For many years now I’ve espoused employee autonomy as key to engagement from the people who work in our organisations. Citing Dan Pinks (Drive is still one of my favourite books), Harvard Business Review and a litany of other sources, giving employees the freedom to make their own decisions, have control of their job and career and decide what they do each day is a huge positive. Focussing on these areas has pivoted organisations from productivity in an absolute sense (through cost reduction etc) to the inputs that increase productivity (engagement, happiness, alignment etc). Most industries have been going through this for a while, financial services is a little late to the party which would explain, alongside the public image, why the number of graduates considering a career in the industry has fallen off a cliff compared to a decade ago. Magnifying this, the fastest growing demographic in the workplace; the fabled Millennials (I object to such wide generalisations but that’s for another article another time), have grown up where control of their personal lives is not only near complete, but most of the time it’s at a touch of a button/screen that they carry in their pocket everywhere with them. 

Click! Amazon Prime delivers a new tv in an hour.

Click! Deliveroo delivers a fancy meal in half an hour.

Click! Tinder gets them a date tonight in 15 mins.

Our ability to get instant gratification through instant control seems endless. However, has the rebellion against autonomy started?

I first noticed this last summer when we implemented a dress down policy. Or perhaps more accurately got rid of a dress code or any sort of guidance on what you should wear to work. (We left some guidance; when meeting clients you had to be dressed in a respectful way given their values and culture.) The uproar was instant, what if people came in wearing crop tops? Were you allowed to wear exposing footwear? Did or did that not mean you could wear shorts? The latter was the most hotly debated, turning successful men and women who make decisions on billions of pounds of people’s pensions into conservative troglodytes. At times we considered reverting back, it seemed the lack of guidance and ambiguity left people completely confused. This has been shown through other surveys by the BBC and FT lately. Looking at it months later, when you separate out cultural and generational norms, it was the lack of clear expectations that befuddled people. People clearly needed a bar against which to judge themselves, with the exception of true anarchists, we want to know that we’re doing the right thing and crave affirmation along the way that we’re heading in the right direction. I believe true autonomy is a terrible place for most people, the ambiguity and the lack of positive re-enforcement replace freedom with the terror of anonymity and uncertainty.

Another example I’ve seen is my drive to replace traditional HR policies with good judgement. I’ve learnt first-hand the legal system does not like companies to make decisions based on each individual situation and its context, it prefers a standardised process that it believes treats everyone ‘fairly’ (at this point I let out a snort of disbelief). However, there is still room left for autonomy through good judgement. An individual in our organisation sadly had a relative pass away and asked his manager for compassionate leave. He was only asking for 1 day to attend the funeral. Here’s how the conversation went;

‘What’s our policy for leave for bereavement?’

‘I’m really trying to get away from policies and towards good judgement’

‘Yes, but what can I offer him?’

‘Ask yourself what you think is right for him.’

‘But what if I give him more time off than other managers?’

This went on for a bit. Some time has passed since then and I’ve had time to reflect and I think in some ways the manager is right. We want clarity so that were consistent and we want processes to facilitate both. Here comes the crux of my dilemma; the more processes you create, the more consistent you are but the less autonomy you have. That process is something people strive for flies in the face of Dan Pink et al. What people in organisations like ours want is a balance. With a variety of experiments under my belt, I believe you have to understand people’s values to get to the core of what they want autonomy on. In the dress code example, those fashionistas found no dress code empowering, those who didn’t care what they wore found it confusing and wanted the decision to be taken away from them. Even in the bereavement example, to the manager autonomy took away fairness in his perception. He would be much rather be dictated to if his core value of fairness was achieved.

While I still believe in autonomy and empowerment, the battle will be to find out which areas matter to people in an organisation and which can be ‘processed’ out. Both sides of the equation make people happy but put any area on the wrong side and you’re sure to be having a heated debate about shorts wearing in the office too.