Blog: Flexible Working - productive vs reductive debate?

27st January 2025

by Lynn Houmdi

Lynn Houmdi is founder of Flexible Working Scotland, Co-creator of Making Work Work and Senior Manager, The Challenges Group. She supports people - particularly women - to find or create meaningful work that works with all the other commitments and enjoyment of life. Prior to this Lynn had a career in public policy and diplomacy.

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Last week we witnessed another wave of media attention on flexible working, prompted largely by the BBC Panorama episode which aired on 20 January, “Should we still be working from home?”

In recent months, we have seen a surge of RTO (return to office) mandates, calling employees back into the office for all or part of the week and reversing policies put in place during the pandemic.

In the media, the flexible working debate is often over-simplified as a binary: in the office or working from home. In fact, there are literally hundreds of flexible working patterns, because every variant could be combined with one or more others. For example, someone might work part-time, hybrid. Another employee might have flexible start and finish times to their day while working remotely.

Evidence based decisions?

There is a body of research emerging which suggests that decisions around RTO are not being taken on the basis of evidence around productivity but on personal bias (by older, male CEOs);[1] on the basis of sector trends (everyone else is, so we had better); to reassert control over employees, blaming them for bad firm performance;[2] or as a means to reduce headcount without redundancies.[3] Research published in November 2024 by recruitment platform Indeed found that 44% of managers and 55% of employees felt RTO was less about purpose and more about keeping up appearances.[4]

In assessing whether a particular form of flexible working is good for productivity, firms need to first be able to measure productivity. In some industries, this is simple - number of calls answered or number of lines coded. In many others, it is much more complex.

Productivity may be improved by the time or location of work. While someone may feel productive ploughing through emails at home, are they also productive in the office catching up with colleagues? On the other hand, too much time at home may lead to isolation, impacting productivity and belonging in the longer term. How do we measure this?

It is also necessary to understand the fundamental role of two important - and interrelated - elements of productivity: good managerial practice (including performance management) and trust. According to the Chartered Management Institute, over 80% of managers are so-called accidental managers, meaning they took on managerial responsibilities without formal training. Someone who is ill-equipped to manage people they can see from their desk is unlikely to be able to manage well when team members are working flexibly.

Trust is vital.

Only a good manager can engender trust. Trust is vital in employee engagement, retention, productivity and wellbeing. The most efficient scenario is one where an employer does not take on people who are not trustworthy, manages performance supportively and well, and does not act in a way which undermines trust. However, life is not only more complex than tabloids suggest, businesses do not always operate efficiently.

Despite an apparent dislike of remote working among some prominent senior leaders, it is enabling a greater supply of labour, as more disabled workers, women and parents access work. It is a magnet for talent, meaning firms can recruit sought-after skills from a much wider radius. It is also driving technological advances and investment.

Nick Bloom, the Stanford Professor featured in the Panorama programme wrote in a paper for the IMF that the impact of remote working depends on how it is managed. He goes on to say:

“While the micro productivity impacts on any individual firm may be neutral, the huge power of labour market inclusion means that the aggregate macro impact is likely to be positive.”

And while he acknowledges the negative impact on city centre retail and commercial property prices, retail spend is being displaced to suburbs and commercial property has the potential to be repurposed for housing.[1] 

In that frustrating way that real life is often more complex than tabloid headlines would suggest, one size does not fit all. Not only for individuals, but for businesses. As managers and leaders, we need to move away from fluffy phrases such as “flexible working” towards honest, evidence-based discussions of how, where and when people deliver their best work.

Happy workers are productive workers.

If we accept that diversity is good for business, then a greater diversity of working patterns is good for individuals, for businesses and for the economy, because diverse workforces are not built on the assumption that everyone delivers their best work in the same way.

The reductionist debate of remote vs. the office is unhelpful, not least in erasing the experience of many front-line and customer-facing employees and key workers who wish they had the choice.

Ends

References

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nick-bloom-stanford_three-papers-analyzed-1200-us-return-to-activity-7250871032759099392-qYVI

[2] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4675401

[3] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nick-bloom-stanford_employees-appear-to-be-pushing-back-more-activity-7272263800437764097-ocrj

[4] https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/return-to-office-appearance/

Image credit: sharing thumbnail image by Adolfo Félix free from Unsplash 27.1.25