Our customers regularly ask for ideas, designs and solutions for agile or flexible working. The Covid-19 crisis accelerated that need. Agile and flexible working are different things, but we notice that they are regularly confused. That leads to confusion and so we shed some light on it.
What is flexible working?
Flexible working has been around for a long time. It refers to flexible, alternative working hours that deviate from the business norm. It concerns work agreements between employers and employees, often on an individual basis.
This way of working meets the need of employees to work from home, to organize their own working hours, to work in duo jobs and to work part-time. This can make a significant contribution to productivity, commitment, well-being, a better work-life balance, reduction of absenteeism and employee satisfaction.
But it is all centered around the employee. And that is different from agile working.
An agile team revolves around the goals of the organization, or how they can achieve them.
Misconceptions about agile working
Agile working is an approach that enables people to work where, when and how they want to. You enable people - with technology, among other things - to perform their work as well as possible with the minimum effort and maximum flexibility.
There are some misunderstandings there.
In IT projects, for example, agile working refers to a form of project management that allows rapid prototyping, limited formal version control and a high degree of collaboration.
In our own profession, the term is often associated with office design, activity-based design, hot desking and optimal use of spaces.
Managers regularly present such a loose part as their agile strategy, while in practice this turns out to be a one-dimensional cost saving that could well yield the opposite result of a serious, fully-fledged agile strategy. They are just parts of the solution, of the complete infrastructure needed to achieve agility from a business perspective.
Real agile working comes from your willingness to quickly roll out all those partial solutions.
What is agile working then?
Agile working is about your efforts to enable new ways of working, such as collaboration, social interaction, secluded and concentrated work, spontaneous consultation in instant meetings or talking about the meeting in informal touchdown spots.
Agile working increases motivation and involvement within your organization. And so it is also about your priorities for the physical and mental well-being of your employees.
This requires freedom of movement in and around your work environment. And the careful dismantling of traditional constraints such as fixed desks, static technology and a non-ergonomic office design. This is replaced by a more innovative approach and ditto workplace design.
Everything becomes possible in this: an employee who wants to work in complete silence in a special acoustic pod. Or a group that chooses a setting that supports optimal collaboration, with integrated technology and furniture that can be set up and adjusted as required.
All this only works with an integrated approach. This offers you new opportunities to create a more responsive, efficient and effective organization.
If it succeeds, it will result in lower office costs and higher productivity and you will have less impact on your environment. You also attract new talent more easily and you invest in a future-proof organization.
What is the difference between flexible and agile working?
Flexible working mainly refers to flexibility in working hours and location. A flexible workplace does not make an organization agile. An agile team is.
Agile working goes much further and focuses on removing barriers in order to perform the work as efficiently as possible.
Flexible working is a change of habits. Agile working is a change of mindset.
You change that mindset based on the belief that work is an activity, not a place. It's how, not where, you work.
If you want to work agile, it requires a change of structure and management.
What does agile working mean for your work environment?
Creating a culture of choice and flexibility takes a lot of time and attention. A good strategy is tailor-made and has priority.
Then follows its rollout in your organization. Then interior design, furniture and technology are important drivers of your agile success. So call in an experienced consultant and designer for this, because it affects your business.
Below you will find a few points to consider for your design.
• Introduce hot desking for mobile employees
• Use collaboration technology such as Clickshare
• Consider modular, multi-functional furniture
• Arrange separate rooms for collaboration, breakout sessions, secluded work, relaxation, etc.
• Consider transforming your office into an open work environment (if not already the case) for more choice, freedom and control.
Learn more about designing a Covid-19 custom work environment.
Call or email us if you want to know more about creating an agile working environment or adapting your office to The New Normal.
