Is successful hybrid working feasible for you?

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afternoon everybody i'm going to kick us off i can see that people are still coming into the room but important for
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us to start on time um my name is katie jacobs i work for the cipd and i'm going
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to be your host for this our latest webinar over the next 45 minutes or an hour or
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so we're going to be discussing what perhaps is the hottest topic for many people professionals right now hybrid
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working what it is how to get it right and what mistakes to avoid joining me to discuss this topic and to
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offer their thoughts and advice i'm joined by claire mccartney claire is senior policy advisor resourcing and
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inclusion at cipd and the author of many of our excellent resources including a new guide on hybrid working that i'm
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sure one of my colleagues will be able to pop into the chat also joined by gary cookson director of epic hr
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who writes something about the world of work as well and lisa faulkner head of people at the financial services
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compensation scheme or fscs which i always mess up so apologies there lisa by butcher the name
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of your organization later in the session thanks everyone for joining us this afternoon and before we get into the topic i'm
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just going to run through some housekeeping notes um this session is being recorded it
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will be available on demand via the webinar section of the cipd website you'll be able to access all of our
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previous webinars there as well as find out about upcoming ones you will also be able to access um the slides from there
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as well if you want to submit questions to our panel and i'm sure you do have a lot can you please type them into the q a box
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not the chat box we're not going to be monitoring the chat box very closely so if you want your question answered then
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please put it into the q a box however you can use chat box if you want to chat to your fellow attendees and
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share any observations um or insights or reflections as you're as you're listening if you want to do that i'd
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advise you to use all panelists and attendees because that ensures that everybody can see your message
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do remember that we're updating our faqs and our resources all the time and you can find them on the cipd website and
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coronavirus hub my colleagues behind the scenes will also be sharing some of our most up-to-date information and advice around
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hybrid working in the chat so you'll be able to access lots of resources there cip members can also get individual
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legal advice by our hr inform helpline which is available to you 24 7. we won't be able to get into any highly specific
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legal situations here um if anybody does have any questions like that so please do use that helpline if you could value
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any additional advice and finally i want to flag our wellbeing hub and helpline which is available for
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members in the uk and ireland you can use this service to access free help and support via telephone or online
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consultations with qualified therapists provided via health assured um i know it is um mental health awareness week so
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really really important to look after yourselves so on to the topic at hand the pandemic has been referred to as the
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world's biggest ever working from home experiment as organizations had to switch on the
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ability for office-based staff to work remotely almost instantly in march 2020 and i'm sorry if referencing that brings
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back many traumatic memories for you about how hard you had to work now as most restrictions have been
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lifted in the uk hybrid appears to be the answer for many organizations according to research from the charter
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management institute more than 80 percent of managers say their organization has implemented hybrid working since the start of the pandemic
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and cipd research recently found 39 of employers are considering further measures and investment to increase
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enable and support hybrid working in the next six to 12 months because what many employers and hr teams
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are discovering is that hybrid working although full of potential and what's expected and desired by most employees
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is not without its challenges when it comes to implementation today our panel are going to share their
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insights reflections and experiences on how to make hybrid working success and how to avoid some of the watch outs that
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you need to be aware of we're going to hear from claire first who's going to share some recent research and resources
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then gary on what he's hearing from his clients network and then lisa's going to bring it to life through a case study of what is working at fscs and then we're
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going to come on to questions but please do get them in throughout so i can keep track of them so that's enough from me tonight for now i'm going to hand over
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to claire to uh open the session for us thanks claire brilliant thank you so much katie uh
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great to be part of this webinar today good afternoon everyone and for my part of the session i'm going to be sharing
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some new research that we launched just a few weeks ago at the cipd which provide an update on hybrid and wider
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flexible working and we conducted some employer and employee surveys with yougov at the end of last year the
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beginning of this year with big samples of over a thousand respondents in each um grouping and we also tracked and
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compared some questions that we'd asked the previous year just to get a sense of what might have changed shifted what um
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challenges are you know organizations facing when it comes to hybrid and wider flexible working so i'm going to be
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sharing some of those insights with you today so if we move on
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i'm going to say exactly what katie has already said but actually we're finding in our our
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research that around two-fifths of organizations are planning to invest more in home and hybrid working in the
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next six to 12 months and actually if we look at this by sector differences it's more likely that those in
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the voluntary sector and public sector are planning to invest more than those in the private sector and also larger
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organizations um more likely to be planning than smes to invest
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and if we look at some of the measures that organizations are putting in place to support hybrid
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working we're seeing a greater investment in the quality of technology
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we're also seeing organizations changing their organizational policies and flexible working policies to promote
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more remote working and encouragingly we're also seeing more guidance and support for line managers
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in managing and supporting homework and homework and i think obviously line manager is quite pivotal
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in order to making hybrid working work with their team so that's encouraging to see
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we're also seeing organizations identifying where any inclusion risks might arise if employees move to hybrid
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working and how these can be mitigated again that's encouraging that they're focusing on that because we are
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certainly seeing some inclusion risks um being noticed by both employees and
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employers and we'll talk more about that as we go on in the session so let's move on to look at some of the
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benefits but also some of the challenges that employers are reporting when it comes to
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hybrid working and we can see some of those benefits probably around things we might expect so improved work-life
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balance for employees better job satisfaction but also coming through quite strongly employers are reporting
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greater business flexibility and greater agility through increased
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remote and hybrid working which i think is um positive uh improved well-being is
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also coming through there by about a third of employers um but if we look at some of the challenges
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again it's around increased stress or mental health problems through people working um remotely
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and difficulty in in working as expected for employees who lack space or privacy when working from home we've certainly
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seen that throughout the prendi the pandemic and beyond uh we're hearing more kind of conversations around
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loneliness which you know might be certainly impacting upon people that are working more remotely and might be
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living kind of in single households as well and the third area which i think we probably haven't heard quite so much
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about is employee conflict due to the challenges of communication and team relationships while remote and home
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working and obviously that is an area that organizations certainly need to focus on and aid kind of communication
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and collaboration and try to um you know manage some of that conflict
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so if we move on we're going to have a little look at how employers are viewing
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performance and productivity and actually in our findings we've seen some real improvements in perceptions of
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organizational productivity so more than two-fifths of organizations who say that homeworking has increased and that now
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believe that more home and hybrid working has increased their organization's productivity and
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efficiency just 18 are saying that it's decreased their organization's productivity or efficiency and if you
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compare that to the line underneath we can see that that is a positive move in terms of an increase in productivity and
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fewer people reporting a decrease in productivity there aren't any big sector difference differences here
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around uh reported improvements in productivity there is a difference between size of organization
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again larger organizations more likely to be reporting increased productivity due to remote and hybrid
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working so if we move on we're also seeing a theme of lack of consultation coming
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through quite strongly really so um two-fifths of employees um say that they haven't been asked how they would like
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to work moving forward and that's employees who are able to work in a hybrid way so that's really quite a high
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proportion you feel that they're not being consulted or collaborated and we're also seeing a bit of a
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mismatch between employee and employer working preferences i think making it even more important for organizations to
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consult and collaborate with employees around ways of working so despite some
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of those performance and productivity improvements that are reported we have a bit of a mismatch going on so one in
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four employers want their employees to be in the office or on site all of the time compared to
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around two-fifths of employees you say that they would like to work from home all most of the time going forward so a
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bit of a mismatch there certainly much more that can be done around consultation collaboration you
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know working through options with different um different people so moving on i said i'd say a little bit
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more about um inclusion risks and we're seeing these both on behalf of employers
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but also employees so almost half of employers are concerned about hybrid or homeworking
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inclusion risks and almost a quarter of employees who are able to work from home
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or in a hybrid way are concerned about being treated less favorably if they work
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um in this way compared to those colleagues that perhaps are more likely to be in the the work space so
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um that's i think really kind of important findings and organizations really need to focus on inclusion and
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make sure that that is at the heart of their hybrid and their flexible working strategies
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um and that they are kind of continually learning lessons around this so we'll pick up again on that in our
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recommendations but if we look at other forms of um
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flexible working less than a quarter of organizations say that they're taking steps to increase these in the next six
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to 12 months and um again you know we are seeing a real
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unmet demand for types of flexible um working arrangements so um if we move on in particular we're
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seeing that in relation to um across all these types of flexible working but in particular
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around kind of flexi time or flexible start and finish times and compressed hours in particular so
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there is a gap potentially there between what is offered and what employees say they would
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most benefit from so i just wanted to um finish off um by
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talking a little bit on about the lack of um flexibility which is prompting job
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and career changes and so our data's showing us that around four percent of employees say they've
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lost they've left a job in the last year specifically due to a lack of flexible working and around
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nine percent say the same in terms of actually changing professions or sectors all together because of that lack of
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flexible working and while those uh percentages don't seem um massively high on first kind of
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reflection but actually if we look at that in terms of the you know the number of people in the labor market in the uk
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that's 28 million in total so four percent equates to over a million people nine percent equates to around
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two and a half million so actually if you think about it in that way it's a considerable pool of talent that
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organizations and sectors might well be missing out on through um not offering greater flexibility
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and of course we've got this um with a backdrop of a very tight labour market and organizations increasingly
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experiencing skill shortages as well so i'm just going to finish off by
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pulling out some of our recommendations or suggestions from our research and so these are around
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developing policies that allow employees to request flexible working from day one
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of employment and that links very much into the cipd's flex from first campaign about broadening up opportunities also
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advertising um vacancies is open to flexible working wherever possible but raising awareness of different forms
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of flexible working i think is really important and exploring these um you know in different sectors we have
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research at the cipd looking at cross-sector insights and enabling flexible working in some of the sectors
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traditionally manufacturing um construction quite difficult to accommodate flexible working but we've
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got some really nice examples of organizations experimenting trialling
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being open doing things differently really important to consult and collaborate with employees i think
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throughout your hybrid working practices and with your line managers you know we've seen that sense from employees that they
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haven't really felt that they have been consulted coming through from our findings spoken about
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the importance of inclusion that really is very important you know in terms of
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organizations plans when it comes to hybrid wider flexible working making sure that line managers are managing
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inclusively making sure that systems are in place to to monitor um decisions and
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um the whole kind of steps within hr around attraction reward retention all of those sorts of things and then
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finally providing training to managers on how to manage hybrid teams effectively we've seen that that is a
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priority area for lots of organizations which is really encouraging um and you know putting that spotlight on employee
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well-being getting performance management right um but also really supporting that remote
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communication collaboration relationship building i think will be um really important going forward
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so if we just finish off there are a range of different cipd resources
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we've worked with the flexible working task force on guidance so do make use of those if you
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think that they will be helpful to you so at this point i'm going to hand back now to
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katie so thank you for that thanks very much claire um really really great setting up the scene and um
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exploring some of our research um our colleagues have put links to um the last slide and stuff that claire was
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discussing in the chat so you can um access those um directly now uh also people asking yes
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you will be able to access the slides you'll be able to access the recording in the slides and we'll put them up um as soon as uh we're able to after this
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so probably this afternoon or tomorrow morning um i'm gonna hand over to gary now who's going to um share some of his
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thinking and insights on i see the new normal question mark thank you kt hello everybody it's a bit
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of a divisive phrase isn't it the new normal you either love it or you hate it and i'm probably in the latter camp but
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the ways of working we adopted in a hurry just over two years ago they're still with us and for a lot of people
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they're not going away for some time but the enforced nature of it that we've experienced over the last two years
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meant that for most of us the advantages it could bring were experienced alongside at the same time
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as the disadvantages but it did force us many of us to confront some previous
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wrongly held truths about the nature of work that the best way of working is
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done in five shifts of eight hours that isn't true that people need to live close enough to
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their place of work to get there on any given day that's not true either and the work has to be done in one physical space in one
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location and that isn't true either next slide please you see two extremes on on this slide
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then and you probably fall somewhere in between in your organization but the challenge for us as people professionals
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is to build something that enables people to get the best or the benefits
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of both ways of working whilst recognizing i think it was david souza pointed out many people don't have a
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choice about where they work they like the image on the left hand side some people never have and they never will so
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the way we build our hybrid offering has got to be inclusive and we need to develop people practices that create the
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best experience for all let's move on to the next slide so if we adopt hybrid
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working we need to be really clear on what we mean by that is it work from anywhere anytime or is it set days a
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week at home is it something that applies to everybody in your organization or just to some there was a
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survey done by understanding society last year and they showed that 88 of uk workers
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feel they want to work in the traditional workplace for at least some of their time and that's going to please jacob reese moss and maybe a few others
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so the office isn't dead yet but it's clear we're not going to be returning to the old normal just yet hr review and
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academic journal they suggested that around three quarters of us would actually accept to pay cut if we could
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retain remote working for a few days a week i'm not part of that three quarters i don't know anybody else who is but
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that's the research but people do need some level of face-to-face interaction and in many cases
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and this is the responses of this world they crave it so our people practices have to be able to operate across the
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different types of working realities that we're all going to face in the future we're going to have some people fully remote we're
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going to have some people fully face to face and in the middle this great amorphous mass of people doing hybrid so
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what do people need to do in a hybrid workplace future on the next slide i'll show you a few things that will help
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firstly i think there's got to be something noticeably different about the experiences in both places home the
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office to give them both some attraction and distinction otherwise run the risk of jacob reese moss coming to you and
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saying you may as well come back to the office if it's exactly the same as working at home so it's got to be
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different secondly there's a big risk of personal injury claims my wife's got carpal tunnel
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syndrome from spending time on the kitchen table with with her hands like this and that's not
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good working at home now and again might not be an issue but if you're going to be doing it potentially for years and
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years decades maybe lots of the week then we're storing up a lot of potential personal injury claims we've got to
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focus on the setup people need in terms of communication skills what i mean here is not the technology that allows
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communication but the skills needed to use it remote working needs a much greater proficiency in reading but
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especially in writing and we need to make sure that all of your employees have got those skills
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we need to focus on the internal communities as well internal networking and relationship building we already do
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this with externally facing remote communities they're called your customer base you're not co-located with them and
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you get on with them really well and you maintain good relationships we now need to bring that mindset
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into the people profession so that we can nurture those internal communities in the same way that the marketing team
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does for the external communities we've got to trust people to make the right choices without building loads of
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processes around things and manage people's expectations that there isn't going to be the same degree of choice
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for everybody and we need to help managers as claire said to to understand what employees do
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is more important than when and where they do it and reflect that stance in the culture as well as being inclusive
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and how they do it so i'm going to look at a few different areas specifically and on the next slide i start looking at
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leaders loads of leadership models that help you to look at how leaders need to divide their energy their efforts and things
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like that they're all still valid in a remote or hybrid environment but many leaders have not really focused
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consciously on where to put their energies and efforts as a result of some of the differences this environment
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brings all the roles are the same all the models are the same but the proportion of time that you spend doing
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each thing is quite different if individuals and teams are still managed on how long they're working for then
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we're missing something so the focus of leaders leading hybrid teams needs to be
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on results and outputs but probably working out whether those results and outputs are as the result of just
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working longer and that in itself should lead to leaders starting to use their skills and time in different ways
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working on communication and enabling it between the team so that everything's not funneled through the leader the same
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with recognition enabling that between the team itself so it isn't funneled again through that leader creating the
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right routines for individuals and teams as well they need to become great at noticing what's happening in the team
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but also what's not what's left unsaid what's the non-verbal communication like the meaning the
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purpose now many leaders and you'll know some of these they can cope well with that they're brilliant at it but you
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also know some that are going to struggle so a key role for us as people professionals is to almost start again
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with leadership development and enable the right skill set for people on the next slide i talk about teams
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very few teams when they moved to remote working
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realized that everything changed now there's a very familiar model you see on screen when co-located teams are first
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put together they tend to follow these or similar steps but when they move to remote working no matter what stage they
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were out of this tuckman model everything was reset it changed and the same is true of teams that have been
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working remotely and which are now going hybrid the model is again reset
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everything needs to be done again so why did few teams focus on this well they were in the middle of a pandemic
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they had better things to do it wasn't the time but now is as we emerge from the worst the pandemic we've got more
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time more freedom and we can be more planned and more conscious about what we do so when you work together alongside
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other people the rules of working together they're unwritten but they're well established custom and practice you
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might call it but when you're remote or hybrid you have to write that kind of stuff
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down you have to make it explicit things like when and how the leader of the team is going to deal with certain situations
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what the information flow is like around the team the preferred communication methods how the team's going to manage
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meetings and the expectations around behavior how the team's going to be administered based on where it's
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different members are going to be so teams need to be given structure
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to be able to operate remotely or hybrid effectively just like claire said we can
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lead to conflict if we don't we can't leave that to chance the next area on the next slide talks
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about some of the physical changes remote working done in somebody's home like i have here should be a source of
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energy a space to work with minimal interruptions the benefit of no commute quiet focused stuff that leaves the
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office to be that place of collaboration face-to-face interactions and those
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serendipitous water cooler moments that jacob reese moss wants us all to have but that needs some real careful design
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and implementation comes with loads of challenges and we can't have a very rigid approach rigid mindset
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of what a workspace whether that's remote or physical is it's not a good thing it's all going to be really
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flexible to cope with a very wide range of different types of work because work
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isn't just definable by where or when takes place but by what work is being
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done and whether that's synchronous alongside other people or the opposite i'll explore that in a second so on the
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next slide you see some images of what work might be like in essence so it has to be different
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can't be rows of desks cubicles in the odd meeting room the balance of all that has
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got to change we need different types of spaces spaces like touchdown spaces where you can work for
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short bursts of time before moving somewhere else you need flexible spaces with things on wheels chairs and tables
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so you can move them around create the space that works for you and whoever else is there at that moment with plug
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and play technology you need areas that are a bit like the atmosphere you might have in a library or you might have in a
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bedroom like this where you can't be interrupted require enables focused work to do hot desking facilities that you
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can book for a whole day and work with your team or other people and we might need the fixed settings that you're more
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used to that needs real conscious choices and the delivery of all of this
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is way more than just asking people to work some days at home and some days in the office we need to
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be ultra flexible it's got to be tailorable to the needs of the individual not just the way they need to
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work but what work they are doing and that means that hybrid working isn't
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and could never be the same for everyone and on the final slide i share with you a model that i
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have developed to help us think about this if we break roles down into semi-distinct responsibilities you can
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work out which of your duties all of them fit into which of the different boxes
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you see there when you look at jobs in that level of granular detail it might well be time consuming but it gives you
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a very different way of looking at hybrid working it isn't something that can be solved by looking at just
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individual preferences certainly not by looking at days of the week or by looking at jobs but by
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looking at the duties and activities that each job has and if you aggregated that saw a bigger picture of it that
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would enable you and your organization to work out what percentage of different activities fit
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into each of those four boxes there then you can make more informed decisions about real estate technology
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and the employee experience and then you can overlay individual preferences and circumstances too so every type of work
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needs a very different type of space and a different type of technology and looking at it that way will enable you
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then to build an organization around this so that we do what it says on the slide and form follows function and with
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that i shall finish and have a little bit of a drink and a breather and i'll hand back over to katie thank you
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thanks gary that's great i definitely deserve a sip water um of taking us through all that um i'm gonna hand over
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to lisa now lisa is going to um talk us through how this has all come to life in her organization the fc sorry fscs sorry
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i did i did i did apologize did warn you this would happen um would encourage people to get your questions in um because the panel are here to help
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otherwise you're just gonna have to put up with me uh suggesting my own questions uh so lisa over to you
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thank you yes it is it's not easy to say fscs um especially when you're answering the telephone i found um so yeah you get
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a variant of initial so don't worry about it um yes hello i'm lisa i'm the head of
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people from the financial services compensation scheme now you know why we call it the fscs because it's really long
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um we work with the regulatory family as part of the
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um uk government sort of claim operation really so if a
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firm goes under or your independent financial advisor goes bust um your bank or your credit union
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goes under we are the people that step into to pay you back so that's kind of what we do we are independent to the
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government though and we are funded contentiously by the finance industry um who pay a levy to us so that
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we can pay people back so that's kind of what we do in a nutshell we're very small if you think about it the
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financial conduct authority the fca the regulator has about i think at last count about 3 000 members of
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staff we've got 244 um in a current hedge count so we're quite small
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we outsource some of our claims to an outsourced company but we do most of it in-house um and up until the
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pandemic we worked out of one floor in a building in the center of london just by old gate
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and actually pre-pandemic we had started on a journey which is weird for us because we were always what you would
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call fast followers we were never out in the sort of like you know the head of people but for some reason
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um we had already started on this journey so in 2019 we said quite boldly all of our jobs
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from day one can be done flexibly we put it into all of our ads um and we asked the line managers to be
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specific as to why the job could be done flexibly not the other way around um and um it's quite interesting
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actually there were a couple of um teams that would hold out and say no these things have to be done and we can't
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possibly work from home they can't nobody can work from home which is really funny because obviously about you know a year later suddenly everybody
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could work from home weirdly enough and it really showed actually really really shine a light on the roles that can't be
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worked from home all the time so we noticed for our facilities team for instance who knew that you have to come into a building and run the water and
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flush the toilets otherwise you just back up and you have to spend thousands of pounds res alienating your water
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tanks um so you know you've got a small amount of people who have to be in the office and the biggest majority really didn't so
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that was quite an interesting one um apologies for this but we've been all of our forms um our flexible working forms
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went in the bin um in 2019 and i don't care why people want to have flexible
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working um really all we need to know is sort of hours because it you know for working
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out your holiday and that's the only reason i would need to know and even then the hours are kind of like a you know
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work anytime and between a certain set of hours just like you put in your hours so you know we got rid of all of the
30:33
forms we made it a lot less difficult and it was really between the manager
30:39
and the the person they employed basically to work out that working pattern
30:44
on top of all of this at the same time we were also looking at our workspace so we had a very traditional open plan
30:50
office frozen very supposed desks everybody came in every day at the same desk with their pedestal and did their
30:56
work and then they went home what we found was that our what our facilities team did is they
31:02
did some data we put little um little bits under the desk that counted
31:07
how many times somebody sat there how long they sat for so we had a vast amount of data that we could look at
31:13
which meant that when we came to look at it we noticed some deaths weren't being used they were never things so it gave
31:18
us the opportunity really to to take out a big chunk of desks and this is all pre-pandemic
31:24
and work on a more collaborative space open up a big chunk of the office put in
31:30
those kind of touch down points put in desks where the teams could get together in a round and have a conversation
31:36
putting sit-stand desks actually which you know are much healthier for people who have um issues or who just want to stand up more so that was our sort of
31:43
like first foray into this we gave everybody laptops we introduced
31:49
microsoft 365. so before after that we had teams um again pre-pandemic teams
31:56
was a bit like whatsapp we just chatted amongst ourselves on teams we didn't really do anything else with it
32:02
um but at the point of the pandemic it enabled us literally to lift and shift
32:07
so we went from one day working in the office to everybody working from home the next day with really little
32:12
intervention at that point we realized obviously we had to do interventions going on um but at that point and there
32:19
was absolutely no loss of productivity in fact our productivity went up um our customers never sort of like we never
32:25
thought it in their customer experience you know so it was all quite it was quite seamless
32:30
to a degree um and then we went through the two years of the pandemic um one of the
32:36
things that we were always very very keen to do and one thing we did really often was we collaborated and we asked
32:42
our employees a lot of it was focused in the first instances of their well-being how are you doing how are you feeling because it was a quite a difficult time
32:49
people worried about themselves their health their family's health all those sorts of things so we focused
32:54
a lot on well-being but then we started to focus on what's next what do we do
33:00
when when this is all over hopefully what's the next stage of this because
33:05
it's working really well what's what's it do we do we get rid of our office in london do we stop doing
33:10
this do we work completely remotely is there a place in our in our world for the office what is that place going to
33:17
be um and really we started working on it probably about
33:22
september august 2020 actually and started asking people
33:28
if and when you come back to the office what do you think what what's what would work for you what is your ideas of
33:33
returning to the office do you see a hundred percent you know do you see a sliding scale
33:39
do you see more kind of like collaboration do you want more space you know all those sorts of questions that you ask people we did all of that
33:46
um and we got lots of you know varying from naught to 100 obviously um
33:52
he could probably line people up against the ball and pick out the extroverts of the introverts depending on which percentage they said they wanted to
33:58
change the office um and then so that started as sort of like having that that conversation around
34:04
what is going to be our new normal and what is going to be our return um
34:09
process really which then became a long kind of drawn out because in september and then all them sort of like mini lock
34:16
downs and really start ups and come back and go ways again and eventually when we rolled around to
34:21
this point um we got everybody back so what we did is we decided that the
34:27
majority of people had sort of said 40 seems like a good thing for them brilliant that's great that's your first
34:33
that she started for ten what do you do next and as gary was saying what is the reason for the office why do you have
34:39
the office now you know my my bedroom from where i'm sitting now is five paces away why do i want to get and sit on a
34:46
stuffy train and travel an hour into london to sit at a desk and do exactly what i'm doing now that seems
34:52
daft really and and people could see the same thing so what is the reason for me doing that getting up and going into the
34:59
office so we came up with this idea that the office had to be thought of as an
35:04
activity not a place but an activity what were you going to do when you came into the office and on top side of that
35:12
was the office set up for you to do that so it was getting there but we've actually
35:19
then improved it again and we've put in again as guy said a lot more touchdown spaces so you might just come in to do a
35:25
couple of face-to-face meetings and you might go home again um you might come in and your whole team get together we do
35:31
have um a room that's full of concentration pods so pod you go in and you sit down
35:37
and you can do quiet work we've introduced a couple of creative rooms you can route the walls
35:43
all of our rooms you can wheel the furniture in and out and every place is enabled to do this so even if you've
35:50
only got half the people in the other half of people are up on a big screen and so you can have a lot of hybrid team
35:56
meetings you can have a lot of hybrids any meetings really and we invested a lot of money in making
36:02
that technology easy and you're right it's very plug-and-play and it's very kind of easy for us to do
36:08
we use a lot of microsoft teams um because it's just a platform um so
36:13
that's everything that we did and one of the things we also did is then we started to ask the managers what
36:19
are you doing what what's happening with your team what's your thoughts around this um and we've got a really great
36:25
team um our mi and analyst team are fabulous they spread out across the country a couple of them moved to the
36:31
north during the pandemic um and the 40 thing was like what do we do and actually the manager and the team have
36:39
worked out how they manage that 40 so the guys that live further out come
36:44
down for a week a month and they they work out what they're going to do the best to get the best time out of that
36:51
week so they do a lot of their they get togethers they do a lot of their team stuff they'll also do some social stuff
36:58
um and you know and then the manager comes in a little bit more that week because he knows he's going to get to see the guys he doesn't get to see every
37:04
other week so it's about line managers working with their teams we ask our line managers we ask a lot of
37:11
airline managers but we ask them to step up and really manage that process they
37:16
have to be the ones that say my team need to do this i want to do this with you you guys need
37:22
to you know let's work out this so this is what we kind of this has been our principle across the whole rent and
37:28
we've worked quite hard with our line managers in enabling them to do that talking about the office talking about
37:33
collaboration talking about creativity always the comms around what we're doing
37:39
how we're changing the floor plate what it could mean to you i was in the office yesterday i went out there i mean the
37:44
collaboration place was humming there were people having meetings over here or of your things we put in your telephone
37:50
room so you can just go in and have a quick quiet chat um you know we've got lots of different sort of like
37:56
hubs going on with lots of different work um and it's sort of picking up really well and and
38:03
working quite well we've still got a couple of people who don't want to come back and we're working with them a lot of it
38:08
is some of it is mental health well-being some of it is other issues you know you have to sort of like recognize that there are some people who
38:14
have been much heavily impacted by this perhaps some of us have been so you know you've got to kind of
38:20
work on it on a personal basis as well as a team basis as well as an organizational basis
38:25
um and i think that um one of the things that you know we've been quite clear about is that the working from home we
38:32
did during the pandemic is different to the working from home that we will do
38:38
post-pandemic in the pandemic you know particularly hr teams and engagement teams all got
38:44
together and they held everybody and they you know they bolstered them up and they did lots of stuff we were doing yoga and we were
38:50
doing um pilates and we were doing quizzes and cookery nights and all those sorts of things
38:55
that's a different process to what we'll have now we won't you know we can do it we won't be doing it on such a big scale
39:02
so you know it's going to look different and it's going to be different and we don't want people to get a false idea of what working from
39:09
home is because it is about collaboration but it's also about connection and you know we're human
39:14
beings we need connection um and i think we need to make sure that people are aware of that as well
39:20
so that's a really whistle stop tour through our last three years um um that's me really
39:27
thanks so much lisa a really really great case study great to hear how you're bringing it to life and making it work in action um got lots of really
39:32
great questions now so i'm just going to dive into them um we've got a few that talk about how to manage
39:42
uh oh maybe stronger than that from senior leaders um somebody said their
39:48
ceo is 100 against any form of hybrid or flexible working uh expectations are we should be in the office all the time
39:54
i've used data research insights performance data to present a well-balanced case there's still no
39:59
change in mindset um claire can you offer any advice on how we can tackle really really reluctant senior leaders
40:06
i mean you're not alone i think it's very common i think that you know jacob rees-mogg example there is you know is
40:12
quite a strong one um it sounds like you're doing all the right things in terms of you know sharing your data um
40:19
you know showing that actually people working in flexible ways doesn't have a negative impact on productivity
40:24
i think a key part of our profession map is around the courage to challenge so i would encourage you to keep on
40:30
presenting those evidence those insights but maybe you could you know create a movement of change so get other people
40:35
on board um you know to talk about this and say that the difference that is making to the organization managers at
40:42
different levels employees people in different functions and hopefully then senior leaders will start to um you know
40:48
change their mindset um hopefully thanks and gary have you got anything to
40:54
add on that from what you've seen and i think i agree with with claire really i think there's a growing body of
40:59
evidence to show that this is going to work and there's certainly enough evidence that people are leaving
41:05
organizations when they can't get this type of thing if that on its own doesn't
41:10
convince senior leaders then then maybe we need to do more and they're probably viewing it through their own lens as
41:15
well but they want to be in the office because that's the way they've been brought up the entire career has been
41:20
that way and they might be a little bit out of date in their thinking certainly i think that that jacob reese morg is is
41:26
one of those who sent into that category you might have others and they they've probably come from a particular
41:32
demographic and they probably need to realize that they might be coming from a very different demographic than everybody else might be in the
41:38
workplace they might be a little bit older than the majority of their workplace they might be a little bit
41:44
more male the majority of their workplace they might have much less children than some of the people in
41:50
their in their workplace and they're seeing it through their own lens and they need to perhaps appreciate that other people don't always see in the
41:56
same way thank you um and following up with that i really like this i really like this
42:01
question i'm gonna put it to you lisa um somebody said they operate a hybrid working policy um when people come into
42:07
the office senior managers have an issue that um staff are using it as a social with lots of conversations chat coming
42:13
in just for meetings um how how would you advise um employ him to help employees see the
42:21
that the physical workplace is also for doing work but then i would also add to that is there a space to convince
42:27
managers actually having a bit of a social and reconnecting his work yeah absolutely that is what we see we want
42:34
to see that i want to see people chatting in the corners i want to see people going out for lunch and they have drinks afterwards you know that is part
42:41
of the reason for people to come in and that's not to say that work is going on i don't know about you but a lot of the
42:46
chats i have at work are about work um you know and those actual we you know those those school
42:52
my boss david and i often say i can swing round and ask him a quick question and then swing back well we can have a
42:59
five minute chat at the end of it i'll ask him a quick question and i get my response back and i'm done
43:05
but that's taken five minutes but only 30 seconds if it was a question i asked him actually the rest of it has been all
43:11
around whatever we wanted to talk about um so there is there's a thing about you know like there's nothing wrong with
43:17
people coming in and chatting you we don't want to go back to the days of dickens where everybody sat in rows and
43:22
nobody was allowed to speak or laugh um you know we want to people to to have that and and
43:29
okay if you see that your productivity is is failing um then there's a there
43:34
might be a bigger issue at hand but if your productivity is staying the same and everybody's getting everything done and just because they're in the office
43:40
and potentially not you know for instance our coders so we have a lot of people who do coding but they keep
43:46
saying to me i'll get so much more done at home i can sit at home and i can literally code constantly for you know
43:51
10 hours um you know but i come in here i can only do about four hours worth of coding
43:57
well that's fine because you've done you know 30 hours of coding already that that week i don't need to just anymore i need you to come in here and figure out
44:03
what is the bigger picture for your work on coding um you know what's the next stage what's the innovation what's the
44:08
change you know that's the kind of thing that we want so yeah there has to be you know an ability to to do that and
44:15
realize that it's not just innate chatter it is about work uh one thing i've heard from an hr
44:21
director which i quite liked was kind of this reframing of productivity so different spaces require different
44:26
activities and those activities can be productive within those spaces so perhaps the productivity in work is that
44:32
reconnection but then at home it's getting all that other kind of deep thinking done but obviously managing not
44:38
managing my output if nobody's doing any work bit of an issue there um claire i'm going to ask you to build on that a
44:43
little bit but also could you talk a little bit about line manager training um obviously that's where like quite a lot of barriers lie um what would you
44:51
advise what does good line manager training look like yeah i mean i think line managers are just so pivotal in this whole
44:57
conversation so we need to make sure that we're properly engaging line managers they're not thinking oh you know this is an extra
45:03
role extra work on my shoulders already have a lot i'm kind of burdened but actually this is gonna you know create
45:09
more um energized motivated motivated productive teams so you know i think it's about
45:15
helping them to establish new ways of working um you know think about what are the best ways to communicate really consult
45:22
and collaborate with their teams as well it shouldn't be them dictating it should be you know them coming together and i
45:27
wonder whether you can create you know communities of managers within your organizations i've seen some of the
45:33
comments around you know not not all managers are following fair and consistent approaches but actually i
45:38
think if you bring your line managers together um to have opportunities to share and learn not not to see that as extra work
45:44
but actually to help them then you can get kind of greater consistency you can get greater kind of ideas sharing
45:50
collaboration so i would recommend that if it's a possibility thank you and gary somebody's i'm
45:57
specifically asked about your model around synchronous and egg synthetics working um could you explain a little
46:03
bit more about what you mean by synchronous asynchronous and maybe give some examples of what that kind of work would look like and how it would be um
46:08
connected to space yeah okay there were four boxes in in the model the first box
46:14
was synchronous online or remote work and this is a good example of it this is
46:19
something that requires many people to be in the same virtual space at the same time and we've all had loads of examples
46:25
of meetings like this live online classrooms but from a people practice perspective we've done interviews using
46:32
this type of technology disciplinary hearings using this type of thing so there's examples of that synchronous
46:38
face-to-face things things are things that require many people to be in the
46:43
same physical location a good example of that would be production line type stuff
46:49
where somebody's there doing their bit they pass it to me i do my bit i pass it to them they do their bit every
46:55
organization's likely to have some elements of that in the workplace asynchronous online stuff a really good
47:02
example easy one that everybody does answering emails doesn't need to be done at a particular time does it need to be
47:09
done in a particular space either so that's one that we can all relate to and
47:14
the final one asynchronous in the physical workplace imagine anything where you need to be in the office
47:21
but you don't need anybody else to be there with you think of them maybe a cleaner cleaning the office they have to
47:28
be in the office because they can't clean anywhere else but they can choose when they do that they don't need anybody with them or an i.t technician
47:35
working on the physical on-site servers the servers are there they have to be
47:41
there but the i.t technician can choose when they do that and they don't need anybody else with them so they'd be
47:47
examples of different types of work that fit into the different definitions thanks gary that's really helpful um
47:54
we've got a few questions about um supporting encouraging people back to the office um either because they are um
48:00
perhaps refusing to come back in perhaps they settled into new habits of working from home perhaps it's an anxiety issue
48:06
um perhaps when they do come in somebody's saying they aren't seeing the value so it's actually they're finding it hassle
48:11
rather than benefit um lisa what approach have you taken to um tackling i think we call them reluctant
48:18
returners um quite an individual approach for our relative patronus and we have a few um
48:24
again it's back down to the line manager so if the line manager is happy for them to do less time in the first few you
48:30
know months and then you know so we do have one person um for instance at the moment who isn't doing 40 and we know
48:37
that they're not but we are aware of that we're aware that their line manager is working with them to get over their
48:42
kind of like um their issues around traveling i think it's a possible
48:47
um that they have so you know so you have to do it on an individual basis and
48:53
but there is a you know there is a point i think where you need to um potentially get a little tougher with people um
49:00
you know there's a there's a whole kind of contractual element to this if you like
49:05
that says i mean at the moment our contracts are in the office five days a week um you know we've changed them
49:10
we've just put in a smart working policy that allows us to to run it slightly
49:17
differently but contractually you know we have a it's a reasonable request
49:23
um so you can you know you can play the contractual card don't really want to if i can help it because i don't think that's the best way to get the best out
49:30
of people um and then finally for the sort of more um
49:37
so we've got to sit we've got a period we we do 40 but to be honest we're very flexible around that and we'll look at
49:43
something like you know if you're doing 30 to 40 we're quite happy actually and so it's about your flexibility within
49:49
your flexibility um as well and not being too rigid about it and back to the coders a lot of them would say to me
49:55
i could do so much more at home this is a waste of my time and that's going back to the line and just saying please let's
50:01
see how we make this not a waste of their time let's see where we can get the benefit out of them coming into the
50:06
office what are you doing that is you know drawing benefit from this and actually to be honest those questions
50:12
have have tailed off over the last probably the last month actually so in the first few
50:18
weeks months back a lot of people are saying this isn't working i could be doing a lot more at home but i've noticed that actually
50:24
those have tailed off and we're left now really with the very sort of like people who've got quite emotional or health
50:30
issues that aren't the ones that are really really relaxing to return thank you and what i'm hearing from a lot of the hr leaders i work with is
50:37
once people go back in they realize that actually yeah pretty good well it's like
50:42
it's worth their while and then it just becomes kind of a gradual increase at lisa mentioned um
50:47
kind of the contractual element and i'm claire gary i think get both of you to answer from a slightly different angle
50:53
people somebody's asked and they have a flexible working policy in place which is a formal process their hybrid working
50:58
is more principles-based um and kind of about that conversation and decision between manager and employee is that
51:04
appropriate would you advise a more formal policy procedure so maybe claire first of all you could tackle kind of informal versus formal and gary maybe
51:10
you can share it about what you're seeing in organizations you work with yeah i mean i think there are probably
51:16
pros and cons of informal versus versus formal um but you know i think it has
51:22
been helpful with hybrid to have that informal um you know certainly up front because organizations have been
51:28
trialling adapting employees have also been so you don't want things kind of written in stone actually if you're continuing to learn and develop from
51:34
that and we know that a lot of employees actually really want informal flexibility that's something that's come
51:39
through from our um research so i think it's about just trying to get the
51:44
balance right within your organization um you know obviously employees are entitled to make a right to request
51:51
flexible working and that will be a formal process others might want more of an informal approach they might need uh
51:57
kind of more informal flexibility for ad hoc situations or you know perhaps stagger start and finish times on
52:03
certain days so i guess the probably the best advice is to is to talk to the individuals and
52:08
work out solutions that you know are going to kind of meet those needs that are also going to meet the needs of the team as well
52:14
thank you and gary just done quickly what are you seeing in terms of how many organizations are actually changing
52:20
their t's and c's versus having a more informal approach i think somewhat someone really tempted
52:25
to do it but i i would advise against that i think keeping that principles-based approach that i think
52:31
it was charlotte who raised the question i think that's very much the appropriate way of doing it flexible working and hybrid working are two different things
52:37
they do overlap and there's some common ground you've got a procedure and a policy for flexible working but hybrid
52:44
working is about what works for the team and the team as processes the team has things it needs to get done and the team
52:51
needs to work that out between itself and there shouldn't be a one-size-fits-all approach to terms of
52:57
conditions or policies and procedures that underpin hybrid working so principles and general frameworks is
53:04
definitely the way i'm seeing organizations do it successfully and the way i'd recommend to
53:10
thank you i'm just going to tell you two more questions thank you then we'll wrap up um lisa um one for you some uh vicki
53:15
said she's interested to hear about um the flexible working the collaboration space you've got um what advice would you suggest to organizations that
53:21
perhaps don't have much space or budget to change the space that they have
53:27
i suppose i wouldn't have a massive budget either i have to say i ordered space actually to be honest um we
53:33
first off we did spend money on the the data capturers because what we didn't want to do is take out you know 50
53:40
deaths that people see in that um so these little things that sit underneath the desk and they sit in the meeting rooms as well and they just capture your
53:47
data so that it's a really good point to start actually because it really shows which which desks are being used which
53:53
desks are not being used um but also you you can sort of like you can almost do a tally sheet if you want to on a daily
53:59
basis if you haven't got the the data you know the money to spend on the uh
54:05
occupy i think so it's a little thing sits under the desk you have to do a lot of comments about it where you tell people that you're not spying on them
54:11
but it's just counting sort of like you know legs under a desk um so yeah so that's that's an interesting because
54:16
when you work from that that really strong data point you've got a really strong case for what you do and how you do it um if
54:23
you've got a very small space then you need to probably be a little bit more um flexible around how you do things um can
54:30
you remove desks if you can't is there a different configuration that you can do can you can you take those dividers away
54:38
so that it opens up you know sort of like a flatter space and the dividers were put in the days when people were
54:43
doing lots of telephone calls um which people don't do now you know is there space for you to take off your team to
54:49
go somewhere else so you're not annoying everybody but can you take out those dividers can you move your desks around
54:54
so that they are more you know sort of like formed in a different way they're not in long lines
55:00
which is what ours were you know we put the desks into groups of four we've faced people to each other so they can
55:05
see each other um you know so all those sorts of things you can can do it and i think there's always
55:11
going to be a cost involved because anytime you want to move a desk i don't know about your place every time i want to move a desk and you know i t and
55:18
facilities have to get involved i'd have to move you know three million bits of data out of the floor um to move a desk
55:24
so i don't know quite how that works in other places but you know basically we used a lot of data
55:30
um and um we didn't get any you know design people in we just sort of went well we think this will work and we went
55:37
and looked at other offices to be honest as well um so we went and had a look around a couple of other offices that were doing
55:42
this kind of collaboration space really well and we got invited in and we went round um and we looked at what they were
55:49
doing and we kind of you know i'm a great fan of bordering with pride as my boss would call it not stealing but borrowing with
55:55
pride and what other people look like so it's always a good idea to go around and have a look at other people and see if there's something that you could do in
56:01
your office put on maybe a smaller maybe scale i'm sure you're gonna get lots of messages now you put out there people
56:06
are asking if you look around your office we'll hold you to that um just um time for one more question i'm
56:12
sorry that i haven't got to the people who've just put them in when we've got five minutes to go put them in earlier um claire you talked a bit about
56:18
inclusion um somebody's asked about tackling proximity bias um could you talk a little bit about how we make sure
56:24
that um there's equity of progression for people no matter where they are i mean i think
56:30
this is where you know really um good training for line manager comes in because ultimately they'll be the the
56:36
people that are determining kind of those progression and development opportunities i think it's about making sure
56:42
that um you know they understand that they should be looking at the development the progression the support
56:47
giving opportunities to everyone regardless of where they're working and you know instilling that in in the
56:52
messages that you're giving out throughout the organization um really important thank you
56:58
okay because that was that was a quick answer i will do one more question i'll put it to gary um somebody's asked about learning by osmosis and i know there's
57:05
quite a lot of narrative around that people perhaps don't get the opportunities to learn particularly younger staff when they're remote
57:10
working how do you think um that that kind of learning and mentoring coaching works
57:16
okay there's a few things he could do here that would help with that almost every meeting that
57:22
hybrid workers attend needs to be run like a training session is with a formal
57:27
structure formal agenda formal opportunities to share stuff and learn stuff so that it does give them some of those
57:34
learning by osmosis opportunities but also when i talked before about
57:39
leveraging the power of the community focusing on the internal networking we need to create face-to-face
57:45
opportunities for people to come into the office the frequency doesn't matter it's contextual whatever works for your
57:51
organization but make these happen make one day a month or
57:57
every quarter where everybody comes into the office and the range of team development type things and internal
58:03
networking so you can get some of that in place but also send people onto internal social media teams channels
58:10
yammer things like that we should be scanning things like that looking for questions that people are asking and
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who's answering them and who's engaging with them and connect people so that they can learn from each other through
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us pointing them in the right direction of here's somebody who knows about that or here's somebody who can help you with
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that and that's a real skill set that not many in the people profession have that stalking on social media we need
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more of that more stalking what a great message to end on um thank you so much um to uh
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gary claire and lisa um thanks everybody for watching this webinar will be available um soon to watch again should
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you wish or to share and you'll also be able to download the slides um and access all of those soon um yeah just
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got a slide there about our many benefits so um do you remember there's lots of ways that the copd is there to
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support you um that's it from us for now have a good afternoon and thanks very much for joining