business resources
Flexibility: The Latest Trend In Great Teams
09 Jan 2019
Narrowing down the single defining factor of a successful team in the workplace is, to put it simply, impossible. It requires great leadership, communication, a culture of responsibility and accountability, as well as real incentive, all of which can take time to build. However, advances in technology are showing one of the biggest contributors to startup success is the growing trend of flexibility. Here, we’re going to look at how businesses and teams are becoming more flexible, and the benefits it could potentially offer your business, too.
Flex your office
Perhaps the defining trait of the modern flexible team is the fact that they no longer have to share an office.
Remote working is spreading across the business world like wildfire. While some teams use a mix of remote working and shared workspaces, there are plenty that are building to be almost entirely remote. It can help save on the costs of setting up an office space, equipment costs, and has been shown to be a good incentive for hiring new members. Processes of accountability and regular communication have to be established to make sure that you’re getting the best out of a remote working team but, on average, they have shown to be more productive than those working in a more traditional space.
Flex your tech
The tech tools we use to do our jobs, software and hardware, are also becoming more flexible. A lot more offices are using a BYOD (or bring your own device) policy that allows business owners to cut the costs of office hardware and makes it easy to find a backup device if you’re having tech trouble. Mustard IT identifies computer support firm that offers Cloud solutions that make it easier to access the software and data resources you need from any device. Software-as-a-service is moving more and more into the Cloud space, too, meaning that you have the flexibility to use your most effective tools at any time, anywhere.
Flex your time
More businesses are allowing employees to have more say on their own work hours, especially those who work remotely from home. The period of most productivity through the day can change from person to person and, so long as you ensure they’re around at shared times to improve communication and resource sharing, it doesn’t have to get in the way of good teamwork. More control over how they use that time with the help of project management software like Slack also allows them to find the work habits that help them meet more goals per day, too. Flexibility can be a huge bonus, but you have to make sure you’re using it responsibly. If you’re using the flexibility of Cloud software and computing, you need to make sure you have tight controls over who accesses it and how they access it, and with remote working, you need to set up clear expectations and ways of measuring the productivity of the team. If it’s done right, however, flexibility can become a defining trait of your own team’s success.
