How to re-energise employee engagement and power faster transformation...
Our conversation began with a focus on enabling faster transformation, but it soon — and rightly — turned to the people who make transformation happen and those affected by it. We are grateful to the 10 CIOs & CTOs who joined us last week, and to Gartner, especially Rob O’Donohue, for taking part and helping to facilitate the discussion.
2020 pushed relentless change onto nearly every sector. The way we work will never return to what it was, and 2021 will almost certainly bring even faster transformation. That pressure places a greater responsibility on employers. How do we look after our employees and colleagues — and, as an industry, how do we pool what we have learned to raise standards across the board and support one another through such rapid change? Clear communication matters, and building a culture of awareness is essential.
Here are some of the questions we explored and the main takeaways. We would love to hear your thoughts, ideas and questions in the comments below.
What are some organisations doing to support their people?
We shared some practical tips to ease remote working and the extra pressure many of us have felt in 2020.
- Virtual commutes – Remember when we all travelled to and from work? What did you do in that time, aside from wishing you did not have to commute? Listen to the radio, a podcast, or read? Did it involve a cycle, a walk, or even a run? The idea is simple — set aside time in the morning and evening for yourself. Read a chapter of your book, listen to the radio and, if you can, take a walk and get some fresh air. The commute was not always pleasant, but it did create a clear start and end to the working day, and losing that completely is risky. It is far too easy in the evening to just keep working. Remember when you had to leave the office to catch the train or you would be late home! Bring that discipline back into your working week and separate work from family or personal time. If you are a night owl you can always log back on for an hour later in the evening, but taking breaks and keeping structure is productive.
- A separate bank of holidays – Some companies now offer extra leave on top of normal holidays. These are personal days meant for taking a break from work. Not every company can provide this, but where it is offered it has been shown to boost productivity.
- Walking meetings – Tricky on a rainy day and less appealing in December, but if you have a weekly 1-1 why not suggest a walk-and-talk meeting instead. It is a break from screens, which we overuse, a chance to get fresh air and exercise, and studies show walking encourages more creative thinking, which helps with problem-solving. It also leads to a more honest exchange — walking side by side (even virtually) makes the conversation feel more peer to peer. Give it a try, but give people plenty of notice and keep it to no more than 3 people; it works best as a 1-1.
- Flexible working times – Not just working from home, but a flexible approach to work and tasks. At Mason Alexander, and many other organisations, we have seen a shift away from hours and days worked towards outputs and outcomes. How can we work smarter, not longer? How do we celebrate what we are good at and move away from a prescribed “role” with a task list that demands mastery of everything, working more collectively towards shared goals and pooling our strengths? Time of day can matter too — some people work better in the morning, others later in the evening. The benefit of working away from an open-plan office is that you can manage your own time to a degree and plan around personal and family commitments.
What benefits have emerged from our new ways of working?
Getting people into the same room! Finding a time that worked for executives — or any group — was always difficult. Thanks to various tools we can now bring people from all over the world together at the same time with ease. Strange, then, to think Zoom launched in 2011 and MS Teams in 2016, or that Cisco Webex is 26 years old! Yet worldwide business travel spending grew from 839 billion in 2009 to nearly 1.3 trillion in 2019. It is not only the “new” tools that have changed — our willingness to adopt new ways of working has had the greatest impact.
We all agree that Zoom calls cannot fully replace face-to-face meetings, and some meetings require a physical presence. Still, anecdotally we know many people who took 50 or even 100+ flights a year and now take none, with no change to their role or productivity. We are certainly looking forward to travelling again — to conferences, to meet clients, and to spend time with colleagues around the world — but we will question the need to be somewhere in person far more than ever before.
One participant noted that across a team of 20-30 people, the total reduction in wasted commuting time was around 600 hours a month. That figure alone was not the point — understanding that it equated to adding 2-3 people to your team, each with all the combined experience of your whole team, was powerful! This is not about turning commuting hours into working hours, but about time that was wasted on the commute.
Can people really work from anywhere, and what are the tax implications?
We did not attempt to give or share any tax advice, but it was noted that new solutions are reaching the market all the time in response to demand. If you work from anywhere as a full-time employee, you must be in Ireland or where your organisation has an entity. For now, the digital nomad life is reserved for the self-employed. We welcome any of our tax specialist friends to add more information in the comments.
Duty of care versus accountability…
This is an important topic. Nobody can dispute that employers have a duty of care to their employees, but we are all adults and we also need to take some accountability for looking out for each other. The world has never been free of risk, and we all need to take our health and safety seriously — it matters that you do what you can to stay safe, and we cannot simply rely on our employers. We also have a duty of care towards our colleagues and the wider community.
It has been a tough year for people and businesses alike. Companies need people to try to shake off a “lockdown” mindset and focus on what they can do — on what you can control. A positive, optimistic outlook will help us stay productive and create a healthy sense of urgency.
Delivering an excellent experience in whatever you do has never mattered more. This is a challenging year, but it is also a chance to stand out and go the extra mile for your colleagues, your clients and yourself!
Do people really want to work from home 100% of the time?
No. Put simply, most people do not want to work from home 100% of the time. There are many reasons why, but the takeaway is that if you do not offer flexibility and a hybrid model you will likely lose your best talent — and the same is true if you demand 100% remote or 100% in the office. You could, however, build a business or teams who join knowing it is 100% remote, which is an interesting concept with some great examples of where it has worked.
The voice of technology in the boardroom
The voice of technology has never been stronger in the boardroom. Y2K was the last time — do not miss your chance to deliver lasting impact. As a group we agreed that most of what we are seeing happen because of the pandemic would have happened eventually anyway; it was simply implemented and adopted in weeks and months rather than 5-10 years.
Looking ahead
Hindsight is 2020: the choices we make tend to be the best available at that moment, yet can quickly prove unwise. Still, nothing is more damaging than indecision — it ripples across an organisation, reducing confidence and undermining communication, which in turn affects culture. One piece of advice, drawn from speaking to thousands of people across hundreds of organisations: get your communications right. Make a decision, communicate it clearly and quickly, and have the confidence to change your mind.
When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?