Bring the best out of your staff with deep work

Alicia Navarro at FLOWN explains how “deep work” can give employees control, flexibility, and satisfaction

 

Employee wellbeing. It’s not just a buzzword – it’s becoming one of the most important ways to attract and retain staff in the post-pandemic workplace.

 

The last two years have seen unprecedented levels of staff churn. Remote working and skills shortages have left many employees isolated, burnt out, or simply ‘languishing’: not quite depressed, but not galvanised either, just uninspired and unproductive.

 

So workers are looking for a renewed sense of purpose.

 

According to McKinsey research, staff are looking for flexibility, autonomy, and a more fulfilling, human-oriented experience of work. And they’re prepared to move jobs to find it – with up to 60% of staff willing to walk without another job offer in hand.

 

Clearly this isn’t an issue that can be fixed with a ‘thank you’ bonus or a free gym membership. It gets to the core of company culture.

 

How can your company maximise the wellbeing of your workforce, keeping them happy, productive and – most importantly – employed by you?

 

There’s one thing that can give employees control, flexibility, and satisfaction without even leaving their desk. It’s called deep work.

 

The power of focus

Deep work is work done with complete focus, free of distraction. And the key to it – for both productivity and wellbeing – is a magic ingredient called flow.

 

Flow, discovered and popularised by psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, is the state of being completely absorbed by an activity. It was first used to describe the mindframe of highly trained experts doing their thing (dancers, chess players, brain surgeons), but it turns out to be accessible to anyone doing something both difficult and meaningful.

 

Csíkszentmihályi called flow “the secret to happiness”. That’s because, despite being hard work, it makes people feel good about themselves. A person working in flow feels in control, with thoughts focused outside themselves, and a reduced need for external validation (since flow is intrinsically meaningful). All this confers a real sense of satisfaction, and builds resilience in the face of external pressures.

 

Flow can happen at both work and play, but I suspect that flow is so good for wellbeing because it turns work into play. Like a child utterly absorbed by its LEGO, a worker in flow is giving their absolute all – and enjoying it.

 

How deep work can transform your business

Deep work – work done in flow – is where things of importance get done. Things that drive your business forward, like strategic planning, process design, coding.

 

So deep work gives your business a double win: it’s where employees produce their best work, and also where they find a sense of satisfaction and wellbeing.

 

My company, FLOWN, is built around deep work, and we’ve learned that a deep work culture is absolutely compatible with the fast pace of growing and developing a business. In fact, I’d say it’s essential.

 

How can you bring deep work into your business and make it work for you? Here are some of the things I’ve learned about developing a culture of deep work.

 

Banish distraction

The average employee checks their email – wait for it – 74 times a day.

 

Divided attention is the curse of the modern workplace, and it erodes employee wellbeing. Not just because it contributes to overwhelm and lack of control, but because it’s the enemy of flow.

 

Staff can’t just dip in and out of flow. Switching between tasks leaves behind ‘attention residue’ that prevents the mind focusing on the next task: one study showed it took an average of 23 minutes to fully regain focus after a single distraction.

 

So, protect your employees’ need to focus. Encourage them to block out deep work time, and don’t expect them to respond to messages in that time. At FLOWN, our staff join our flagship product – online co-working sessions at set times throughout the day. It helps to have common deep work times across the business, and deep working alongside others provides accountability.

 

Hybrid working can be really useful here. Maybe have staff schedule deep work on quieter home days, and meetings on noisier office days. It needs effort and planning, but can work brilliantly.

 

Lead by example

Major cultural shifts always work best if championed from the top. If you as a leader buy into a culture of focus, you’ll give your employees permission to do the same.

 

As a CEO, I find the two main roadblocks are my own behaviour – it’s too easy to spend a day multitasking – and convincing my line managers to support their staff’s deep work time by not dropping in meetings, or expecting replies to emails.

 

But I never regret a distraction-free hour spent completely focused on one task. And when the benefits are so pronounced, it wasn’t hard to convince my management team to join me!

 

Take a holistic view

Prioritising deep work forces you and your staff to examine how focused work is balanced with meetings, ‘shallow’ work (admin), and break time.

 

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that in most companies, the balance is out.

 

A prime bugbear is seemingly endless meetings: mentally draining and unproductive. Consider what you actually want to get out of meetings. Problem solving, decision making, team bonding? Limit meetings to those that will achieve these goals.

 

At FLOWN, we start the day – and our online deep work sessions – with intention-setting stand-ups, which provide accountability and a sense of belonging to something bigger. We even keep Fridays meeting-free so team members get a good stretch of time to get into flow on their most important work.

 

Shallow work is unavoidable and can be valuable, but not when it poses as the raison d’etre. Are your staff spending more time than they need on messaging, data input, red tape? How efficient are your processes? Could you outsource or automate some of their shallow work?

 

Finally, restorative breaks are an important (and under-recognised) part of work. Focus is tiring, and a quick 10 minutes’ walk around the block is time well spent for the productivity it restores.

 

Freedom to recharge overnight and at weekends also maximises productivity, according to Boston Consulting Group research. Employees allowed to switch off were found to be so much more productive that ‘predictable time off’ was made an intrinsic aspect of BCG’s business culture.

 

Changing culture is never easy, but embracing deep work can give your company the edge it needs to get the important stuff done – driving the business forward AND fostering employee wellbeing (without a free gym membership in sight).

 

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Alicia Navarro is the founder and CEO of  FLOWN, a virtual coworking platform that provides an online deep work toolkit. Frustrated by how hard it was to find the physical and mental spaces conducive to productive and creative thinking, Alicia began FLOWN to offer a set of online tools and resources to enable accountability, focus and creativity

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com