Understand the agile working pros and cons before you decide to transition to this new way of working.
Agile working offers many benefits to employees and employers and can not only increase productivity and work performance but also improve the culture of your company.
Having an agile business means something different for every company. Essentially, though, adopting an agile working environment for your business creates a more responsive, effective and efficient company. Having an agile working environment in your business improves the performance of your business and increases the satisfaction of your employees.
Many studies have shown that when companies empower their employees to work when, where and how they want, their productivity is increased. Offering an agile office environment benefits both employees and employers. This is because instead of employees focusing on time and attendance, they focus more on results and performance which drastically improve the products, ideas, and culture of the company.
Benefits of Agile Working
Cost Savings
There are many business benefits of agile working. One of the major agile workspace benefits for companies is the cost savings. When employees are offered a flexible workplace, like being able to work from home or wherever they choose, this drastically reduces business costs by not having to provide an office space and all the equipment and other expenses that come with it. These cost savings are also applied to the salaries you offer your candidates. With agile working, your company can hire equally talented candidates from areas of the country, or even the world, where they can offer them lower salaries but still acquire the talent they need.
Improved Work-Life Balance
It is now more important than ever to the current workforce to have a balance between their work life and home life. Employees nowadays care a great deal about spending most of their time with friends, family and loved ones and are even willing to get paid less to be provided with the luxury of choosing how they wish to spend their time. When you implement agile working principles in your company, your workforce will be much happier. Offering agile working is now much easier than ever before thanks to technology allowing employees access to their work from anywhere which allows them to work around their social schedule instead of having to plan their social schedule around their work.
Increased Self-Determination
In a traditional work environment, employees are told how, when, and where to work by executives and senior positions. When employees are offered agile working, though, this hierarchy is broken down and makes way for the workplace to be much more respectful and recognize employees’ voices better. With increased self-determination, employees tend to produce better work because they have ownership over the way they work.
Increased High-Quality Talent Retention
With the demand for flexible work on the rise, it is becoming essential for companies to offer agile working options to their employees. Being offered agile working is in such high demand that in the past few years, the demand for agile working has increased by more than 40%. Any company that doesn’t offer agile working is most likely losing out on great talent. Offering agile working also increases retention rates because any employee that needs to take time off to travel does not need to quit their job to do so. They can just work remotely, and business will carry on as usual.
Agile working offers many benefits to employees and employers, but it can also offer disadvantages. Some disadvantages may include a reduction in productivity for employees who need more structure to complete their work. Other disadvantages also include management not being able to adapt to the new environment and some employees not appreciating the new amount of freedom they have in their work environment. Aside from these few disadvantages though, agile working offers many benefits that the new workforce is seeking.
