If your manager still thinks compressed work weeks, working from home, sabbatical programs and arranging your work around your life is a bunch of softy bull, ask her or him how much more misinformation forms their leadership credo.
Researchers Grzywacz and Casey at Wake Forest concluded clear and definite bottom-line benefits associated with just such flexibility. A new study of more than 3,100 U.S. workers shows improved job commitment over a one-year period as well as a jump in putting forth extra efforts (without being prompted.)
Are you a leader ambivalent about engaging in flexibility? While flexibility in the workplace is a complicated issue, bolstering resistance to the idea is about as smart as not changing your car’s oil. Organizations and leaders at odds with the issue (and there are lots) have a short window of time to re-frame their thinking and get focused on giving workers more of what they want.
In a 2007 Monster Work/Life Survey, HR executives (61 percent) see more and more employer-provided work/life balance initiatives in five years and about half think their organization gets the best talent because of those initiatives.
No one may be asking for a week at your place yet, but the passionate followers of Princeton-educated Timothy Ferris brim with ideas of how to massage and mash his concepts into working AND living intelligently.
If ultra-vagabonds like Ferris aren’t hard-hitting enough, tips and a report containing case studies of different companies recognized for excellence in flexibility are available from When Work Works.
- When it comes to ideas around workplace flexibility, what are yours?
- What opportunities would mean the most?
- How does your organization rate on opportunities for you to meet work, personal and family commitments?
When career meets life it shouldn’t be about collision or balance. 
It’s about flow.
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