As companies rethink working arrangements, some employers are moving beyond binary work-from-home or office arrangements to more flexible, activity-based duties.
In activity-based working — also referred to as “smart” or “flexible” working — employees don’t have their own desk and choose the setting appropriate for each task in their work day.
They might choose a quiet location for uninterrupted high-focus concentration, or an area to carry out low cognitive load work, where they’re quite happy to be interrupted for a chat. There is generally also a range of meeting spaces, for informal brainstorming sessions between a couple of people or for more formal gatherings such as board meetings.
The term “activity-based working” (ABW) was first coined by Erik Veldhoen, a consultant with Veldhoen + Co, in his 1994 book The Demise of the Office. It has evolved since then.
Following the COVID-19 lockdowns and work- from-home mandates of 2020–21, work often now includes two or three days a week working at home. As a result of this hybrid working model, many employees are already thinking in terms of activity- based work, even if their organisation hasn’t officially introduced it.
For instance, an office worker might decide if they have a day of Teams meetings and a report to write, they’d be better off operating from home. And on a day when they need to collaborate with colleagues or meet clients, they are better working in the office.
Proponents say ABW increases productivity and makes for more engaged employees, thanks to the autonomy they gain over their work. They have less travel time and a better work-life balance, which can include time for exercise and caring for children or elderly parents.
It can also be a staff attraction and retention strategy, thanks to modern ABW premises and the opportunity to work remotely. Employers can take on staff who might not be able to — or don’t want to — work nine-to-five, five days a week in the office. Many companies also see it as a way to cut back on the organisation’s office space.
However, Eoin Higgins, Veldhoen’s head of business growth in Australia and New Zealand, says while there are real estate savings to be made from having fewer desks, ABW is not an office design solution. It starts with employees thinking about their different activities and the most appropriate space for each. Central to this is not “owning” a desk.
“If you’re not designated a desk or an individual office, your change in how you’re working is that you need to be more conscious,” says Higgins. “You’re saying, ‘What do I need to do today and what’s the best setting for that?’”
Catalyst for change and innovation
Directors should use the fundamental shift brought about by the introduction of ABW as an opportunity to bring about larger changes, according to Higgins. “If you’re looking to change your culture, to make a strategic change in who you are as an organisation, then you can use a change like this as the disruptor to enable that,” he says. “The key question directors should be looking at is, if you’re going to invest in this change, do all this work, what is it you want it to do for you?”
There are no cookie-cutter solutions to activity-based working, with each design specific to each employer.
“Organisations fall short on this when they don’t do the necessary strategic and analytical work upfront, and engage their people to think about what types of spaces and settings in this office space suit their strategic and cultural needs,” says Higgins.
Organisations can’t just fit out an office for ABW and hope it will happen. Employees are likely to feel put out if they arrive at work to discover they no longer have a desk.
In his role as an IT leader, Dan Maslin GAICD has been involved in the design and implementation of ABW projects at three of his workplaces in the past decade. He says companies need to explain to employees — even sell the idea — why they are introducing ABW, to help people adjust to not having their own personal desk.
“It’s almost like they’re offended and feel they’ve been forced into giving up their personal space,” says Maslin, group chief information security officer at Monash University.
One of his employers started by fitting out one of its 12 office floors as an ABW space, then inviting staff to explore it, get the feel of it and provide feedback.
“Having that sort of consultative committee, where employees are part of the design from an early stage, helps,” he says. “Each department usually has a champion who is the conduit for feedback and can also deliver updates.”
ABW also provides an opportunity for the innovative use of space. One of Maslin’s previous workplaces had amphitheatre-like meeting spaces, with seating for 20 in a semicircle around a large screen. This prompted more interactive and natural meeting room conversations.
Another setting was a room with high tables and bar stools, where employees might stop off between meetings to send emails, and which enabled casual conversations and networking.
Once ABW has been introduced, directors should monitor its effectiveness based on pre- and post-change staff surveys. They can consider engagement scores, employee perceptions of their productivity and, for some tasks, actual productivity.
Another element to smart working is flexibility over working times and the concept of a span of hours. For instance, some employees might have a 12-hour work span — from 7am until 7pm. But in that time, they might have gone to the gym, picked their children up from school, cared for elderly parents and prepared dinner. All-up, the employee might have put in eight or nine hours work over the 12-hour period.
Management by results
One of the main benefits of flexible working is a shift from managing by presence to managing by results, says Andy Lake, director of flexibility.co. uk. Managing by presence assumes that if a person is sitting in their seat then they’re being productive — that productivity issues can be dealt with by cracking a whip over somebody’s shoulder. This eats into managers’ time, according to Lake.
“When you move to management by results, it often involves deeper thinking about the granular outputs each person and team is trying to achieve, and whether the systems are in place to monitor those,” says Lake. “So you get new reporting structures, and [new procedures in] how people touch base, share work and collaborate jointly, rather than having a series of solo bits of work and then having a meeting or sending dozens of emails.”
While one of ABW’s key benefits is providing staff with more flexibility and control over their working arrangements, there still needs to be framework and agreement about how they work, he notes. Colleagues who have to collaborate, for instance, will need to have overlapping times in which to do so.
Office vs hybrid
Where some employers have continued the flexible working arrangements introduced during the pandemic, some such as Starbucks and Amazon are mandating that staff return to office five days a week or risk being sacked. In Australia, wagering group Tabcorp ordered its employees to return to the office from September, five days a week. The company did not respond to interview requests.
Lake’s Smart Working Maturity Model is an exploration of what the future of work means for business, society and public policy. It assesses progress in technology change, experience of working virtually, policy, leadership, workplace change and wellbeing. Directors are able to refer to the model to assess whether their organisation is getting the benefits it expected from switching to smart working.
David Dennis, CEO of Australian IT company FiveP, says the technology needed for employees to work remotely is the same sort of hardware set-up they’d have in the office — a good internet connection and a meeting platform such as Webex or Zoom. The business also has to be cloud-enabled. This will allow access to documents from any location, rather than having to maintain on- premises hardware.
FiveP is a Microsoft partner and helps organisations to facilitate remote working with Teams and other Microsoft products.
While Dennis is an enabler and advocate of remote working, he notes that hybrid working is appropriate for most workers, because working online can’t always replicate all person-to-person interactions, such as the spontaneous three-minute conversations with a colleague to answer a quick question.
“You can’t whiteboard online,” he says. “I’ve seen all sorts of different tools to do it, however, in my opinion, there’s nothing like standing in front of a whiteboard and writing something down. It can’t be replicated.”
Another change making its way through Australian workplaces is the “right to disconnect”. This gives eligible employees the right to refuse employer or third-party contact outside of working hours in various circumstances.
“Because everybody is so accessible and you’ve got this set-up at home, the expectation, potentially, is that you get on a meeting at 6.30pm,” says Dennis. “But that’s completely inappropriate for many people, especially if you’ve got a family and kids.”
This article first appeared under the headline ‘On Active Duty’ in the December 2024/January 2025 issue of Company Director magazine.
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