Christine Armstrong lights up the 2022 IWFM Conference crowd
Workplace consultant Christine Armstrong crammed a day’s worth of the latest data into a dynamic 40-minute presentation at the IWFM Conference. Here are the main messages from her whirlwind tour of the current state of hybrid work.
• Plenty of businesses performed better than they ever expected in lockdown, but now we need to reevaluate how the hybrid world works for managers and the managed.
• Efficiency and productivity are not the same thing: In this post-pandemic world of work, people can feel inundated. We’ve none of the old boundaries between working and not working – and that’s a problem, because we perform much better when we know when the end of the day is.
• Travel is now a discretionary spend: Is going to the office worth the cost of commuting and lunch? All told, the cost of commuting could be upwards of £2,000 a year, so what’s in it for me?
• There’s a nagging sense of a shift in power: Employees are doing work around their own routines, for example, picking up the kids from school – and this is the opposite of how things were. Employees in 2022 have a better sense of the value of their own time. Why shouldn’t I pick up the kids when I’m working out of hours for the company routinely?
• Conversations between employers and employees about what is and isn’t acceptable haven’t necessarily happened, resulting in tension and conflict.
- Where is the new edge of work?
- When should we finish working for the day?
- We’re ‘always on’ and too often assume everyone else is around 24/7.
What are the proposed solutions?
• A lot of bosses are looking into fresh ways to sustain team spirit and culture. Others are publicly expressing their frustration with this new world. Some bosses might want their teams in the office solely so they can have someone to laugh at their jokes.
• In any event, managers and leaders are going bananas. But while there is a need to settle on the right working pattern for their organisation, it’s too early. There simply isn’t the necessary data yet upon which to base decisions.
• We’ve seen various attempts by businesses to get people back to the office full time, or impose ‘two days in, three days out’ models, or all sorts of variants in-between. But they’re routinely rebuffed. Jacob Rees-Mogg’s suggestion is that people are ‘skiving’ when at home, but there is simply no data to prove that.
• This said, with the benefit of post-pandemic hindsight, we didn’t see massive productivity gains from people working from home over time. What we have seen is stable productivity, but also happier workers. Force people into the office and stress or work-life balance get worse.
The key is consistency
• People are much happier when they can plan around a predictable working day. If it’s a rolling ‘what day this week, what day next?’ with workers second-guessing their bosses, that’s no good. When work group teams, not the wider organisation, have decided on a working pattern that works for all team members and can be evolved, that’s where everyone wins.
And what about when they do come in?
• Let them sit in a consistent place. In their teams, at least. Seat-booking apps can be a nightmare for team morale. Remember, too, that open plan spaces may no longer be as effective, and that noise distraction can be more stressful to people after lockdown.
• There’s a lot of thinking ahead about how we work. For instance, we underestimate the value of professional development and have to work harder at it now that we don’t see people every day. A 10-15 minute one-on-one with direct reports per week, ideally face to face, is emerging as best practice.
• Rather than weekly team meetings, monthly or even quarterly get-togethers might prove best to connect people and sustain company culture. But be conscious, again, that consistency is key. Big events will involve workers having to plan childcare, for example.
• Who has ever leapt out of bed, turned to their significant other and shouted, ‘Darling, I’m off to collaborate today!”? What you were excited about was seeing people, learning something new, sitting next to someone who makes you laugh. These are important.
• As to the future, forget the myth that 20-somethings are desperate to get back to the office. We’ve asked. Not a single one wanted to go back to the office five days a week. They told us, ‘we’d never get anything done’ because they are the most interrupted part of the workforce.
• In fact, us older folk have to be careful of idealising the way we all did things back in the day, which for many of us even involved dating and marrying people we worked with. Millennials and younger might just look at us and go: ‘Nah, you’re alright. We think there just might be another way.’
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