There are certain roads around my childhood home that I could identify purely by sound — the whooshing whine of concrete broken up by the rhythmic ka-thud of the expansion joints between the slabs. At the time, it was a brief musical interlude in otherwise dull car trips.

Later, I learned how vital those flexible strips are to maintaining the road, absorbing the differing weights and vibrations through changes in weather, traffic, and geology. Those joints were planned, designed, costed, and installed to handle known issues. 

For small to medium-sized businesses, especially those staffed with hourly workers, the same need for intentional flexibility applies. Flexibility doesn’t come free — and it can require negotiation and compromise — but the outcome is a stronger, more resilient business. 

Let’s get into some specifics.

The benefits of flexibility

Recently we wrote about bees and their ability to scale up and reshape their hives according to the needs of the moment. That specific type of flexibility is hard for businesses to achieve (except perhaps in the world of The Lego Movie), but being able to respond quickly to changes in the business environment is equally important.

In industries like construction, manufacturing, and even professional services, being able to scale up and down to meet demand makes for a more efficient, adaptive business. You can reduce your outgoing cashflow when there’s less work on and ramp up quickly to take advantage of opportunities when they return. 

Flexible work can also allow coverage outside of your normal business hours, more coverage in your busiest hours, or coverage beyond your usual geographical range. 

Flexibility can increase autonomy for your staff, too. Even moving from a physical clock-in location to a software-based, in-the-field option can make a difference. As Michael Fitzsimmons from SharpStream Painting & Power Washing puts it, “[Buddy Punch] allows for the guys under me in my service department to be responsible for their own actions and hours recorded. Not punching in and out makes them hold themselves accountable.” 

Compared to a typical butt-in-seat, 9-5 role, flexibility can also open the employment door to skilled people who are unable to work traditional hours. Consider parents of young children, students, people with disabilities, or carers of all kinds for whom a 40-hour week is not currently possible. 

Even so, workplace flexibility is not a cure-all. A more permanent staffing structure, for example, could deliver greater predictability and build stronger customer relationships. An appropriate balance needs to be struck. 

Flexible, not amorphous

A flexible workplace doesn’t mean one without any permanent structure. Think more Elastigirl and less octopus-in-a-glass-jar. You want a solid default structure that can quickly flex and adapt when the situation demands it.

Managers are often tasked with reducing unnecessary labor costs and managing variable demand, and workforce flexibility is a valuable tool. However, like all tools, it can do serious damage if not used carefully. 

In her 2008 research, “Passing the buck: Labor flexibility practices that transfer risk onto hourly workers”, Susan Lambert suggests that workforce flexibility — the ability of a business to vary total hours worked, when those hours are worked, and how many people work them — can cause instability for the staff who bear the risk of unpredictable hours and income levels. Those flexibility costs show up in eroded trust, higher turnover, and the subsequent loss of customer relationships. 

Lambert found that some employers were able to create flexibility more effectively through methods including:

• A retail company asking for volunteers to work a shorter day
• An airline caterer limiting shift changes to twice a year
• A company giving advance notice of upcoming zero-hour periods, which allowed employees to plan vacations
• A hotel allowing employees to earn points to buy into extra shifts or out of overtime

Giving some control back to their teams created a better work environment and a more sustainable system of flexible work. 

Buddy Punch’s own survey, “Scheduling Flexibility Isn’t Unlimited—It’s Negotiated,” found that employees aren’t asking for unlimited freedom, but for some structure — with flexible start and end times being their most requested option. 

Striking the right balance will require adapting to your particular industry, business, employees, and customer base. 

Workforce flexibility for the small to medium business

What would sustainable flexibility look like in your business? Large companies typically need more complex policies and systems to coordinate people and workloads, but they’re also able to build permanent flexible options. Small-to-medium businesses, at smaller scales and with closer relationships and the ability to interact in person, can avoid much of that coordination cost and make two-sided flexibility a true advantage. 

Know your business 

If middle-aged-home-yoga has taught me anything (beyond a deep appreciation for corpse pose), it is that you don’t become flexible on the first day you stretch. Trying to suddenly become a flexible business without really knowing your organizational body is doomed to failure. 

If you run a seasonal business, you should already be able to map out the typical volumes of your year, but every business has its own rhythms and patterns. Mechanics and medical receptionists both know to expect those Monday-morning “it started making a weird noise” drop-ins, and Tuesday lunchtime is the best time for restaurant staff to book in those medical appointments that have to happen during the workday. 

There will be times when your coverage needs will override everything else, and times when you can offer more flexibility back to your team. Communicating those patterns to your team in advance can help them make use of the moments when their work can be more flexible — and prepare for the times when it cannot. 

Flexible systems last longer 

Since you’re here, it’s likely that keeping the same staff on the same hours all year long is just not a practical option for you. The trick is to build a flexible business that can still hold onto the staff, the culture, and the approach that makes it better than its competitors.

“Scheduling Flexibility Isn’t Unlimited—It’s Negotiated” puts it this way:

The opportunity is “to build the operational foundations (e.g., staffing models, communication systems, clear policies, and manager support) that allow flexibility to function consistently, transparently, and at scale.”

What do those foundations look like in practice? They might be practical items; for example, a single shared schedule that everyone can refer to so there are no misconceptions or unfounded suspicions. It could be cross-training your staff to allow them to take on differing roles as needed — or a transparent change-request policy that can be applied to everyone. 

Flexibility in a business ultimately demands flexibility from the staff too, and making that work well requires communication and fairness. 

Build structures to support flexibility

Flexibility is beneficial, but a total lack of structure could cause disaster. Even Southwest Airlines at the height of their no-assigned-seating era didn’t let you pick the pilot’s seat. 

What makes a flexible work environment sustainable and manageable is intentional visibility and alignment. That might mean enabling your whole team to understand who is working and on what, and especially giving your managers an accessible overview of the schedule and any gaps that need filling. You need operational structures that can take the flexible workforce and match it against business needs so that the right resources flow into the right areas at the right times.

Some of those structures can be provided by your scheduling tools, others might need clear policies and guidelines on the extent and the limits of flexibility. Transparent, clear communication gives flexible workforces direction and control.

Communication and fairness make for flexible businesses 

As outlined in “The U.S. Scheduling Crisis No One Talks About,” 59% of survey respondents picked out clearer communication from their managers as the number one thing that would help them. Clarity makes for better decisions and improves trust and confidence in the business, whether it is clarity of policies, of business requirements, or of operational needs. 

Good communication includes making useful information accessible to those who need it. For example, lack of visibility into others’ schedules was cited by many respondents as the cause of confusion and distrust. It can also reduce collaboration between team members. The same applies to company schedules as a whole, such as telling people ahead of time when known busy or quiet periods are coming up for the business.

As well as general communication clarity, employees value fairness in scheduling and decision making. Having rules for shift flexibility which are both expressed clearly and applied consistently builds up trust and avoids even the appearance of favoritism. 

The long and winding road

Flexibility in business is there to absorb the ups and downs of the economy, the shifting seasons, and the sudden unexpected demands. But just like those road expansion joints, flexibility can’t make up the entire structure. It is there to keep those persistent elements of the business connected. 

Successful, flexible businesses over the long term are the ones that combine clear and reliable structure with the ability to quickly adapt to current situations and balance the needs of the business with the needs of the employees who deliver much of the flexing. 

Communicate clearly, treat people fairly, and build a business that can survive all the twists and turns ahead.