Does everyone in your company go to the office? work fully remote? or do the hybrid model? No matter what your answer is, autonomy is always essential in work.
According to Harvard Business Review,
autonomy is an indispensable component of motivation and a key driver of performance and well-being.
https://hbr.org/2021/10/forget-flexibility-your-employees-want-autonomy
Autonomy is the key to improving performance and well-being. Companies can encourage employees’ autonomy by adopting hybrid or remote work. In terms of well-being, a study says
Those employees who are engaged in telework are happier, healthier and experience less stress if they are given a substantial degree of autonomy regarding where, when and how they work.
https://oxfordre.com/psychology/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.001.0001/acrefore-9780190236557-e-850
Hybrid work and having control over choosing workplaces is the key to autonomy. However, employers and managers would not let everyone in the company go hybrid because they have to care about the company’s performance, the safety of their employees, and various other reasons.
If a company wants to go hybrid, setting guidelines to enhance autonomy will help maintain the balances among performance, employee well-being, management, etc. We will cover three key points on setting such guidelines.
Guidelines are not policies
Guidelines are like principles and recommendations. Showing the employees what is recommended makes it easier to understand the employer’s message. Plus, guidelines do not usually come with punishments. The sense of “it’s all up to you” is what employees want to know. On the other hand, policies are more specific requirements accompanied by punishments.
Here is an example provided by Harvard Business Review,
In a shift from policies to principles, “minimum three days in the office per week” may become “there is inherent value in both the physical office and remote locations — we strongly encourage employees to consider which locations best enable them to most effectively carry out certain tasks.” This sets a guideline for best practices without stepping on the toes of any employees for whom a minimum number of days in-office policy may be seen as restrictive or outright impossible for them to fit into the balance of their life. If communicated correctly, principles can be just as effective as policies, while creating room to explore new ways of working.
https://hbr.org/2021/10/forget-flexibility-your-employees-want-autonomy
As we can learn from this example, policies would not nurture employees’ autonomy, but guidelines would by having them think about the best practices.
Jabra’s SVP, Holger Reisinger states,
Generally, people appreciate clear guidelines. If it’s only about policies, you are missing a human element. But if you have guiding principles, you are communicating that you trust people to do what is best. When leaders are very strict on saying what people should not do, employees get more concerned and have a higher need for reassurance, which stalls productivity. Having too many strict rules makes things complicated and frustrates people. People can really deal very well with autonomy, and they appreciate the flexibility.
https://www.jabra.jp/hybridwork
If everyone can work autonomously according to the guidelines, building trust between employers and employees is easier.
Focus on the outcomes
When people are working autonomously, what they do during the day will vary. You cannot measure their performance in input- or output-based management, such as how many calls a salesperson makes, how many tickets customer support resolves, and how many new features engineers release.
What matters most is the outcomes. Managers need to share specific ideas of wanted outcomes.
In Accenture’s blog, senior managing director David Hole shares about their practices.
I believe that my colleagues, clients and myself have joined the overall trend of defining work success in a new way, based on results. This trend has accelerated during the pandemic and is here to stay. As long as people are accountable for delivering transparent client/customer-focused, outcome-based results, they deserve the opportunity to thrive and choose a lifestyle in which they control how, when and where they work.
Companies own results — not calendars or time — and that means leaders need to be clear about what those results should be. This is the conversation that my team and I are having with current clients, as they are thinking about and planning for the future of work.
https://www.accenture.com/us-en/blogs/business-functions-blog/future-work-model
And some companies work in the same way. For example, when Amazon announced letting teams decide their workstyles, the announcement included the following sentence.
The decisions should be guided by what will be most effective for our customers; and not surprisingly, we will all continue to be evaluated by how we deliver for customers, regardless of where the work is performed.
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/workplace/amazon-offering-teams-more-flexibility-as-we-return-to-office
Not too much autonomy
When autonomy is too much, it could be an intense stressor. If employers put too much emphasis on autonomy and independence, it could result in the opposite direction. There is a study explaining the concept of the autonomy paradox.
autonomy turns from being an asset into a liability resulting in workaholic behavior, higher stress levels, and lower job satisfaction. The work-life balance at home may be disturbed, and interpersonal relations in the workplace loosen, resulting in isolation.
https://oxfordre.com/psychology/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.001.0001/acrefore-9780190236557-e-850
How much freedom and control employees have and how many choices they have to make is the question. It is why guidelines are necessary to set the balance of autonomy and dependency in the workplace.
The same study talks about the common misunderstanding about remote work.
One essential question for work motivation is to what extent the choice of working place and time is autonomous. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, “forced remote work” started to become the new normal as employees often were not allowed access their workplaces and were obliged to work remotely. In this sense, it reduced autonomy.
https://oxfordre.com/psychology/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.001.0001/acrefore-9780190236557-e-850
Conclusion
There is no one-size-fits-all solution for hybrid work. However, if we look closely at what companies need to thrive in hybrid work, companies can adopt common concepts and tips to some extent. Setting guidelines to encourage employees’ autonomy would be one of them.
Setting effective guidelines following the three points above could provide managers and employees with the chance to consider their vision, mission, and values and build stronger trust and relationships.