Commitment, Working Hours and Flexibility

The regular meeting held to share personal commitments provides the forum for this to be aired with colleagues. If someone wants to reduce their working hours they are expected to find a solution to uphold the commitments they have made. He/she has full liberty to find a solution, but until they have found one, they are bound to their previous commitments. If a colleague continually needs to work fewer hours over a longer period of time, then this may well be raised by that person or other colleagues as part of a regular peer-based compensation and self-set salary process.

At Fitzii, coworkers have freedom to work anywhere there is internet connection and responsibility to achieve the benefits of in-person connections.

In considering working hours and location, Fitzii “manages a polarity” between freedom and responsibility. Coworkers can work anywhere there is internet connection (freedom). Flexibility is greatly enjoyed by individuals who are productive working from home or have occasional needs, ex. one coworker spent a week working in Miami in order to visit a sick relative. In practice, coworkers work primarily from two offices – one in Oakville, Ontario and the other in Toronto, Ontario. In an effort to spend time together in person – the CEO is often heard saying “you can’t build community unless you waste time together” – coworkers make every effort to work from Oakville on Tuesdays and from Toronto on Thursdays (responsibility). Monthly in-person team meetings rotate between the two locations; an annual in-person team retreat provides quality structured and unstructured interaction.

HolacracyOne uses a regular meeting practice for colleagues to share and discuss commitment.

During these meetings, colleagues discuss how much time and energy, at that moment in their lives, they want to commit to the organization’s purpose. The rationale behind this regular meeting is for each person to make a conscious choice about how much time and energy they are willing to commit. At the same time, the meeting practice gives all colleagues a conscious way of holding and recognizing that as humans, everyone has multiple endeavors that interest and enliven them, and that each person is choosing how much time and energy they want to give to any particular purpose^[1].

Each colleague at Morning Star has a work schedule commitment.

The work schedule commitment captures how many hours a person can commit to work during low and high season (when the tomatoes are harvested and processed), providing a clear basis on which colleagues can discuss and manage their time collectively whilst still fulfilling the organization’s purpose. The work schedule commitment is captured in Morning Star’s colleague letter of understanding or CLOU, which also includes a personal mission statement and detailed information about the roles a person currently commits to, as well as improvements they hope to make. This more formal way of capturing commitment plays to Morning Star's need for continuous improvement to increase efficiency as it is essentially a low-margin, commodity business^[2].

At Buurtzorg, the structure of small, self-managing teams helps in providing flexibility.

If a nurse wants to reduce her working hours, perhaps because she has a sick parent to take care of for instance, the team will re-shuffle existing clients and temporarily take in fewer new clients. The nurse will discuss her other commitments with her team and together they will find a solution such as temporarily taking on fewer new clients or moving the care of a patient to another nurse or team if needed^[3].

At Favi, no one clocks in and out but workers still work in shift patterns and are expected to spend roughly this time on the shop floor.

An operator at Favi who was having a house built, brought the topic up with his team. To be on site with the builders, he wanted to switch to the night shift. He asked if a colleague would be willing to swap shifts for a four month period. An arrangement was quickly found without the need for a formal HR approval process of management approval^[4].

People have complete control over hours

“People know what their responsibilities are”, explains Henry Stewart, the co-founder. “They don’t need anybody else to tell them whether they need to be in the office or not.”

“I remember before the pandemic I was showing somebody around the office; he commented that only 5 out of our 25 staff members were in the office and asked where the others were. ‘I have no idea,’ I commented. People are judged by the results they deliver, not the amount of time they spend in the office.”

There are a range of flexible hours. Some work part-time. Some work compressed hours (eg, the full week in 4 days). There are no set hours, people work when they want around their responsibilities.

Around 2000 the leadership became aware that our admin team of 9 people wanted to work more flexibly. So they set out the terms, that there was a need for two more people in the office from 9 to 5.30 each day to answer the phone. People then decided between themselves when they would work, with some coming in at 6am (to avoid the London commute) and not many people working on Friday afternoons!

Nowadays it wouldn’t be the leadership who would set out the requirement; the team would do it by itself.

Decisions to be made on when people are in, and what meetings are for, are now all made within the team.

Freedom & trust – just make a positive impact

Reddico operates as a completely self-managed company, where individuals are accountable for how, when, and where they work best. The following applies:

• No set number of days holiday each year. Everyone has to take a MINIMUM of 28 days (including Bank Holidays), but outside of that it’s up to the individual.
• Choose where you work. This could be 100% remote, 100% in the office, or a hybrid of the two. Reddico also supports individuals who want to move abroad permanently or temporarily.
• Choose the hours you work. There are no core hours, and team members are able to decide the best times for them. It could be 6am or 11pm – whatever works for you.
• Pay all sick days. Reddico trusts the team to be open and honest. If you’re sick, take time off to get back to 100%.

The only caveat to all of this is ‘you must make a positive impact’.