Hybrid Working White Paper Published

Hybrid Working Roundtable Learnings

In late May 2022 a round table was held by WM People to discuss hybrid working, the challenges, share evolving practices and to shine a light on this pertinent subject. It was sponsored by Roche and involved employers from a range of sectors.

Interestingly, Roche allowed flexible working prior to the pandemic, though inconsistently throughout the company. To investigate how to improve their companywide flexibility offering Roche conducted a review which also covered embracing diversity and inclusion, work life balance and belonging, with a view to empower employees with greater autonomy over how and where they worked best. After testing this programme on a small group, they rolled it out across the organisation – all before Covid lockdowns began.

Two keynote speakers attended the roundtable; Jane Sparrow from The Culture Builders and Andy Lake from Flexibility.co.uk.

Jane Sparrow highlighted that focus was more on policy, however, company culture was also an important, yet often ignored, factor when improving flexible working approaches. The Culture Builders focusses on wellbeing issues which are key to maximising the benefits of hybrid and remote working. They have recently launched their app aimed at having teams own working on their own wellbeing. The app measures how teams are doing across six areas of wellbeing based on their responses to nine questions asked at regular intervals, and then suggests actions they can take. Similar to agile retrospectives, the team members then discuss these suggestions, vote on them and share them out among the team, with a view to creating new wellbeing habits.

Andy Lake reported that, whilst hybrid working is not new, a lot of people are uncertain how to handle flexible working with approaches falling into two forms: controlled hybrid working with policies and mandated days in the office vs flexible hybrid working giving employees greater autonomy. He also noted a rise in remote first organisations.

Discussions covered many challenges including:

• Technology, it was agreed, is key to hybrid and remote working and there is much innovation occurring in this space. Virtual collaborative tools help keep the communication lines open between those who are and aren’t in the office. Self-managing teams is another Agile-esque approach Roche has adopted.
  
  
• Ensuring visibility when workers are not co located with the focus shifting to availability instead of physical presence.
  
  
• The pressure to be “always on”, the boundaries between work and life, ensuring breaks are taken and that people switch off at the end of the working day. Overall, a more balanced approach to life and work is needed.
  
  
• Acknowledging that every organisation faces different challenges and that there is no “one size fits all” approach, they agreed that budget, programmes of change, visibility of benefits, and consulting with employees on any changes to be brought in were important. Employers who get their flexible working approach right will help the inclusion of a wider talent pool who is poorly served by traditional inflexible working practices. These would become employers of choice.
  
  
• It was apparent that some employers are keen to revert back to the pre pandemic office-based practices, and the key role that Government guidance will play cannot be underestimated.
  
  
• With employees keen to continue with remote or keep hybrid working it raised the question of what the office is for. The role of digital transformation across all work best practices and reviewing which activities would be office based are vital for orgnanisations to agree.
  
  
• The pros and cons of returning to office, mandatory core days, coaching and mentoring and how some groups such as younger workers may benefit from more in-office contact were raised, with a warning to be wary of making assumptions.
  
  

Key takeaways:

• Empowering people and teams to make their own decisions around the ways of working that work best for them, and ownership of wellbeing issues.
• Moving away from rigid policies to more looser frameworks and guidelines.
• Engaging with employees before implementing changes, along with transparency and conversations around work life issues.
• Embracing and experimenting with technology.
• Focusing on outputs and availability.

What is clear is that many organisations are still finding their feet to adapt to the post Covid world of work, and with the focus on wellbeing and outputs rather than visibility, maybe we’re heading more towards a meritocracy. What is certain is that we are moving away from the old normal and the new normal holds exciting possibilities.

The white paper is free to download from the WM People site.