Manar Morales on Creating Flexible Work Cultures

By Brigid Schulte

Manar Morales has been working to help firms shift to flexible cultures since 2006.

The one-time employment litigator-turned Founder and CEO of the Diversity and Flexibility Alliance, has just published a new book, The Flexibility Paradigm: Humanizing the Workplace for Productivity, Profitability and Possibility, that’s designed to help others make the change.

The goal, Morales says, is to create human-centered workplaces of the future. When people have flexible work arrangements, they thrive, with time to care, time for family and friends, and for rich, full lives outside of work. At the same time, such flexible work arrangements can help businesses flourish as well. We all benefit, she argues.

I spoke with Morales about her mission and the five-step process she’s developed to shift to a flexibility paradigm. The following is a transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

Brigid Schulte: Let’s talk about your own journey. How did you come to dedicate your life to helping organizations embrace and shift to flexible cultures?

Manar Morales: It started out as a personal journey. I was working as an employment litigator in a job I loved. All of a sudden, I had my first son. There wasn’t much advice at the time about working flexibly. You really had to chart your own path. I remember a lot of people saying, “If you want to work on a reduced schedule, why don’t you give up litigating. That way, you really can do it.”

And I thought, but I want to do both. I can do this. I came to see that a lot of the issue around flexibility is around framing. I wasn’t less devoted to the clients. I wasn’t giving 50 percent to the clients. I was giving them 100 percent. I just had fewer clients. Then I became an adjunct professor, piecing everything together. I was able to do what I needed to do both at work and at home, in ways that worked for the employer, for me, and for my clients and the people I served.

I’d have conversations with women who’d say, “Well, I wouldn’t have left my job if I could have done it the way you did.” And I began to think, “Well, why can't we create work environments where that's possible for people?” Then I began looking into flexibility research and realizing that it can be a win-win for everybody, like it was for me.

Schulte: When I first met you, in 2010 or so, there was real resistance to flexibility. There was a pervasive feeling that flexibility was an aberration to “real work,” an accommodation for someone who didn’t want to or couldn’t work very hard, and most often associated with “working mothers.” Flexible work was predominantly seen as a one-way ticket to being sidelined to lesser work with little to no chance of promotion on the “Mommy Track.” Has the pandemic changed that?

Morales: People ask all the time, “What do you predict will happen with flexible work?” And I think that you cannot change the impact that COVID has had on the way that we work. I think that the way that 9/11 forever changed how we travel, COVID will forever change how we work.

Flexibility has been around for a very long time, long before COVID. There was a time where we had to be advocating just to say, “Look, people can be successful working flexibly, like on a reduced-hour schedule, and still be able to meet the demands that they need to at work.” I used to say that my biggest competitor was the status quo.

And then COVID happened. And suddenly we were all in a grand experiment with virtual working. And organizations that once said, “Flexibility could never work. We could never survive as an organization,” couldn’t say that anymore.

One of the things that COVID did was, for the first time we saw people as people, and not just employees. We had to see each other as humans and understand what was happening in the world was also happening in our homes. I would hear leaders say, “I’ve never done this before, but I’m starting every meeting asking, on a scale of one to 10, how are you doing?” We had insight into people’s lives. We saw people’s pets. We saw their children. We had to talk about what was happening in people’s lives. We can’t unsee that. So COVID didn’t just change how we work. It changed people’s expectations about work.

Schulte: That work should be more humane, or, as you say, human-centered?

Morales: Yes. The idea that, if you take care of your people, they will take care of your teams, and your teams will take care of your clients or your customers. That people are at the center of productivity. Of engagement. Of performance. And people thrive in flexible cultures.

One of the things organizations have to learn is to, first, define flexibility. The COVID experiment was largely around virtual work. But there's lots of forms of flexibility. We call it holistic flexibility. Organizations have to decide, “Is it reduced hours that we want to offer? Is it shifting the times in which people start and end? Is it giving people location flexibility? Is it job shares?” There's lots of different kinds of flexibility.

But in order for any kind of flexibility to work, it has to be “de-parented,” “de-gendered,” and “de-stigmatized.” If we only think about it as a Mommy issue, like it once was, it’s never going to work for an organization. We can say women, parents and caregivers are highly impacted by an organization’s ability to offer flexibility, yet everybody needs it for different reasons.

Schulte: Right. And yet there are still misperceptions about and resistance to flexibility. We’re seeing that in some of the big firms and big headlines about “Return to Office,” with the argument that being together physically is the only way to build culture and collaboration. The Trump administration is also insisting all remaining federal workers return to office. It’s as if the goal is to snap back to 2019.

Morales: What I'm seeing is a disconnect between what employees want and what leaders think employees want. So it’s important that organizations think more inclusively when they make these decisions and be more intentional around the impact that these decisions are having on their people.

At the end of the day, flexibility is a people decision. It’s not just a policy. It’s a culture decision. We’re done with the idea that flexibility is an accommodation. I want to make sure organizations are having the right conversations about flexibility. When you say you want greater collaboration, what are you doing in order for that to happen? If you’re telling people to be back in the office, what’s the return on experience? If leaders are concerned about a loss of culture, what are they doing to preserve it, or build it once everyone’s back in the office?

Schulte: There’s often this feeling among leaders that it’s just going to happen as if by osmosis.

Morales: Right. Like people are suddenly going to mentor others if everybody's together in the office. Instead, what’s happening when organizations make people return to office? People are coming back and resentful around the commute. They're resentful that they sit in their office, sometimes on Zoom or Teams calls all day. Some come in and have their doors shut all day. And yet they’re getting rewarded for being physically present in the office. It’s like they’re telecommuting from the office.

The right questions to ask are, “What do you want people to be doing when they're in the office?” How are organizations designing their days to get the most out of being in the office that are of real value? In a hybrid environment, there is value to being in the office, but you only receive that value if you’re intentional about what you’re doing while you’re there.

Schulte: In some work cultures, there’s still the idea that flexibility is a “nice to have,” rather than imperative. You argue that it’s imperative. Why? What’s the business case for flexibility?

Morales: Leaders need to think: what’s the impact of flexibility on the ability to recruit talent? To retain talent? What's the impact on diversity and the ability to create an inclusive workplace? What's the impact on productivity? What's the impact on profitability? What does flexibility make possible for us as an organization?

What I really wanted to do with the book is to say, every organization needs to decide that for themselves. We can talk about the broader business case. We know the stats and the impact in general. But if you don't take a look within your own organization and define what it means, you're not going to be able to build out a reason for it. We hear from leaders who say some of their top talent stayed with them because of the flexibility that they offer.

The challenge around flexibility is people trying to get to common ground. Like we all have to agree that either working from home or working from the office is better. What I’d like to do is elevate the debate and get to higher ground. That means asking, what does this do for us as an organization? And understanding that there are exceptions, that what might be true for you isn't always true for everyone. We have to be thinking about that.

Schulte: Can you share a story of an organization that’s made that culture shift, has adopted a flexibility paradigm, not just a policy, and is doing well?

Morales: We talk in the book about the Saul Ewing law firm, and the way they went about creating their 4+4 Hybrid Plan. [The plan creates flexibility and predictability for both in-person and remote days: Everyone is asked to be in the office for “Zoom-free” Wednesdays for a break from screens and to focus on in-person collaboration and connection. The firm also encourages everyone to be with clients or colleagues in-person at least four additional days per month. They also offer other flexible work arrangements like reduced hours and schedule flexibility.]

We worked with the leaders to think through the business case, and understand the value of shifting to a flexible culture. They realized they had to be intentional about what they did. They had to be inclusive. And they had to be iterative—try something, gather data and feedback and keep fine tuning. They really put in the work to make the shift.

I also write about Mike Valentine, CEO of BCU [Baxter Credit Union] and what it takes to build a workplace where people thrive. Many leaders assume they are putting people first, but when you dig deeper, their policies and practices often tell a different story. Mike Valentine’s guiding principle has always been people first. He believes that prioritizing employees creates a ripple effect where culture strengthens, engagement rises, and business results follow. Even through the disruptions of COVID-19, BCU maintained double-digit growth by reinforcing flexibility and deepening connections. His leadership proves that a people-first culture is not just the right thing to do, but a strategic advantage.

He was able to shift his thinking about flexible, hybrid and remote work by focusing on what flexibility really means. And what it doesn’t mean. Flexibility can often be impacted by having the wrong conversations.

Schulte: What do you mean?

Morales: There are still a lot of misperceptions around flexibility, as we said. Just look at the headlines on every Return to Office story: “People aren’t performing, so we have to get back to the office. Or “We need to be together in the office because we need to be collaborating.”

But the right way to think about flexibility is that it's not a trade-off for performance. If you have people who aren't performing, that's a performance issue and you should address that. It’s not like if you put poor performers in an office, they’re suddenly going to start performing.

The other side of the flexibility coin is responsibility. For organizations and leaders, when they decide to provide flexibility, they also have to ask, “Am I providing the infrastructure? Am I providing the training? Am I providing the practices?” Meeting those responsibilities is what creates an environment for flexibility to succeed.

It’s also the responsibility of leaders to know how to manage in a flexible environment. They need to understand their own tendencies, like “How do I make sure I don't engage in proximity bias” [favoring on-site workers over digital workers] and other things that can cause flexibility not to work.

There’s also responsibility on the part of individuals. How you show up in these flexible environments matters. I say to people, “If you are in a hybrid work environment, when you hop on a Zoom and your camera is off, and you're not engaged, you’re not meeting performance standards.” They need to understand Zoom is an extension of the office. The way you show up on Zoom should be the same way you show up when you're in an in-person meeting. Some of the complaints I hear from leaders about flexibility are actually bad behavior that needs to be addressed.

Schulte: So how do you help firms create those flexible environments?

Morales: We formed the Diversity and Flexibility Alliance in 2012. We’re a member organization where we share ideas with one another, talk about best practices, do the research, collaborate, and connect in order to advance the work of creating human-centered workplaces. As we worked with members, we began developing a five-step framework to shift to a flexible culture:

The first step is to Reflect. That’s all about defining the purpose, getting firms to think about what flexibility is and what it makes possible for the organization.

The second step is Re-imagine. We get organizations to start creating a shared vision of what they want, what the future of work looks like for the organization. What do they want people saying about them? And what are the non-negotiables that shouldn’t change?

The third step is Redesign. We work with organizations to design around all of the things they said were important to them.

Then the fourth, Recommit, looks at how to embed flexibility into the culture. How do I align flexibility with my policies? How do I align that with a set of practices so that I integrate in stages? How do we communicate in this environment? How do we collaborate and connect? How do we maintain community? How do we do all of the things that are important for us to succeed? How are we going to roll this out to our people and train our leaders and our people to be successful?

And the fifth, Reinforce, asks organizations to measure and continue to monitor the impact. If things we thought would happen aren’t happening, where’s the breakdown? Was there ambiguity?

Where I see organizations making the biggest mistakes is in not aligning and embedding flexibility around a set of principles.

Schulte: Your book is coming out right at a time when the Trump administration is attacking diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, efforts, and many corporations are rolling them back. How should organizations be thinking about DEI at this moment?

Morales: It all goes back to culture, who you are, and that at the end of the day, it’s all about people. Who are your people? What do you stand for? The problem right now is, we're constant in reactivity mode. We don’t know what’s going to happen a year from now, four years from now. We’re seeing executive orders and injunctions. Are you suddenly going to go in reverse? The question is: how do you stay true to who you are and what matters to you as an organization?

Obviously, there's compliance conversations that are happening. And we have to be in compliance with the law. But the bigger question organizations need to be grappling with is, What is our culture and what do we value? How are we providing opportunity? How are we making sure that everyone feels valued within our organization? How do we make sure we honor individuals within the organization for who they are?

It’s really a time, just like with flexibility, to define, what do we mean by Diversity, Equity and Inclusion? It’s an opportunity to clear up a lot of misperceptions and for an organization to say, “This is actually what diversity, equity, and inclusion means to us.” Because people are watching. They’ll remember what you do right now.

Schulte: So paint a vision of the ideal workplace of the future:

Morales: I’d like to see more human-centered workplaces where care is not seen as a trade off: If I care about my people, it doesn't mean I don’t care about my business. Can we live in a world where we can say, “I want to be a caregiver and I can also be a valuable employee or contributor, and I can do what I want.”

The idea of choices is so important to me, not forcing people to think there’s only one way of doing things, and creating flexible work environments where everybody can thrive.

We’re seeing burnout at an all-time high. And one thing I always say is that flexibility is not a work-life balance tool. Flexibility can make certain things easier and can make certain things a lot harder. Now, with technology, we can be reached anywhere at any time. For many workers, our work is where our computer is. I can get on a Zoom call on vacation just as easily from home, just as easily from the office. We’re living in a world with no boundaries at all.

So, in my ideal flexible workplace, there are boundaries to protect time for our lives outside of work.And they’re not seen as barriers, but bridges to productivity.