5 Reasons Bosses Fear Flexibility (and What You Can Do About It)

This article is adapted from Chapter 5, “Negotiating for Work Flexibility,” of the new book, The Working Dad’s Survival Guide: How to Succeed at Work and at Home.

Lots of working parents benefit from working alternative work schedules, such as telecommuting a day or two a week or shifting hours around family responsibilities. However, for the most part, companies will not come to us to ask us about our needs for flexibility. We have to take the first step. This can be difficult, but most good things in life are.

To increase our chances of success, it is important that we understand the concerns our supervisors may have before we start our negotiation. This way, we can focus our communications so that we dispel most of their concerns and show them how they will also benefit. If you take away their reasons to say no, they are more likely to say yes. With that, here are five common reasons why supervisors may be resistant to supporting flexible work, followed by ways to address each.

To be successful in negotiating for a more flexible work arrangement, you first need to build a solid track record of valuable performance, earn the trust of those you work with, and make sure to “sell” yourself gracefully as a valued part of the team.

Be sure to keep records of your performance, and ask satisfied clients and grateful colleagues for “thank you” letters. Managers and companies are often desperate to hold onto their most valuable employees and are far more likely to allow for flexibility to keep one of their “rock stars” happy.

Most managers are pretty bad at measuring actual job performance and, instead, default to basing their evaluations on “face time” or “chair time.” This, of course, is silly, and easily gamed. The opportunists work slow and stay late, while the best employees work hard and go home.

If I were to ask to work from home two days a week, I would be sure to present my supervisor with documents and plans so we can mutually set short and long-term performance goals, identifying how and when progress against goals will be measured. I’d also volunteer time diaries and weekly progress reports, and agree that if the boss feels my performance, in any way, declines they can cut back on the flexibility.

In this way, we give our bosses the tools to actually do a far better job in evaluating all employees going forward.

Many managers see their primary role as preventing problems and potential problems, as opposed to taking risks to maximize performance. Many don’t want to stick out as defying convention or traditional office culture. We need to convince managers that appropriate work flexibility is all upside and no downside.

One way to do this is to provide a plan for how we will maintain or increase performance while working flexibly and for how we will remain connected with colleagues and clients through both personal contact and technology. We also need to propose our flexible work begin as a 3-month trial arrangement, and, if the boss isn’t happy or if there is a work emergency, they can put the arrangement on hold.

Finally, we need to show flexible work is increasingly common even among employers in the most competitive industries (for example, 83 of the Fortune 100 make frequent use of flexibility), and has been shown to be at worst revenue-neutral, and, at best, a win-win for employees and employers. This article can help arm you with facts.

Some managers believe the best way to be fair is to treat everyone the same, and they are concerned if they accommodate you, they will have to do the same for everyone.

To combat this, you need to make sure your request is framed as a business request, not as a personal favor or family accommodation. For example, you can explain that working from home on Fridays would save a two-hour commute that you could otherwise spend working, and working from home would allow more uninterrupted time to work on tasks requiring long stretches of concentration (as opposed to being distracted by the comings and goings of the busy office). This is a better request than saying how telecommuting will help you go to more soccer games.

You should also document all aspects of your request. By doing so, you are providing your supervisor a format by which they can decide whether or not to grant requests from other employees by applying the same decision-making rules. You’re helping them make more fair and consistent decisions.

In my experience, most managers are well-meaning people who try to do the right thing for their employees. If so, actions 1-4 above should help you address their concerns and be more successful in negotiating for flexibility.

However, there are jerk bosses out there as well. Some don’t believe that “family stuff” and workplace flexibility are legitimate concerns. Some feel as if they paid their dues by sacrificing their personal lives for career success and they’ll be damned if others won’t have to do the same. Some see “involved parent” or “family man” as derisive terms.

Honestly, it will be very difficult to negotiate with someone who is openly hostile to flexibility. Worse, working for a boss like this makes for a stressful worklife that also spills over into our home and personal lives, hurting our mental and physical health. So, my unsatisfying advice for those in this situation is to keep your head down for now, do a great job, network widely, and fire off resumes to other employers. If you have the opportunity to leave an aggressively unpleasant boss, please do.

Buy Scott Behson's book, The Working Dad's Survival Guide: How to Succeed at Work and Home. Then, be prepared to negotiate with your boss.

The first thing you should do is research, so you're able to come to the table armed with the knowledge of what your job is worth. Use our free Salary Wizard below to find out what's a fair salary for your position. You can enter your location, education level, years of experience and more to find out an appropriate salary range before you negotiate.

Good luck.