There was a bit of anxiety about what we'd do when the virus subsided - as far as bringing the staff back to the office. At that point I saw an opportunity to try an experiment that I'd been thinking of trying for a while. I decided to allow staff members to set their own hours, unless they were working on a project that had to be completed on a certain schedule or by a certain deadline.
The outcome was interesting. When we allowed staff to leave once they completed their routine responsibilities it seemed we got more work done and completed it much sooner. Not one person took advantage of the situation.
I think that at first there was some suspicion about what we were up to. We still were paying the same wages and salaries, yet some of them were working half as many hours.
My reasoning about the hours they put in was that I didn't want to walk past a desk and see someone surfing the web or posting on social media. I'd much prefer to see them complete their jobs and then maybe go to the gym or to a 12-step meeting. And that's what many of them did.
We probably will continue this schedule as long as it's as effective as it has been. When I see people just wasting time on busy work just to look like they're doing something productive I see us wasting the one resource we can't make more of: our precious time.
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