Although flexible working cuts costs and improves employee performance, some suspicious managers still refuse to let go of the reins of power

An old corporate dinosaur I was talking to recently told me he had no truck with the concept of flexible working. He said working from home is too often an excuse for skiving, and it bugs him that he can never find people around the office when he needs them. As someone who has worked entirely from home for the past eight years, I was able to reassure him that it isn't necessarily a soft option. I don't have a line manager breathing down my neck, but I have never worked as hard in my life.

I also wondered how his staff feel when they can't find him for three hours in the middle of the day because he's out to lunch. "Well, they know I'll be on the end of the phone in the Savoy Grill," he retorted.

A growing number of enlightened employers have embraced flexible working, but they have not done it for altruistic reasons. They know it makes good business sense. Among the benefits they have reaped are better attraction, motivation and retention of staff, higher productivity and cost savings. BT, for example, claims that every year it adds £8m to its bottom line purely as the result of allowing more people to work from home, where their productivity increases by an average of 20 per cent.
Growing homeworking has cut its real estate costs by £500m since 2000, and the fact that 99 per cent of new mothers return to work, compared with the UK average of 40 per cent, saves the company around £5m annually in recruitment costs.

But the difference between companies like BT, Lloyds TSB, the BBC and First Direct and the organisation my dinosaur friend works for is that these pioneers of flexible working have cultures, processes and infrastructures that support the practice. Flexible working is not something that happens at the margins; it is a fundamental part of their business strategy.

After all, in these 24/7 days, firms need people to work flexibly. They'd be sunk if everyone worked to rule, pitching up at nine and downing tools at five. But when it comes to support functions and managerial levels, lots of employers get nervous. The most common fear is losing control over someone who is not in the office. But how much control do they have over people even when they are in the office? Just because you can see someone doesn't mean they are productive. The mistake many managers make is measuring people's input rather than their output, and their preoccupation with face time says more about their own insecurities than it does about the contribution of their staff.

An episode of the US TV comedy Seinfeld poked fun at the notion of 'presenteeism', which is clearly not an exclusively UK phenomenon. The car of bumbling side-kick George breaks down at work, so however early people arrive in the office and however late they go home, George's car is always there. George quickly concludes that so long as his colleagues think he's there, he doesn't actually need to be there, so he goes off on vacation.
The converse may actually be true for many executives: they think they need to be there, but actually they don't. The flexible working pioneers cite all sorts of executives who work all sorts of flexible patterns, including from home, compressed hours, early finishing and so on. For example, when First Direct chief executive Chris Pilling has to spend time away from home during the week, he comes in to work late on a Friday morning so that he can have breakfast with his children.

"That may mean he misses a meeting, but we all cope," says head of HR Jane Hanson, who readily admits that she could easily do her job part-time if she delegated chunks of it to others in her team. "It's about changing your mindset to realise that you are not that important," she says.

The nature of work has changed dramatically over the 60 years since the launch of Director, but in many areas leadership and management practice has not kept up. The concept of command may have largely died out, but most executives clearly still love the feeling of being in control.

Jane Simms is the former editor of Financial Director and Marketing Business.