Are 'non-linear workdays' the next big thing?

Could a non-linear workday be an intriguing new way to manage a diversified and distributed future workforce?

Yes, says one company that went remote-first in August 2020 and hasn’t looked back.

“Team members, they’re enabled to experience a brand-new level of focus that was impossible in the previous method of working and when they are more focused, they get to contribute their best work and they’re more productive so that’s what the employer gets to benefit,” says Andy Bowen, manager of remote-first collaboration at Cimpress and Vista in Washington, N.C.

So, what exactly is a non-linear workday?

“The concept of a non-linear workday is that you can design work at the time that best suits you individually,” says Alexia Cambon, director of research at Gartner in London, U.K.

Some workers can work at certain times while others work at different times, all dependent on personal preferences and homelife demand.

The traditional nine-to-five model was created early in the 1900s, she says, which was a completely different working reality, and was pioneered by Henry Ford.

“The idea was factory workers needed to work during the hours of daylight as natural daylight and nine to five was born but, obviously, the majority of us are not factory workers anymore. We don’t need natural daylight to work; we have electricity and computer screens and all that allows us to work outside of nine to five,” says Cambon.

“The important thing for us to do right now is to sit down and question everything: Why do we work the way we do and still merit to working in that way? And if nine to five was first set up for factory workers to take advantage of that full day, then it probably doesn’t make that much sense for it to be the standardized way for every single employee on the planet.”

Needs of employees

For Cimpress and Vista, the non-linear workweek is designed around the needs of employees, according to Bowen.

“We think about it as a spectrum, which is pretty huge. It can [be] something as simple as scheduling your fitness routine around not necessarily lunch, when you have to fit it in at any particular time. It also looks like parents being able to spend quality time with their kids, maybe driving them to school, enjoying that commute, instead of sending them off on the bus which they wouldn’t have been able to do if they if their presence was required in the office or they’re being monitored on Slack, something like that.”

As proof of the company’s success, Bowen said engagement is three-and-a-half times higher today than it was in October 2020: 91 per cent of employees surveyed believed the transition to remote-first was the right idea, compared to 79 per cent in May 2021, and 82 per cent are more likely to stay with the company.

“We also see more autonomy leads to greater engagement and so something that we’re pretty proud of is that our remote-first team member engagement score encompasses our team members’ commitment, advocacy, and their overall satisfaction,” says Bowen.

“Remote-first working works. Nonlinear workdays are achievable. We’ve seen the benefits not only in our business outcomes but in our team members’ lives as well. Greater flexibility in the workplace at scale can have a monumental positive impact not only for our team members but for our communities as well.”

Many employees would take a pay cut just to remain remote, found one recent survey.

It all revolves around trusting workers to get the job done with minimal restrictions around exactly when to work, says Cambon.

“Being able to cede back control to the individual and set up the individual to be able to design the day that works best for them is going to yield greater performance from them, and probably also greater engagement because, essentially, you’re telling me as an employer that you trust me to do my work in the way that suits me the best and that’s going to make me feel psychologically safe at your organization.”

Potential pitfalls

But that newfound freedom may lead to potential pitfalls.

“The biggest one is obviously lack of team cohesion, which is [because] the idea behind everyone working nine to five is that then you know that everyone is available nine to five; you can then find them at a time that you know that they are accessible. And what you don’t want to run into is a situation in which, all of a sudden, I can’t collaborate with my team because we’re working completely different hours,” says Cambon.

But Bowen says 85 per cent of employees at Cimpress work asynchronously and 92 per cent feel they can complete tasks working this way.

Careful planning needs to be undertaken first, just to gauge the best way to assign duties and tasks, he says.

“Unless you put a lot of intentionality and effort into making processes asynchronous or enabling those, if you try to enable a nonlinear work schedule, it’s going to be incredibly hard to maintain effective communication and that’s with team members who share a time zone; not to mention, if you are a global organization with an international presence, productivity is going to suffer if you don’t change the way that you operate.”

A large part of this planning must be done on the local-teams level, says Cambon, because those are the ones who truly understand individual goals and work styles.

“You need to find a way to equip teams and team managers to sit down and decide collectively ‘What is the work pattern that is going to best enable us to work together?’ and that that will vary from team to team... I’ve seen a lot of organizations put together playbooks and guiding principles, helpful tools to start to have that conversation.”

As part of these news rules, time should be classified for work that best gets completed with teamwork, he says.

“One of the organizations we worked with actually sat down and said, across the organization, ‘We’re going to say there are four hours in a day, across all time zones, where we block that time for synchronous collaboration. That means those four hours, all teams have to be available and accessible to meet but outside of those four hours, the day is yours: you can do whatever you want,’” says Cambon.

Happy workers are healthy workers, according to one researcher.

Questions for HR

For HR departments tasked with setting up non-linear work realities, the best question is “How much work can we accomplish asynchronously without negatively impacting the business outcomes?” says Bowen. “And then when you determine that balance of synchronous work versus asynchronous work, that’s how you determine what’s right for you and that’s when the balance levels itself out.”

In addition, you need to make sure that leaders are role-modelling flexibility “because so often employees look to their leaders to set the tone for what is acceptable within the organization,” says Cambon.

“If you have a culture that has a lot of stigma attached to flexibility, then as an employee, you’re probably not going to likely take advantage of it but I think that role modelling aspects, and the culture aspects, they are incredibly important.”