No schedule, no meetings: are 'working hours' history?
Mar 19, 2024
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Exploring the rise of asynchronous work where employees have flexibility but face challenges in collaboration. Featuring insights from Atlassian CEO and UCL professor on making remote work successful. Discussing the balance of autonomy and teamwork in a distributed work environment.
Asynchronous work promotes productivity by enabling employees to choose when and where to work, emphasizing self-sufficiency and autonomy.
Successful asynchronous work thrives on transparency, requiring detailed documentation to facilitate independent decision-making and drive progress.
Deep dives
Asynchronous Work Flexibility and Productivity
Asynchronous work allows employees to choose when and where to work, promoting productivity by enabling individuals to operate during their most effective times. This approach emphasizes the importance of open access to information throughout the company to facilitate independent work without constant reliance on immediate responses.
Transparent Workflow and Decision-Making
Successful asynchronous work thrives on transparency, requiring detailed documentation to provide historical context for decisions and workflows. Employees are entrusted with understanding relevant information, making decisions autonomously, and driving progress despite potential time gaps, encouraging self-sufficiency and accountability.
Balancing Flexibility and Collaboration
Asynchronous work allows for time flexibility, reducing the need for frequent synchronous meetings and optimizing efficiency by leveraging tools for communication and collaboration, such as video platforms like LUM. Building trust through occasional face-to-face interactions enhances team dynamics and fosters a cohesive culture, emphasizing the balance between individual freedom and collective engagement.
The pandemic showed us we could all work in different places; can we all work at different times, too? That idea – known as ‘asynchronous’ work – has gained traction at a number of companies. Workers march to the beat of their own drum, and only occasionally speak to their scattered colleagues in real time. That gives them greater flexibility; but does it make collaboration harder? How can a manager get a handle on their team’s work if they’re several time zones away? And how can colleagues be expected to bond, or trust each other, without spending real time together? Guest host Mischa Frankl-Duval speaks to Scott Farquhar, CEO of software group Atlassian, whose employees work from 13 countries; and Jen Rhymer, an assistant professor at the UCL School of Management, to find out how companies make asynchronous work… work.
Presented and produced by Mischa Frankl-Duval, mixed by Simon Panayi. The executive producer is Manuela Saragosa. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s head of audio.