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How to make flexible work a success

6 min read

Jan 13, 2025

Flexible working: The secret weapon for small businesses?

How do small businesses use remote work as a competitive advantage that will help them thrive in the future? Dropbox set out to answer that in our Choice Economy report, a survey of over 2,000 small business leaders and employees across eight countries. 

We wanted to see how flexible working arrangements have changed employee attitudes to how, where, and when they work. The pandemic saw that nearly two-thirds of businesses made notable or significant improvements to their business structure, tools, and practices to enable collaboration. It was essential, after all, with everyone locked indoors for those years. But that was just the start.

It’s been proven new technology can help teams get work done remotely. But how do we maintain the same level of flexibility when some of our team members are in the office, and others are at home?

After all, building high performing teams, no matter where they are in the world, is the number one priority for any businesses looking to survive the next few years. So, backed by our research, we’ve secured insights from leading figures in the field of remote work to find out how to implement flexible work arrangements.

What does “flexible working” mean?

Flexible working is an alternative to the traditional 9-5, office-based working arrangement. It gives employees greater control over when, where, and how they work. That could be part-time, remote or hybrid, compressed work hours, job sharing, or something else entirely.

For example, a flexible schedule may enable one of your employees to work flexible start and end times to fit around their childcare needs.

Basically, flexible working is all about giving employees the option to tailor their work schedule and environment to suit them. And it can have significant benefits for employers and employees—including job satisfaction, engagement, motivation, and work-life balance.

How to make flexible working work for your team
 

1. Ask employees what they want

If you want to offer flexibility in the long term, you first and foremost need to understand what your teams really want. And that means giving them choice, rather than blanket solutions or ways of working.

Employees are actually pretty good at deciding what environment is best for them at a given time. 

“They might prefer to work from home for focus work, or in the office for brainstorming sessions and collaboration, but they can make this decision independently. And, if you allow them to do this, you’ll see improved productivity as a result,” says Kate Lister, President at Global Workplace Analytics. 

So the answer is to not make rash decisions on behalf of your employees but simply to ask them and lead with what they actually want, even if it surprises you.

Looking over a remote worker's shoulder, a laptop sits open with five team members on a video call discussing a project.
A visual representation of the Dropbox interface, showing files stored in a Dropbox account.

Work with flexibility with Dropbox

Whether you're working a part-time or full-time job, are office-based or remote, Dropbox has the tools to help you manage your flexible schedule.

From cloud sync technology that allows you to work from anywhere to file sharing features that make it easier to collaborate with colleagues—you can set yourself and your team up for success with Dropbox.

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