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Why it’s time to redesign work
1 October 2020
Now is the time to ambitiously re-design workplaces and the way work gets done. It’s long overdue.
What’s wrong with the way we work?
I read recently that the 2010-19 decade of productivity growth in the UK was the lowest for the past couple of centuries. This is despite the fact that UK employees work the longest hours in Europe. And work has made our wellbeing worse over the past two years, according to CIPD’s latest annual benchmark of job quality, their 2020 Good Work Index.
Employers are losing £33 billion - £42 billion per year through presenteeism and poor mental health. And that’s before the impact of the coronavirus, meaning our economy is facing a huge challenge and businesses are under pressure to maintain income and deliver results. All of this calls urgently for a more sustainable, adaptable approach to working, for individuals and organisations.
What’s broken in the corporate world?
I’m particularly interested in corporate workplaces and careers. From past research that I’ve conducted and countless seminars and workshops that I’ve led over the past 20+ years, I’ve heard employees in the corporate world list those aspects of their work lives that they value: stimulating work, opportunities to gain new skills and experiences and/or progress in their careers, highly competitive pay and benefits, to name a few.
The issues have remained the same too: unsustainable workloads and demanding schedules; working environments and practices that hamper productivity; poor job design; a high-speed, ‘always on’ culture favouring those who can be visible, available and responsive at short notice and disadvantaging those who can’t. These issues mean that time and again, professionals are too often making sacrifices at the expense of their home lives, relationships and their wellbeing. These systemic issues aren’t in the best long-term interests of any organisation, especially those whose primary asset is their people.
What’s changed with the coronavirus?
During the coronavirus, many professionals I’ve spoken to who haven’t been furloughed have welcomed the opportunity to work from home and avoid the time-drain of a daily commute. They’ve also been able to tailor (to varying degrees) their working day (still long and pressurised) to better accommodate their home lives and build in pauses to clear busy heads or do exercise. In saying this, I fully recognise that the lockdown has been a very challenging time for many of us, and experiences vary enormously by individual depending on each person’s particular circumstances. Many have found the past 3 months a less positive or indeed, an extremely difficult time for a whole variety of reasons.
Whatever the experience, I’m hearing that it has prompted people to evaluate their personal values and priorities, considering questions such as: ‘Do I want to return to the way things were pre-lockdown?’ and ‘Is this a sustainable, fulfilling way to work and live?’.
What are employers doing?
In recent years, corporate employers in and outside of the City have been investing substantial time and resources in supporting employees by enhancing HR policies and employee benefits, putting in place mental health awareness programmes and providing wellbeing support, offering access to mentoring and coaching and more. These are all good and valuable things which forward-thinking employers should indeed be offering. However these initiatives won’t, on their own, fix the root causes - the collective work overload and inefficiencies embedded in so many workplaces.
At present, employers are busy figuring out how to safely bring back their employees to workplace and how work will be done in future. The general consensus appears to be that a full return of the workforce to office-based working is highly unlikely in the short-term, and may never happen. The current mass enforced home-working has blown away long-entrenched assumptions and beliefs that ‘it can’t be done here’ or ‘in our industry’. Even functions and professions such as trading, wealth management and the law - which all previously relied strongly on office-based professions for various reasons - have adapted successfully to virtual working. In addition to ensuring the safety and wellbeing of their employees, the other challenge now for employers is to figure out how to blend the office-based working with greater remote- and flexible- working without lapsing back into a presenteeism culture that continually disadvantages those not physically in the office or available at short notice. Or whether an office will even feature at all in their future world of work.
What do we do now?
We have a window of opportunity to properly redesign work and how it is done. Let’s look at what’s broken and needs fixing. I don’t mean tinkering at the edges, or rolling out some well-designed, unhurried initiatives that somehow fail to tackle the root causes or make a difference to day-to-day working lives. It’s time to be bold and to act now. Here are my ideas for how.
1. Ask the big questions.
Many employers are rightly consulting employees on their plans for returning as safely as possible to more office-based working; a few are going further and asking the bigger questions with the aim of creating a new working culture. The law firm Slater and Gordon is one example. I’d love to hear from other organisations who are doing this too.
If you’re not yet doing this, now is a great time to ask these kinds of questions of your employees:
What are you so busy doing? What does ‘productive’ really mean here? What would your most productive working day look like? What gets in the way of contributing positively to client service, developing intellectual capital, developing colleagues? How can we work better together? How can our organisation make greater use of genuine flexible working (as opposed to enforced remote working) in a way that wins for everyone? How can we help you to do your best work in a way that leaves you energised not exhausted?
2. Design it collaboratively.
Ask the big questions of employees at all levels, from different ethnic and social backgrounds, at different life stages, with different homes lives, with different travel needs. And not just employees, but clients, partners, and providers too. Listen to their experiences and invite them to shape the future together. So that you’re designing a new world of work that works for all, not just the few. Another example of this is how Lloyds of London are designing their Virtual Underwriting room.
3. Do it quickly.
It needn’t (and shouldn’t) be a long-drawn out affair. Mass conversations are happening everywhere with our widespread use of technology. The important points will emerge quickly if you ask the right questions. Create a sense of urgency to help with momentum; after all, we’ve seen entire workforces quickly adapt to working in new ways and find myriad solutions to hurdles along the way. Bring together all these examples of creative thinking and as much recent learning as you can. These are all positives to build on, they give concrete substance to and imbue confidence in the future you’re aiming for.
4. Consider the unimaginable.
Develop a number of different possibilities, however improbable they seem and however sceptical you feel about them. Then look at what you can be doing now to make those futures possible.
After all, as recent experiences tell us, the unimaginable can actually happen. And we can make changes happen fast when we fully commit to doing so.
I read recently that the 2010-19 decade of productivity growth in the UK was the lowest for the past couple of centuries. This is despite the fact that UK employees work the longest hours in Europe. And work has made our wellbeing worse over the past two years, according to CIPD’s latest annual benchmark of job quality, their 2020 Good Work Index.
Employers are losing £33 billion - £42 billion per year through presenteeism and poor mental health. And that’s before the impact of the coronavirus, meaning our economy is facing a huge challenge and businesses are under pressure to maintain income and deliver results. All of this calls urgently for a more sustainable, adaptable approach to working, for individuals and organisations.
What’s broken in the corporate world?
I’m particularly interested in corporate workplaces and careers. From past research that I’ve conducted and countless seminars and workshops that I’ve led over the past 20+ years, I’ve heard employees in the corporate world list those aspects of their work lives that they value: stimulating work, opportunities to gain new skills and experiences and/or progress in their careers, highly competitive pay and benefits, to name a few.
The issues have remained the same too: unsustainable workloads and demanding schedules; working environments and practices that hamper productivity; poor job design; a high-speed, ‘always on’ culture favouring those who can be visible, available and responsive at short notice and disadvantaging those who can’t. These issues mean that time and again, professionals are too often making sacrifices at the expense of their home lives, relationships and their wellbeing. These systemic issues aren’t in the best long-term interests of any organisation, especially those whose primary asset is their people.
What’s changed with the coronavirus?
During the coronavirus, many professionals I’ve spoken to who haven’t been furloughed have welcomed the opportunity to work from home and avoid the time-drain of a daily commute. They’ve also been able to tailor (to varying degrees) their working day (still long and pressurised) to better accommodate their home lives and build in pauses to clear busy heads or do exercise. In saying this, I fully recognise that the lockdown has been a very challenging time for many of us, and experiences vary enormously by individual depending on each person’s particular circumstances. Many have found the past 3 months a less positive or indeed, an extremely difficult time for a whole variety of reasons.
Whatever the experience, I’m hearing that it has prompted people to evaluate their personal values and priorities, considering questions such as: ‘Do I want to return to the way things were pre-lockdown?’ and ‘Is this a sustainable, fulfilling way to work and live?’.
What are employers doing?
In recent years, corporate employers in and outside of the City have been investing substantial time and resources in supporting employees by enhancing HR policies and employee benefits, putting in place mental health awareness programmes and providing wellbeing support, offering access to mentoring and coaching and more. These are all good and valuable things which forward-thinking employers should indeed be offering. However these initiatives won’t, on their own, fix the root causes - the collective work overload and inefficiencies embedded in so many workplaces.
At present, employers are busy figuring out how to safely bring back their employees to workplace and how work will be done in future. The general consensus appears to be that a full return of the workforce to office-based working is highly unlikely in the short-term, and may never happen. The current mass enforced home-working has blown away long-entrenched assumptions and beliefs that ‘it can’t be done here’ or ‘in our industry’. Even functions and professions such as trading, wealth management and the law - which all previously relied strongly on office-based professions for various reasons - have adapted successfully to virtual working. In addition to ensuring the safety and wellbeing of their employees, the other challenge now for employers is to figure out how to blend the office-based working with greater remote- and flexible- working without lapsing back into a presenteeism culture that continually disadvantages those not physically in the office or available at short notice. Or whether an office will even feature at all in their future world of work.
What do we do now?
We have a window of opportunity to properly redesign work and how it is done. Let’s look at what’s broken and needs fixing. I don’t mean tinkering at the edges, or rolling out some well-designed, unhurried initiatives that somehow fail to tackle the root causes or make a difference to day-to-day working lives. It’s time to be bold and to act now. Here are my ideas for how.
1. Ask the big questions.
Many employers are rightly consulting employees on their plans for returning as safely as possible to more office-based working; a few are going further and asking the bigger questions with the aim of creating a new working culture. The law firm Slater and Gordon is one example. I’d love to hear from other organisations who are doing this too.
If you’re not yet doing this, now is a great time to ask these kinds of questions of your employees:
What are you so busy doing? What does ‘productive’ really mean here? What would your most productive working day look like? What gets in the way of contributing positively to client service, developing intellectual capital, developing colleagues? How can we work better together? How can our organisation make greater use of genuine flexible working (as opposed to enforced remote working) in a way that wins for everyone? How can we help you to do your best work in a way that leaves you energised not exhausted?
2. Design it collaboratively.
Ask the big questions of employees at all levels, from different ethnic and social backgrounds, at different life stages, with different homes lives, with different travel needs. And not just employees, but clients, partners, and providers too. Listen to their experiences and invite them to shape the future together. So that you’re designing a new world of work that works for all, not just the few. Another example of this is how Lloyds of London are designing their Virtual Underwriting room.
3. Do it quickly.
It needn’t (and shouldn’t) be a long-drawn out affair. Mass conversations are happening everywhere with our widespread use of technology. The important points will emerge quickly if you ask the right questions. Create a sense of urgency to help with momentum; after all, we’ve seen entire workforces quickly adapt to working in new ways and find myriad solutions to hurdles along the way. Bring together all these examples of creative thinking and as much recent learning as you can. These are all positives to build on, they give concrete substance to and imbue confidence in the future you’re aiming for.
4. Consider the unimaginable.
Develop a number of different possibilities, however improbable they seem and however sceptical you feel about them. Then look at what you can be doing now to make those futures possible.
After all, as recent experiences tell us, the unimaginable can actually happen. And we can make changes happen fast when we fully commit to doing so.
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How to encourage this in a way that works for your business. There is a real and urgent need to address the creeping norm of employees working all hours, being contactable and available all the time. But Labour’s recent abandoning of a legal ‘right to disconnect’ in favour of a voluntary code of practice is probably the right move, in my humble opinion. Here are 5 reasons why, 5 ways to make switching off a win/win for you and your organisation, and 5 positive actions to put into practice now. Why legislation is too blunt a tool: Heavy-handed legislation will probably antagonise businesses, not secure their support. There's more to do first to spotlight organisations that are managing the boundaries well between working & non-working time well and proving the business benefits. It’s too early to say confidently how well similar legislation has worked abroad. Australia only adopted this last month; the longer-standing fine-based approach in France and Portugal isn't proven as an effective deterrent. Human-centred organisations are probably already paying attention to this, being creative about work boundaries and using their approach to enhance their employer brand. They'll be the ones who proactively adopt the code of practice and make it genuinely part of ‘the way we work here’ - and they'll win at attracting and retaining talented people longer-term as a result. ‘But clients will go elsewhere’. This is the defence I often hear in rejection of proposals like the right to disconnect. No, client won't IF you engage them in the change and show them that it means they get to access your sharpest minds working at their best,. When organisations see their early-adopter competitors living the code and still winning & keeping desirable clients - and nabbing theirs - they’ll swiftly follow suit. Let’s be clear: some people will continue to say yes to high pay/exciting work in return for ‘you’ll work whenever when we need you ‘. But it’ll be a transactional relationship lasting for as long as it benefits the individual (or employer) and no longer. Easy come, easy go. If that’s your philosophy as an employer: own it and be transparent. Don’t sign the code and pay it lip service. If yours IS an organisation that wants to do better at encouraging employees to switch off, try: 1. Using Labour’s shift to open up conversations at work about pressures to communicate or be available after hours. 2. Adding ‘we support the right to disconnect’ in your recruitment material and having examples to share with candidates during interviews. 3. Supporting selected managers and their teams to trial different experiments around switching off. 4. Asking people ‘how can we help you do to your best work within your normal working hours?’. ‘What gets in the way of this?’. 5. Setting up an industry-wide collaboration to trial different ways of achieving the same outcome. Asynchronous and flexible working are here to stay and bring many benefits to individuals and their employers. But they can make it a challenge to co-ordinate and communicate within teams and across time zones. Here's what you can do personally to uphold the right to switch off and respect other people's non-working time: Add an email footer like: 'I'm sending this now because it suits me but I'm not expecting a response outside of normal working hours'. Work offline if you're working late evenings or weekends, so you're not visible on Teams/whatever channels you use, and schedule your emails to send the next day to avoid the ripple effect of people responding immediately. If people on your team have repeatedly worked late or sacrificed home lives to help reach a deadline, then give them some time back straight afterwards. It's simple and effective. If you're a manager, find out people's preferences around being contacted - or not - during out of hours or when on leave. Everyone's different, so make it your job to know. See annual leave as an opportunity for a colleague to step up and have some stretch experience by covering for you, with support beforehand. Then switch off properly and don't muddy the water by dipping in and out unasked. Listen to my podcast conversation with Ben Higgins, Global CHRO of Wholesale Banking at Societe Generale, about how he does this. These examples are about applying #timeintelligence. If you want to know more about my #timeintelligence sessions for leaders, teams and individuals, get in touch . And if you're making good progress in your organisation on switching off - or at least trialling a few changes - then I'd love to hear more. During normal working hours, of course.
Managing the school holiday juggle and announcing book 2!
What does it cost us to be always rushing ahead? What are we missing by not pausing to look back?
When sticking stops. A barn owl perched observantly on a post in front of me, a heron gliding by like a feathered Concorde with its wings tucked in. Just two of the birds I’ve spotted today whilst working at UK’s only family-owned and managed National Nature Reserve, at Elmley in Kent. I’m not working in the sense of checking on wildlife and mending fences, I’m working in the sense of enjoying an indulgent writing retreat in glorious isolation, tucked away in a definitely-not-roughing-it wooden cabin complete with outdoor tub overlooking meadows and marshes (more pics here ). This retreat is both a long-anticipated birthday gift from my family and the official starting point for writing my second business book. It’s been brewing in my head for months and is now begging loudly to be given some proper love and attention. So here I am, off-grid in every sense with nowhere else to go and nothing else to do for 24 hours than plan and write. Write what? I hear you ask…
What does time off mean to you? How well do you 'not work'?