A number of years ago, I heard an HR Manager lament that, “When people work from home, we can’t guarantee they are actually working”. In fact, this organisation had a policy that if you have children, they needed to be in daycare or you needed to have something in place if you were working from home to stop them from distracting you from getting the job done.

As I’m typing I can feel how ludicrous this is. Very Dickensian.

Thank goodness the world has changed…. or has it?!

How many of your leaders or managers still have the opinion that out of sight means out of work?

This is one of the most destructive leadership attitudes going around and if it exists at your place, you will need to nip it in the bud.

So much has been written about how trust is at the core of making work work. We know that the when trust is present we increase productivity and save money and yet, many of our workplace policies and procedures are in place to protect organisations from their own employees!

I’m old enough to remember a time when giving everyone their own phone on a desk was a risk because people might make personal phone calls. Or giving employees access to the internet might lead to people surfing the web all day.

As newer generations are entering the workforce, they are used to being able to study anything, anywhere at anytime. They won’t be happy if bound by a desk. They will look for ways to home from work [see my previous blog] and find spaces that are conducive for whatever they are working on. 

If you want to attract the best talent, you will need to have policies that are supportive of flexible, activity based working environments that show your people that you trust them to get the job done.

How many of your workplace policies are actually telling your employees that you don’t trust them?