If you run a company, you probably know that it’s a jungle out there. If you want to survive, you need to be able to adapt when things change – and no one can deny that the world is changing fast.
It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that the best-performing businesses are revolutionizing their working practices to get the most out of their employees while letting them get the most out of life.
Agile working – a practice that started with software engineers seeking to optimize efficiency and improve collaboration between teams – is now being adopted and coopted by many industries. But what is agile working, and how can it help you build a better, more dynamic workforce? Keep reading to find out.
What is agile working?
Agile working provides a more flexible work environment for your employees, both in terms of when and how they work.
This involves recognizing that people’s lives are complicated and that the best time to work for one person might not be the best time for another.
It also involves recognizing that people work in different ways. Some people are introverts and need a quiet setting, while others are extroverts who thrive in a more social environment. Everyone has their own experience and ideas to bring to the table.
By ensuring your working practices are agile enough to account for the different ways people work, you can create a workforce that is more engaged, efficient, and creative.
What are the benefits of agile working?
While agile working is all about ensuring that your employees can work the way they want, there are real-world benefits to your business.
1. A happier, more engaged workforce
The first benefit of an agile workplace is that it allows people to work how they work best when it’s best for them, too. Not crowbarring employees into a one-size-fits-all workplace means that you give your employees the best work-life balance and get them when they’re at their best. This improves employee sentiment and means you get a workforce who is engaged and happy to be at work.
2. Increased productivity
Which workplace is better? A calm, quiet environment where people can get their heads down and work, or a bustling hubbub where people can bounce ideas off each other and share thoughts? Do people have better ideas in the morning, when they’re fresh, or in the afternoon, when they’ve woken up and are firing on all cylinders? What’s the best way to communicate: email, in person, or via the phone?
The answer, of course, is that it depends. It depends on who you ask and what the task is. Some people are morning people, while others work better later in the day. Sometimes, you need peace and quiet, and sometimes, you need human contact. While older workers would rather pick up the phone rather than email, your younger workers might be left wondering, what is a voice call? In short, different people work differently, and specific tasks require specific environments.
Agile workplaces provide an environment that ensures people are always working optimally. The truth is, there is no fixed way to work that is best for each and every task you need your team to do.
3. Closer collaboration
The next benefit is that you can improve collaboration. If everyone comes into work at the same time, day in and day out, and sits at the same old desk, your employees will talk to the same people and fall into the same old routines.
On the other hand, by experimenting with a more agile workplace, you can create new bonds between team members, encouraging cooperation and collaboration.
4. Greater creativity
Everyone is unique. They’ve studied different things and had different life experiences, which means their ideas are also unique. By creating an agile workplace, you give these ideas and experiences the chance to rub up against each other. This blending of ideas is where creativity is born.
5. Reduced overheads
Offices are mostly unused; they sit there all night doing nothing. With traditional setups, where all your employees work in the office for the same eight hours a day, your office is empty two-thirds of the time. Meanwhile, people’s houses sit empty all the hours people work.
Agile work practices, such as hot-desking and hybrid working (more on these later), can dramatically reduce the required space. If your employees are in the office 2-3 days a week and only at their desks for some time, you may only need half the space you previously required, reducing overheads and improving efficiency.
How do you boost team dynamics with agile working?
So, how do you build an agile workplace to boost team dynamics? Let’s look at some practical things you can do to get started.
Start with flexitime
From your employees’ point of view, the move to flexible hours has the most significant impact on working conditions. As we have already touched on, people’s lives are complicated – as are the people themselves.
Some people are morning people. They want to get in and organize the day before the rest of the office arrives. Should everyone come in early, then? No. Just as many people shudder at the thought of a 6 a.m. start. They’re not lazy – they’re just alert later in the day.
How about childcare? How much work do you get from someone desperate to leave to pick up their kid after school? They’re unhappy, anxious, and unproductive, which is terrible for everyone.
Flexible working hours are the simplest way to improve your employees’ work/life balance. They also foster a healthy work culture and fight presenteeism in the workplace by showing employees that downtime is important. With this simple change, you can increase their happiness, improve productivity, and make your business more efficient and profitable.
But the real benefit to your business is that happy employees form teams that engage with each other when they’re at their best, thinking positively and engaging with each other to drive creativity and problem-solving among your teams.
Introduce hybrid working
One of the significant changes in working practices in the last few years has been the move towards hybrid working, with office staff able to work partly from home while still coming into the office a few times a week.
From your employees’ perspective, it’s easy to see the advantages. No commute, a real lunch instead of soggy canteen sandwiches, and meetings in your casual clothes. Recent technological advances have also made remote working simpler, with video conferencing making it easier to connect with people and time and attendance software making managing a disparate team easier than ever before.
Conversely, coming into the office is also vital for teams. Face-to-face meetings create different dynamics to remote meetings, and seeing colleagues in-person allows teams to bond better.
Yet it’s also a massive boon for your business. Not only do you make space savings, but by having teams that engage with each other through a range of mediums, such as face-to-face meetings, online calls, and through messaging and emails, you’re allowing everyone to use their preferred method of communication.
The simple fact is that not everyone communicates the same way. If you aren’t offering a range of ways for your team to interact, you’re stifling some of your team’s potential. Create an internal communication strategy that lets everyone have the chance to speak how they want, and you’ll dramatically improve your team dynamics.
Try hot-desking
Hotd-desking isn’t just about space-saving. It’s about improving the dynamics of your team by creating new bonds between team members. If your employees sit in the same cubicle day-in-day-out, they’ll only ever talk to the same old people. Your team becomes siloed. Ideas stagnate.
With hot-desking, however, people can sit and interact with new people whenever they come into the office. In fact, when coupled with hybrid working and flexible hours, it’s practically a guarantee. In turn, this improves group dynamics, with new bonds by forming new bonds between team members.
Activate active-based working
So far, we’ve looked at the when and where people work and see how that facilitates new bonds between team members. However, creating an agile workspace is also about creating an environment that accommodates how people work.
Active-based working acknowledges that not all tasks are best performed in the same environments. Sometimes, tasks require calm and quiet to allow you to concentrate. Sometimes, you need lively interaction to brainstorm ideas. Sometimes, you need people on hand to give you help and advice with a task when you need it.
Agile workplaces allow for all of these. Consider designing your workspace with distinct areas for specific types of tasks. Desks for interaction, quiet places for concentration, conference rooms for formal meetings, and casual spaces for free-flowing conversation. All of these spaces facilitate different types of interaction, boosting team dynamics.
Be agile, not fragile
If you want to succeed in business, you need to learn to adapt, be nimble, and make the most of your resources – and no resource is more important to a company than its employees. You need to ensure that your teams are performing optimally and maximizing their creative potential.
Building an agile workplace is the best way to ensure you get the most out of your workforce. Flexible and hybrid working practices like hot-desking and active-based working allow your employees to all work when, where, and how they perform best. Not only will they be happier and more engaged, but your overheads will also decrease while productivity soars.
Yet, it can be more fundamental than that. By letting your teams interact in new and varied ways, you maximize team dynamics, creating an environment where ideas can thrive, driving creativity.
