The past two years have shown that employees desire greater flexibility- and they're willing to change jobs to get it.Flexibility has tremendous benefits for employees, including reduced burnout and greater job satisfaction.However, it can also result in spiraling coordination costs for managers, large amounts of wasted effort, and the inability to respond quickly to client requests, The brief meetings that once allowed teams to promptly brainstorm solutions and align efforts are now harder to pull together.It can take days to get most members in the same virtual place at the same time(including one person who's half listening from the dentist's chair).

To increase employee flexibility on their teams, managers need wstguidance and support - otherwise, they could burn out on the job or check out to find a new one.Here are some ways managers can offer their teams flexibility without breaking under the coordination costs or significantly stalling progress.First, rethink when employees works together.For complex tasks that require teamwork, it's not feasible to provide employees with complete flexibility (i.e, the ability to work for any duration at any time).However, returning to the standard in-office work week won't work either, "Thus, managers will need to think differently and deeply about project requirements and schedule accordingly.

For project-based workflows, managers should carefully chart out the project tasks and timeline and issue an advance request for employees to block a specific set of days for overlapping work during key project phases (e.g kickoff, mid-point, finalization).For less predictable workflows, consider aligning scheduling bursts with calendar time.For example, during the second week of the month, employees are expected to beworking from 10 a.m.-- 5 p.m.Eastern, then they're allowed to choose which 40 hours (+/-- 10) they work weekly during the wst rest of the month.

Second,rethink who works together, To provide greater flexibility, managers may also need to reorganize their larger teams into multi-team systems of smaller, empowered,and interconnected groups.For example, converting your team of nine into three teams of three empowers them to make decisions and makes it easier for employees to help coordinate their work.Besides, managers must think more deeply than ever about the structure of their employees' tasks and priorities, Understanding the connections between different tasks is especially crucial for setting wst priorities to avoid bottlenecks, If everything is a priority,nothing is a priority.