What Flexibility Really Means

Published by Ryan Healy on March 5th, 2007 in Noteworthy, Productivity, Work/Life | 7 Comments

I recently read a comment to a very interesting posting by Penelope Trunk titled What Obama Means to the Workplace. Don't worry I will not get into politics or my opinion on the article. I am more interested in the comment posted by a baby boomer manager who appears to be unimpressed with Gen Ys attitude toward work. The comment more or less describes her Gen Y employees as selfish, immature people who still live with their parents, but make enough money to buy designer clothes, shoes and handbags. She further went on to complain about these workers leaving at five pm, while their older peers remained at the office.

To say the least, this comment infuriated me and prompted me to write this post about flexibility. Flexibility means I have enough time in the day to; complete my work, exercise, run errands, read, relax and catch my favorite television shows. If I leave for work at 7:30 in the morning and don't return until eight or nine in the evening, how can I possibly accomplish all of these things?

I can only imagine what baby boomer managers who happen to be reading this must be thinking. Probably something along the lines of, who does this kid think he is? Or everyone has to work late to complete some tasks. Yes, this is completely true, often times leaving work at five will not cut it. If you have a major deliverable due the next day or you are simply behind on your work the typical 8 hour work day is not enough.

My peers also recognize this fact and we will not hesitate to work until the job is done. We spent our 4 years in college cramming until all hours of the night for tests and spending countless days researching and writing papers. We know what hard work is, and we know that sometimes you have to sacrifice your social life, exercise and favorite TV shows for the greater good.

However, from my minimal work experience and countless conversations with peers I have discovered that often times us entry level workers don't actually have a lot to do during the day. How much sense does it make to stay in the office until five if we can finish everything by two? Forcing us to spend three extra hours in the office for a little face time instead of giving us the freedom to leave and run some errands or spend a little extra time at the gym will send my peers and me running for the exits at five pm every day. Eventually we will run to the next employer who doesn't concern themselves with unproductive face time.

The only reason this system actually does make sense to many older employees is because it is how the system has always worked. You put in your 8+ hour day, every day. In case nobody noticed, this is the same system that was implemented 150 years ago during the industrial revolution when employees cranked out widgets on an assembly line!

My suggestion is to do away with this notion of a minimum amount of time worked in a day or week. Face time does not equal productivity. Hard work does equal productivity. Focus on the quality of the work being produced rather than the time of day someone leaves the office and you will have happy and productive Gen Y workers. In case you haven't heard, our generation is one of the most self driven, entrepreneurially spirited generations in recent history. Allow us to have this flexibility of getting the job done, regardless of how much or how little time it takes and we will return the favor with an excellent product.

Obviously other factors such as allowing us to occasionally telecommute and providing adequate vacation time will contribute to this flexibility that we demand. These topics will surely be covered in the near future on this site. However, doing away with this idiotic concept that everyone must work a minimum number of hours to do a good job is an easy way to give us the flexibility that we crave while simultaneously improving worker productivity.

Leave your thoughts here. (7 responses)

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Penelope Trunk

Mar 5th, 2007 at 4:03 am

Hi, Ryan. This is a fun post. I laughed out loud at the part about how you can get all your work done by 2pm.

I am really looking forward to what you have to say in the next post.

Congratulations on launching the blog!

Penelope

Matt

Mar 5th, 2007 at 4:37 am

I agree. I am relatively new to the workplace and I often spend a few hours of my day trying to look busy. I complete all my tasks and never miss any deadlines, but if I decide to leave a few minutes early I get awkward comments and get gawked at by let's say the "veteran" employees. I am actually one of few recent graduates I know of that enjoy their job, but the politics that go into being successful and climbing the corportate ladder seem pointless. I will do what I have to in order to be successful, but if my company were to reward based on merit instead of this so-called "face time" I would be a much more fulfilled and motivated.

Jeff C.

Mar 5th, 2007 at 8:01 pm

I am one of the recent grads who is not enjoying my job. I work at a corporate office, and I need to be here 830-530, and leaving early, ha that is definitely not a possibility. However that is not my main problem with the corporate culture of today. My main problem would be the communication process, which has a direct affect on not only my job and productivity but the department as a whole. I think it is completely absurd that I need to email my supervisor, to get permission to email my boss, to get permission to email a manager of a different department who can help me with a problem. All of this process can take hours, and even days if my supervisor, or manager does not see the problem as urgent. So why couldn't I have just emailed this person (they are still human beings who work here, just like you and me) and gotten a response in about 10 minuets? I wish I knew the answer to that question. So for now my biggest pet peeve, or thing that "Grinds my gears" is that I can not get my job done without asking permission basically.

This has numerous affects on me, one being it makes me hate my job. Because its not like I am just doing these emails, and communications once a day. It is more like I am doing these communications HUNDREDS of times a day. So I am not just complaining, it really is hampering my productivity.

That is just one of the many reasons why I can not stand the corporate environment. I think that the way the "rookies" are treated makes them not work as hard, and not make the company as much money. Maybe if we had more freedom, and RESPECT then we would work harder, be happier, and enjoy our jobs.

Sorry for ranting, but it is currently 3:00pm and I have 2 and a half more hours of this wonderful cubicle and being treated like a 3rd grader.

Ryan

Mar 6th, 2007 at 12:06 am

Jeff, Thanks for the great response. It's actually kind of funny you bring this up, because I was struggling with a similar overly bureaucratic problem at work today too. Organizations, especially large ones seem to be built with so many hierarchical layers that when you are on the bottom, you literally can't even see, much less communicate with people at the top. Companies are slowly flattening because this notion of a formal hierarchy just will not work for our generation. Theres an interesting comment to a post I just read about this. The writer attributes our generations inability to adapt to this hierarchical structure to the fact that we grew up with these social networks and the internet itself. Who knows, but we plan to explore this in the near future

Mary Ellen

Mar 11th, 2007 at 9:18 pm

Dear Ryan,

I hope that I am writing to you. Your website is fantastic. I read it quickly and will take time in the near future to carefully reread it. I adore the comments on "face-time". This is not necessarily inter-generationaly – this has been around for a long time. I always arrived early working for a large corporation, years before you were born, but it was the people that stayed LATE, that got the credit for "face time", even though that may have only been an additional 15 to 20 minutes. If you don't recognize the name, you were at my house this past Saturday in the company of Gilman. Yours, Mary Ellen

Ryan

Mar 12th, 2007 at 3:00 pm

Mary Ellen,

Thanks so much for your response and for remembering to check out the site. The post on flexibility was actually written by my partner (the other Ryan), but the idea remains the same in my job as well.

It really drives me nuts sometimes. The people that sit around for that extra 15 to 20 minutes are only still there because there's nothing else in their life valuable enough to be doing. That may be a big generalization on my part, but it seems to hold true at my job.

For me, being a very outgoing individual, I like to participate in activities not limited to my cubicle, such as going to the gym, writing on my blog, or getting a bite to eat with some friends.

There's only so many hours in the day! If you don't have anything left for me to do, for god sake, let me live!

I hope to hear from you more as we continue to post new thoughts.

Adam

May 4th, 2007 at 1:10 pm

Couldn't agree more!!! I've been trying to convince my employer to let me telecommute for over a year (I have a very long drive to work), but they keep telling me how important "face time" is. Baloney. Working remotely one or two days a week isn't going to kill us. More often than not, I work autonomously in my office ALL DAY with very little interaction with co-workers. What little interaction does happen could just have easily been handled via email or phone. Take a look at the ROWE program that Best Buy started: http://www.culturerx.com/
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