By Madeleine Niebauer, founder and CEO of vChief, a virtual chief-of-staff service, helping executives stay focused on what matters most.
An asynchronous work schedule allows individuals to work at the times that work best for them. With this setup, employees have the freedom to choose when they start and finish their workday as well as how they allocate their working hours throughout the week.
I believe this approach is a must for teams spanning multiple time zones, but it’s also increasingly being adopted by companies seeking to enhance productivity and prevent burnout.
However, if your team is used to having unrestricted access to their colleagues during the workday, the switch to an asynchronous schedule has the potential to cause bottlenecks and confusion that could harm your productivity and morale.
To ensure a smooth transition and effective implementation of an asynchronous work schedule, it’s essential to embrace three key mindset shifts.
1. Eliminate a false sense of urgency.
Deadlines can be a great tool for boosting productivity. But sometimes, we impose deadlines purely for the sake of accountability and stick to them even if there will be no disastrous consequences for missing them. For example, a marketing team that wants to keep their blog content fresh might impose a weekly deadline for new blog content. But if the content of those blogs isn’t time-sensitive, the blogs could be written in batches and delivered at the end of the month without any loss in quality.
When working in an asynchronous schedule, a false sense of urgency such as an arbitrary deadline can create unnecessary tension. One person could find themselves up against a deadline and needing something from a colleague who won’t be online again until after the deadline has passed.
Communication methods can also create unnecessary urgency. Sending an email communicates less urgency than sending a text or making a phone call. By aligning the urgency of the task with the most suitable communication method, you avoid unnecessary interruptions and respect each team member’s focus and autonomy.
2. Grant trust automatically.
One of the hills I’m willing to die on is the idea that your team members shouldn’t have to earn your trust. If you believe in someone enough to hire them, then you should grant them your trust automatically. This shift from micromanagement to empowerment encourages accountability and ownership.
In an asynchronous work schedule, you can’t rely on the old methods of assessing team members’ contributions—seeing whether they’re at their desk (or online) or keeping an eye on them to make sure they’re not “wasting time.” And let’s be real: Those signals aren’t real measures of productivity; they’re just indicators of busyness.
Granting trust automatically requires setting your employees up for success and then letting go of micromanaging. That means you give team members explicit expectations regarding their deliverables and performance evaluations, and then you stay out of their way while they do their thing. When you give your people transparent criteria by which their work will be measured, you empower them to take ownership of their responsibilities.
Adopting objective measures to evaluate your employees’ performance also gives you more options when an employee is underperforming. Instead of assuming they’re slacking off, you can analyze patterns of missed deadlines or incomplete tasks and sit down with them to address the root cause constructively.
3. Prioritize high autonomy in the hiring process.
While adopting an asynchronous schedule has been extremely beneficial for my team, it’s not a great fit for every employee. People who need a lot of routine, ritual and procedure in their work tend to struggle in this environment. That’s why there are some very specific skills you might want to look for in your hiring process.
The first skill to look for is time management and time forecasting. While time management is the ability to use your time effectively, time forecasting is the ability to accurately predict how much time a task will take to do it properly. This requires the ability to anticipate challenges, adapt to unexpected changes and ensure completion of critical tasks.
The second skill to look for is self-awareness about their working style. Candidates need to be able to articulate their working style in the interview and identify what kind of support they’ll need to be successful. This can help you make sure they’ll be able to speak up if they’re struggling and ask for help.
Transitioning to an asynchronous work schedule requires a shift in mindset for both employers and employees. By dismantling false urgency, granting trust and prioritizing autonomy in hiring, organizations can create an environment that supports individual productivity and well-being.
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