As the war for talent heats up, life speeds up, and technology frees us from the desk, we’ll find that the most precious “perks” we can offer employees are flexibility and freedom. So we must innovate to allow this freedom.

Freedom, expressed as time and place – where I want to be when I want to be there – has to do with: flexible time to take care of other life chores as needed; experiencing more of the joys of family, friends and new challenges; the flexibility to work from virtually any place at any time; and to be connected to families and communities more than ever before.

We can have that flexibility now, because technology finally allows us to sever the tether from our offices and desks, yet stay in touch with our teammates.

Professional service people often are thinking about their work challenges in the shower, on the freeway and, too often, when they should be listening to their spouse and children. They’re working, or have the potential to work around the clock. This is a far cry from the “leave it all at work when the whistle blows” mentality of the factory workers and, to a great extent, many of the white-collar workers of modern day bureaucracies.

The combination of this desire for freedom, the flexibility made possible by communications technology and the “always on my mind” mental work calls for an organizational system that operates with a high level of trust. The departmentalized, “always in your face” pyramidal hierarchies originally invented for the military and factory work are simply outdated.

Joe Phelps