Returning to the workplace: mitigate the divide

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good afternoon everyone my name is lee panglia and i'm delighted to be hosting today's session
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as part of our returning to the workplace series where we'll explore how to rebuild trust
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and how best to tackle any potentially simmering session tensions in the workplace following a
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return to the workplace you'll see from my title that i head up the crpd in scotland in northern ireland
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but for the avoidance of any doubt because i have been asked this in previous webinars what we're discussing
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today is applicable to all our members whenever you're dialing in from not just those of you that are joining
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us from scotland and northern ireland if we think over the past year or actually a bit longer than the past year
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we've seen frontline workers responding flat out to the pandemic while others have been forced into
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homeworking and a number of workers placed on furlough each of us though playing a significant
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role in the uk's response to the pandemic as the workforce slowly begins to come
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back together in whatever um shape it's important for us to recognize that each
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individual's experience has been unique and that the impact on high workloads
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and potential redundancies that have taken place and burnout for some may well have
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impacted morale commitment and for some it may well have eroded trust in their employers
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so today what we're going to do is explore what factors employers need to consider
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when reintroducing and reintegrating what some are referring to as a split
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workforce and how best to manage expectations so considering how we ensure that
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rebuilding trust and working relationships are at the heart at the very heart of our return to
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the workplace and whatever form that takes and so that you can make the best decisions for your
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organization and for your workforce so today i'm delighted to introduce
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three speakers um our panel of three speakers and each of them brings a different perspective to the
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discussion and each speaker has a particularly impressive biography and if i was to
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share it all all of them it would take up the whole session so just to summarise
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i would like to first of all introduce my colleague david d'souza who is cipd director of membership
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and prior to joining the cipd david has a wealth of experience mostly in
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financial services and retail sectors and he brings lots to this discussion but i
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think in particular his experience around organizational development and culture
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corporate ethics and employee engagement i think our areas are particular relevance to
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the discussion today secondly i'd like to introduce professor ross searle
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ross holds the chair in human resource management and occupational psychology at the adam smith business school in the
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university of glasgow rose is a chartered occupational psychologist
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she's a fellow of the bps of the rsa and she's also an academic fellow of the
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cipd and one of rosie's main areas of research is the impact of change in
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organizational trust and in particular the role of the hr m process and that
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and then last but not least i'd like to introduce um andy doddman who is the chief hr
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officer for leed city council which is a uk's second largest local authority which i didn't realize
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andy is responsible for people strategy and hr service delivery for all 14 and a half thousand staff
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directly employed by the council but also around 12 000 employed by
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primary and secondary schools prior to joining local government in 2019
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andy worked in higher education he was a chief operating officer for the university of sheffield
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um and andy is a chartered fellow of the cipd so just quickly before i go any further
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there's some practical housekeeping rules i need to um go through with you um attendees are
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all muted the session has been recorded and will be available on demand via the webinar section of the crpd
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website where you can access all previous webinar recordings but you can also sign up for future ones
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too our next webinar is on the 13th of may and it's on fairness and reward and
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recognition post covert 19. so it's focusing on the unequal impact
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of the pandemic with the unequal impact that pandemic has had in the workforce
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to date and what employers could be doing we should be doing to ensure fairer reward and recognition
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post pandemic to submit questions to the panel please type into the q a
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box not the chat box you can use the chat box and to network with each other and post
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observations but any questions please post them into the q a box before
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i introduce the speakers to share their insight there are um i'd like to draw your attention
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to some of our member benefits in particular some of the those additional resources
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that you may not already be aware of that can support you in the role um of particular interest i
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would like to continue to highlight our covert 19 resources
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and they are updated frequently and we're always updating the faqs and
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do so after each of these webinars and so i would encourage you to continue
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to visit our coronavirus hub and also i'd like to draw attention to
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the fact that the cipd members get individual legal advice by calling our hr and our hr inform
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helpline it's available 24 7. and then finally with regards to our member benefits i
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would like to point out that all cipd members in the uk and ireland can also access our new well-being hub
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and helpline together with award-winning workplace well-being provider health assured
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we now provide cipd members with free help and support 24 7 365 days a year
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via telephone or online consultations with qualified therapists
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all of our members can access the phone number and the online services via the web the membership benefits
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webpage and you'll see more details of this at the end of our session so next let's get on to the content of
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the discussion david will be our first speaker and he'll share cipd's position on trust
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and return to the workplace followed by rose who will explore how distrust may have built up
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over the course of the pandemic and how organizations can rebuild that trust
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then andy last but not least will share some practical insight from how leed city council has been
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managing a multi-layered workforce and maintaining trust throughout we'll
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then open up for questions for the remainder of the session so if i can encourage you as i said
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earlier to post your questions into the q a um function and we'll aim to get through
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as many questions as we can after the speakers have shared their insight so that's it for me i'm going to hand
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over to david now thank you hi everyone my name's
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david de caesar and i'm membership director at the cipd the cipd's position on trust uh is
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probably quite an obvious one trust's a good thing uh it's very useful in organizations
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societally it's absolutely imperative and in fact as a species and it's probably one of the most
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important things we have it's what allows us to thrive and it allows us to thrive more effectively than almost anything else
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because of the ability for us to work together reliably and collaborate without trust
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collaboration is nearly impossible um it's what allows us to deliver and we've gone through a
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period in the last year where there's been incredible trauma incredible stress
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and at times significant division and certainly politically you take that back as a kind of broader window
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of disagreement uh and when you add all those things together it becomes absolutely imperative for
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organizations to have the trust that allows knowledge to flow effectively through organizations and up
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and down to allow people to express their voices and bring their talents and their skills
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to the organization in the most inclusive way possible and and also for people to maintain a
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sense of trust and relationship with the organization and the interesting thing about organizational trust is that it
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manifests in a number of different ways so do you trust your organization
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as a multi-faceted question because to some extent you might trust that the organization will do
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something consistently but you won't necessarily trust the intent that sits behind it or you might trust the organization as a
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whole but you don't trust the colleagues that you work with or quite often you might trust possibly
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the organization and your colleagues but your boss you really have a problem with your boss and you don't trust that
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they have your best interests at heart you don't trust that actually they want your career to flourish you don't trust
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they're not taking credit for your work all of those things happen to a greater or lesser degree
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in most organizations but when you're living in a time where actually we're told that we can't trust the press
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or people distrust the information they're being given by medical professionals then absolutely
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understanding the impact of that an organization what you might need to better do to deliver an environment where people
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can trust each other and know the intent of each other and operate well together is absolutely
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key to organizations so whether you are an organization that intends to keep people working remotely
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and you have challenges or issues with trust within that or with the organization's relationship
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with them or whether you're an organization that actually is starting to bring people back together you're finding they've had profoundly
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different experiences it's a really important period for us to tease apart just a bit more and understand how the
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social dynamics of organizations work so there's a really good example i
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think around the framing of organizations that you'll find in dan ariely's work uh who uh his brilliant job he's the um
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he's heads up the center for advanced hindsight at gt university which is the best name for anything ever and he talks about the
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difference between financial and social transactions and how often we cross them and that creates an
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issue for trust and many organizations will have seen it this year so you start off your positioning as an
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employer quite positively we're a family we like people to feel part of things like we're a family here
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and then actually someone needs to uh go off because they're sick or they're absent and suddenly they find
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there's an impact on their pay or their job security well you don't do that with family members you frame that relationship in
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one way and the reality of that is turning up in a very different way and trust at its heart relies on a few
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things and i know roz will go into far greater detail around some of the psychology and some of the
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research but it relies on a congruence of values quite often so i trust you to do the
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right thing is the really helpful thing rather i trust you to do the wrong thing we normally implicitly say when we trust
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someone that we're trusting their intent aligns with ours or their intents will at least be positive
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but the second thing that i think often isn't focused on enough is that it also relies on consistency
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that i can rely on you to come up with the same kind of decisions or the same kind of efforts or the same
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kind of determinations that you would have done yesterday tomorrow
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and if you can't find that in your organization if there's an inconsistency of approach in values then it becomes impossible for trust to
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flourish because if i turn up each day and i don't know how you're going to be with me either an organizational level or in
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terms of my team or in terms of my boss it's incredibly incredibly challenging to try and build
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any trust in that space so there's a wonderful thing in organizations that exist in a kind of
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feminist so they don't understand what's going on they're not interested in our welfare
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they don't really care and the challenge for hr is to serve the interests of the
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organization and the people in it in such a way that we don't become they
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we don't become the they that people are talking about in organizations they don't get it they don't care isn't
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something that you want associated with hr but we're also brokering a relationship between the organization
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and the individuals within it at times so there's a number of things that can break
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trust and that's quite often a useful way of looking at how you make trust so as you're thinking about your
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next year and as you think about how you're progressing how are you going to make sure that you articulate the decisions that you have
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within the organizations in such a way to create trust in those values and in the consistency
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of applications what does that look like in terms of the policies that you might create or in terms of the principles that you
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might want to operate in the organization and again in terms of the consistency of application
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in terms of your leadership how do you create a space where actually they are clear on what
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they stand for people can rely on them again that consistency base but also
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interestingly far more importantly because we've talked about psychological safety a lot for the last year
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how do you create a trust that there are spaces where people are psychologically safe and can voice their
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concerns in a constructive way so if you really want an organization to be the most productive that it can be
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you need to maximize the contribution that's possible from people and lack of trust is a complete barrier
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to that so hr have got a role to play on reflecting
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on what things we can do that will either help or hinder the process of creation of trust within
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organizations and that starts from the very start of the employment relationship
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have you been honest in your advertising are you bringing people in on a salary that's going to be congruent
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and fair within the kind of organization you're working in and how after that point you communicate
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and support people and the people that create teams and environments within the organization
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to be fair so what's changed over the last year a lot has changed in terms of the external environment
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and the sense of stability that we have if you want to bring that stability back into your workforce
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then it's really important that as hr we understand the role that we play within that but also that we aren't the entire
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um party the leadership team we've got a part to play in that line management it's got an absolutely key role to play
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in that because with the exception of a very few niche organizations
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trust is a genuine uh hygiene factor in terms of performance and in terms of
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the ability to deliver there are some environments where you don't want people to be overly trusting espionage
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would be a good example of that you sort of want people to understand to spot a lie if you work in
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fraud prevention you probably want people are quite expecting but in most environments you want the starting point to be
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one-off trust in your colleagues trust that the organization will do the right thing and trust that that will be
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reliable and consistent i'm getting people into a position where they build that trust
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through working together through examining the boundaries of it and through communicating clearly
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it's absolutely something that hr can have a clear and hugely important role to play but
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the other thing that i'll throw in before i kind of hand over to ross is their reputation professionally
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there's a barrier to that which is that quite often hr is seen as on the side of the organization rather
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than the individual and that is a perception that the only way you can shift over time
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uh the only way you can genuinely get movement and momentum on that is by being different so creating an
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environment where actually people can trust in and will come to hr and be psychologically
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safe and feel that that's an environment they can talk and speak up in and be treated fairly in the same way you would want from the
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leadership team so i think as a profession we have a historical challenge that we
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need to meet up so i do understand having worked in a range of different organizations why people might be skeptical and
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mistrust hr so we've got that to deal with i guess on our own front lawn where we have a
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broader challenge and a broader opportunity to help drive curate and support more trust within
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organizations particularly for those of you who are working in areas of knowledge work where teamwork is critical it's
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impossible impossible to be at your best if people don't trust each other
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and they don't trust the responses that they'll get around them hugely important thing for us to deliver i know roz will talk uh more about some
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of the research that sits behind it and andy will talk about some of the practical things that they've been doing there but i look
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forward to joining in the chat at the end to try and bring things together but i trust that you'll have an
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excellent rest of the webinar um thank you david for that
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for sharing some of the challenges and opportunities and the hr face and brokering
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a relationship between the organization and the individual within um within each organization
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and delivering that environment where people can trust each other to collaborate communicate
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and i guess deliver productively um as you've said so now i'd like to um
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hand over to ross who's going to share a little bit more around the evidence and insight
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and thank you ross thank you very much and thank you cipd for giving me an opportunity to
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wear a dress because we have to take these small bonuses so what i'm going to be talking about here
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building on what david was talking about is really an idea about preserving trust
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so it's all very well to think about building trust and repairing trust but i actually think we've got a really
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important mandate here particularly as hr professionals in terms of preserving trust
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and paying attention to what currently is happening within the business can i have the next slog please
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so the return to work is going to be a very anxiety provoking situation for a
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number of people um i was talking to a friend over the weekend who had been backing at work
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yesterday last week and ended up uncharacteristically dissolving into
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tears and she was really shocked by her reaction she was also really shocked
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that nobody around her came and connected and helped so she is now coming back into work
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again with another big question mark going on in her head about is this the workplace that i expected it
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to be um is this somewhere that i want to remain working in and i think for a number of people this is likely
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to be the case next slide so if we look here trust really becomes
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to the fore in situations where we have uncertainty and disruption which i mean the pandemic
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has done this to everybody with knobs on but also where we have a heightened sense of vulnerability
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and that can make us because we are human animals it can make us very very focused on
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keeping safe as dave is highlighted but that really is very important because it
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gives us a focus that's about that safety issue and in particular that means that
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we pay attention to things that have gone wrong things that have been negative because
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those are likely to make us feel unsafe so trust is really a very salient
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issue now if we think i'm going to be highlighting and some three key issues here
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so let's think about the experiences of the pandemic which my next slide has on them for many
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people it's been this kind of skydiving experience in the sense of out of the plane not quite knowing
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what's going to happen and then trying to link up with people in different ways you'll see on my next
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slide what i've got here is um a synthesis of some research that
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we did a while ago on looking at how do people in organizations respond to change
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and particularly crisis and you can see we've got the top team um in one of the corners where
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people are working together and we found that this group were able to maintain trust they worked together they communicated
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they shared the values and they made sure that they were able to operate effectively
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but i think that is often a rarity particularly in the pandemic
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but i think also we have to remember that many of the people who have come together to form teams to help
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organizations deliver in these times actually are very tired and have been doing that if you like
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like holding by their fingertips to the situation so that may not be sustainable so there may
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have been a team but they're a very tired team now and we need to come back and think about that
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so you'll see then down if you go on the diagonal you see the person uncovering the question mark
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we call these watchful followers so these are people that have noticed that something isn't quite right
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and they are alert but the key issue for this group of employees is that they need a conversation about
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that concern and then the resolution of that and then they'll flip back into being a truster
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but if you don't have that conversation then they're going to be thinking are there any more things under this carpet
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that you're not telling me about so again i've been focusing on that then in the middle of the screen you saw
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the person with the the big x that is somebody who's really registered that it's the
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leaders in this organization as david alluded to earlier they really haven't stepped up
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they really haven't done things we are a great organization it's these people that are in charge of us that we have to be
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very wary about and the way the messages that they need are going to be very different than the
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person in the in the middle there with the big question mark coming out from them we call these and concerned loyalists
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so these are people who notice something isn't quite right in your organization may need to be heard they
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want to share those concerns they want to tell you about things that aren't going right so that trust can be
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preserved but also so that things will not spiral out of control for them and for other people so they
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really are a hugely important resource to make sure that you're listening and trying to see where are the people
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coming from this from then the person with the job but well they're the person who they kind of
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understood what their job is and now they really don't because all of the pandemic all of the way of working
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means that they don't quite understand how do i do this when i used to do that in the old world as it were so again we
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call these identity shifters and their concerns are quite different there may be a whole group of people
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around them who are feeling the same way and are starting to doubt and disconnect
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but again these people need to be listened to they need to help to make that bridge
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into trusting again and then in the top corner you can see we've got somebody exploding these are
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angry distrusters these are a very small group of people that we found in our research
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but they are very negative they've often been on a journey through some of the bits in the middle
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of this uh diagram and they finally ended up in this point where they're often stuck
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record in the organization so people have stopped listening to them which actually makes them very isolated
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and can make them quite dangerous in terms of what they could do to harm the organization or other people in it
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but these people have really changed from trust into distrust and as a result of that
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it's very hard to pull them back because suddenly they are not able to segment
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and see things in a proportionate way they tend to be much more extreme with this distressing now distrustful at
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these angry disgusters is a really exhausting place to be so what we found is that either people leave the
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organization or they drop down into that bottom little person that we call the apathetic
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who sadly has to stay in the organization often from pensions and other issues that can strain and
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make them have to stay even though they actually don't want to and they're very disconnected and they're not really interested in
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trust because they they just want to leave the organization ultimately but the reason why i've put
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all of these up is to remind you about what is the communication that's going on in your business
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have you understood where are these different groups because i will guarantee that
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it's about segmenting that communication is about listening and understanding and if you're able to do that it will
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make that return to work so much more helpful for people because they'll feel that the things that
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they're concerned about are being addressed next slide so what this
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has really underscored is the emotion and the issue of dynamics of emotion so
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as i mentioned earlier on this friend who was returning to work suddenly finding themselves
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on this kind of emotional rollercoaster that they really weren't expecting and so you'll see on the next slide what
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we find in these events is that you tend to get these two different types of negative emotions
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so one is all about fear and anxiety and that shuts down our thinking and
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makes us pull away from things so that we can avoid and try and get away
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but the second emotion that we can often find ourselves in is anger anger why was i put in this
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position anger about the situation and that is a mobilizer so it makes people want to
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engage to fight back and push now the reason that i mention these two emotions
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is that they're really important in fueling counterproductive work behaviors they're really important in fueling
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moral disengagement which allows people to do bad stuff but feel vindicated in doing it and that
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they were right to do it so again we've got to pay attention to the emotions that people are feeling
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if you look at the next slide this is a study that we did and i'll put the resources
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um for you to look at and what we identified here were these three specific um aspects that leaders
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and hr need to do and you'll see the second one of those is what's called emotional embodying
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and what this is about is about recognizing that people have these very strong emotions
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particularly at the moment and helping them work through it if you look at the next slide
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this practice is all about helping people manage their vulnerability and it's a
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mechanism about getting them to acknowledge their emotions and as i said earlier on that might be a
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real surprise to them that they're feeling this strength of emotion but it has to be dissipated in a
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particular way so it's about helping people and to recognize that they're going to have an emotional response so that they're not
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shocked and surprised and feel let down by themselves but it's also helping them work through
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these things and that can involve coaching it can involve reminding people to look after
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each other and particularly what we find in terms of trust and organizational trust is
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that benevolent respect is about showing people that you care about them
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and i think really critically in terms of helping them with their emotions next slide please so
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if you like as a call to arms i think that hr has a really critical role and actually a very unique and special
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role in managing this transition back into it next slide please
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it's all about helping organizations to be resilient organizations to be able to preserve the trust that
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they have within them but also it's about helping them to do that in a
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dynamic way in a way that happens over time so in particular there may be small
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groups of people within your workplace who suddenly have realized that they have a whole range of skills that they never
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thought that they had they've learned so much more about themselves and their resilience and what they can offer but there'll
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also be a lot of people who are wobbling and who are very damaged by their experiences that
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may relate to nothing that's happened within their work situations so i think here particularly thinking about mental
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health and mental health first aiders is critically important now i know that you've got something coming up that's
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looking at wages and in particular the fairness around wages is a really important issue in terms of
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restoring but it's not just about getting back to the normal next slide please so on this slide i
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i've created some resources that you'll be able to have a look at and the top one is a free animation that
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builds on what i talked about earlier and then the middle one is a free and
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very practice orientated paper all around preserving trust in organizations i'm looking forward to
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your questions thank you thanks rose and for sharing so much
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insight and so much content for us to consider um
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around the importance of understanding our employees pandemic experience
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and i love the the idea of segmenting your workforce and understanding um
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how to communicate and better with them i'm sure we'll have lots of questions around that
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um later on but um if i could pass on to andy now
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um to share his experiences of light thank you very much lee and
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good afternoon everybody i hope everybody is uh well says lee rightly says what i want to do is just share with you a very brief case
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study of the work we're doing here at leeds city council around our future working arrangements
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um before i uh get on to the case doing some of the practical application just a very quick bit of background
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uh from me first so the next slide you'll just see um a bit about myself and the city
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council so i'm the chief hr officer uh at the council um i'm recently appointed as the vice president of
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epma which is the public service uh people managers association which is a professional
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hr body that represents uh public sector hr people um as lee mentioned at the start
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of the session um these city council you can see where i work in the the lovely building of the civic hall in the centre of leeds
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and we're the second largest local authority in the uk and when you add in this the staff that
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we directly employ together with our primary secondary schools across the city um we do employ around 26 27 000
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staff um as some of you know when when you talk to people about working from council they always assume that
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um we're the people that have to worry about potholes and emptying bins which is true we do do
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that and indeed we empty about 2 million bins a year in the city
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as a large council of course we do run a whole range of other services as well so there's something like
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450 different services we provide to our local communities um and that's everything from sort of
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the a to z so a in terms of our adoption services and up to zed we do employ
32:36
uh some zookeepers so we're we're a very broad um and quite complicated organization
32:43
so just in terms of our future working arrangement so we launched a program um in early march of this year
32:52
and probably the first thing to stress for everybody on this is that we really wanted to spend a fair bit of time talking to our workforce
32:59
really about the drivers for the change so we didn't just want the change to be described within the
33:05
remit of the immediate in-year response to coved and obviously the
33:10
pandemic of course has acted as a real catalyst um on a lot of the change that our
33:16
colleagues have already talked about but it's it's really recognizing that we've been on this journey actually as as
33:22
large employees for some time anyway so we spent a fair bit of time talking about those other big drivers for change
33:29
across the city and across the organization whether they're sort of demographic changes
33:35
behaviors our customer expectations of course are changing we have a range of different financial
33:42
challenges social economic factors political factors you name it so we've been focusing very much on
33:48
presenting if you like that much bigger broader context of change within the workplace rather
33:55
than an in-year response to the pandemic um we tried to present a lot of our
34:00
thinking a lot of our practical application in that kind of transformational longer term uh program of change and
34:09
and activity and often when we're talking to staff about this some of the narrative we've been using is is not
34:15
just talking about place of work but much more about the future of work
34:20
so i have to say to staff that whilst we are interested in talking to you about where you'll be working in the future sort of post
34:27
pandemic we often say this is as important that we talk to you about how you'll be working not just where you'll be working
34:33
so so that's sort of some of the common themes and common narratives that we are
34:38
uh really sort of introducing and talking quite open directly to our staff about
34:44
just in terms of the the journey and the activities on the next slide you'll see really quite a busy slide so apologies for this
34:52
this is effectively a bit of some youtube youtube videos that were produced for our workforce
34:58
which effectively is an animation taking our stuff through the journey that we would like them to go
35:03
through between now or march on the start of this probably up to june and july and beyond
35:10
because the time i can't show you the animation so you got in front of you just a screenshot of it and it is quite
35:15
a busy slide that's a key thing just to draw your attention to is if you like that
35:20
middle row um and you can see a big blue triangle in the middle of it and effectively that
35:26
is a key issue here for us because this recognizes that we're not a homogenous workforce as a
35:32
large employer and we do employ people right across the city but engage in a
35:38
whole range of different working environments and of course working patterns so of
35:43
course we've got a lot of frontline staff who've been working really flat out throughout the last 12
35:49
months of the covered pandemic our frontline staff but of course we've had lots of staff
35:54
who've been peripatetic those working in and out of the um community
36:00
and of course we've got lots of individuals who are working in our partner organizations whether that's the nhs
36:07
and not not least of course we've got around 8 000 staff who are office-based staff
36:12
who've been predominantly working from home since march of last year
36:18
and that's a larger 50-50 split with our workforce so half of them have been uh frontline working as normal the rest
36:25
of them working remotely working from home since pandemic
36:30
so what we've done with a lot of our comms at the moment is not just talk to that 8 000 staff who
36:36
have been working from home and following the government's roadmap as to how we get get them gradually and
36:42
safely back into the workplace we've really wanted to say something positive and something open
36:47
about the whole of that workforce community whatever kind of working patterns they've been engaged in you can see that
36:54
on the right what we have done is we've developed a very simple straightforward pledge
36:59
for all of our staff whatever their working pattern whatever their working environment has been
37:05
i'm not sure how clear it may be for you on the slide so apologies if it's not but on the yellow circles to the left
37:11
you can see some of the content of our pledge to everybody so that's all of that 27 000 stuff that we've referenced and
37:18
there you can see some reference to some of the really simple practical um pleasure we want to
37:24
make to everybody which is sort of augment and improving their working environment focus very much on making sure that
37:31
their work and space and promotes their health their safety their wellness
37:36
making sure people have the right kit and tools to do their job but also teasing out some of those other
37:41
key issues that are important for us in terms of promoting and emphasizing the low-carbon agenda really making sure
37:49
that all of our staff that their working environments bring the best out of them um that enable them to be productive to
37:56
be creative and also have fun in the workplace so it's a very simple pledge but one of the key things we really
38:02
wanted to do is talk to everybody whatever their working environment has been over the last
38:07
year and we wanted to say something to everybody focusing perhaps a little bit for a
38:13
minute on the 8 000 staffing leads who have been working from home and
38:19
what we have done is we have developed a very simple model in light of the government's roadmap and on the next slide you'll just see
38:26
how that model has panned out and i just want to fairly quickly share with you that model
38:32
first thing's there to say is is um with those 8 000 colleagues working from home
38:37
effectively what we said is to enable you to develop your future working environments or your future
38:43
working arrangements and we reckon that it's very much going to be a compromise
38:48
and a balance between three different pillars and you can see in the model what those three different pillars are
38:54
so on the orange on the top left you can see here that this is very much about
39:00
individual choice so here we are saying to all of our 8 000 staff we want you to have some sense of
39:06
control some sense of ownership in determining your future working pattern so it's not just going to be
39:12
using that kind of paternalistic way telling you what your pattern will be you want to hear what your own personal
39:18
preferences are based on your own experiences and david and also ross talked about the unique experience and
39:25
the lived experiences people have had and we really want to capture that and the way that we have
39:32
captured that so far is invite everybody to complete an online survey um and we've got about sort of about
39:39
seven thousand six and a half seven thousand staff that have completed that that they've set out those personal
39:45
uh preferences and their own ideas and also of course we're encouraging individuals to have that one-to-one
39:51
conversations with their managers too so really have that open and honest dialogue so we can really
39:57
understand personal choice saying all of that of course personal choice can't be the only
40:03
determinant for future working arrangements and you can see on the right hand side this the yellow bit of the the
40:10
wheel um that we really want to make sure that we capture service need so what our customers are
40:17
expecting and demanding what the whole generic teams are wanting and what we've done here is we've
40:23
developed a manager toolkit which is enabling service managers and heads of service to actually
40:30
think about their service needs and service expectations and and throw that into the mix and the
40:36
final bit of the jigsaw if you like the final bit of the model is a bit at the bottom the green bit
40:41
this this effectively is recognizing that there are of course some corporate wide parameters or
40:47
corporate wide expectations based on our strategy based on our resources what we can afford to deliver and where
40:54
and also in our values um and that also has to be thrown into that sense of
40:59
sort of blend and compromise between those three different dimensions so you can see really here we're talking
41:06
very much about that good old-fashioned hr model of me we announced so the me being about the individual the
41:11
wii being about managers and the teams that people are operating in locally mdo's being that collective
41:19
wide parameters and expectations and we spend a lot of time reminding our
41:25
workforce and talking to our workforce about those three different dimensions in terms of how we set out the this idea
41:33
of those resources at corporate parameters the way we've done this effectively is
41:38
just develop a series of principles or expectations around these three areas you can see at the bottom of that slide
41:45
which is principles around people around place and around technology
41:50
very quickly and finally for me if i just spend a little bit of time just sharing with you some examples of each
41:55
of those principles because it it may help you if you're developing something similar so the next slide you can see just a
42:02
snapshot of some of those principles in each of those three areas probably the ones most interesting for
42:08
this audience are those around people and a lot of people will have read in the past about organizations setting out
42:15
very clear corporate expectations about how staff should split their time between
42:20
the workplace and working from home as a council what we're saying is that we do want and we have said to everybody we
42:27
are expecting people to split their time in the future in the long term between working from home and
42:33
as a workplace and we're effectively saying that we're expecting the majority of people to spend most of their time
42:40
working from home so we're not given a percentage but we're just giving some of broad parameters to give people a little bit
42:46
of corporate guidance but recognizing the other two dimensions service need and
42:51
personal choice play into that factor too one thing we have said quite explicitly
42:58
though which sort of teases out some of the issues raised by david and roz as well which is
43:03
whatever work and pattern people do end up with we are suggesting that everybody should
43:09
at some point and we're saying regularly which is different from frequently but regularly should come into the workplace and have
43:16
that connectivity and connection with their team and their manager so we don't want people to work exclusively
43:23
from home we don't want people necessarily to uh always work on the go or remotely we
43:28
really do value that sense of people touching in coming into the workplace meeting their team
43:35
but the the degree to which they do that will depend very much on those other bits of the dimension so
43:41
service need and personal choice the other principles you can see there terms of technology
43:47
so there's obviously their commitment for muslim terms and making sure people have the right kit
43:52
and also that we're trying to build or struggle perhaps with that user i.t equipment in terms of uh
43:59
use of hybrid meetings which has proven challenging um interestingly some of the key
44:05
principles in terms of space and place um i'm sure a lot of you
44:11
have done a lot of thinking and uh planning on this but one of the key things that we're saying now is that when
44:16
individuals do come into the workplace what we are saying is that people come into the workplace for very different reasons
44:23
than perhaps they did 12 months ago or 18 months ago so when people do touch down and come
44:28
into our workplace they will do it predominantly to interact with others and predominantly to collaborate
44:35
so if it's about doing your emails or talking to people on the phone well you can do that anywhere you can do this at
44:40
home you can do that in a cafe you can do that elsewhere but we want you to touch down and meet with people collaborate with
44:46
people in the workplace and therefore as a result our buildings are now currently
44:51
being redesigned accordingly so all of those sort of banks of desks are coming out and and replace them on
44:57
much more of that collaborative open space and some of our own buildings they're not all done yet
45:03
but some of them now look and feel a bit more like coffee shops you know with comfier seating and more opportunity for
45:09
people to to meet round bigger broader tables and one thing we have done though as you
45:15
can see there were the second principle in the workspace issue that everybody however will still have a
45:20
what we're calling a team zone so whatever team you're working in you will have a base you'll have a home
45:26
where your team will be predominantly based so that sense of connectivity and connection to your team to the working environment
45:33
we still really want to maintain uh final thing for me really is just the
45:39
final slide here um just pulling out some of the issues that other colleagues have raised so
45:44
we're very mindful about that sense of working with colleagues and building that sense of
45:50
commitment and trust whilst we go through this journey and it is a journey we only started it in march
45:55
and really a lot of this won't land until sort of june july august and then obviously we're in for the long
46:01
haul some of the obvious things we're doing fairly straightforward a lot of specific support for staff so
46:07
there's a lot of number crunching and data collection so we're pulling out all of that stuff from the toolkits and
46:13
and the surveys so we understand what people are saying to us and and how they feel
46:18
um as you can expect we're doing lots of road shows going around so lots of our buildings and meeting with our teams to
46:24
have the dialogue and conversation and also i think ros you talked about
46:29
this idea of sort of very much sort of listening and engaging with people and we are inviting people to contact us
46:36
and in lots of different ways if they've got any particular fears or questions or worries um
46:42
and people can call in they can email they will use our social media accounts and actually people are doing that it's
46:49
really interesting that people are asking us really practical questions that people are anxious about
46:54
and we really need to make sure we have an outlook for that and in the survey that i mentioned we have invited people to give us a call
47:00
back if they're particularly worried about issues so there's a lot of that one-to-one engagement ongoing
47:07
i think that's the final thing to say is that sense of assurance because we are very mindful about those issues of trust
47:13
and so we're doing quite a lot of warming people up to that change of working environments that change of
47:19
ways of working that we referenced so in terms of the workplace to change that we've done a lot of videos and photos
47:26
uh introducing what they look like inviting people to sort of phase their return so they feel
47:32
that sense of confidence about their new work environment assuring them about some of the health
47:37
and safety fears um as you can expect there's quite a lot of that ongoing and i think perhaps a final point just
47:44
raises is linking into that wider people context which is really important to us so this isn't just about
47:51
uh future ways of working it's recognizing there's a much bigger broader people context here
47:56
so again colleagues have talked about the role managers need to play here so we're spending quite a bit of time
48:02
thinking and reflecting on how we support our managers in terms of giving them the skills and the
48:07
confidence and the expertise to manage workplace workforce change to manage performance to manage
48:14
productivity because all of those are going to be challenges for our our workforce and our managers
48:20
we've often banged the drum about that relentless focus on well-being because that is underpinning throughout
48:25
all of the last 12 months but certainly will be in the future and what we have done is we're trying to adopt
48:31
that kind of benefits realization approach where we've surveyed probably to death but nevertheless we've surveyed quite a
48:37
lot of our workforce about how they feel in terms of their wealth their health
48:43
and their happiness in the workplace and we want to sort of do that sort of before and after so we can sense whether or not people
48:50
are having that sense of um you know confidence and and being comfortable in that change program that we're
48:56
developing our final thing really is just say that we tried to work in partnership with a lot of our city
49:02
and system-wide partners so what we're saying is that we're not just working in isolation we are working with our
49:08
partners whether it's the nhs other big city employers and partly because it just generates a
49:13
whole range of different opportunities for our workforce to work in different creative ways and i think it again assures our staff
49:20
that we're not in it on our own we can work collectively think collaboratively and really as a
49:25
city and a system wide so that's our journey to date um with any it feels that we've only been on it
49:31
for a very short period of time so i wanted to share that with you and mindful of timely so if i just pause
49:37
there so there's the opportunity for q a um thank you very much andy for sharing
49:45
um your organization's experience and journey to date and i guess highlighting the importance of
49:50
communicating those big drivers to change for change and the broader context so it's not just
49:57
considered i guess and then your response to the pandemic i think is how you and described it so thank you everyone
50:04
and i'm going to quickly go on to try and answer in the 10 minutes that we've got as many questions as possible
50:10
and kind of combine some of them together and so so i guess if i could ask
50:17
you those and to start with on there's there's a question early on in
50:22
the session around how can we best identify which groups our people fall into and
50:28
then a kind of related question is um from listing i'd love to know if the
50:33
pandemic has resulted in more distinct and separate groups in organizations and how those are these
50:40
are being actively managed engaged and brought back into one organization so how do we identify where our folk
50:48
sets and then what maybe could we be doing about it which rose and maybe andy you
50:53
can pick up on please i think i think there's a number of ways that can be done and it was
50:58
great to hear andy talking about the kind of surveys that they're doing in their workforce
51:03
and to really identify some of those the uh we put a link to the animation that
51:09
we created it's a seven-minute animation that kind of spells out each of these different types and how you could spot them but also
51:16
what could be done to help them and enable them particularly the angry distrusters to get back on track
51:23
um and i think in terms of the pandemic and more segmentation of uh workforces
51:30
and we don't know we we've got a number of things that we've been doing i've been part of a longitudinal
51:36
um survey that we've taken four different readings with about several thousand people and we're just
51:42
number crunching at the minute so we will come back to you but i think as i tried to put into my slides i think
51:47
we've got to remember that this is a dynamic situation so just because i'm worried and uncertain
51:53
today doesn't mean that that is going to be a permanent thing there might be some aspects of the anxiety that are retained but
52:01
i think over time we will start feeling more confident about things and so we we need to be very careful
52:07
about not to pigeonhole and make people feel that they're they're kind of ossified in their responses it's a journey we're
52:14
all on a journey um and it's about helping them to be able to raise a hand and kind of say i
52:19
need a bit of help here would you have anything to add to that
52:26
andy from an organisation point of view it's fully mirroring what rosa said
52:31
because i think that's sort of the issue that it is a journey and one of the things to try to build in i guess is
52:37
that sort of feedback loop and recognizing that whilst people are going through and we i've talked about sort of balance
52:42
instead of three different dimensions and as a result you know an answer being popped out you know in terms of this is
52:49
where we've got to as an individual but also corporately but recognizing because it is a journey
52:55
and we've not done this before and like a lot of the hr things you tackle you know you've done before in a different
53:00
guys and all in a different way this is quite new to us um so one of the things that we've
53:05
wanted to do is sort of build in that evaluation feedback loop so when people do
53:10
uh or represent sort of some comfort to where they've got to where they want to
53:16
manage their working environments in the future they have that opportunity to reflect to review to go back to different
53:22
sources of information to say right this this is working for me now but may not work in the future
53:28
and and that's that's sort of quite a challenge and i think one of the biggest challenges i've had and i think some of the people have
53:33
put on the q a which is this idea of how prescriptive are you so you want individuals to have that sense of
53:40
control and choice and you want managers to give them some some you know sense of
53:46
ability direct what works for their service delivery because they've got a job of work to do
53:51
and that sometimes can conflict and it's that kind of delicate balance between all of those which is a real tricky thing and i don't think
53:58
we've yet seen where we're going to get with that yet so so i i think it's it's building in a lot of that sort of
54:04
evaluation and feedback so it's not it's not a good answer but it's just saying i think it's going to
54:09
be quite bumpy along the way but i think if we keep the if we keep the dialogue going hopefully we'll be able to respond to it
54:15
as best we can okay no thank you for that before i move on to the next question there's quite a few questions
54:21
and a saying can we share the youtube videos yeah yeah i can so
54:29
it's it is on youtube so think maybe if i go through you lit you lean just give you the link to that
54:34
it's only about sort of four or five minutes long so it's not very it's easy watching so i'm
54:39
happy to do that yes no thank you for that i know lots of people have been asking for that and also if there's anything you could
54:45
share on the toolkits yeah sure yeah i'm sure we can do that um thank you so
54:50
we will share that afterwards um somehow my colleagues are probably thinking how we're going to do that
54:55
um but we will so so we have a question which is something from a kind of different perspective so
55:03
does there come a point where trust in the organization is so damaged that it is a broken
55:09
it's that it is broken thinking about how to realistically handle saboteurs how does hr manage in
55:16
this scenario david would you maybe like to pick up on that and followed by rosin
55:21
maybe andy yeah i think employment relationships can be
55:27
completely broken down that can happen at scale um we've seen organizations make
55:32
decisions that are entirely odds with what their people might have expected and it's incredibly difficult to to come back
55:38
from that and i i think that concept of saboteur is a really interesting one because obviously
55:44
it values misalignment there but actually if what you're talking about is employees being noisy in a
55:50
situation where something wrong is happening or they're not getting treated fairly i think actually that's a natural outcome of the
55:56
system so i'm not sure you handle it so much as build better relationships but there comes a point yeah where if
56:03
things are broken down to such a level there has to be a parting of the ways or there has to be a genuine
56:09
reconciliation based on trust and understanding and that's why it's so important i think the thread going through many of the
56:15
questions actually it's just a question of having adult relationships being able to say unapologetically to
56:21
people but it has to be ritual we have to make these decisions but giving enough transparency of information so they understand why
56:29
okay no thank you for that does any of us would you have anything to add to that i think it's about understanding how
56:35
that breakup in the relationship has happened we certainly find with angry distrustrious it was often that a difficult
56:41
conversation early on had not been happening and so people ended up having very unrealistic
56:48
expectations about what was going to happen for them and because managers felt
56:53
ill-equipped to say difficult things to people and so i would counsel i think as andy's
57:00
highlighted lots of support around line managers at this time is really really important but i think as they're kind of
57:06
collaborating to that as well for me to say um it's it's trying to understand
57:12
could it be that actually you have a rogue individual who's creating other rogue individuals
57:18
so it could be that your person who the trust has been broken with is actually um a product
57:26
or something bad that's happening in your in the rest of the organization so certainly just identifying them as
57:33
your problem child and not understanding why they're your problem child could be a very short-sighted issue
57:40
we've got on the 11th of june uh with the ewok impact incubator we're
57:46
launching a new animation that's going to be looking a little bit about how these things can
57:51
spiral in organizations whether through stress or it could be somebody being very deliberately
57:57
counterproductive but i i always counsel be very concerned because just removing somebody
58:03
doesn't get rid of your problem and also if you do it wrongly you can actually make a small issue an
58:09
awful lot worse so yeah be careful well thank you for that rose
58:16
um we are running out of time but um i'd quite like to ask a question that specifically aimed
58:23
at andy which is on a different topic again love the pledge to all staff what kind
58:28
of response have you had from staff andy yeah it's fairly early days i think two
58:35
responses i would say first of all um a warm welcome that we are not just
58:40
having this dialogue with people who have been um you know working from home for a long
58:46
time so people are very pleased that we're we are reaching out and wanting to talk to everybody um so it's very much
58:54
that message that everybody's important and particularly recognizing frontline staff who have worked so hard and
58:59
timelessly um you know throughout um the last uh year so there's that general sense of
59:05
support and commitment that that's the right thing to do i guess the second thing to recognize of course is that the
59:11
anxiety about so what what will it look like you know differently for me
59:16
and obviously then landing it and delivering it um in all all of our many sites across the
59:21
city and all of our hundreds of different services is going to be really hard work so we got this difficulty now of trying
59:28
to identify what it would mean for each individual service some servers that may be very practical
59:34
things just in terms of improving the working environment or improving the comms and communication that ros has
59:39
talked about others it will be much more deep rooted longer term activity so we have to manage expectations that
59:47
some of the problems and challenges some people have in some of their working environments are going to take us some time to tackle
59:53
so it's probably good that we're doing it but query question mark has to so how what's
59:59
it mean for me and how long will it take and we're trying to now manage that expectations have a bit of a road map a long term
1:00:05
view um and then i guess invite me back next year and i'll give you an update as to
1:00:11
how that's gone thank you for that that's it you should
1:00:16
never offer especially oh you're probably right i'm backing and share
1:00:22
um so as expected we are out of time and we do always try to finish
1:00:28
um and to quite keep to strict timings for these session
1:00:33
sessions so thank you to everyone who submitted a question we tried our best to answer as many of
1:00:39
them as possible and but we do review the questions that haven't been
1:00:44
answered and as i said at the beginning if um we're frequently updating and
1:00:49
particularly the faq section of our coronavirus hub and so we will read the questions reflecting
1:00:56
what may have may not been answered and actually we can try and reflect um those questions in
1:01:02
the faqs section and i see that um my colleagues have posted that when we
1:01:09
upload the presentation to our covert hub later to the website and
1:01:14
we can upload some of the other resources that have been referred to or requested
1:01:20
um so it is clearly a lot for us to consider as um we would um
1:01:28
return to progress our plans to return to the workplace um the webinar will be available on
1:01:34
demand later with the resources as well the slides and do keep an eye out for future
1:01:40
webinars as i mentioned um our next webinar is on the 13th of may
1:01:46
and i'd like to make a final reminder to all of you around the new well-being
1:01:52
support or the more recently launched well-being support and for our members in the uk
1:01:57
and ireland and that's delivered with our workplace well-being provider health assured
1:02:03
and then just finally i would just really really like to thank um our speakers from today who i'm sure
1:02:10
you will have a great shared great insight knowledge expertise and we're very genuine um
1:02:16
in their responses to the questions and throughout their presentation and as with everything that's related to
1:02:23
covert it's fast changing we don't have all the answers um or not all the
1:02:28
time anyway um but i'm sure you'll agree that they've shared a lot of great insight
1:02:33
and content and a lot for us to reflect on and as andy said he's going to come back
1:02:39
so um thank you everyone have a lovely
1:02:46
afternoon