Workstyle: designing when and where you work around your life

Executive overview

Most people accept that work dictates when and where they show up — but that assumption is built on 200-year-old industrial-age thinking, not the realities of knowledge work. Workstyle is the freedom to choose when and where you work, distinct from flexible or hybrid arrangements that merely tweak an outdated system.

Autonomy — the core mechanism — improves well-being, and well-being in turn drives productivity. The framework gives individuals and organisations a practical path to individualise work through three phases: set, project, and respect.

Autonomy is the goal; workstyle is the method to get there.

Why workstyle is not flexible working

• Flexible working tweaks the edges of an industrial-age system; workstyle replaces the system.
• Flexible working creates in-group/out-group dynamics — people need a "reason" (illness, childcare) to qualify.
• Workstyle is universally applied; no one needs to justify their schedule.
• Groups most excluded by current systems — carers, older workers, neurodivergent people — gain the most.

The three conditions for workstyle to succeed

• Digital first: treat digital tools as the primary workplace, not a backup; asynchronous communication is the default.
• Asynchronous by default: work when it suits you individually rather than synchronising everyone to the same hours; more inclusive and often more productive.
• Trust-based culture: measure output, not presence or hours; leaders must model and reward this explicitly.

Set, project, respect — the individual framework

• Set: map non-negotiable life commitments first (school runs, medical appointments), then identify where work genuinely has flexibility.
• Think across a full week, including evenings and weekends, not just the standard Monday-to-Friday window.
• Ask: what am I accountable for, and does this workstyle let me meet those accountabilities?
• Project: speak your workstyle into existence — share it in your status, email signature, or Slack profile; telling others makes it real.
• Respect: embed routines and boundaries; schedule personal commitments (gym, errands) to anchor the new pattern.
• People are typically better at respecting others' workstyles than their own — external anchors help.

What the research shows

• A four-year longitudinal study found autonomy increases productivity primarily through improved well-being.
• Existing literature links autonomy to better work-life balance, job satisfaction, and engagement, and to reduced stress, staff turnover, and exhaustion.
• Individual circadian rhythms mean deep and shallow work happen at different times for different people — a fixed schedule wastes that.

What drove the conditions for workstyle in 2014

• Technology: mobile tethering made work a portable activity rather than a fixed location; collaboration tools reached a tipping point.
• Demographics: 21% of the global population will be over 60 by 2050; pension shortfalls mean older workers must stay in the workforce longer — current systems exclude them.
• Independence: the freelance workforce became the fastest-growing labour segment in Europe and a large share of the US workforce, normalising self-managed schedules.

How organisations can adopt workstyle

• Requires a visible senior champion who makes workstyle available to everyone, not selected individuals.
• Publish workstyle documents on a shared intranet so they are visible across the organisation.
• Move beyond Zoom-as-office: many organisations replicated synchronous meetings online during the pandemic without adopting genuine digital-first or async practices.
• Autonomy brings accountability — employees must own output, not hours; organisations must stop measuring presence.
• A community model (Huxby's approach): ~500 global freelancers assembled into diverse teams, working fully asynchronously for clients including Unilever, Merck, and B-Lab.

Getting started

• Create a workstyle document even if you don't share it — clarity on your ideal schedule reshapes how you think about work.
• Use the word "workstyle" in conversation; the authors found people naturally adopted it when they heard it.
• Join the Slack community at workstylerevolution.com/join for tools and worksheets.
• Book: Workstyle by Lizzie Penny and Alex Hirst, available on Amazon and Audible.