Flexible Working

I started veering off-topic in my last blog post so decided to gather all the stuff on flexible working and put it here...

This post really only covers two distinct topics - flexible working and Google calendar (you can't have one without the other). However, I've split the flexible working topic in to several topics so that they are hopefully easier to compare to traditional working practices.

There are no office hours

We have no fixed office hours really, although UK daytime is when you'll find most of us online.

For example:

• I tend to work from lunch time until the early hours of the morning, with a few hours break when my wife gets home from work - I deal with a lot of customers in the USA so I like to be awake when they are
• Dan tends to mostly work during normal office hours - he has kids so his hours revolve around his family life
• Alain does a bit of work in the morning, then spends some time working on his Morris Minor (car), etc., and starts work again in the evening until the early hours of the morning

Each member of staff finds hours (and days) that suit them. And those times change based on external factors (eg. if the weather is nice Alain will be working on his car and Dan will be at the park with his kids).

Rather than causing problems, this has actually helped our business. It means that at practically any time of day or night pretty much every skill or capability is available.

Surprisingly, there is always a period of overlap with each member of staff pretty much every day of the week (including weekends). If someone has been trying to fix a bug but has to leave for some prior arrangement, they can pass it on to someone else to look at, etc.

Flexible hours create a constant flow of knowledge around the company. That knowledge is transferred using mainly text-based mediums so it's not only recorded, it's also searchable and editable!

Overall, I'd say this is a massive benefit to the company and staff alike.

We don't care how many hours someone works each week

We are not remotely interested in how many hours staff work each week, as long as it's less than 50 hours.

The only times any member of staff has come close to getting a formal warning is when they've been working too hard. I regularly have to tell Dan Hardiker to stop working - he was even coding Confluence plugins – for fun – whilst waiting for his wife (Caz Hardiker) to give birth!

If someone wants to cram all their tasks in to 3 days and then take the rest of the week off, they can.

Overall, this is turning in to a problem. We're not giving ourselves enough "me time". I'll no doubt be blogging about whatever solution we find to this problem.

We work when we are motivated to do so

We like our jobs. We wake up wanting to work. In fact, many of us have woken up in the middle of the night and just started working. For example, Caz was woken up by the kids and decided to sort out some sales enquiries.

As long as we've not got something specific planned for the following day, we can just sleep in. Likewise, if we get a bit tired during the day, there's nothing stopping us from taking a siesta.

If we're not in the mood for work, we can stop and go shopping or whatever. There's no point trying to work when you're not motivated or when you're stumped on a task. It's better to go off and get something else done and come back when you're refreshed.

Overall, this is a huge benefit for the company and staff. Both work and personal tasks are generally more productive because they follow our shifting patterns of motivation.

Holidays are flexible

If someone wants to take a holiday at short notice (eg. you find a cheap last-minute deal in a weeks time) then as long as is's not going to cause any problems they get to go.

This next bit makes most people freak. I mean, really freak.

All staff have an annual holiday entitlement, which is normal for any company. Only at Adaptavist we're not too fussed if they take more than their entitlement.

For example, if someone only has 1 week of statutory holiday entitlement left and they find a bargain holiday but it's 2 weeks long, then as long as it's not going to cause delays in projects they can take the extra week. On full pay.

This should be a huge benefit for the staff but trying to get Adaptavist staff to take holidays is like trying to get Microsoft to write a decent web browser. Well, getting Microsoft to write a decent web browser is impossible, but getting staff to take holidays comes a close second.

Task completion and quality is all that matters

As a company, all we're interested in is tasks getting done on time to the right level of quality.

We really beat ourselves up if things are taking too long or quality isn't good enough.

Everything I've written about above is only made possible if tasks are getting completed on time and quality is high.

Google Calendar

One extremely important factor in our flexible working arrangements is Google calendar.

No other calendar comes even close to being able to do what Google calendar does.

At a glance, any member of staff can see not only their own work and personal schedule, but also the schedules of all other staff.

If someone wants to schedule some work, they can instantly get a rough idea of availability from the calendar and then get more accurate times by direct communication with the staff members involved.

Most importantly, we can see when people are not available for work - eg. on holiday or some other pre-arranged task.

Generally speaking, if someone doesn't show their time as booked out, they are available for work. That being said, we know when people like to work and generally don't hassle them outside those times unless we see them online or in rare cases when there's some critical deadline and they need to be pulled in.

Anyway, I need to get back to work (it's almost 1 AM on Monday morning)...