues to benefit your organization and its people.

Summary

Whilst the world of work is rapidly changing, for many employers, it’s still not feasible to provide flexible working arrangements to their entire workforce without serious amendments to their existing culture. However, if you’re willing to dedicate time and resources to building a better, more fluid working environment, ABW can provide tremendous value to your business, including promoting it as an employer of choice to exceptional talent. If bringing flexibility to your business sounds a little out of reach though, we have fantastic HR practitioners ready to help you through any organisation change on a full-time or contract basis.

I hope you enjoyed reading this article. For more advice on ABW or to get connected to Australia’s fantastic HR professionals, get in touch today.