Predictability Is The New Flexibility

I have always believed that flexibility at work was the most valuable employee perk for me, so I was intrigued when I read a The New York Times article suggesting the opposite. The data shows that workers are willing to give up far more pay to avoid jobs where employers control their hours unpredictably than they are to gain flexibility or remote work.It seems that what parents actually want is predictability. People want to know when work will end. Parents want to be able to plan childcare without worrying that a last-minute meeting will derail their day. Employees want to know when they need to be “on” and when they are truly “off.”

Flexibility sounds progressive, but if I’m honest, when I reflect on my own experience as a working mother, I see how easily flexibility became 24/7 availability. Early morning calls at 7:30 a.m. with the U.S. were normal. Replying to emails at 10 p.m. became the usual practice. Going to bed with unresolved work and open-ended emails began to create anxiety that seeped into the next day.

What I realize now is that flexibility only works when strong boundaries are in place and when organizational culture actively supports those boundaries, rather than relying on unspoken rules and expectations about availability.So maybe the better question is not how we give parents more flexibility. Maybe it is how we design jobs with clear stop times. That could mean approving The Right to Disconnect laws like those in Australia, or (crazy thought incoming) it could just mean companies re-learn how to respect that people have lives outside of work.