Unlocking employee potential through self-directed time.

• Author: Hawn, Jan
• Position: Management & Careers

Self-determination, or the ability to exercise autonomy is central to health and contentment. In fact, individual liberty and the pursuit of happiness are at the heart of the American ideal. This need for autonomy also extends to the workplace. For example, a study of work settings found that businesses that offered their employees more autonomy grew at four times the rate (and had one-third the turnover) of firms that emphasized top-down control of employees. (1) To meet the challenges governments face in the years ahead, then, we need to attract the next generation of workers and realize the full potential of everyone who has chosen public service, unlocking their passion for their work. Greater autonomy for employees is one powerful way to help achieve that.

Few organizations would be willing to simply allow employees to do whatever they want, whenever they want, but even a modest amount of unstructured time can channel the considerable power of autonomy toward positive results. Self-directed time has yielded great advantages in the private sector. The duration of time allotted can vary, but the intention is to allow employees time to be creative and innovative, and the decision on how the time will be used is largely left up to the employee. Google encourages its employees to spend 20 percent of their time on identifying and working on projects they think will benefit the organization, and in fact, one of Google's most recognizable products--Gmail--was created during self-directed time: Similarly, Arthur Fry, a 3M employee, invented the Post-it note in the 15 percent of his time that was self-directed.

Can self-directed time work in government? Two cities--Rock Hill, South Carolina, and Bellevue, Washington--sought to answer that question. Rock Hill has a population of 69,967 and 912 full-time-equivalent (FTE) positions on its payroll, and Bellevue has 136,426 residents and 1,319 FTEs. In addition, a third city--Topeka, Kansas (with a population of 127,215 and 1,176.5 FTE) positions--attempted the experiment with one analyst.

SETTING THE STAGE

To start, the three cities borrowed an idea from Jamie Notter and Maddie Grant (the authors of When Millennials Take Over), a book about contemporary workplace culture, who wrote, "The real power is in giving employees permission to experiment.... Find a way to give your people some space. That is how you grow and improve: by shifting resources as things change. Yes, you might need to eliminate some activities currently done by staff to make room for the experimentation time, but find a percentage you can live with and give the employees your permission." (3)

All three cities shared reservations about how self-directed time would be perceived by the public, concerned that it might look like an imprudent use of resources. It was also a potentially significant commitment of time and resources. But the research about the value of autonomy was convincing, and failing to fully engage and realize the potential of the workforce would ultimately be far more expensive than experimenting with preventative measures. The cities decided to try allowing employees to direct 10 percent of their time to research or the development of service-delivery improvements. The time would be spent working on ideas outside of normal work functions to spur creativity and encourage ownership of ideas and projects. The cities agreed that 10 percent of the employees' time would enough...