Flexible work design and the practicality of holistic employee support
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Organisations that consider the breadth of the employee experience are rewarded with happier, healthier, more balanced, more loyal – and often more productive – workers.
Speaking recently on an episode of The HR Leader Podcast, the director of people and culture at GumGum, Emma Mani, said a further evolution to hybrid work and expanded wellbeing support may be the future of flexible work practices.
Mani explained that practical work design has a broad definition, inclusive of fractional work, a typical “nine-to-five” role or gig work – but what matters is intention.
Execution must be aligned with reality, both for the organisation and its employees, and in acknowledgement that what a workday looks like for one person “could very well look very different for someone else who’s in a different season of their life or at a different stage of their career”.
In Mani’s experience, a considerable degree of flexible work design relates to an equitable parental leave policy.
Mani identified micro-shifting – which sees work broken up into blocks rather than within one traditional time frame – as a way to engage in life, whether this means dropping children off at school, going to the gym, conducting life errands, or simply having the capacity to take a moment for oneself.
She said: “My work hours didn’t expand at all. I still worked a decent day’s work, but I did it at time periods that worked for me.”
Earlier this year, Mani reflected on the constant battle she felt between experiencing motherhood to its fullest potential while navigating the corporate world, noting that 2026 may be a turning point where the “motherhood penalty” is being left in the dust for practical work design.
She said: “We are seeing a massive shift in how businesses support parents by moving from occasional flexibility towards true autonomy.”
“Forward-thinking companies are adopting structural support such as phased returns from leave, 24/7 family healthcare access, and gender-neutral parental leave that encourages partners to share the load. Ultimately, we are seeing an evolution in how we view ambition itself.”
Mani explained that culture plays as much a role as structure in the establishment of practical work design.
She explained that every organisation can have beneficial policies and frameworks around supporting people through parenthood, or other life stages such as caring responsibilities or study, “but if your foundation of your culture and your organisation doesn’t value trust and doesn’t value autonomy, then those structures in actual reality don’t work”.
In practice, this looks like a workplace that values employees holistically, not just during work hours – and that bases policy design on employee consultation.
“It’s about asking those questions around how you can make people successful, how you can support them, better, and what they need from you in order to achieve the results that you’re asking them to achieve,” Mani said.
Maintaining the balance of employee preferences and consideration of performance, Mani explained, generates “that level of trust and autonomy really is the ultimate engagement tool”.
Highlighting that flexible policy design is, by its nature, not a one-size-fits-all solution, Mani said that even industries where certain policies are not possible can generate a mutually beneficial solution and that it starts with being “open and honest about what our work models are or what we would like our teams to be doing”.
She said: “It’s about looking at what the business working model is, and then, how does your family or your stage of life fit in with that?”
On the other hand, burnout is rising at considerable rates, which is, as recently covered, often witnessed in organisations that demand greater productivity without considering where it comes from.
In this way, Mani highlighted that “it would be an incredible miss for HR to not see the opportunity that the advancement of AI is giving us to really make moves forward in this area”.
Mani identified AI as a time-saving tool that can pave the way for different work shift patterns, adding that “most of the boardrooms around town or the executive teams around town are talking about all the other gains from AI, but this is one of the really human ones where we can … utilise this technology to drive efficiencies on our bottom line”.
“AI is going to open up another door, I feel, with time savings and efficiencies,” she said.
AI, Mani concluded, offers greater possibilities for time saving, productivity, and, and, at its core, flexible work design.
“It doesn’t go at the cost of performance … it’s hand in hand,” she said.
RELATED TERMS
Employees experience burnout when their physical or emotional reserves are depleted. Usually, persistent tension or dissatisfaction causes this to happen. The workplace atmosphere might occasionally be the reason. Workplace stress, a lack of resources and support, and aggressive deadlines can all cause burnout.
Your organization's culture determines its personality and character. The combination of your formal and informal procedures, attitudes, and beliefs results in the experience that both your workers and consumers have. Company culture is fundamentally the way things are done at work.
An employee is a person who has signed a contract with a company to provide services in exchange for pay or benefits. Employees vary from other employees like contractors in that their employer has the legal authority to set their working conditions, hours, and working practises.
Parental leave is a benefit offered to employees that allows for job-protected time off from work to care for a kid once the child is born or adopted.
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Amelia McNamara
Amelia is a Professional Services Journalist with Momentum Media, covering Lawyers Weekly, HR Leader, Accountants Daily and Accounting Times.
