Work environment is an essential aspect of your team dynamic. In a positive space, you can fuel the creativity of the staff and provide them with a place where they enjoy spending their workdays. Here at Meeks Design Group, Inc. we pride ourselves in finding ways to continually improve our work-life balance. Over the past several years, we have established work guidelines to support working from home, from other cities, flex hours to provide a shortened Friday work day, and flex time to allow our staff to miss the traffic by shifting start and end times as needed . As our team dynamic grows and changes, our flexibility to help meet the needs of our staff grows with it.
We started off several years ago when Clayton was looking to move closer to family in Arkansas. He has been working remotely for the past few years and comes to Texas only as the need arises. The stressful commute is gone and he was able to create the space that works best for his style. “Even though you spend just as much (sometimes even more) time working from home than you would in an office, you still feel like you are closer to your private life than before. The work/life balance improves a lot,” Clayton says. There are a few struggles that come along with working from home like the lack of in person communication and connection struggles, but the benefits significantly outweigh the costs! We also have our second office manager, Amberley set up to work remotely as well. Her husbands job took them away from Texas. To keep a valuable staff member as a part of our team, it was crucial to take advantage of the available technology once again. We knew she would be returning to Texas within a year or so and we wanted to have her come back to work full time, thus the ability to change her work place quickly and easily has been incredibly beneficial.
Additionally, our office hours changed several years ago to allow the benefits of a shortened workday once a week. Adding a little extra time to our Monday through Thursday schedule, we are able to close the office down at 3pm on Fridays. Due to this simple adjustment, employees are able to enjoy more time with family and friends and get a head start on their weekend. Everyone has obviously enjoyed the shortened Friday work day, as it is now our standard schedule.
Being able to nimbly adjust work schedules and work locations when necessary, we have been able to accommodate new employees we would not have been able to hire previously. It has given more freedom to the employees and has helped boost team morale. There is a lot of trust needed when planning a work from home situation to make sure productivity and availability is still met. Our team has done a phenomenal job at taking this responsibility seriously.
We have been so glad that technology and flexibility has played in our favor to give more freedom to our employees and allowing us to keep great staff with us even when life takes them to other locations!