Flexi working hours

We have been practicing flexi working hours for awhile though not too long.

The first thing about flexi working hours is that the responsibility falls heavily on the individuals to manage the time, job priority and accountability of his/her work area.

The worst of it is to mis-use the flexi working hours ie using less time on work as needed. It is not an issue to use the morning 1 to 2 hours to exercise or as family time with kids and then devote more focus and efforts on work at the appropriate time shortly. The purpose of the flexi working hours is to make individuals more productive at work. Hence, you can properly feel how individuals are coping with the flexibility by assessing one's quality of work. Of course, individuals will need to be given a bit of time to adapt to the new arrangements but should not take too long for it. One's quality/character/commitment could judge/assess would appear in the process.

The next observation to make is how much your supervisor and management believe or trust the individuals in the flexi working hours. It is definitely easy to preach by mouth and can fail pretty badly by actions. A new working arrangements with the supervisor or management has to be established along the way to make the system robust and effective. Some understanding is needed as well to support both parties in the a new working space/place.

The last challenge is how to build a flexible and effective team with excellent communication, co-ordination to meet organizations' objectives ? Flexi working hours mean properly less physical time/space with the team members and likely more time on air and the use of technology such as email, sms, conference call, facebook, twitter, intranet etc. Technology cannot replace the needed human presence to build trust, relationship and team. It can only facilitate it. Hence, all have to find more creative ways to build an effective team. All must also willing to make time to build a team. Individuals who dun feel part of the team or organization or no longer motivated will likely to drift further and further away from the team / organization.

The end result of the last challenge would be the mis-use of flexi working hours as shared earlier.