Trusting your employees to effectively manage their own time is a game-changer. Let everyone decide their own working time, when to take time off and how to manage and handle their own work.
Again, we are dealing with adults who took themselves through schools, activities, exams and some even got kids and manage all that without any problem. Your best bet is to treat people like adults and let them manage this themselves.
What is important, is that it’s communicated.
I keep an "absence calendar" shared where everyone can just put in when they are out. It's easy for everyone to see and no one needs to ask around where people are.
Everything can happen, but keeping the ones you work with informed about when you are available or not, is a good thing to do and it’ll help avoid a lot of confusion.
Letting people take care of this themselves also free’s up a lot of time. All of a sudden no one needs “approvals" to go to the doctor, so basically people will also be more motivated.
Some companies have a free vacation policy. Meaning they can take as much vacation as they want to. Some has put a bit of a restrain on it and set like “what's good for you is good for us” and “manage with responsibility”.
I have heard of some good examples when this worked really good (Danske Banks former innovation hub in Copenhagen, Denmark) — and I think it's an interesting concept.
Just as long as it doesn’t force people to check in more and work more I guess it's a great thing. People need to breathe.
Why not take a break in the middle of the day, go for a run or do your favourite activity for 1-2 hours, combined with lunch? Then you can return fresh for the afternoon shift.
Too many people over-work and try to achieve stuff on their own. Or try to deliver to the ever demanding micro managing boss, who has no respect for your time and needs their stuff “now now now”.
Allowing schedule flexibility makes it easier for people to relieve this pressure and enjoy the outdoors or other activities for 1-2h in the afternoon. In the evening it gets trickier when family gets home.
When we do go off on longer vacation, it's absolutely crucial that we let the employees enjoy their time off without interruptions. Some like to check in here and there, and some to be totally unreachable.
Accommodate whatever the need is. The ability to make individual setups with employees is what makes a great leader.
Don’t demand conformity. Don’t demand anything. Support instead.
Read more on leading development teams in "The CTO Playbook", written by our CTO Robert Mejlerö, available on Amazon/Kindle.
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