35 is the magic number…The case for part time working

My twitter feed is full of discussion about the changes to flexible working that come into force next month. And from the findings of XpertHR’s survey published this week it seems that almost everyone is in favour of the change: only 1.2% are strongly opposed to the reform.

However, this sense of broad support seems to mask what is happening in reality in many organisations, particularly for requests to work less than 35 hours each week.

The perception seems to be that this is an unfair expectation on employers. After all, the role is full time. You are not asking to work differently. You are asking for a different job.

Moreover, there is a perception that if you work less than 35 hours a week, you are a different kind of employee. It is a rare person who would think of an employee who works less than 35 hours a week as being dynamic, ambitious and fast paced.

At this point, I guess I need to give a disclaimer: I am a new mum of a 1 year old and am about to return to work 4 days a week. I say this because, often when someone realises I have a young son, I get a knowing look that says, “ah! That’s why you’re going on about flexible working”.

But my point is much broader than ‘working mums,’ it is about the management assumption that something special happens when someone works 35 hours or more each week.

To illustrate my point, I will draw upon the story told by Jo Gambi in Holding On, which outlines in riveting detail her (and her husband’s) journey towards climbing the 7 summits (the tallest mountain on each of the 7 continents), including the infamous Everest.

Before reading this book, my knowledge of extreme mountain climbing was nil. My husband and I have climbed Scafell Pike, but that is all. It took two hours to climb to the summit and 5 hours to get down.  All we needed was: a map, a compass, waterproofs, some sugar, two pairs of legs to carry us and a bottle of wine afterwards.

In the context, of the workplace, this would probably be known as a  “SMART objective” for my husband, the former boy Scout, and a “stretch goal” for me. Such goals respond well to concerted and continued effort and in a year, if we did nothing, but climb Scafell Pike 9-5, Monday to Friday with 28 days holiday a year, we could probably climb it 200 times a year compared to 160 (if we did a 4 day week), assuming perfect weather.

But what if we wanted more? What if we had a “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” like climbing Everest? We would need a different approach.

I had always assumed that climbing a mountain, like Everest, would be a linear endeavor. You would climb from one camp to another, resting between camps, but reaching the summit incrementally. But it is far more complex than this due to the acclimatisation process, adverse weather conditions and the limits of the human body.

There is a climber’s maxim: “Climb high, sleep low.” This is considered to be best practice, as you gain altitude exposure during the day and then rest in your comfort zone.  Thus, each climber would climb up and down the mountain many times, with prolonged periods of waiting out the weather or sickness, before finally grabbing a window of opportunity for the summit.

For organisations that want to achieve those Big Hairy Audacious Goals rather than more and more of the same thing, I wonder what the workplace would be like if they followed this maxim?

On Everest, there was an incredibly strong understanding of limits amongst all of the best expedition leaders and climbers, people were constantly checking each other to make sure no one went too far.

However, in the workplace, our culture often encourages us to ignore our limits to both our bodies and our minds. We assume that more is better (10 hours is better than 8), despite our own experience of personal peaks and troughs of productivity, especially for knowledge workers.

I am sure I am not the only one who gets the best inspiration for work related problems when I am not actively thinking about work. It used to be when I blow-dried my hair each morning, now it is while I feed my son before bed.

We need to give employees more time in their comfort zones (however they define it) not less. But how do we do this in practice?

I don’t fully know the answer to this, but I’ll offer a few thoughts that I have stumbled upon during conversations with some of the leading thinkers in HR:

1.    We need to think about work not jobs- This insight came from the inimitable Perry Timms. We spent a lot of time deinfining jobs and then translating them into clear and measurable objectives. Could we not create a new model where what we need to achieve and recruit according to this rather than by duties?

2.    We need to manage people by outcomes rather than by observation- This insight came from Will Davies, HR Director at Teach First, who very kindly explained their approach to ‘agile’ working.  They have core hours of 11-3, when they expect employees to be working/ contactable. They have no restrictions on where people work, except for what is agreed by teams to facilitate team working.

We spend so much time wondering how to engage our employees, but I believe that all we need to do this is: an exciting organisational goal, clear individual outcomes and to give our employees more freedom to design their own work-life.