Communication – The 3 Biggest Killers of Flexitime
By Andrew O'Connell, 14.09.2016, Approx. 5 min reading time.
Work as you wish: it does not matter where or when. My first experience with flexitime is that it releases a feeling of freedom, but when reality comes into play it can be quite annoying. Most difficulties are due to communication, or the lack of it.

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- Keep private issues to a minimum!
- Choose a quiet area! Keep in mind that the meeting could take longer than expected.
2. Training
The Main Problem: your business partner is probably sitting miles away from you making a quick, “look here, I’ll show you what I mean” very difficult. The good news: Simulating the feeling that your business partner is sitting next to you is easy to achieve with the use of screen sharing programmes, such as, Skype. These programmes enable your colleague to view the content of your computer screen, which makes visual explanations comprehensible. The advantage: recording a video must only be carried out on one occasion, but it can be used over and over again for providing explanations and training purposes.- Recording a training video is an excellent resource that can be used for repetitive topics!
Task Allocation
The Main Problem: holding “mini-meetings“, coordinating projects, finding out employee availability and acknowledging any progress achieved are all difficult tasks to perform with flexitime and can potentially increase conflict. Sometimes it is possible to inform others of a new task by e-mail or to deliver project up-dates. Though, in most cases, these strategies will only clutter an e-mail inbox unnecessarily. Of course, it eases communication and cooperation if you know what tasks your colleagues are currently doing or the current status of a project, but do not use your e-mail account for it. Much better methods include writing to-do lists, drawing up projects trees and project analysis, as these will help you avoid conflicts and present you with a more insightful overview of the whole project. Numerous tools available on the market can support you with many aspects of project management – our own-brand software TimeTac was developed exactly for this purpose.- Trust and effective means of communication in your business are the most important factors for success with flexitime.
- Set out your company communication rules right at the beginning!