A ‘Flow-Friendly' Workplace

The freedom to work flexibly is a key factor in reducing stress and boosting productivity in an organisation.

- Steve Glaveski

The nine-to-five workday has been a hallmark of the working world since it was ratified as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. American labour unions had, until then, fought for decades to do away with the inhumane working conditions that plagued factory workers and had seen children as young as six in the coal mines.

In the eight decades since, work has largely evolved from algorithmic, assembly line tasks to heuristic, critical thinking ones. Despite this, most modern organisations are still designed to manage hours, something organisational psychologist and The New York Times bestselling author, Adam Grant, does not agree with. “The more complex and creative jobs are, the less it makes sense to pay attention to hours at all,” he says.

In order to perform at a high level, heuristic and creative workers need to get into flow, coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in 1975, and better known by most people as ‘the zone’. Think a lone surfer catching a ten-foot wave and completely immersed in the task at hand, or a writer who has been consumed by their work, so much so that they had not realised that several hours had gone by. That is flow. Management consultancy McKinsey & Co. found that top executives are up to five times more productive when they are in a state of flow.

Yet, the modern organisation ultimately inhibits its people from getting into flow by setting unrealistic expectations on availability and responsiveness as well as making no qualms about interrupting people immersed in a task and pulling them into, what often amount to, pointless hour-long meetings. Employees are in such a state of hyper-availability that they check their email 74 times a day.