We don’t need more flexibility
Life can feel like a game of Twister
In 2009, I was working in my dream job as a policy analyst on the women’s economic advancement team at the United Kingdom’s Government Equalities Office. During my time there, our policy, The Right to Request Flexible Work, was passed into law, making it a statutory right for any employee to request flexible working arrangements, including in the days and hours they work, or where they work.
Coming from the U.S. – where we stick out as an international sore thumb for our lack of worker protections – this felt truly radical. I also grew up in a family where my mom would take half a day of vacation to bring us to doctor appointments.
Fast forward to today: flexible workplace policies are still the shiny pinnacle, and the golden ticket we pin our hopes on. When we collectively talk about work-life balance, flexible work arrangements seem to be the secret sauce that will open up all possibilities.
But, what does “flexibility” really mean? When I ask my clients, they define it as the ability to:
Pick my kids up from school
Go to a doctor’s appointment and then work from home afterwards
Work remotely when I need deep focus time
Is this flexibility, or is this just being an adult?
How we define “flexibility” in today’s work-life reality
For some of us, the notion of flexibility is literally Twister, where we’re “trying ourselves in knots” to reach any number of dots.
When laptops, smartphones, and an internet connection are our primary working tools, “flexibility” bleeds into our whole day, and our evening. For knowledge workers during the pandemic, it was inherent in our jobs – working from home meant you were always accessible. Caring for a sick family member during the day? Don’t worry, you can flex your time and answer emails in the evening.
Flexibility was supposed to offer us more autonomy over our work; and autonomy means power. But flexible work arrangements actually became a way to work more hours – from different locations, on a variety of devices, with an increasing number of methods (Slack, Teams, Zoom, Brightwheel, Asana, OneDrive, Google Drive, etc.).
We don’t need more flexibility. We need more agency.
What’s at the root of peoples’ pleas for more flexibility? It’s an expression of the unmet need to be treated like an adult. It’s the ability to have agency over:
Our work responsibilities
Our dependents and their care
Our individual pursuits for meaning in our daily lives
Our ability to have lives that make us healthy, well, and whole
That’s not flexibility, that’s agency. And it should not be optional.
If our work at Reframe is to help you clarify what matters and make a plan to turn it into a reality, then we’re doing you a disservice if we leave it at “I’m looking for a job with flexibility” because it’s not the root of the issue.
Agency is the ability to have autonomy over decisions that influence your whole life, and that includes having greater freedom in defining how we contribute in a meaningful way through our work.
So whether it's making time for school drop-offs or finding space for deep-focus work, we need agency over how to manage our time. That’s not something we can leave to our employers or manager.
Having more agency in our work lives
If you want more agency in your daily work life, start by asking what you’re really looking for: What’s most important? For example, it’s most important that I can:
Determine where I can best do deep-focus work (probably not in an office with an open floor-plan)
Plan my workday and feel safe to decline any day-of meeting requests
Block my calendar to do my most important work in the beginning of the day (or whenever I’m most focused)
If we don’t have this level of agency, disempowerment grows, resentment creeps in and people feel like children, who need permission to go to a doctor's appointment or fill out complicated paperwork to take paid leave. No one wants to feel that way! (And organizations don’t benefit from their employees existing in a state of disempowerment.)
Here’s some ideas of what agency can look like in the knowledge economy so many of us work in:
Asking for — and receiving — constructive feedback that supports our professional growth
Prioritizing one-on-one meetings over everyday “fires”
Being proactive with my calendar, instead of reactively saying “yes” to every meeting
Turning off my email when my work requires focused attention
Having a clear protocol for requesting time out of the office
Being empowered to ask for assistance from trained professionals or people managers before the burnout hits
Try this to start
Whether you’re staying in your current role or looking for a new opportunity, reflect on the parts of your role where you want more flexibility and consider the root of what you actually need. For example, you might have the flexibility to pick up your kids from school, but not feel the agency to set an out-of-office message directing people to a colleague, or letting them know you won’t be responding until the next business day.
To get at the root of your personal need for flexibility, try these prompts:
What specifically would have to change for you to have more agency?
What behaviors do you want explicit approval for?
What policies or protocols demonstrate agency to you?
What would more agency enable you to do? How would you show up differently?
Where flexible workplace policies were once the vision for a new way of working, greater agency is now the way forward. This frame has the power to foster ownership over how we contribute meaningfully in our careers and our lives. And when people thrive, organizations succeed.
Seeking greater agency? We can help you clarify what it means for your work and life. Let’s connect!