How COVID-19 has changed people management

good afternoon everyone I'm going to get started it is hot for 12 if you're watching live I hope you had a really
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nice weekend my name is Katie Jacobs I work with HR leaders at the CI PD and
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I've been hosting our coronavirus webinar series in this session we're going to be talking about people
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managers how HR can best support them during this weird time and beyond and what Co vid 19 could mean to the future
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of how we manage people joining me to today to discuss this topic really great
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panel we've got Peter cheese CEO the CIPD we're joined by Dan Luci principal
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research fellow at the Institute for employment studies and Paula Jordan room HR Director at McCarthy and stone which
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is a leading developer and manager of retirement communities in the UK I'd like to thank all of our panels giving
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up their lunch time to join us today as ever I'm just going to do some very quick housekeeping first up just like to
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flag this is the first time we're doing a webinar on WebEx so there are any technical issues apologies in advance
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the session is being recorded it will be available on demand by the webinar section of the CIPD website and you can
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also access recordings of all of our previous webinars there and we've done them on topics like furlough health
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well-being leadership and communications you can also sign up for future sessions on Thursday the bank holiday we're going
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to be looking at rewarding benefits and how that's been impacted by the corona virus next Monday will be kicking off
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our return to the workplace series and I'll remind you at the end of the session about those if you want to
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submit questions during the webinar please use Q and a tab we've disabled the chat box for attendees and you'll
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also be muted so any questions need to be submitted by typing I'd like to remind you that the legal
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advice CIPD members can call our HR inform helpline it's available 24/7 and you get an individual response also
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we're updating the epic use and resources on our website all the time this new information becomes available
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head to the COPD coronavirus hub for more and finally I just want to flag our
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new well-being hub and helpline for members in the UK and Ireland together with award-winning workplace well-being
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provider health assured we're now providing CIPD members with free health and support 24/7 and 365 days a year via
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telephone or online consultation with qualified therapists members can access
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the phone number and the online services by the membership benefits webpage and you'll see more details about this at
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the end of the session so that's enough housekeeping let's get into it the corona virus pandemic has shone a
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light on the importance of people management whether that's through managing remote teams managing teams of
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frontline or key workers were under immense pressure we're going to be looking at what makes good people
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management whether this crisis changed that and whether any of those changes will or indeed should stick and we're
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going to explore how HR teams can best support and develop people managers through this crisis and through the
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stress change and uncertainty we unfortunately know is still to come I'll just take you quickly through the
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running order first up Peters going to set some context and offer some insight around people management in general and
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today Dan will then share insight and research on what good looks like in people management and how to cope it 19
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is impacting managers and Paul is going off of case study and some insight into HR and how they're supporting people
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managers McCarthy and stone and then we'll go into a panel discussion please
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do submit your thoughts and questions throughout so I'm going to hand over to
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Peter to kick us off and I'll just remind you Peter led to unmute yourself thanks
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but Kaycee hope you can all hear me and welcome to this webinar series and this
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whole subject of line managers and people management as being one which we have for a long time many of you may
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have heard me speak at different events and it's always been one of my favorite topics there we talk about HR practices
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about enabling cultures about supporting people it always comes back ultimately
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to line managers and I've always thought of HR as an enabling function but but clearly they're the people that are
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looking after our people day by day are the line managers giving managers at every level for organizations and this
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case is said the context were in no doubt has created additional challenges but I think you're leading into this
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crisis over many years I think if we're honest in many organizations we didn't
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do enough to really develop support like managers and their ability to manage people and individuals and as the world
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has steadily changed over the last 30 years we have seen more about remote working we have seen different ways of
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work and we have seen more diverse teams normally sorts things which but it even stronger prerogative and I need a skill
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and support our managers we've also had a long-standing debates in this country
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and then other countries as well about where the imported line managers in terms of productivity in performance
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then interestingly and unattainable and install that a lot of the research in this culture is tended to point towards
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by managers as being one of the issues certainly and maybe a central issue in terms of how we elicit and the real they
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have productivity from our people because at the end of the day people are not feeling supported don't feel like they've got a trusted relationship with
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their line managers and those line managers in turn are trusting them then we shouldn't be surprised the questions
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of loyalty and engagement and so forth become very crucial and those of course are ultimately drivers of things like
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productivity we've also known for a long time that there will be many what I think of as
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biases and what they're thinking whether it be presence is and which is its idea that if people are often feel that more
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rewarded for just being there than if they're out of sight ordering many people might feel
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to mine because it is not able or not typically working from the workplace so coming into the crisis there have been
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many many questions for quite some time about what we do to develop and support our people managers and line managers at
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every level so what has the crisis called out well as Kate is really touched on there's no doubt that the
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connection between all of our people has been challenged they are connecting to people are working remotely staring into
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each other's living rooms and things I have created a whole different dynamic now from a positive standpoint I think
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most of us would acknowledge that in adapting we've had to to these very fast changing circumstances it has put much
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more to the center people's attention into the business agenda the whole notion of our relationship with our
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people that's supporting the broccoli that communicating in very very different ways and of course well-being being a very
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central construct what good management is about about set mini-stories nature
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leaders about being very much at the center of the organization response and spending more time at executive and more
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time to see as than they ever have before and those those I suppose in in
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many ways the postures not necessarily pointed the fact that we are seeing a dramatic shift so at this point in time
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towards the idea and the centrality of people hang look after them how you can act and so forth as being a critical
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part of the business agenda in response it's certainly challenge sly managers
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everywhere you're also reading things like how we strengthen the emotional and intelligence my managers because they're
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fundamentally dealing with people and dealing with when their own individual challenges to certainly come out in the
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crisis does require back some level of emotional intelligence and then we get into debates that of things like how
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much can you teach it and in my view maybe others on the call that's later is that you can you said he can teach these
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things and you can influence that agenda with our campus and we do need to be learning line managers more to account
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not just of what they do and the results that they deliver but how they do and how they engage with their people we
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need to see it as integral to performance management we see need to see is integral to their training
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learning so I think as we and we're all beginning as we know particularly you cave and many other
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countries besides looking to this so-called transition back to workplaces what that might mean there are many many
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learnings that we going to take boards and there will be additional pressures as we begin to open up our offices and
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workplaces again and a lot of those pressures are going to come on the line managers and the people managers and
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tense all the questions but can I return to where should I return to where do I feel safe return as well what happens if
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I say I don't want to return to work what happens then what about all those jobs that we need to try to if we're
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having more people back in the right places and they're going to protect people and keep them safe and then we know that some of the government
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guidance is getting developed now and getting steadily leaked but we cannot expect under any circumstances that we
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will have an instruction manual is exactly what we've all got to do we're gonna have to work through a lot of
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different issues about chatting our work back working practices adjusting our workplaces but fundamentally putting
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people first and that of course is a responsibility we have to our prefect but it will vary much as it has been for
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a while now landing on the shoulders of all of our land managers and all of our people matters so as we think about
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transitioning here back into our workplaces and what will happen in the coming months becomes an even stronger
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imperative in our view to train managers to think about how to even rien duck
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people back into what will be different working practices and different things we expect to do the workplace how do we
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make sure that we're being fair across many different dimensions we got people are coming back from furlough and then
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people who've been working all the time and maybe fed have had an increased workload how to balance these things and
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family will to make sure as I said that people feel that they have a choice and they're not being forced to do things
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they're not comfortable with in their first port O'Call and I think rightly will more and more often than not be to
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their own online manager their own team manager and that's why we've got a really focus now and all of the planning
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across all these different dimensions about as we begin to unwind the restrictions and ease the restrictions
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you can limit living with what is now coming to six week that we really do think about our
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people managers and having trained and effectively so to conclude from my perspective I think that we've seen this
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too bad about Lyman is important to their ability to manage effectively make
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sure that they're being inclusive in how they work make sure that our understanding well-being and all these other ideas and that this crisis
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undoubtedly has been a huge catalyst for all of that so we have a real
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responsibility in our profession to make sure that we are enabling those low managers and people manages to be
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effective we're training them with supporting them but also in the right ways holding them to account and so what
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they deliver but also how they deliver it because at the end of the day we all know all these avenues about there are
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people join organizations that is leave managers we know that productivity is so much driven by the trusting relationship
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that they have here obviously to their direct managers but all the way through the organization we talk about culture
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change it's about managing change all all those sorts of ideas and so much at
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the end about how to pull the line managers to be integral to all of that thinking so I think this is a really
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very important session at a really important time and I'm certainly looking forward to hearing more from them and
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Paula so Katie on that note so I'll hand it back to you thank you so much pieces and
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in the context so nicely there I'm going to hand over to Dan from IES who's going
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to take us through some of the research and insight says I've known for a number of years and he's in that time cashed out a lot
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of really fascinating research about line managers and how the expectations
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and feelings of that group have changed so Dan I'm going to hand over to you and remember to unmute yourself excused
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you Katie that's a fantastic introduction introduction from pedes I couldn't agree more with many things you
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said already and I thought I'd address kind of three questions today really what could my management is like
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management different at the moment and how might it be different in the future and why I thought I would do is just
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offer some thoughts and reflections and some insights for research hopefully that will kind of prompt some thoughts
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of your own and some reflections too so Katie can we move on to the next
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slide and so we've often sort of struggled this idea of you know what is
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the like major role what does a bar manager do and it's often difficult to define and I think that when we speaks
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the complexity of the role I think we do know that have a good idea of what it
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looks like from a direct report perspective and IBS has done some work in this area looking at engaging
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managers there are five things listed on the slide that and all engaging managers
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and these things like building trusting relationships from promoting open free
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discussion 50p Direction good feedback on performance and development of focus
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so we have a good idea about what good line management looks like a direct
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report perspective the real challenge now seems to be a making of practiced
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widespread and consistent and I think the challenge is they're really often
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around and not getting the right black managers in look at what people environmental roles not providing
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training at the right times and generally asking moment is too much to
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do too much Katie could you move next slide so why is good line management
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important and with this piece of research from the center for economic
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performance at the LSE as always struck me as and really really powerful
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systemic extent of cross country variation in GDP
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tributyltin management practice an enormous amount of variation accounted
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for by management practice and what's interesting about that study is it does actually include all metal practice it
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does include things like innovation so seventy percent could actually be high
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wheel turn edit lie management is associated with a wide range of organizational outcomes whether it be
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absenteeism job performance workplace climate and line managers really essential to the success success
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or failure of a organizational change and so they're incredibly critical and
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as because people Peter said people join organizations but leave managers and
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Katie could you move to the next slide please
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you Katie could you move to next slide please okay thank you
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so it's line management different now I think is different there are much more
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pressures and demands of my mountains right now there have it to implement and adjust and new ways of working as
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increase folks on their own and supporting others health and well-being having to thorough staff and perhaps
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cope with additional workloads so that it is definitely different now but I'll
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also like to argue in this presentation many of the same dilemmas remain and
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albeit that their heightened and perhaps made more salient by the current conditions one I'll talk about three
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main dilemmas and there's probably more but I will come on to those three dilemmas in moments
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we have seen it this sudden increase in remote working at scale I think it's important to recognize that
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virtual management is different from a normal management face-to-face mode requires a different order of skill in
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the ability to listen to spot underlying messages and cues that all may not be well and that's particularly important
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since mental health is such a such a massive issue at the moment in this context we also know from previous
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research that actually managers are not well equipped to manage promoting
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Sprewell take it's the previous research ideas of Rafi Park Institute 53% of
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managers thought that managed in their organization were not well equipped to make virtual
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we also know that remote management requires increased contact even it's just to say hello on a regular basis or
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and therefore placing additional demands our planet is is with the beginning this
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crisis started to serve by the is working a webbing survey which is
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showing the increased contact for employees leads from their manager leads
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to increased organizational commitment and job satisfaction and so benefits
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have actually made managers been in touch regularly with our employees is being demonstrated through through the
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researcher doing there's also evidence that managers may
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be faring desk well in these current circumstances and non managers so in the
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same survey managers rate their job satisfaction and work-life balance worsened non-managers although they are
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scoring more highly beyond organization
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and next slide Katie
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so I thought we talked about three and dilemmas that I think are made more salient by the current situation the
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first one is the control trust toilet so we've talked for a long time about the importance of mounting by output
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rather than inputs and this is important at least for a couple of reasons so
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first we know that employees generally experience better mental health in their jobs when they're able to operate with
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the degree of autonomy and the freedom of expression
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right now mental health should be pretty high up and gentle for most marriages and their child progressions second
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reason I'm given the circumstances remote working lots of managers just will not be able
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to manage by inputs they need to learn how to manage by outputs better
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and it's not clear that all managers will be able to make this shift we'll have wicked ethnic shift
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and it has a sort of a 13-2 one way of looking at the current crisis is that it does offer the opportunity a charter
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supports managers in upscaling through a kind of crucible of experienced managers
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they're having a really really tough time now if a child puts in the right supports and there are support mental
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capability but now mentally next slide Katie please
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so second dilemma which i think is made more phobia now is this keeping the
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business going versus meeting staff needs readily so managers are having the government
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Majestics are keeping the business going and meeting staff needs which demarcates be complex and also very overtime
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bill to have an important role to play in putting medications is the possibility that could get caught
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between senior management desire for start to be expected at normal events their staffs ability to actually do so
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as fast staff will actively reporting challenges in terms of kind of anxiety
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mental health care and responsibilities so manage is going to have to infant to
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navigate those different expectations and it the best way to work with HR to
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kind of get those messages right I'm uh surfacing this messaging change
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at number organizations over the period of crisis from a Carol is normal so we
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are not going to be as productive as we normally would be but we've got to do our best and I think that kind of messaging is enormously helpful managers
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and their staff third kind of area where this dilemma is
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likely to occur is it in one to walk balanced so managers will need to strike the balance between health and
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well-being concerns and operational business practice and I think important
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of MAG which is which is evaporating this a is internet
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and a weapon to ones and conversations or climate of operational Maxis and next
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slide please so the third um sort of dilemma really
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relates to innovation and the challenge of innovation I think they can do new
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things in the midst of a crisis so we do need to innovate working your way to
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find solutions to new problems but we know that it makes is difficult for
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humans at times of stress and anxiety we also have managers don't operate as much
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normally in this space as they feel they should in normal times so they might have the existing habits or techniques
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that they can draw on and to encourage staff to be innovative
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I think it's lightly those bungees you've managed to cultivate a sense of trust and psychological safety net teams
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will be able to do this well fathers it might be more difficult again HR can support directly indirectly
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directly by facilitating meetings that switch which which raise staff ideas and
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concerns and indirectly by supporting managers next slide please
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so looking to the future and a few
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things to consider but so this idea of mass remote working so will we see big office closures and we've already heard
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recently stalee apart Lee's talking about closing and the solar big offices in City I
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think this is possible but I think there is a risk there that we use new ways of working and without a quick reflection
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on the human dimension so I think HR role here proactive role trying to
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understand when we get together this crisis what has worked well was work not
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well when do people benefit from working remotely when do they not and try to
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sort of frame a sort of policy and approach based on that input not sounding rotten knee-jerk reaction and I
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think it's also maybe more likely that we might not see maximal working but we
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might see more people request to work remotely more often I think after this
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crisis is going to be difficult for businesses to say no to that but we're going to make that a productive reality
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when we need to obscure managers to be able to manage remotely well
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so will that be more flexible working so by this I mean and will we see more
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people work from different hours from pressed hours and part-time different
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hours I think we like to see more requests for that type of working but and again I think it would be difficult
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for organization to turn that down I think we also have to recognize them because barrier and the flexible work is
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never really been technology it's always been cultural a particular where the seamless senior leaders role model
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flexibility and I think we also have to recognize that usually in court up till now
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working flexibly has come with price in terms of pain progression and that needs to change to facilitate more flexible
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work computer so in summary I think that a charcoal
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fire critical role in supporting managers through Ovid 19 indeed if they
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provide the right support could be a good opportunity to develop the future management capability
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I also think that some of the future changes though muted such as mushroom ago
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a Chinese play a prominent role there reflectional what's worked what's not worked from a human perspective and
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inform future policy changes and then in
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terms of and when people work there are some long-standing barriers to overcome
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such as shifting perceptions of the types of role that can be done flexibly I guess final floor and it's probably
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important for is this just to remember that line managers are people first and line managers second and they need
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support too I'll finish there Katie thank you so
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much down them I'm really really interesting I also just like to flag that we at the CIPD have some research
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coming out in the next few weeks about how people's working lives are changing
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in coded 19 and how people feel about that which will have some data on line managers as well so thanks so much Dan
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like to pass over to Paula now who's going to bring some of that to life
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by talking about what they've done at McCarthy and stone and just to encourage you to get your questions in on the Q&A
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rather than the chat box although someone is sending them to me of your putting them in the chat pod but it'd be easier for me if they were in the Q&A
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thanks hand over to you Pollard you could unmute yourself thanks thanks Katie and first of all apologies
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for not being able to show my face it isn't because I'm in my pajamas it's
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because the rural brand bandwidth isn't isn't allowing me to show my video today
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so please bear with me on that just to give you a very lightning overview of
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McCarthy and stone as Katie said with the UK's largest provider a private
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retirement accommodation so we are two things we're a property developer and we're also a lifestyle provider we've
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got about a 70% market share which sounds absolutely huge but but actually
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only one percent of the available demographic go in to bespoke private retirement accommodation so so there's
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everything to play for in terms of the business it's clouded life as a family company back in the 70s and it's been
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through various iterations of its existence including the family company being publicly quoted being reprieve
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attired again in private equity ownership at the point of which I joined and then re IPO did in November 15 and
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in the last couple of years we've been really bucketed by all sorts of economic and political headwinds which are not
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great for for older people who tend to retire into their shells and not not
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make decisions to move so it's been quite a challenging time for the business and we've been through quite a
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lot of restructures changes abroad changes of chief executives so it's been
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a very interesting time to be leading the the HR function it's also a business
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of dichotomies so we have a care side so all of our home owners are elderly and
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require quite a lot of looking after we're also a profit-making organization first and foremost so our businesses is
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designed to to deliver good shareholder value for our investors so many
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dichotomies in the way when we operate in terms of firm of coronavirus we've
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got about 2,500 employees and about
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1,700 those are on the services high side ie they look after our residents and about 800 on the development side
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business so and all those people we've got about a third in sales a third in
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construction and support and answered organizational back-office and so on and
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so one server in the interesting things for us is that the the services business
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has been unaffected by by coronavirus except that it's become more of a need and we've needed more people to look
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after all of our residents who are all aged 74 all locked down and they need lots of support but the rest of the
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business has been hit quite hard in terms of the number of people furloughed we've got about 90 percent of our people
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on furlough at the moment on the development size for business so that that's been interesting and having very
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different populations and we've redeployed about a hundred people onto
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the services side to to support frontline operations and we're also
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getting a lot of our people to buddy with homeowners and be able to help line
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to keep their mental health alive and and look after them if they don't have
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families to call them every day so in terms of how we've worked with those
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groups we we've offered a lot of guidance to to line managers and at the
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beginning of this I felt that that I was perhaps keep trying to teach our line
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managers to suck eggs too much in terms of do this do that this is what you should do with your furloughed workers
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this is what you should do with your retain workers and along is a little nervous in all honesty about putting out
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guidelines about frequency of contact and how to talk to people and the top five NHS mental health points and so on
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and actually what I found is those things have been incredibly well appreciated and line managers have sent
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sent email takes like seven that you gave me this guidance because I wouldn't have been able to think about all that
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stuff on my own and so Frank from being almost nervous attached realizing my
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line managers but that has actually turned out to be a really good thing and many of the things we
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focused on not exactly the points that terms that the Dan made those trust your
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employee they probably will be working really hard they're probably working more hours than they would normally work
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and you know don't turn your video ask if you can possibly do it on bandwidth unlike me
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today and let people see your face let people see your sitting room and your dogs rushing through and your children and
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interrupting you because it makes you more human as the line manager and the
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other thing that we've been looking at is how we balance the bouncer keeping
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the business going first they're looking after the well-being of our people and what we're trying to do is to learn from
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this experience and rather than just expect everything to come back down
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again in exactly the same format as it ended when we went into the coronavirus
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crisis to think about how we could do things differently and some of those are
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structural and do we need as many salespeople on on development are people going to go to developments and and want
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to walk around and look and touch things or can we do more things remotely without a doubt I think we're going to
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do more remote working maybe not on mass but but I think that will be a bigger
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factor so those are development business we have a lot of people who actually build things or look after people on
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developments so the Cena sort of received wisdom in the business that if you have that kind
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of profile everybody needs to be in an office and needs to be its present and
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unavailable to to speak directly and I think we're now understanding that it's
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perfectly possible to do things remotely but the other side of it is how people
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behave in a remote working environment and we all know that term that that's
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being on a phone flattens out of our voices and makes us seem more more
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robot-like so we've been looking at how to actively lift how to how to really make people know
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that you're there listening to to everything that people are saying particularly that's something that's
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quite deep and emotional rather than they're just the asylum on the other end I've also been encouraging people to
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make sure that objectives are really clear that people have a very very clear
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idea of what's expected of them both in terms of their what they have to achieve on a day to day basis but also what they
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don't have to achieve that the productivity will be lower that we do embrace that that we do want people to
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go out and and get pressure and spend time with their families rather than just be locked to a desk from from the
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time they would have left their home to commute and get back in the evening so I think my summary would be that yes I
34:11
think the business will change as a consequence of this I think we will have a lot more remote working I think we
34:17
will have to and should and I think this is a gift for HR in so many ways respond
34:24
very positively to requests for differing work profiles and remote
34:29
working I think it's also a gift in the sense that line managers are some of the
34:36
people who've almost suffered the most in this environment because it's very
34:42
difficult to manage people remotely and they're having to do a lot more with people quite raw emotions and so I think
34:49
they will be more open to being more of
34:54
an integrated whole person line manager rather than somebody who relies on their
35:00
technical capability and tells people what to do so I think there's a growing
35:06
hunger on line managers part two to understand how to manage in a different
35:11
way and my own personal experience was an email went out in my name to all of
35:18
our per load people and it was them it was a guide to what to do on furlough
35:24
you know what ideas how to look after your mental and or help and so we've got 500 450 people
35:31
on furlough at the moment and I got about 70 personal responses to this
35:37
everybody must have known that that was a general email that went to a lot of people but lots of people wrote back to
35:44
me saying oh thanks so much for the updates really great hear from you hope you're okay hope your family is okay and
35:50
that you're bearing up in these difficult circumstances and we really appreciate you being in touch so that
35:56
that start surprised me in a way and that there will be that that sort of outreach so I think there's a real
36:03
humanization that comes from all of this and I think we are going to need to operate very differently as
36:09
organizations going forward and really acknowledge that that we truly employ
36:16
the whole person and not just their piece of productivity for our shareholders
36:23
thank you so much Paula that some lovely I really love that reflection about a lot of this bringing the humanity back
36:31
to a lot of work because we have no choice but to be our whole selves if our kids or our dogs are there or if we're
36:38
working from our kitchen table as I am NOT right now and on the sofa but that kind of no choice but to be vulnerable
36:45
and authentic and to see our whole selves because we are in a place that
36:51
means that that's that's all it's possible to be right now and juggling so many things I'm going to open it up to
36:58
questions and we've had quite a few sent through but please do keep them coming about 15 minutes or so can I ask it
37:04
really all the speakers to take themselves off mute easier than you are muting yourself um got a nice question
37:10
about the fusing I think this is something that you said down of productivity and well-being and whether
37:18
we think that that kind of fusion should be the way that we go forward from now on and down if you've got any further
37:25
reflections on that and well we noted well-being is critical
37:32
to productivity I think the point I was making which
37:37
Paula picked up on a nice bit was just this and this time kind of balancing
37:44
well-being concerns prohibited concerns and getting the messages right around and not not creating a situation where
37:52
managers are squeezed between you know maybe senior management demands for productivity is normal and actual
37:59
they're they're kind of direct reports ability to actually do that for reasons
38:05
of about various reasons of you know calcareous public airing responsibilities or there were an
38:11
anxiety about the situation or their own health concerns but I think Paula's
38:17
examples about the messages that caffeine stone and pink you know so actually two spots on I think that
38:23
require messages petered you have any thoughts on that fusing of productivity and well-being yeah absolutely I mean I
38:30
think that the two were always their two sides of the same coin and I think as I
38:36
said leading into the crisis we do more proponents giving more and more of this debate about well-being and yet it's not
38:43
a new subject it just seems to be something that I think got a little lost in previous decades about a pursuit
38:50
towards a single goal which is I going to make money I'm going to support the financial stakeholder and that's what
38:55
really matters and hence a big drive to just give a technical aspect of line
39:00
managers roles and so forth and yet well-being must be one of the most
39:06
important outcomes of work and I think the crisis is taursus is so much more that but if job is stressing me out if
39:13
it's not supporting all the other things I have to do if it's making me physically emotionally mentally unwell
39:19
how can that be a positive outcome of any kind so I adapt to the fact that there's are
39:25
attributes of course which drive productivity but I think there are fundamental parts of a duty of care we
39:31
have as employers and managers and all of these to support our people and I really do believe this crisis will shift
39:39
the dial on a debate having more and more and I hope and believe nothing it's as much up to us as
39:45
any to make sure that that does genuinely shape than we do welding as an
39:50
outcome and they're finally that we have more transparency on us as well I think it should be one of those key metrics of
39:56
businesses that we are able to just touch and say so what have you done to support the well-being of your rivals
40:02
how would you evidence this is one of the most important principles of a good sustainable responsible organization and
40:10
Paula when you sent that kind of all you've got that messaging out about productivity perhaps becoming less of a
40:17
kind of key output how does that go down I think it was very well received and
40:24
and it's interestingly in in our last employee survey there was quite a lot of
40:33
commentary about the the the activity of the business seemed to be very much
40:39
focused around quarterly analyst reviews and product productivity in in the pure
40:47
economic sense and that has become since we IP owed very much the focus of the
40:53
organization all communications were led with that you know what the analysts were thinking what the market was
40:58
thinking the share price and all that kind of thing and so I think that and
41:04
we're just sending out this week a different sort of in employee services much more about well-being and and how
41:12
people are feeling about things so what's been coming back is the sense that though we've invested in lots of
41:19
well-being resources actually what has made the difference is people actually reaching out and communicating in a
41:26
human way and there isn't a cost associated with that so I think that's quite interesting when people think that
41:32
they've been well looked after in terms of we've said you don't have to be as productive and people really appreciate
41:40
that I think the trick will be bottling that and keeping it and making sure that
41:46
it remains as Peter says one of our prime focus going forward and we don't just flip back into the quarterly
41:52
analyst reviews and so on and all be about the sales and the figures and the
41:57
prophets and the rocío and all of those kinds of things I think we need to look
42:02
at it on a much more balanced scorecard basis thank you I'm going to conflate a
42:08
few questions into into one and got a few things about er issues and any
42:14
advice we can give on how you progress employee relations issues fairly and practically given you've got some people
42:20
are going to be fielding a lot of people are going to continue to be remote working we might not be able to be in
42:25
the same place as we are in the same place we have to be two metres apart we might be wearing masks how if you have
42:32
any advice or thoughts on how to deal with employee relations issues or things like grievances disciplinaries
42:39
when we can't do them perhaps in them in the as human away as we might wish and
42:44
Peter I got any thoughts on that yeah I mean it's definitely more and
42:49
more I mean even within the CIPD we've been looking at this as well so first of all as you said I mean if people working
42:56
in all these different ways and some people working remotely well we know there's a lot of evidence about this leading into the crisis that people
43:02
weren't always bidding they were fairly treated if they were working more remotely and because we have as I said
43:07
before something of presenteeism vines so we're going to have to work hard on those kinda questions how do we make
43:13
sure that what we're doing is fair and bounced across the different ways in which our workforce and right question
43:18
we're going to be working in the future that we have better and stronger communication with them and I think they
43:24
all will pull this out and Paul you pulled it out in terms of the much more regular communications and having people
43:30
and using those and using different forms of communication in two directions and spending on just down through the
43:36
organization but up through the organization understand what people are really feeling and all of this and
43:41
recognize that it is what we what we've understood now is we often not properly
43:46
include people who were working remotely or working in different ways of working part-time or whatever and we must take
43:53
forwards the lens all about so there's no I don't think there's one simple answer to covers it all that's just a
43:59
very different appreciation and taking ports as I said the learnings I think that Communications understand
44:05
differently about how you influence people and work with them perhaps on tough feedback when you can't see them
44:11
all I think Paula made a great point to that even as you've trained your own frontline managers and dealing with your
44:16
customers that when you're speaking across the videoconference channel or a phone the way you articulate messages
44:22
particularly tougher ones if it's tough feedback for example you've really got to train people to do that in very very
44:28
different ways because we don't always pick up all the signals of emotional intelligence since you pick up when
44:34
you're in front of people it's a lot of different things to think about for sure Dan or Paula do you have any thoughts on
44:40
how it pal reason live to arrange things like reverence appeals or those really
44:46
tough things that a child has to do over zoom or WebEx or teams as opposed to
44:52
being able to do it face to face yeah but I can pick up on that I think
44:57
just reflecting on that point Dan talked about doing the right things and doing
45:05
things right and that that needs to be how we how we lead through through this
45:11
kind of situation and doing the right things and doing doing things right never changes it's always you know the
45:18
principles are anyways the right principles follow and I think that needs to be our kind of beacon our guiding
45:25
principle but I think we also need to be much more imaginative and supportive of
45:32
line management and in terms of how we do this and you know crimp from limited
45:39
amount of experience since since the crisis hit of difficult situations we've been trying to resolve I think what what
45:46
we have been doing is getting alongside line managers much more closely and and
45:52
helping them through video conferences or Skype meetings or whatever is there are difficult situations and I think
45:58
we're going to be in a sort of hyper care phase with line managers well they
46:05
adapt to these new ways of working and adapt they will I'm sure but I think
46:11
there's a huge role for it for for HR to train to hyper care and then gently to
46:17
let the let the reins go and when my managers are are able and comfortable
46:22
and confident who thinks things themselves thank you I'm done a question for you
46:29
how can HR effectively and meaningfully assist in strengthening emotional intelligence in our managers that's
46:35
something that we can train get better up yeah I think it is something that term
46:41
people can get better at with the right support and right training I think learning from experience is really
46:47
important I think that it's something that I'm Nizar saying only I think this
46:53
is an opportunity Nisour a strange way they charge their support managers to learn and develop through actually quite
47:01
difficult on a very difficult situation through the kind of crucible of experiences I've kind of mentioned and I
47:08
think the kinds of kind of support that are useful at giving people the space and opportunity to reflect discuss at
47:16
11:00 so it'll be things like mentoring coaching you know learning sets things
47:22
like this which actually can give marriage as a space to talk and discuss issues and learn from them as well as a
47:31
practice bite size kind of learning that can be easily accessible online yeah I
47:36
think it's definitely something that they they can learn I think it's really important that HR supports them in doing
47:42
that because there we are a time that is going to be remote working for seems
47:48
like quite a while and it does require a different different set of skills and
47:54
Peter jiminy thoughts on that but also perhaps broadening out into the kind of ways that we can develop manager
48:01
differently yeah absolutely I'm going to agree with everything Dan said and as you said you can do certain amount
48:08
learning some of the experience you're learning some of it's coaching mentoring but interestingly as hopefully many of
48:13
you aware of and the cool that through the work we've done in our own profession map we think about our own profession that the heart of it salts
48:20
about this idea of core behaviors which encompasses a lot of what we described and we see a great uptick and then
48:26
together the websites a little bit for members is free to accesses which is learning and it's delivered online so
48:32
it's it's quite them sort of different ways of delivering online learning but it is pointing at these sorts of skills
48:38
and capabilities also for her in profession and but then I think it is this as Dan said is wrapping around that
48:45
with things I'm mentoring and coaching and support and I do believe as I said in my opening remarks that you can
48:51
absolutely developing skills but it isn't just about sitting in people in front of a lecture for an hour
48:57
and blasting without a bunch of things and expecting this change because you have to keep reinforcing the papers a
49:02
new kind of Uncle Mac you need to keep encouraging it supporting people effectively and seeing it as a vital
49:09
part of performance themselves as line managers as they how do they coach and store their own teams just as much as
49:15
instead of what they accomplished in terms of output performance metric thank
49:21
you and Paula somebody's asked if you could share a little bit more about the guidance that you used for managers so
49:26
the kind of nobies for things you were telling them well we started off with how might it feel
49:33
depending on whether you were you know retained worker with more to do than you would normally have because people have
49:39
been furloughed at short notice or people who were who were actually furloughed so a little bit of a well how
49:45
might people be thinking and what might it feel like to be experiencing those things so did a lot of lot of research
49:54
some some which of course came from the CRPD which is very powerful about people
49:59
might be feeling lost or they might be delighted and not to assume so start
50:05
start with how people might be feeling then go through how you feeling yourself
50:10
and because I think a large part of the
50:15
whole emotional intelligence thing is about your own vulnerabilities and authenticity and making sure that that
50:24
you're comfortable with yourself before you start trying to help others and then some some more technical stuff you know
50:32
which isn't rocket science around and the National the NHS guidelines the
50:37
five-point plan to connect and give and those kinds of things and and somesome
50:45
and this is where I felt I was perhaps being a little patronizing but it turned out that I wasn't actually some ideas
50:51
you know have a break have a kit kat have a cup of coffee have lunch alves go and do some quizzes
50:58
with something you know it felt a bit like motherhood and apple pie but actually it seems to have gone down
51:03
really well so it was a bit of a blend of this is what this is what the furlough process
51:09
is this is how it works the technical piece the background some some things to
51:15
think about in terms of how people might be feeling and then some things to try really but that people could feel
51:21
comfortable with so rocket science it wasn't but it just seemed to go down okay so it is the trick so that's what
51:27
Madison perspiration I've got some questions from somebody who says that
51:32
they actually their entire team including their manager has been furloughed and they are the last one
51:37
standing which brings a whole range of stresses from worrying about their own
51:43
job on are they going to be furloughed to wondering that how they cover their work and what work do they need to do so
51:49
give me tips on how that person today manage their own well-being but and be know that they're working in the
51:56
appropriate way given they don't really have anyone to ask science woman right now
52:02
that's a tough one kid it's now I mean they're there in all sorts of circumstances are fair lowering and
52:07
let's also acknowledge it was it was a new thing to us we didn't know what the world was six weeks ago and so is lots
52:14
of organizations are going to about in various ways and yeah that's a tough one where you're literally left as the only
52:20
team members down he managers being furloughed I think it made only thoughts on it would be that obviously encourage
52:27
that person to be reaching out throughout the channels not leads to their HR teams looking as yourself and well-being support because that is
52:33
pretty stressful and encouraging them all they can they can have to work to to their bosses but back there as well if
52:40
that manager is not there but also that's real challenge so many people are fixed and furthering thing and as you
52:46
described ball is not that you can't ever talk to you people and but some people have taken it very very literally
52:52
like that that's going to be radio silence because that anything I do could be construed as work and because we do
52:58
have a doula still like the people work for us we still should be connecting with them and communicating and so
53:03
hopefully the other team members that have been furloughed are also in some way able to keep in touch and support
53:09
that individual but Paula I remember when we had a conversation a while ago you said that you there were some teams
53:15
in your organization where you've almost lost a few just layers a few days have you got any young tips on how you're
53:21
managing that yes particularly in our construction workers we refer load
53:26
pretty much everybody so there would be three to four levels of management who've been furloughed so so that will
53:34
leave a lot of people very isolated so what we've encouraged people to do is is
53:40
to buddy up with them with colleagues out outside work and we've pushed out
53:46
quite a lot of of content to to fill out workers CEOs updates and snippets of
53:54
information about the business and but we've pushed it out to somewhere where people can come and self-serve so that
54:02
we're not taking any risks in terms of this being construed as firms you know as work and and that's proved incredibly
54:10
successful we've also made sure everybody about remote access to our learning
54:17
management system where there's not just just corporate learning but a lot of
54:23
well-being resources and the the most popular things that that people have hit
54:29
on have been resilience maintaining mental health and things like breathing
54:34
exercises - extremely knowledgeable so we put we put out a link on a Monday and
54:42
by Tuesday evening we have 900 hits on those those well-being resources on our
54:47
learning management platform so so I think it's finding the right balance
54:53
between making things seem like work and risking furlough pay and and offering
54:59
people resources to to help themselves thank you I'm Dan it's actually a
55:05
question from me and being rich easy because it's something I was wondering about earlier how can you have if you've
55:11
got managers that are feeling perhaps overwhelmed by the amount of pastoral or well billing care that they're having to
55:17
do the amount of kind of check-ins the perhaps didn't seem so much in the
55:23
office how can you help them yeah I think it's important to sort of
55:29
them recognize with very sort of rely normality judgment I mean even the kind
55:34
of frequency of contact I mean oh how high research is saying that the employees receive most regular contact
55:41
for managers are doing better about regular contact doesn't mean that video did so an hour an hour phone call five
55:49
times a week it could just be like a quick phone call to check how people are and and I think that's where the the
55:56
listening skills become really important being able to kind of listen to people closely when you speak to them be at a
56:02
spot is there any kind of an you know underlying messages in the conversation
56:08
that maybe need to kind of um be aware of um so I don't think I think it
56:16
manages the feeling overwhelmed I think HR is a potentially great resource to
56:22
kind of get some support with that and kind of the normal sort of organizational supports in terms of the
56:28
APS as well and but I think yeah just for managers to kind of reach out and I think one option I think some
56:36
organizations pursue is this kind of having peer groups of managers so they
56:41
can kind of share and discuss with each other and get support they need and at this difficult time
56:48
thank you I'm going to bring that to a close now I'm just going to quickly pick up on a couple of questions because I
56:53
haven't asked them so we had a couple about return to the workplace and I just like to flag that we're doing a webinar
56:58
on that on Monday so I'm going to Park those and we'll pick up next week and
57:04
somebody also asking about is there a closed group where they can discuss evolving practices new ways of working emerge so I just like to point you
57:11
towards the CIPD community there are various community groups on there that you can join and discuss things there's
57:18
something from them do it in confidence in closed groups so I would advise you to check that out
57:23
I'm afraid that's all we've got time for this afternoon I'd like to thank our panel so Dan and Paula you're all brilliant so
57:30
thanks for your time a reminder the webinar will be available on demand from this afternoon so feel free to share it
57:35
with peers and colleagues or even watch it again the slides will also be available to download from this
57:41
afternoon as I just said our next webinars are going to be on return to the workplace but also reward so we're
57:47
doing reward this Thursday return to the workplace on Monday you can sign up to those by the CIP website to check out
57:54
our social media channels because we'll be posting there as soon as it's able you to sign up and a very final reminder
58:00
about our new well-being support for members in the UK and Ireland with a free 24/7 telephone helpline staffed by
58:07
therapists and provided by award-winning workplace well-being provider as insured so that's it so much this afternoon
58:13
thank you and goodbye for now