Balancing Act: Why Work Flexibility Makes Us Happier and More Productive

For decades, the myth has persisted, especially in public relations, that working long hours in the office means being highly productive. 

Indeed, leadership books published between the 1960s and the early 2010s repeatedly advise us to be the first one in the office in the morning and the last one to leave at night. New PR professionals in particular have been encouraged to follow this rule. 

Showing the reality of longer hours

Reality and numerous studies, however, prove that longer hours in the office do not equal higher productivity. In 2014, researchers at Stanford University found a negative correlation between the number of hours worked and individual productivity. After 55 hours of work in one week, productivity nosedives as stress, fatigue and monotony take their toll. At 70 hours, employees achieve the same productivity as those working 55 hours, the study found. In short, working more than 55 hours a week is pointless.

Last summer, Microsoft tested a four-day workweek in Japan — a country known for excessive work — and saw a 40 percent jump in productivity. A few years ago in France, an insurance company had the innovative idea of installing a software program on employees’ computers that automatically deleted all emails that arrived after-hours or while an employee was on vacation. A standard response informed senders that their messages would be deleted because the employee was out of the office, and asked that they send the emails again after the employee returned. As a result, employees would never come back from vacation to find 1,000 unread emails in their inboxes.

Encouraging flexible work hours

If working inhumane hours helps no one, then neither does the outdated idea that all work must be done in the office, at a desk. A 2019 survey of more than 1,200 full-time workers in the United States by the remote-conferencing company Owl Labs found that having robust work-remote policies “improves employee productivity, increases employee retention, and makes employees feel more trusted and better able to balance work and life responsibilities.” 

Employees, especially millennials and members of Generation Z, are hungry for more freedom to decide when they come to work and when they leave. And that expectation is only fair, since we ask them to respond to emails and texts in the evenings, and attend events on weekends or after hours. They want something in return. Many young professionals I’ve recently met understand that we work to live, not vice versa.

As leaders in the communications profession, we should adapt to these trends and listen to what the studies — and our employees — are telling us. We need to convince leadership to offer all employees more flexibility. With buy-in from your management team, 80 percent of the battle is already won. 

To make the case for the benefits of flexible work hours, come prepared with recent studies, particularly those relevant to businesses such as yours. You might even try a test run of flexible hours for a few weeks and see how it goes. If your firm has offered flexible work hours and remote-work policies in the past, then show concrete examples of how they helped you and your team become more productive.

As leaders, we also need to practice what we preach. If a leader spends 10 or 12 hours in the office every day, it’s unlikely that other team members will behave differently. But if the supervisor never stays past 5 p.m. or she works from home once a week, employees will feel less awkward doing the same.

Rather than focus on the number of hours spent in the office, we should set clear goals and timelines for each employee and hold them accountable for their progress. I personally value regular, in-person meetings to update projects and goals.

When working flexible hours or remotely, we also need to prove to others in our organizations, and to our clients, that we are getting things done. To make that point, I’ve developed a tendency to respond to emails more promptly when I work remotely than when I’m in the office.

We also need a plan to manage employees who abuse flexible work arrangements. I recommend making it clear to everyone that any single employee who slacks off risks the arrangement for everyone. Peer pressure is not always a bad thing.

The best corporate cultures are built on mutual trust and employee happiness. If we want our teams to work late or be available after hours, then we should give them the flexibility to structure the rest of their lives accordingly. 

We’re lucky that our jobs in communications do not require us to be at a certain place all the time to fulfill our duties. Let’s capitalize on that good fortune and build a culture of happiness and productivity in 2020 and beyond.


photo credit: fanatic studio