Smartphones, social media, instant accessibility to anyone, anytime. Though once thought of as luxuries, these aspects of modern life have become ubiquitous to many adults. Yet this level of convenience has yet to fully find its way to the workplace. In the following guest post, Allison O’Kelly takes a closer look at the many benefits of workplace flexibility from an often-ignored perspective – that of employers.                                                                         

Considering flexible staffing as a strategic, organizational benefit—not just an employee perk 

By Allison O’Kelly, founder and CEO of Mom Corps 

You may have read my post a few weeks ago in which I shared my perspective in the debate sparked from Anne-Marie Slaughter’s recent and much-discussed article in The Atlantic. I briefly touched on flexibility from the business standpoint in that post, noting how a “one-size-fits-all” approach to alternative workplace initiatives is counter-intuitive and unproductive in building a successful program.

This week, I wanted to expand on that perspective from my experience both as a working mother and as the CEO of a national firm. If you’re a business owner or manager, I hope the following gives you the resolve to implement flexible options for the benefit of your employees, your culture and your bottom line. If you’re a working mom, I hope it inspires you to take up the baton for more work/life alignment and to build your own case for flexibility at your workplace.

While it’s apparent—and not surprising—that employees appreciate access to flexible work options, it would be one-sided not to consider the influence flexibility has on the employer. What is the motivation for an employer to make provisions that create a better lifestyle for the employee? Here’s a thought—employers ultimately benefit when they start seeing the employer/employee relationship as symbiotic.

Consider this: We live in a world of endless options because market innovators continue to create opportunities to expand their markets. On-demand entertainment, 24-hour fitness centers, flexible educations through online universities, and our smart phones even tell us which restaurants will deliver tomato soup.

Here’s a comparative example of business evolution. Owning a vacation home or airplane was once available only to the exceedingly wealthy. Then business innovators embraced the concept of fractional ownership, in which a group of individual investors share the purchase price and usage of a luxury asset. This idea expanded the market opportunity and increased sales for these particular items.

Likewise, workplace innovators created the job sharing solution as a way to attract top talent who had yet to be accommodated. Many skilled professionals were unable or unwilling to commit to a 40-hour week due to life choices, further limiting the pool of available talent for positions requiring specific skill sets and experience. Dividing “ownership” of the job created flexible and meaningful work for a growing talent segment and gave companies access to workers who might otherwise be unavailable to them.

Today, an evolved workplace can take on nearly limitless forms. An organization (or employer) looking to achieve or maintain a leadership position should study cases in which workplace flexibility programs have been implemented successfully and learn from what has worked best.

It’s important to not make assumptions about which flexible options will make a difference for your employees. Whether through a formal company-wide survey or inviting the conversation individually during performance reviews, it is key to uncover the “pain points” across the organization on a macro level, and by department or location on a more micro level. This will allow you to pinpoint the programs that are both achievable and effective for your particular workforce (again—it’s not one size fits all).

Modern life has produced flexible options that make us more efficient and allow us to spend time in ways that best fit our lives at the moment. When aspects of our professional lives mirror this, we do better at work, too. Employers may be apprehensive about the idea of implementing and managing alternative work methodologies; that’s understandable. Investments of time and resources are required in order to see a measurable return, but small and steady efforts will create a new social norm of workplace flexibility that will make a measurable impact on society. 

Allison O'Kelly is the founder and CEO of Mom Corps (www.momcorps.com), a national flexible staffing firm dedicated to connecting progressive employers with professionals seeking flexible work options.