Deloitte’s Work Anywhere policy: true flexibility or just lip service?

Work anywhere.

That’s the message Deloitte is telling its Australian employees. It eliminated start and finish times, and removed the requirement to be in the office for a set number of days per week.

On the surface of it, this is an encouraging move and one that should be celebrated. However, telling people they are free to do things without addressing the underlying workplace systems and cultures that actively sabotage the spirit of this move, is like giving someone the keys to a Tesla, but not access to a charger.

As the bestselling author of Atomic Habits, James Clear, puts it, “You don’t rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems”.

You can tell people that they can work wherever, whenever, but if the typical workday is punctuated by an expectation to participate in back-to-back Zoom calls and meetings, to centralize decision-making, and to respond to hundreds of emails and instant messages a day in a hyper-responsive manner as if connected to an IV drip, then nothing much will change.

It’s a little like unlimited leave policies. They sound great in theory, but it turns out that employees often end up taking far less leave than the average two to four weeks offered by employers…