Fairness

Another challenge that leaders could well face when administering flexible work structures is that of ensuring that all employees are treated fairly. Leaders may realistically fear that the application of flexible work systems could cause difficulties with ensuring equity. These issues should not be taken lightly. Achieving fairness in the workplace is indeed a complicated challenge (Brockner, 2006) and the consequences of perceiving unfairness among employees can have very significant effects for employees and their organizations (e.g., Colquitt, 2001). For flexible work systems to achieve their intended benefits, all workers need to feel they enjoy equal access to the policies, with the acknowledgment that the most successful implementations will individualize access for different employees with different needs rather than impose a single rigid template. Indeed, fairness does not mean treating everyone the same.

Acknowledging that leaders are unlikely to control the general policy, individual discussions with each of their employees on how they can access and use the flexible work benefits that exist, and actively encourage them to do so, should be considered. It is critical to assure team members that the system is meant to suit their needs, rather than their individual needs bending to the flexible work policy. After all, this is the basic purpose of flexible work programs — to ensure that working hours can be customized to individuals’ unique needs. In doing so, the reasons why employees are seeking flexibility should be much less important than how that flexibility can be provided. Making individuals defend their motivation for seeking flexible hours will only discourage employees from initiating the discussion in the first instance.

One way to enhance the likelihood that leader behaviors will be perceived as being fair is to explicitly consider each of the four elements of organizational fairness (or justice) (Colquitt, 2001).

• 1. Distributive justice: perceptions that the distributions of tangible (e.g., pay) or intangible (e.g., working hours) resources are fair.
• 2. Procedural justice: perceptions that the decisions and processes that lead to outcomes of distribution are fair.
• 3. Interpersonal (interactional) justice: perceptions that one is treated with respect and propriety regarding distributive decisions.
• 4. Informational (interactional) justice: perceptions that one is receiving adequate, timely, and accurate information regarding distributive decisions.

Applying these principles to flexible work systems — leaders should ensure policies are fairly applied across all employees; that the ways in which unique schedules are set are agreed upon with each individual worker; that each employee’s unique needs are considered with sensitivity and respect; and that information regarding decision-making is clearly communicated in a timely fashion.

Relinquishing control and trusting employees

Surely, one of the biggest personal challenges any leader will face in applying flexible work systems is relinquishing managerial control and trusting that employees will not abuse these systems. Greater organizational control is an inherent part of the leadership role — the authority and power to make decisions for others, and to direct others (Christie & Barling, 2009). For some leaders, relinquishing the responsibility in determining when employees work will be experienced as a status loss. Because people seek to gain power and status (Magee & Galinksy, 2008), and feel badly when they are accorded lower status (Hoption, Christie, & Barling, 2015), relinquishing such control may be uncomfortable and unpleasant for leaders, resulting in negative psychological (Pettit, Yong, & Spataro, 2010) and physiological responses (Scheepers, Elle-mers, & Sintemaartensdijk, 2009). Moreover, those in higher status positions suffer the consequences of status loss more than those in lower status positions (Marr & Thau, 2014). Despite all this, it is questionable whether leaders can successfully encourage and facilitate their employees’ access to flexible work policies unless they manage to relinquish control.

One prerequisite if leaders are to relinquish control is that they trust their employees. Although there are several definitions of trust, we adopt Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman’s (1995) definition as

the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other part.

(p. 712)

Trusting others can be very difficult. It requires the trustor to want to trust the trustee, and that the trustee has the perceived ability, benevolence, and integrity to reduce the risk associated with trusting. In the context of leaders facilitating the implementation of flexible work systems, leaders have to be willing to trust initially. In most situations, leaders will have an established relationship with followers that will likely leave them having different levels of trust in different employees, making some leaders more risk averse in the adoption of flexible work schedules. Setting clear guidelines about what they expect from followers in accessing flexible work policies could enhance the likelihood that trust occurs and is maintained. Leaders may be helped by remembering (a) that followers are initially required to trust in their leaders’ decision making, and (b) that the development of trust naturally occurs over time, and in this instance by granting employees the opportunity to prove that they deserve to be trusted. Ultimately, the more trusted an employee feels by their leader, the more empowered they will feel over their work (Gomez & Rosen, 2001).

Communication and feedback

One additional challenge that leaders may experience when implementing and administering flexible work systems is maintaining effective communication, feedback, and performance evaluations in a context in which shared face time decreases. This is a legitimate concern for a couple of reasons. First, leaders may have less direct, face-to-face opportunity to communicate regular feedback with employees with somewhat differing work hours. The responsibility to ensure high quality communication with their followers is now more complicated when active performance monitoring is not always

Leadership inflexible work systems 87 possible. Sara Sutton Fell, founder and CEO of Flexjobs suggests that “proactive communication, time management, and creating a clear understanding of goals and milestones are all ‘best practice’ management skills that become more important when managing flexible workers” (National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), 2018).

Second, regular communication and opportunities to socialize with peers within work groups is an important social practice that is central to the fundamental need to belong (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). A potentially unavoidable consequence of varying schedules within a work group will be reduced opportunities for such social interactions, not only with one’s leader, but amongst team members as well. Organizational belongingness is critical to psychological well-being (Harris & Cameron, 2005), can mitigate the negative effects of work stressors (Armstrong, Shakespeare-Finch, & Shochet, 2016), and are significant predictors of physical health and wellness (Steffens et al., 2017). As such, leaders must ensure that they create regular opportunities to facilitate social interactions amongst peers to maintain the social benefits of work and maintain an organizational climate.

We recommend that leaders take an experimental approach to testing flexible work schedules in their organizations. This would involve surveying team members to identify their flexible work needs; pre-testing attitudes, wellbeing, and performance. Thereafter, flexible work schedules could be implemented for a period of time, after which surveys could be re-administered to assess whether employees’ attitudes, well-being, and performance have changed in the desired direction. Findings from studies over several decades suggest that the likelihood is that this will help leaders appreciate the positive effects of their actions, and help them maintain their support for flexible work policies as they move forward.