In my first few corporate jobs, we started at set hours, but there were definite benefits to working late and to being seen to be working late.
“Face time” mattered even if you were simply rewriting your to-do list so you could cross off “rewrite to-do list.” You never knew when someone would walk by your cubicle. Everything changed when I started working as a casewriter at Harvard Business School.
In those days, most casewriters sat in a single large room without any air conditioning on the fourth floor of the library. Inside, casewriters were packed in so closely that moving your chair away from your desk nudged the divider into your colleague’s space.
I made a really good friend that way. We shared a printer, which also had benefits, as you’d pick up someone else’s printout and wonder how they’d made that great graph. We learned a lot from each other. Except for one professor, who made an annual pilgrimage to our area to distribute holiday gifts to the writers who worked on his projects, we saw our professors only in their elegant offices.
One day, I realized that my professor didn’t care if I wrote cases at midnight hanging upside down from a lamppost. He just wanted me to deliver what I’d promised when I’d promised it. After nine years of “working 9 to 5,” as Dolly Parton sings in her famous song, this was transformative.
When flexibility works
Being flexible with employee requirements builds loyalty and commitment. Before COVID, one of my staff members asked if he could temporarily relocate to the U.K. to stay with his parents.
My initial response — which I was smart enough to stifle — was “Absolutely not. How will I know what you’re doing?” But I temporized with “Let me think about it.”
By the following day, I’d realized that he could absolutely work from the U.K., as long as he was on our weekly check-in call and connected with his teams. Sure, we noticed his absence, but between Microsoft Teams, the occasional phone call, email and his faithful attendance at meetings, it worked. His talent at database analytics formed the foundation of a new set of product offerings that we fleshed out more completely upon his return.
Eventually, the employee moved on. He is now chief operating officer at a Saudi-based startup, but our flexible arrangement likely meant we benefited from his talents longer than we otherwise would have.
The other extreme
Flexibility can also be abused. It’s a small step from “work anywhere, just get it in on time” to “work everywhere, all the time.” The opposite of face time, back in the day, was downtime; if you weren’t at work, you weren’t particularly expected to be working.
In another column for Mainebiz, Nancy Marshall and I wrote about the importance of recharging and taking the vacation you’re allotted. And recently, Deloitte announced that it was cutting paid time off for a certain category of non-customer-facing workers.
As with anything, there’s always a balance. A focus on face time becomes self-defeating. A focus on self-motivation can lead to emails at 2 a.m. Working alone isn’t a cure-all. There’s a balance between the in-person interaction that generates breakthrough thinking and the solitary time spent researching and drafting a report.
To the hilarity of my millennial team, I would call them when I got frustrated with chats on Microsoft Teams.
“Oh, right,” one said. “Calls can be efficient.”
Empowering employees
While there’s an element of meeting staff where they are, sometimes we need to break through habit and just get things resolved. Being entrusted to manage one’s own schedule and fulfill one’s commitments is empowering.
“I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul,” William Ernest Henley writes in his poem “Invictus.”
Being trusted to manage your own work deliverables provides a similar sense of self-determination. Save your face time for when it matters.
