Leverage employee freedom for work success

It’s much easier to recruit and retain great talent when you are giving employees what they want while helping them excel at their jobs.

And these days what more and more people want is the freedom to decide where, when, how and with whom they work.

Here are three things you can do to bring more freedom to work.

1 Ask your employees which kinds of freedoms they want, and be prepared to act on their requests.

Employers have many options when it comes to increasing freedom: remote work, work-from-home and paid vacation policies are some of the more commonly known.

But you can also let employees choose their work and managers, select their own professional development opportunities, or provide incentive-based compensation for particularly good performance on key projects.

2 Spend time understanding remote communication tools.

Companies like Slack, Hipchat, Yammer, Trello and Asana are bringing fantastic new tools to the marketplace that make it easier than ever before for remote team members to communicate and work together, as well as interact with company stakeholders.

If you’re not sure what team communication tools to use, get in touch with either a start-up founder or people who work in your local start-up ecosystem.

They are more likely to know of the latest offering that has been faring well with early adopters.

3 Be vocal about your work policies related to freedom. Adopting high-freedom policies is a competitive advantage in the talent market. The more nuanced and relevant your policies are, the more competitive your hiring brand will be.

If you have great benefits but don't have a dedicated (and concise) section of your careers page or a job description that explains them, or you don't talk about them during candidate interviews, you're missing an opportunity to leverage that asset. – Copyright Harvard Business Review 2014