Originally written by Tom Carroll on Small Business
A gym on the roof. Extensive gardens with areas to relax and unwind. Employees bringing their dogs into the office. This might sound like a modern, cutting-edge workplace experimenting with measures to boost engagement, but it actually describes the US Department of Justice under Robert Kennedy.
And just as modern businesses are discovering now, these measures had a huge effect on morale, according to Larry Tye, Kennedy’s biographer. Ultimately, Kennedy demonstrated that he trusted his staff to let them use their time effectively; to step away from their desks regularly during the working day. The lesson is clear: flexibility and trust create loyalty and engagement.
The lesson is similar for productivity. Empowering employees with the choice to work from a range of locations provides a real fillip to productivity. Research from HSBC, for instance, has found that nine in 10 employees feel that the ability to work remotely has the greatest effect on their productivity.
And where Kennedy may have been something of a workplace pioneer in offering flexibility in the working day, nearly 60 years on, remote working is all the rage. The traditional desk-based nine to five is giving way to a remote, flexible