Making leadership roles flexible
Leadership roles, particularly people managers, have historically been difficult to do flexibly.
In the old ways of working, coverage across the week has been important to being a successful manager.
However in the future of work, managers’ success is based more on value creation, priority setting and mobilising teams. And let’s face it, as leaders we are often unavailable for much of the week due to meeting overload anyway!
Options for triage on days not working are very effective, making all of the flexible work options do-able for managers.
Well-designed flexible leadership roles are essential for success and career progression. Particularly for people who work part-time, there are significant implications for gender diversity at the leadership level.
Flexible role design for leaders
There are a few additional factors that you should consider when designing a part-time or flexible people leader role:
The team’s capability and effectiveness
When reallocating work, look at roles both within the leader's team and across their peer level team.
Analyse the approvals or decisions that the leader makes and how time sensitive they are. Consider the delegation options.
Consider if a vertical job share would work or use the talent budget savings for a 2IC. Consider the flexible role options. ie. Vertical job share provides great succession planning opportunities and can work well in a 4-day reduction for leaders
Ways of working that the team signed up to are critical to making any job design work.
The team will need to talk about factors such as:
When is it ok to contact the leader on their non-work day (if at all!)?
What does a leader want to be notified of? How do they want to be contacted?
What decisions can the team make themselves? Who should they escalate issues to when the leader is not at work (and what type of issues)?
How will the team make sure the leader is across everything they need to be?
What is the team’s operating rhythm? How and when will we review how the arrangement is working?
Starting a newly designed role
Before someone starts in a new flex role, it’s important to discuss expectations, schedules, support and to incorporate work preferences in your team work approach.
If the flexible work arrangement has contractual implications, you’ll need to notify HR to update the contract (eg. reduced hours).
Check in on how the arrangement is working. You might need to take a deeper dive into team work or flex managers to optimise business and flex outcomes.