Today we hosted the third online leaders event on coming out of lockdown and what your return to work strategy is. The session began with a welcome from Board Directors David Herd and Lisa Hooley and a check in with everyone.
We ran a Sli.do poll to kick off the session and the first question asked how everyone was feeling, the general feeling was that everyone was ok. The next question asked what are your current Shared Services Team working arrangements. The majority of people were still working at home with some small teams having moved back to the office. The focus seems to be moving from a "keeping the lights on" response to a moving back to the office one and it was interesting to find out that most organisations were taking a co-ordinated approach in their "next step plan", rather than individual.
Paul Fairhurst from Central England Cooperative shared their 3 stage approach to deal with the crisis, firstly understanding the external impact of what was going on in the world, doing a risk assessment and understanding how that was impacting the business and then how they could bounce forward. They soon found they were quickly making decisions so much quicker in this new world we are now in. They have found that they have all become a lot more agile because of the pandemic.
The subject of when organisations plan to be back working in an office environment created a good discussion within the group with 56% of leaders suggesting the third quarter, between July and September. 20% felt it would be the forth quarter. Esther Ferrari from Boots shared their phase return approach to getting the team back in the office. Starting with 25% and building up to 50%. She shared the planning with social distancing and felt that with Boots being a retail business that has definitely sped up the process.
Sarah Mahoney from Community Integrated Care, shared their return to work plan, they are undertaking various risk assessments built on criteria. If there is a business need for someone to be back in the office, if their is a personal need and also a personal preference. If people are struggling with technology and systems or being at home is impacting their mental health they will be priorities to get them back to the office first. If there isn't a need or a preference they may not return to the workplace this year.
SPX Flow are looking at a slower return starting at 10% each week and its based on a need rather than preference.
BDO are also taking a slow approach and are in the early stages of thinking about working hours, people entering the offices and exiting it.
The key challenges and concerns that many of our leaders are currently facing whilst planning the return back to work included included personal anxiety, travel, childcare, social distancing and home schooling. Abigail from Bristol Myers Squibb shared details on a survey they have shared within the Team to find out some of the pain points so they can keep going with the communication channels within their teams to help reduce the anxiety and keep everyone updated and find out who needs to go back to the office first.
The key positives of the current remote working arrangements included flexible working, shorter meetings, more time with the family, more focused work. Colin Garside from The Very Group, touched on the fact they have moved to digital ways of working very quickly and they won't be going back and what they have achieved in weeks, sometimes would have taken a lot longer.
Jessica Ritchie from Raytheon Technologies spoke about furloughing half of her team, equally and then swopping them over. She felt that people responded really well and supported each other and communicated well. Since the Team has all been taken off furlough the performance has now gone down. Interesting to find out how some people have responded well to a pressured situation.
The last question asked was what do we still need to consider in our back to work strategies? Holidays, emissions, redundancies after furlough, hiring, performance management were all topics raised. David Herd touched on holidays and asked what other organisations are doing. Are people still taking holidays whilst working from home.
The results from the Sli.do are available to view in resources.
To view the live session CLICK HERE
