In this article we’ll draw on some of the early findings of our talentsmoothie 2020-2021 Generation Z: What They Want from Work research, the full report is coming soon.

Hybrid working is not a panacea

If hybrid working is to be central to the post-pandemic future of work, then the complex question is what combination of where, how and when people work will your organisation adopt? Like many, you may still be grappling with deciding on what the perfect future-of-work scenario will be.

Despite some bold decisions and big statements by organisations, we know that any hybrid-working decision is not as simple as deciding how many days in the office and how many days at home. To get to the right solution for yourself or for your organisation, there are many factors to consider – let’s explore.

“The Great Resignation”

We’re facing a fundamental change in how we work that will have a widespread impact on our society, perhaps as significant as the industrial revolution. The pandemic has pushed us to discover what really matters, to dramatic effect. People have retired early – 3.3 million in the US (Bloomberg¹). A third of all mothers have scaled back or left their jobs (Los Angeles Times²). Almost a quarter of workers are seeking to change roles (Guardian³). “The Great Resignation” is here and cannot be ignored. With 1.17 million job vacancies in the UK, almost 400,000 higher than before the pandemic (ONS⁴), it’s essential that businesses give the future of work, and the part that hybrid working will play in it, the depth of thinking it requires. Asking and listening to what employees want is more important now than ever.

You can survey your employees to understand how they are feeling about hybrid working, but you need to make sure your survey will give you all the data you need, so you can make the right decisions for your people and for your business. Here are three aspects we think you should consider:

1. Where?

For desk workers – those that don’t have to be at a place of work to perform their jobs – what is the optimum split between office and home? This question isn’t new. We’ve been asking it of employees in our research and in surveys, to help our clients develop Employee Value Propositions, for 20 years.

Pre-pandemic versus now, surveying all employees might show a change in the average consensus, such as a shift in preference to wanting to spend more time working from home. This is what our clients are experiencing. But, if you go further and break that down across different employee segments, you will likely see differences in what people want. One size does not fit all.

For example, our Gen Z research notices this shift, but Gen Zs have a preference to spend more time in the office than at home. While it’s less marked now than pre-pandemic, their preference is still for more time in the office. The 50:50 split of home and office is now preferred by 44% compared with 29% pre-pandemic (early 2020). In addition, Gen Zs still have a very low preference to be 100% at home: 1%, compared with 21% preferring to be 100% in the office. Their main reasons stated for being in the office make total sense. Gen Zs need to learn, build networks, understand cultural norms and expectations; they learn by watching and listening, and also, logistically, some just don’t have a home environment conducive to long periods of home working.

It’s not surprising that organisations choosing to mandate a 100% return to the office are facing a backlash from their employees – people want more flexibility and know they can get it elsewhere. But, mandating any set percentages of time in the office and home, in a blanket way for everyone, might not be the way to go either.

2. How?

Too much of the current conversation about the future of work focuses on ‘where’ we work. In the midst of pandemic-related change, we have a unique opportunity to rethink ‘how’ we create great work experiences, wherever we carry out our roles. How will we create the connection we need, between the organisation and its people, to achieve a productive, motivated and, essentially, happy workforce? Don’t focus on your hybrid-working policy in isolation, rethink your whole Employee Value Proposition.

Some things are no longer nice to haves. They are essential. Ask your employees, and the different segments of your employees, how they feel about these:

• Trust. Important for employees for decades, trust needs to be taken to a new level. We want to be trusted to get the job done, but now we also want to be trusted to get the job done using the process that suits us best… including where, when and how we choose to work. This might be easier to accommodate for people who have been in the organisation for a while, and more difficult for new joiners and particularly those starting out in their careers, who haven’t built relationships and networks yet. In our team development work with clients over the last year, we’ve seen instances of high performance being hindered by the lack of trust caused by the inability of people to build relationships through remote working. Where needed, find ways to support the development of relationships, so that trust can develop – build in face-to-face experiences.
  
• Listening. It’s even more important to demonstrate you are doing this when teams are dispersed. Many organisations have increased the opportunities for people to feedback how they are feeling via surveys and are encouraging managers to build in more one-to-one time. Listening is a top need of Gen Z who rated “having their ideas listened to” as their fourth most essential quality of a manager.
  
• Wellbeing. The pandemic, as well as societal change, has catapulted people’s wellbeing to the forefront of every organisation’s HR strategy. No longer just “health and safety”, we expect the focus to be on our whole health and wellbeing – physical, mental and  financial. We’ve seen companies do some great work, like training mental-health first aiders and offering wellbeing classes, but the biggest difference will be made by living the mindset of ‘putting people first’ and ensuring managers are equipped and supported to deal with employee-wellbeing scenarios.
  
• Collaboration. Never easy to perfect even when we were mostly working in the office, we need to work even harder to get collaboration right in a more remote world. How we choose to communicate and connect will determine our success. Technology will support us and, as we gather more data about how our organisations are working in terms of networks and connections, we will organically find new and innovative ways. 84% of Gen Zs said it is “Important” or “ Very important” that the organisation they work for is future focused and innovative, and driving a collaborative, knowledge-sharing organisation is critical to this.
  
• Connection on a more personal level. In our pandemic-enforced video calls, it’s become acceptable for the kids, the dog or the cat to make a guest appearance. This kind of human connection has been a positive of the pandemic which people don’t want to lose.
  
• A great ethical record. Increasingly important to all of us, this is THE number-one most important factor for Gen Zs when choosing an employer. This covers diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI), sustainability and the environment, and the moral compass and standing of the organisation in society. 84% of Gen Z respondents said it’s “Important” or “Very important” that the organisation “stands for/cares about the same things” as they do.  Being able to align their values with the organisation’s is essential.

3. When?

Working hours are less talked about than place during the latest new-world-of-work debates, but the topic should not be forgotten when considering hybrid working. We think it’s important. Portugal does too! (Guardian⁵)  What does “out of hours” mean to your organisation and how do you treat your desk and desk-less workers, with respect to the hours they either must make themselves available (to the organisation and its clients) or choose to work? Could you create more options for everyone, rather than only for people who have desk-based roles? By introducing greater flexibility around working hours, you might also attract and help more women and older workers back to the workplace – especially important in the face of “The Great Resignation”.

Ask your employees what they think. Two thirds of our Gen Zs would opt for something other than the traditional “9 to 5”:

Employer flexibility on hours demonstrates real trust and empowerment, but, of course, it also has to suit the customers/clients and not hinder the ability of the individual and their teams to get things done in the most productive way.

Hybrid working is not a panacea. Keep your eye on the bigger picture. In the rush to develop a new hybrid-working strategy, don’t create process and a standard approach. Connect with your employees by listening to what they want, then build on this connection by demonstrating you have understood their needs, through flexibility of approach rather than a ‘one size fits all’ strategy.

How talentsmoothie can help

Talentsmoothie can help you define your new-world-of-work experience.

Our insight comes from 20 years of primary research and experience of developing Employee Value Propositions with our global and local clients. We understand the needs of your workforce segments including all the generations. We know how to put people at ease, so we can ask the right questions to get the answers you need. We help you get to the nub of how your business can connect with your people, faster.

Get your workplace connection right. Talk to us today.

justinejames@talentsmoothie.com
www.talentsmoothie.com

References (links will open in a new tab/window):

1. Bloomberg, October 2021 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-22/covid-early-retirees-top-3-million-in-u-s-fed-research-show
2. Los Angeles Times, August 2021 https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-08-18/pandemic-pushes-moms-to-scale-back-or-quit-their-careers
3. Guardian, November 2021 https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/nov/01/the-great-resignation-almost-one-in-four-workers-planning-job-change
4. ONS, November 2021 https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/uklabourmarket/november2021
5. Guardian, November 2021 https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/nov/15/portugal-boss-texts-work-us-employment

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What about this?

Welcome to our What about this? podcast series about the Employee Experience in 2020. We’re excited for this new venture and to share it with you! Our aim is to provide you with current, easily digestible and useful content that you can listen to wherever you are. We’ll be discussing relevant ideas to help you manage during these uncertain times.

Episode 1 tackles a topic on our clients’ minds as we all emerge from lockdown, Office v homeworking – what’s the optimal mix? You might also like to read our related research-based blog post, Planning the next ‘normal’, where will we work post C-19?

Listen to the podcast here, enjoy!

Developed for HR, Employer Brand, Talent and Resourcing professionals, and business leaders, the What about this? podcasts are a collaboration between Justine James, Managing Director at talentsmoothie, and Cathy Hyde, Client Partner at White Label, a recruitment marketing, digital media marketing and employer brand agency. If you’ve got a question you’d like us to cover in a future episode, get in touch and let us know.

Other ways talentsmoothie can help

We don’t have all the answers, but, by contributing what we know, we hope we can help you make good decisions for your organisation and your people over the months ahead.

Our focus is on helping organisations understand what’s important to their employees and how that might have changed. We’re reviewing Employee Value Propositions to make sure they will create the culture required for success in the ‘next normal’.  We’re also supporting individuals with coaching and, in some cases, outplacement support, and we’ve reduced our prices in order to help as many people as we can. Please talk to us about how we could help you.

Or, download our printable PDF flyer containing details of some of our C-19 offerings.

justinejames@talentsmoothie.com
www.talentsmoothie.com

The post <i>What about this?</i> Podcast series, Episode 1: Office v homeworking – the optimal mix? appeared first on talentsmoothie.com.

Home versus office working

In the UK we’ve just experienced a dramatic switch to home working – from 12% working from home before the Pandemic, to over 40% now. There are plenty of commentators telling us that everything has changed and that working from home, where it is possible, is the next ‘normal’. You might have seen this recent article in The Guardian, The office is obsolete. And that’s a good thing.

But will this really be true? Talentsmoothie research suggests otherwise.

It is, of course, unlikely that companies will return to exactly what they did before C-19. There is an opportunity to learn from the massive work-from-home experiment that so many of us have been living. Every organisation should reflect on their experience and what has been learned, both positive and negative. It’s most likely that what comes next will be some kind of hybrid with the way we worked pre-Covid.

Any organisations previously nervous to allow working from home – because of technology security concerns, productivity concerns, or just not being comfortable with the concept – have had the opportunity to see that it can have real benefits. Myths have been quashed, and leaders may be more open to it as a more frequent way of working as a result.

So, what do employees want?

First, we need to understand how working from home was for everyone and what the best solution moving forward could be. Here are some of our learnings from employees we’ve surveyed, HR Directors we’ve spoken to and our own generational research.

The case for more home working

1. Productivity: Working from home doesn’t appear to negatively impact productivity – people felt that they could be really focused and productive, and that they were trusted to get their work done. Yes, the situation right now, where people are juggling work with other caring responsibilities, is not particularly easy, but under more normal circumstances the majority of people, we spoke to, felt working from home did not hamper their ability to get the job done and, in many cases, improved it.

2. Inclusion: For some, the use of technology (audio or video) for meetings was a real positive. Where they might not have felt confident to speak up in a face-to-face meeting, an online meeting felt more inclusive and empowering and easier to contribute to. It’s actually harder to talk over people online, making it easier for introverts to take part. Building on this, observational research at the Smith School of Business at Queen’s University, Ontario suggests introverts do their best work without threat of interruption, and so remote working can aid their productivity as well as their wellbeing. (Extroverts on the other hand are more likely to suffer, as one of their assets is their ability to communicate with people face-to-face.)

3. Connection: Having video on and thus seeing people in their own homes has really connected people. They’ve seen another side of their colleagues, which has brought them together, and that’s been a positive. It seems to have a levelling affect. We feel we are connecting with another human being, rather that someone in a position or a role. 

4. Networks: Online working has encouraged people to reach out to more people within and outside of their organisation and to make new connections. This is totally natural for the younger generations but perhaps less so for the Xers and Boomers. It encourages and supports a shift, from the traditional hierarchical structures we see in many organisations today towards a more networked structure, which we know is a  preference of Gen Ys (born between 1980 and 1994) and Gen Zs (born 1995 onwards). Understanding your company’s natural network and how things get done will further support a change in how organisations structure themselves; it will help to inform the right balance between office space and homeworking in the future.

5. Wellbeing: From a wellbeing perspective, some employees find it easier to switch off when they work from home and they set themselves better rules; when in the office it’s easier to work late. There’s also the saved time on the commute – although there are some who find the commute a great opportunity to decompress before arriving home! Reduced travel might also contribute to the ‘wellbeing’ of the environment, of course.

These five points give some compelling reasons to reduce time in the office and continue to trust employees to work from home.

However, it seems that ‘the office’ is definitely not dead.

The case for maintaining at least some office space

There are some good reasons to maintain office space going forward, even if you decide to reduce the amount you have. Employees told us:

• How important incidental conversations with colleagues are for their sanity, either for idea generation or just to have a chat about things beyond a work focus. These are harder to replicate online.  All our research tells us that face-to-face is still the preferred method of communication for all generations, and that includes Gen Z.
• Working in the office helps with setting boundaries between work and home, which, for some, can be hard to achieve when working from home.
• The routine and discipline of going to the office can be important too for mental health.
• Others were just struggling with the space they have at home – it isn’t conducive to working productively, for them, either because they literally don’t have enough room, or they don’t have the right equipment to create a comfortable working environment. 

As well as this, our Generational research over the last twelve years has shown that the preference for where people work is a mix between home and the office, with a slight preference for more time in the office than at home.

In our recent Gen Z survey, (the results of which we are yet to publish) on the topic of preferred mix of work location, 40% of respondents said their preference would be to work 30% from home and 70% in the office. Only 4% said they would like to work 100% at home, and 14% said they’d like to be 100% in the office. 

This follows a similar pattern to that from our Gen Y research in 2008 where the most popular response (37%) was for 30% home and 70% office. Our Baby Boomer research (seven years ago) showed the same preference for 30% home 70% office work mix. It’s possible the Covid experience could have pushed this preference more towards home working but it’s clear a blended mix is important. The exact mix will differ from one individual to the next.

How to transition as smoothly as possible

Whatever the right blend turns out to be for your business, we leave you with our talentsmoothie tips to help you make a successful transition to the next work normal: 

• Don’t rush to go straight back to what you did before – look at what your business and employees need, and decide on the best combination of home/office-working. From our research, we’d suggest this should be somewhere around 30% home, 70% office, or even 50/50. Most people aren’t ready to switch to 100% home working yet.
• Keep employee motivation high during this transition period. Now is your opportunity to remove any culture of presenteeism. Embrace the technology and trust and empower people to get the job done. Being trusted at work always features highly during any employee research we conduct, and it continues to be important for the new generation entering the work place now. In our most recent survey, Gen Zs said that the most essential pre-requisite for a good manager was ‘being trusted to do the job’; they put it above things like ‘supporting my wellbeing’ and ‘being supported to develop my career’, although these were also important.   
• Continue to encourage and coach managers to manage the outcome and not the process, as this fosters the culture of trust, empowerment and accountability that we know works for so many people.
• Move from a one size fits all, to adopt a more individualistic approach where possible, showing an understanding of personal circumstance and requirements. Talent will have the opportunity to work flexibly somewhere – if you don’t offer it, other organisations will.
• Get the mix right, so that you can maximise face-to-face premium time (particularly important for extroverts) as well as give the opportunity to work from home (great for introverts) where there are less distractions. But, make sure working from home does not mean back-to-back Zoom calls – to offer space that allows teams to be as productive as possible is the way forward.   
• Consider using technology to understand your natural networks i.e. who is networking with whom to get things done. This information will help inform how the organisation should be structured, to optimise ways of working that will deliver business success and create the best Employee Experience.

How talentsmoothie can help

We’d like to share our knowledge and expertise during this period. Please check back for our blog posts and for our new podcast series What about this? going live mid June.  ( UPDATE 17th June 2020, our first podcast is now available, do take a look: What about this? Podcast series, Episode 1: Office v homeworking – the optimal mix? )

We don’t have all the answers, but, by contributing what we know, we hope we can help you make good decisions for your organisation and your people over the months ahead. Our focus is on helping organisations understand what’s important to their employees and how that might have changed. We’re reviewing Employee Value Propositions to make sure they will create the culture required for success in the ‘next normal’.  We’re also supporting individuals with coaching and, in some cases, outplacement support, and we’ve reduced our prices in order to help as many people as we can. Please talk to us about how we could help you.

Or, download our printable PDF flyer containing details of some of our C-19 offerings.

justinejames@talentsmoothie.com
www.talentsmoothie.com

The post Planning the next ‘normal’, where will we work post C-19? appeared first on talentsmoothie.com.