The Meeting Coach
InterCall's Monthly Newsletter

Employees Ditch Stock Options for "Flexibility"

What does it take to keep a star employee these days? Movers and shakers don’t want bigger salaries, stock options or training like they used to, according to a recent survey by Watson Wyatt. The #1 employee retention tool is now flexibility—the ability to work according to the way we live.

Flexible work arrangements, such as job sharing, custom work schedules, compressed work weeks and telecommuting allow workers to be the CEO of their own lives. It’s simple enough: Let employees leave early on Fridays, have them work with managers to set their own hours or work from home. But the key to making this work is figuring out how to keep productivity up.

The answer, of course, is technology. The genius of new collaboration technologies is that they allow workers to customize their work-life balance. The way employees are creating their own work-life balance is as clear as Gen X and Y.

• Gen Y workers who can’t unplug might launch a group IM session on their smartphones instead of preparing an "Interoffice Memorandum".
• Family-minded Gen X road warriors may want to get a few hours back by doing a web meeting, which can now be launched with a single button.
• Senior executives can podcast an announcement in lieu of an all-company meeting. The mp3 can be recorded from their office or the golf course.

At InterCall, providing new collaboration technologies that allow workers to customize their work-life balance is of key importance. To learn more about other ways technology makes flexibility possible, check out our audio conferencing, web conferencing or video conferencing solutions!