Work is a Verb
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Flexibility shouldn't be a one-way street
Their employer trusts them to get work done on the road, unsupervised, through long weeks and delayed flights. However, that trust stops just before they open their front door.
Between work trips, office attendance is required.
That's the situation a real Work is a Verb reader described in a reply to my welcome email. They asked to stay anonymous.
Between trips, they want a little room to recover the time that work travel swallowed. Maybe work from home and get the laundry done between tasks, or a 6 hour workday instead of an 8 hour workday after a severely delayed flight returning home from a work trip meant they got home at 3am.
Now, they're ready to find a fully remote job.
This flexibility imbalance isn't just unfair, it's illogical. The employer already relies on this person to do their work away from the office, during business travel without a manager watching.
If the company trusts them to get the work done while traveling (not in an office), would materially change when they're home (still not at an office)?
What gets me about this power dynamic imbalance is how much flexibility the employee is already providing to their employer. A work trip runs long, and their personal time gets shorter. Getting home late doesn't make the laundry disappear or the dog needing fewer walks; the rest of their life still needs doing.
In this reader's case, the mandate to work from an office when not traveling for business, leaves them no corresponding room to adjust.
I think that is a useful test of a company's culture: who gets to be flexible, and who has to absorb the consequences?
Travel can be a legitimate part of a job. Some work requires being in a particular place. For example, a client visit has to happen at the client's location. I don't know everything this reader does between trips. There may be tasks that require an office, however the employer should be able to explain those requirements in terms of the work itself, not just a blanket policy mandate.
If a business expects an employee's work week to stretch around its needs, it should be willing to reciprocate and make some room around theirs. A later start after a late arrival. A quieter meeting day after a demanding trip. The freedom to do suitable work from home without having to present a case for why their life deserves consideration.
I don't want flexibility to become something you buy with exhaustion. You shouldn't need a delayed flight or an unusually long week before ordinary autonomy is available. Those examples just make the imbalance easier to see.
What the reader wanted was so modest. Someone to acknowledge what the job had asked of them, and give a little consideration back. Instead, they describe a standing office requirement and a desire to leave and find an employer who will.
If you're evaluating your next employer, ask what happens after an unusually demanding week or a disrupted work trip. Can someone adjust their schedule or work from home afterward? Ask for a recent example. You'll learn more from how a manager handled that situation than from the word "flexible" on a careers page.
If you manage people and don't have past examples you can draw from you can answer that candidate question with what you plan do next time.
Flexibility shouldn't be a one-way street. Your company already knows how to ask for it from you. Make sure you reciprocate, or find a company that will.
After presenting a keynote at the Remote Rebellion job fair last month, people asked whether they could work with me as a job search coach. That isn't what Remotivated does, but I didn't want to stop helping the dozens of people who reached out wanting personalized remote job search guidance, so we're trying something new.
If you sign up for Remotivated Pro while this runs, you get a one-to-one, 20-minute call with me. We can set your job alerts up properly, get the free Job Hunt Skills plugin running, or just talk through where your remote job search is stuck and how to fix it.
You also get 45-minute group working sessions with me and the other founding members, in the spirit of the conversations we had at the event: bring a posting you're weighing applying to, bring a question or a challenge you need help working through, or just listen. Any Remotivated Pro plan level counts - monthly, annual or lifetime. It's a thank you for joining early, but this offer won't be around forever.
