A Shock to the System
For 20 years we have been advising organisations on ‘agile working’, running related change programmes for people as diverse as Cisco to The British Council. In each case we have been helping them to manage the change essentially from a legacy fixed desk office system to a more flexible one. There are big implications for productivity, organisational social capital and cost, as well as cultural challenges and opportunities. It is fair to say that there was some scepticism about the benefits and working implications for management style and business support in the early days. A new emphasis on outcome-based management for example, long talked about but not always enthusiastically embraced.
But come 2021, what for 10 years or so was a slow evolution morphed into a very dramatic one. The PANDEMIC meant that employees were working from home almost OVERNIGHT, even those like bank traders, for whom home working, not least because of data security issues, was considered inconceivable. A classic example of what a ‘burning platform’ can help change.
Since the return to work firms of all types have been grappling with the challenges and opportunities emerging from a world in which it has become the norm to work at home several days each week. Getting organisations and working practices right for every firm in this environment is a challenge; there is no right or wrong solution. For our part we strongly suspect that people working for five days a week in the office is now firmly a thing of the past for most. What issues and opportunities does this new paradigm throw up? Here are four to think about:
The power of autonomy
The value of time
The idea of smart working
A new type of community engagement
The power of autonomy
Over 20 years ago at forward thinking inc we worked with psychologists to understand what makes people productive, and with that learning helped clients to optimise employee productivity. More recently with our charity partner Shawmind we have been looking at the area of Psychological Capital – a way of understanding employee ‘mental fitness’ and how to support it. With help from Professor Madoka Kumashiro at Goldsmiths, University of London, we helped our partner charity Shawmind to develop an understanding of what drives Psychological Capital at an individual and organsiational level. We built the PsyCap 4+4 model which allows firms to develop an organisation supportive of positive mental health. Through this work we have come to understand that for individuals, AUTONOMY is one of the most powerful drivers of productivity, work reward and mental wellbeing.
Of course the power to choose where, how and when you work offers the opportunity to ‘gift’ employees a big upturn in their autonomy quotient. Yet many organisations are embracing the opportunity rather reluctantly. Worried about productivity impacts, concerns about control and the impact on company culture, they are wrestling with how to optimise agile working protocols. Our advice is to see today as a watershed opportunity to enrich the lives of employees and unleash their potential by grasping the change enthusiastically. Young people in particular are likely to resent a reluctant acceptance of their new-found ‘freedoms’ and you might find yourself at a competitive disadvantage in recruitment and retention if you attempt to cling on to now outdated thinking. Of course, the opportunity needs to be executed with care and intelligence, there are risks along the way but we see it as a chance for every firm to build new ways of working which empower both the individual and the organisation.
The value of time
People are every firm’s most valuable asset, as well as their largest cost. It seems that for employees, their most valuable asset is TIME. People value remuneration certainly, but time is a super scarce resource which they value almost equally highly. Look at some of the quotes below from an internal discussion board we ran for a client recently:
“Lives and schedules have evolved. Who can choose the two days that suit everyone? I believe it’s fine to say employees must be in the office more but choosing the same two days for everyone is rigid. Perhaps saying everyone must attend two days a week and of those days, one must be a Tuesday or Wednesday for example. Giving some choice to the employee still.”
“I do like the flexibility post-Covid a lot! Like today’s tube strike, no hassle, just a super productive day at home without issues despite very challenging markets and client calls. That’s great, makes work so much better.”
“The new way of working suits me with its focus on PURPOSE rather than the habit of visiting the office.”
“If management decide to mandate people coming back to the office this could cause issues and bring about push back. We enjoy the autonomy afforded to manage our working patterns.”
“You have more flexibility to be at home and see your family and do other activities you might not have been able to do pre-pandemic.”
Some estimates suggest that a typical London commuter travelling into the city back and forth five days a week could spend seven years of their life on a train. Hard to look back at the end of a working life and see that as time well spent!
But are people making optimum use of the time saved if, for example, they are no longer making that trip two days a week? Using the time saved for self-development, physical activity, team and community engagement? Our observation is that the time saved should be invested very wisely for team and individual benefit and many individuals and managers could benefit from some coaching support around the transition.
The idea of smart working
‘Working smarter’ is an overused phrase but in a world with potentially greater autonomy and possibly with more time to invest people need to understand what work style works best for them. To really ‘know themselves’, when and how they are most productive, how they impact other people? The clues to some of this self-assessment may be informed by a Myers Briggs analysis and other existing techniques, but they fall short. We’ve developed a prototype for a better tool which organisations can utilise to help individuals and managers to intelligently audit their strengths and preferences and tailor a workstyle which allows them to maximise their positive impact on the organisation and their productivity, job satisfaction and all-around wellbeing.
Community engagement
Every firm with a purpose and cognisant of the investor importance attached to ESG is concerned to optimise their SOCIAL IMPACT. Though in our experience few are clear on how best to do it, they are much further ahead in managing their carbon footprint, in large part because it is easier to MEASURE (we have some learning and ideas around this for those interested in the challenge).
How does a firm positively impact society in the world at large, the area where their offices are situated and even in the age of agile working in the local communities in which those working at home are now spending much more time? How can they make a positive social impact and promote the firm in their own local environment? At the same time, how do firms with more dispersed working continue to create an internal sense of community and cohesion? Our experience, working with clients through the pandemic and beyond, is that often good managers manage the dynamic of their own dispersed teams pretty well but are much less good at intra-team community building. In this case, how to optimise ‘social’ interaction across locations, time zones and teams?
The challenge and opportunity to foster strong social capital internally and externally is a big one, worthy of particular focus and a defined strategy rather than leaving to happenstance.