So you’ve been asked by your leadership to evaluate whether your company's flex work strategy is working. The question was bound to come.
We’re 3 years into this experiment and we’re seeing behemoths like Amazon giving up on the flex work dream. Your CEO is no doubt under pressure and being asked by your board what makes us so special?
So how do you go about evaluating a flexible work strategy?
We’re helping organizations do just that. Below are some of the common issues we’re seeing in our research into flex work and metrics we’re using to help organizations identify them. Think of this as a way to build your flex work scorecard…
1. Are people quiet quitting?
Metric to track: % of people who have become severely disengaged
Quiet quitting is a sensitive topic but regardless it is top of mind for many leaders when it comes to questions about flexible work. Leaders may worry that flex work is creating an environment that encourages people to completely check out. In previous research we have found that this extreme form of disengagement is relatively rare. But even then it does occur it is usually driven by factors within an organization's control. The most significant predictor of quiet quitting we found was lack of manager attention. For instance remote team members without regular manager 1:1s were significantly more likely to become disengaged over time. Presenting this aggregate level trend data to leaders along with ideas for actions to mitigate the occurrence of this issue can go a long way to easing their concerns. Pretending it doesn’t exist is a good way to lose leadership’s trust in your flex work program.
2. Are people maintaining their networks or becoming isolated?
Metric to track: % of people who are highly isolated
A common risk we’ve seen in distributed and flexible organizations is that certain people on the fringe are more likely to become gradually less connected to peers. In the most extreme cases this can result in people becoming completely isolated from their teams and the rest of the org. This is often just a natural consequence of being ‘out of sight, out of mind’ and the organization failing to proactively encourage healthy connection. A successful flex work strategy needs to take this risk into account and take action to minimize it.
3. Is your organization becoming more siloed?
Metric to track: Average number of cross-functional connections per person
Our research shows that with less in-person face time people’s networks tend to narrow. They may still work just as much with peers in their direct workflow but over time they lose broader connections in other departments or functions. The net result is that flex work organizations can become significantly more siloed. A successful flex work strategy must include a plan to maintain these cross functional networks that are vital to innovation and maintaining healthy culture.
4. Are people visiting the office frequently enough to stay connected?
Metric to track: Cross-functional network size by frequency of office visit
One way to address the potential increase in organizational silos is to encourage more face-time. Time in the office increases serendipitous connection and thereby the breadth of people’s networks. By combining badge and collaborative network data one can get a good sense of how often people should come into the office in order to take advantage of this effect. The frequency required depends heavily on the quality of in office time. If time in the office encourages broader connection then it tends to be far more beneficial in this regard. This data can help drive guidelines for recommended frequency of office visits.
5. Does your travel policy support remote employees visiting HQ frequently enough?
Metric to track: Network decay after in-office visit.
With greater flexibility we generally see more geographic distribution of teams. This means that in order for teams to connect face to face people need to travel. The question is how do you balance the needs for connection and flexibility with increasingly tight travel budgets. Well it turns out after an office visit we see a big bump in people’s collaborative networks which tends to decline over time as they return home. By analyzing this trend across various teams and offices one can generate data driven travel guidelines to ensure remote employees stay connected while still limiting the use of travel budget to where it is most needed.
6. Are visits to the office intentional?
Metrics to track: % of peers, managers or execs seen when visiting the office
Flexibility work invariably leads to less time in the office. It is therefore more important that when people do make the time to travel to the office that they are making the best use of that time. A negative pattern we commonly see in flexible work is a lack of intentionality in office visits. People travel into the office once per month and perhaps coordinate with one other colleague but do not coordinate as a broader team or with other teams to ensure they are maximizing on that time. Ensuring that office visits are taken advantage of is key to ensuring a successful flexible work program. This can be achieved by encouraging managers to more intentionally plan in-office time or defining in office policies that promote greater peer density.
8. Are managers reaching out to their teams?
Metrics to track: Manager 1:1 frequency or Manager co-attendance of meetings
As mentioned in point 1, the strangest predictor of quiet quitting is lack of manager engagement. In flexible work environments it is more important than ever that managers are proactive about keeping regular contact team members. In particular managers play a critical role in ensuring that remote and/or distributed team members remain connected with their teams. Flexible work strategies are highly dependent on engaged managers.
9. Are people getting in-person facetime with their managers?
Metric to track: Weeks since manager facetime
Research indicates some semi regular frequency face time with one's manager is important for maintaining connection. In fact we’ve found that individuals who go over around 4 months without manager face time are significantly more less likely to agree that they feel supported by their managers. By combining badge data with data from the calendar one can approximate the time since every individual last met face to face with their direct manager. This KPI can be aggregated up to give you a sense of where in the organization flex work is making people less connected to their managers.
10. Are people getting exposure to leaders / execs?
Metrics to track: Exec face time or exec meeting co-attendance
Flexible work programs tend to lead to lower face-to-face exposure to leaders. You’re in the office less frequently and when you are in the office you’re less likely to coincide with leaders. You’re also more likely to be distributed and be going into a different office from that of your direct leaders. The net result is there is a greater risk of loss of connection with leadership. Lower exposure to leadership is problematic for a number of reasons. It provides less opportunity for leaders to impart company vision and culture. It may also limit people’s access to information and opportunities within the organization. Flexible work programs need to proactively drive connection with leaders in order to ensure their success. This issue can be identified by tracking aggregate levels of connection with leaders over digital channels or in-person during office visits using badge-ins as a proxy.
11. Are new hires successfully integrating into your organization?
Metric to track: New hire network ramp rate
Joining a new organization with a flexible work program can be particularly challenging. It may be weeks or even longer before you meet your entire team in person. You are also less likely to be introduced to people outside of your direct team and in other functions unless your organization is particularly proactive about bringing you into the fold. This process of integration into an organization can be measured by comparing the growth rates of different collaborative networks for various cohorts of new hires. By tracking this metric organizations can ensure their flex work programs are built to ensure the inclusion and success of new hires.
12. Are people still being responsive?
Metric to track: Average Slack or Teams response times
Flexible organizations allow for more flexible schedules as well as increased odds that teams are more geographically distributed. One potential negative side effect of this change is teams may experience slower response times from remote peers. This is not a problem in the general case but at the extreme it can significantly slow down workflows and decision making. There are several metrics one can use to identify this issue but a typically useful proxy is Slack or Teams response times. How long does it take for the average person to respond to a new question sent over chat? A couple of hours is okay but consistently taking many hours can be quite problematic.
13. Do you have enough overlap on distributed teams?
Metric to track: Workday hours overlap among close collaborators
As discussed above, flexible work programs tend to go hand in hand with greater geographic distribution of an organization's workforce. This is a blessing in that it allows for access to a far wider pool of talent but also introduces challenges as teams may be split over multiple timezones. People working on flexible schedules and over multiple time zones may find it challenging to find sufficient overlap for collaborative work. This overlap in availability can be measured using organizational data and organizations can do much to ensure their flexible work programs take this flex work challenge into account.
14. Have you effectively adopted asynchronous collaboration or are meetings taking over?
Metrics to track: % of collaboration time that is asynchronous and focus time
Much has been written about the explosion in meetings brought about by the shift toward remote and hybrid work over the past few years. An explosion of time spent in countless recurring meetings, check-ins and coordination events has made it incredibly hard for people to find time for focused individual work. A key component to the success of a flexible work program is ensuring that your organization promotes asynchronous forms of collaboration. These allow people to determine when they want to respond within their flexible schedules. Fortunately this transition to synchronous work can be directly measured by comparing collaboration data from various synchronous and asynchronous collaboration channels.
15. Is your office or space suited for flex work?
Metrics to track: Meeting room demand and utilization during spikes in attendance
Flexible work tends to lead to “spikey” in-office attendance. Office occupancy may be low most of the time but will spike up close to capacity during end of year planning or similar employee high density onsite events. What’s worse is that greater distribution has significantly shifted what people need from their office spaces. People are far more likely to spend a large portion of their days in hybrid meetings with a small number of peers in the office and others offsite. There is now a far greater need for smaller 1 to 5 person spaces and less need for far larger spaces. As a result people are left waiting for space or struggling to get work done as peers take calls in open spaces. These issues make people less likely to want to visit the office and to benefit from time in person with peers.