Ever heard of Parkinson’s Law? The adage that, work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Without realising it, every time you hire someone, your company perpetuates Parkinson’s Law. You miss out on the opportunity to embrace flexible working and in doing so, delay becoming a visionary, high-performance, go-to employer for millions of highly capable employees who are longing to feel part of something more meaningful. Here’s how...

We hear lots about flexible working at the moment:

• Millennials see nothing but the measurement of profits and time spent being ‘present’ in the office, rather than being bought into a larger purpose and given autonomy to excel.

• Parents complain of the filthy looks they get when they leave the office at 5pm to start their second job (being a parent), having put in 8-hours solid, productive graft.

• Companies want to reduce their expensive city-centre office needs by demanding that employees work from home at least 2 days a week. All the while, managers within those same companies resist as they stress over whether their people will be watching TV more than working.

• High profile influencers like Mother Pukka can be seen delivering TED-talks comparing today’s workers to battery hens, suggesting that we fight for the right to work flexibly.

What problem is common to each of these?

They each want flexible working, but none seems to have suggested a solution. They don't appear to have fundamentally understood why companies (more likely managers) are, in general, reticent to cede control of their people and embrace what should be an incredible differentiator for employees and employers alike.

We can’t blame technology. After all, each of us has the ability to work from anywhere in the world at anytime and access our desktop as if we were sitting in the office.

And let’s not kid ourselves that by insisting people work from the office, they don’t waste time. I have seen many hours wasted by people in offices, probably more than if they had worked from home.

It was a conversation with my wife, that caused me to stumble across the idea. I think it must have been cooking for a few days having heard a radio programme (where I heard about the parent getting filthy looks, see above). The idea was so simple, so radical, that even I hesitated as I suggested it.

She was talking about how a friend (a manager) was vehemently opposed to the concept of flexible working, in this case, people working from home. As is often the case when I hear about vehement opposition , I asked why they should be so opposed to it as long as their people got the job done; as long as they achieved their outcomes. It transpired that no real outcomes had been defined. Ah! Now we were getting somewhere.

Part of the problem (but not the root of the problem) is that managers are actually quite poor at defining well thought-out objectives. Instead, they rely on two things: activity based job descriptions (activities that often don’t actually produce results), and a minimum amount of time that an employee is contracted to work.

But how many podcasts, articles, blogs and videos talk about the need for organisations to define a clear vision (outcome) in order to succeed. It’s the most basic and obvious of suggestions, and is so rarely done.

We could train managers to set effective objectives but this wouldn’t fix the problem either. Why not?

The reason managers don't set effective objectives is because they simply don’t need to!

There is a age-old construct that most managers fall back on which prevents them from having to set well thought-out objectives. It’s called the 37-hour contract (or 35, or 40 hours, whichever is used in your company). Managers have a get out of jail free card that allows them to demand that people sit in the office for at least 37 hours a week while they watch and direct their people, mostly unproductively.

What would happen if we removed the minimum-time safety net altogether? What would happen if managers themselves were given clear objectives, and were given only the setting of effective objectives, and adherence to clear company values as levers for performance in their people?

They’d become pretty bloody good at setting objectives, sharpish. Because they simply wouldn’t achieve their own objectives without it.

So, here’s my solution.

Let’s ditch the 37-hour a week employment contract.

I'm serious! Let’s remove the biggest enabler of Parkinson’s Law and instead, change employment contracts so that an employee is deemed to have performed adequately as long as they have delivered the outcomes that they have been set and have adhered to the company's values, ONLY. This would mean that if no objectives (outcomes) had been set by their manager they would automatically have delivered what is required of them and they need only act in line with company values.

There’s also a productivity angle here. If you give your people a sense of autonomy (one of the three elements fundamental to intrinsic motivation, as described by Daniel Pink in his brilliantly simple TED-talk), by setting objectives and giving freedom over the time, location and method of delivery, your people will become far more productive than you ever believed. After all, they have a reason to be. If they get the job done in less time, they get back something more valuable than money…time. They would be more efficient and deserve to be rewarded for that. Their reward is to stop working, or go home, if they want.

The funny thing is that some of them won’t go home.

Some will ask for more work.

They will be intrinsically motivated. By asking for more work they will differentiate themselves from their peers and immediately single themselves out as worthy of a bonus or pay-rise, or a future promotion (as long as that’s what they see in their future).

Summary

At present, flexible working is one of the biggest barriers to your company increasing productivity, employee engagement and employee wellbeing.

The mere existence of a 37-hour a week employment contract is incentivising your managers to not set effective objectives and instead insist that people work in the office where they can be seen.

By removing the minimum number of hours from your employees' contract and writing in performance based on the delivery of objectives and the living of your company's values, your managers will be forced to set clear and effective objectives rather than activity based job-descriptions.

You will be incentivising efficiency rather than promoting Parkinson’s Law.

Your people will deliver more reliably and may even ask for more work. At that point, you won’t care, where, how or when they do it. You’ll only care that they are happier, more productive and that you have a healthier bottom-line and have conquered the flexible working culture issue.