In June, I was fortunate enough to be invited to speak at the 2013 Your Workplace Conference and was offered the topic of flexible work arrangements. It was an interesting journey putting my material together since flex arrangements are something that we don’t really think about that specifically here at Habanero — it just sort of happens that people start and end their days as they wish or work from home when they need to.
As I put the deck together, it became clear to me that flex arrangements are more of a cultural consideration than a policy to implement. If you already have a corporate culture based on autonomy, strong hiring, coaching, and clear personal accountabilities, it’s easy to have successful flex arrangements. Without those cultural ingredients, offering flex arrangements gets a lot more difficult and frankly, risky.
If anyone is curious to learn more about flex work arrangements (and related topics of performance management, hiring, and culture), you can check out this post-conference interview with me and Mark Franklin, president of CareerCycles.com. Mark regularly broadcasts his show, CareerBuzz, on Toronto’s CIUT 89.5 FM. The recorded broadcast features all of the Your Workplace Conference speakers, and there’s some great material there. If you’re in a hurry and just want to jump to the flex arrangements piece, it runs from about 31:00 – 38:00.