People’s attention span and performance suffer when they are forced to switch their focus, especially when it happens without warning. Unsurprisingly, this is also true at work. Even as many scheduling quirks from the COVID-19 pandemic have now normalized — such as struggling to keep children out-of-frame during work calls, or taking 15-minute breaks to provide care to family members — distractions still abound at home. Fortunately, remote workers can take control of their home situation, and one of their best resources for doing so are the managers who lead them. In this new world of hybrid work, organizations must train their managers to have conversations about boundaries.
What Are Boundaries?
Boundaries involve how employees plan their schedules. For example, employees might be aware of specific work locations, work hours or other aspects of their setting that help them to focus, so they can clock out on time and enjoy their personal and family life. In essence, boundaries are about “leaving work at work” and help to preserve work-life balance.
Some employees use flexible work to uphold boundaries. The idea is, having more control over the timing and location of one’s work can make their schedule more amicable. However, flexible work might backfire if employees haven’t considered if that flexibility will truly enhance their work life. For some, flexible work might entail the opposite, with them being more distracted, experiencing more stressors and ultimately working more hours.
Despite the potential drawbacks, many employees expect permanently-instituted policies for flexible work. They might even factor a lack of these options into their decision about whether to stay at an organization. Given the demand for flexible work, the question is this: How can organizations ensure that it is being done responsibly, in a way that preserves work-life boundaries?
An Organization’s Best Asset for Navigating Boundaries: Managers
Managers are a huge asset in helping an organization understand and accommodate its employees. Therefore, it makes sense to equip managers for the inevitable conversations that will happen about flexibility — and have them focus on the end goal of protecting their team’s work-life boundaries.
First, managers need context: Why is flexible work so detrimental when it goes wrong? When boundaries fail and work-life conflicts happen, employee well-being suffers on multiple fronts, causing negative outcomes including impaired sleep, increased substance use and mental health issues, and a major driving force in those trends are the disruptions that occur in employees’ relationships with friends and family.
Work-life conflict isn’t inevitable, however. Managers can take multiple steps to avoid the worst and ensure that their employees are making mindful, informed decisions about flexible work.
A Guide for Managers to Protect Their Employees’ Boundaries
More than flexibility, the end goal is for employees to gain control over their schedule. A big part of this is managers better understanding their employees’ situations and personal lives. To equip managers for these conversations, organizations can train them in the following:
- Have regular check-ins after creating a flexible schedule.
Employees likely understand, as well as companies do, that flexibility should not come at the cost of engagement at work. Managers should critically examine — while asking for plenty of input from their employees — whether having a different schedule or working remotely will be feasible for all parties involved. In addition to the employee themselves, this consideration will involve anyone who relies on their output, such as the manager and their team.
To ensure that flexibility continues to be the best option, regular check-ins should occur, and employees should know when these check-ins are coming up. Otherwise, they might perceive the conversations as being prompted by “bad behavior” and think of their flexibility as a privilege that can be taken away. If productivity becomes a concern, managers should avoid blaming the flexible schedule and instead allow employees to propose what they think is contributing to any deficits in performance.
- Don’t be afraid to ask questions and provide information.
Discussions about flexibility are meant to help facilitate work, but some might involve uncomfortably personal topics. Managers should be prepared to ask multiple questions about what their employees need for flexibility, while encouraging employees to share only what they’re comfortable with. It should also be clear that asking for accommodations won’t negatively impact their job.
In addition, managers should embrace the fact that not everyone is an expert on work-life boundaries. Even if employees have an initial preference for flexibility, they might be interested in other information that can help them consider good alternatives. For example, scheduling instability can undermine well-being, so it might be in the employee’s favor to have a predictable schedule week to week or even day to day. Managers can also encourage employees to remember the overall goal of the scheduling conversation (e.g., to help employees have a productive, engaged work experience, so they can avoid working after hours).
- Be a model for work-life boundaries.
It is not sufficient for managers to reassure their employees that it’s okay to have work-life boundaries; they need to model this behavior. This includes not working or sending emails at odd hours. Employees — especially those with flexible schedules — might be concerned that they’re not perceived as hard-working or reliable unless they work the same excessive hours as their manager. Some might become indignant toward the workplace culture, which could pose a risk for retention.
When using any of these recommendations, managers should keep an open mind. There are likely multiple scheduling solutions — flexible or conventional — that will work well for their team. The best solution can’t be known until conversations are had with employees.
Being open-minded will help employees be more receptive to the concept of protecting their work-life boundaries and doing what’s best for their engagement, even if that doesn’t involve their first preference for using the “workplace benefit” of flexibility.
In the end, most employees simply want their needs to be respected. Even if they don’t (or can’t) always opt into flexible work, knowing that they have some options — if they need to work remotely a few times a month to run an errand, or occasionally change up their hours to attend a family event — will go a long way in creating that sentiment.
