The dust has settled from the initial stampede into remote working. After a few teething problems, companies have been successful in making physical adjustments to assist their employees. New hardware has been sourced and distributed, business continuity plans were hastily adapted and implemented, and IT teams rose to the enormous challenge of updating and reconciling entire suites of security and collaboration tools.

However, the continued uncertainty around the coronavirus pandemic has catapulted organisations into a new phase. Remote working is here to stay and businesses are now facing an altogether more nebulous task prompting a cultural shift. Companies and employees have moved from making do with short-term physical adjustments and must now bring in cultural change if their organisations are to thrive.

Define hours and expectations

A cornerstone of remote-working culture is formalising expectations of staff. According to a global remote work survey commissioned by work management platform Wrike, 47 per cent of employees do not feel as though they have had clear conversations around working hours, availability and productivity from their employers.

Managers must define new expectations of hours with their teams to avoid burnout. Arup’s global chief information officer Rob Greig explains that the construction consultancy used Microsoft SharePoint to share content encouraging employees to take a break.

“There is a real tendency for people to work many more hours than they’re used to because there isn’t a moment where they walk out of the office door and it’s the end of their day. [Our messaging] has to be good enough to encourage people to go out for walks, take breaks, spend time with their children or go to the pub; anything they can to get some time for themselves,” says Greig.

Kate Cooper, head of research, policy and standards at the Institute of Leadership & Management, says there has to be a much clearer articulation of expectations from managers.

“If you’re working in an office with people, you learn about the way your manager works and what they like and don’t like, which you don’t get on a Zoom call. So while there is a need for higher trust, there is also a need for a much greater degree of honesty and acceptance,” she says.

Build a social network

To maximise employee satisfaction, there must be a social element instilled into the organisation, especially if in-person interactions are less frequent.

“Leaders have to be much more deliberate about how you build the social aspects; a lot of people like where they work because of those they work with, so leaders have to make sure there’s social interaction,” says Cooper.

There is a need for higher trust, and a much greater degree of honesty and acceptance

That social interaction can come in the form of meetings and business updates, semi-structured activities such as team-building or troubleshooting, or good old-fashioned games and quizzes. When offices open up, employers could experiment with hybrid events, where some staff take part over video and others take part from the office.

“I have a global team of 500 and I have slots booked out in my diary for anyone in my team to come and have a 15-minute cup of tea with me virtually, They can talk about a work issue or anything else,” says Greig. The result has been so positive that he can envisage having virtual catch-up meetings with staff on a regular basis.

Don’t forget training

A recent survey by software development business Culture Shift found a quarter of employees said working from home had negatively affected their training and development.

“Initially most businesses had assumed that normality would resume, and therefore things like training and development were not considered properly,” says Gemma McCall, Culture Shift’s co-founder and chief executive.

Rather than simply migrating current training processes online, businesses can use this opportunity proactively to develop their company culture: upskilling in brand new areas, trialling new training formats, mentor schemes or new tools to track progress and development.

Look after mental health

Culture Shift’s research found nearly half of all employees had felt isolated while working from home. More than a quarter (27 per cent) had felt increased imposter syndrome and self-doubt, and this figure rose to 31 per cent for Generation Z staff and millennials, suggesting younger employees should be a priority when businesses are looking to improve staff wellbeing. 

Increasing communication with employees could ease the problem and make for a better, healthier workplace culture. Wrike’s survey found that in the early days of lockdown, just 35 per cent of businesses were implementing centralised projects and initiatives to encourage company communication, yet a successful culture change hinges on strong communication between employee, manager and employer. Workers must be encouraged to ask questions and able to talk directly to their managers.

Many companies have taken note and learnt fast. Culture Shift data shows 44 per cent of people surveyed said their employer had asked about their wellbeing more often and 74 per cent are getting the same or increased one-on-one time with their employee since working remotely.

It is imperative that businesses continue to promote cultural change to be successful in this new era of hybrid working. By keeping policies under review and asking for feedback from employees, organisations can ensure the new work environment is not only physically productive but culturally successful.

The nervous videographer

With everyone working remotely, video has become the primary means of holding a meeting. More useful than a phone call, it allows you to see the person you’re talking to and register their reaction to what’s being said, as well as easily share any important documents or slides. But for the nervous videographer, a video meeting can be an excruciating experience.

Given the choice, they’d rather leave their camera off completely or worse dial in via mobile. But with the right training on how to use video-conferencing software effectively, and some guidance on laptop positioning, lighting, sound and video presentation skills, they might well learn to enjoy a virtual face to face. Try introducing low-pressure video calls for practice; coffee with colleagues or impromptu team troubleshooting are great ways for the nervous videographer to get used to seeing their face on the small screen. 

The Zoom addict

The opposite of the nervous videographer, the Zoom addict is prone to scheduling countless video meetings. Freed of the need to book meeting rooms, they’ve lost sight of how important it is to ensure every meeting has a clear purpose and are firing out invites with gleeful abandon. Meanwhile, no one is getting any work done.

The best way to help them is to set clear guidelines about when and how frequently video meetings should be scheduled. A friendly nudge towards less demanding forms of communication, such as email and messaging apps, could also help to curb their addiction to video-conferencing tools. But be gentle with them as they might simply be craving more contact with their colleagues.

The burnout

The burnout used to work late in the office and they work even later now that their desk is in the dining room. In fact, they’re in danger of falling into one of the common pitfalls of remote working: the inability to maintain a balance between work and personal life. Not taking the time to properly switch off and relax means they’re at serious risk of burnout.

Emails sent at all hours of the day and night are a dead giveaway, along with promises to “finish things off” over the weekend. Businesses can help potential burnouts by setting clear boundaries around working hours and investing in project or time management tools to ensure low-priority tasks don’t take up valuable time during the day. It’s also helpful to reassure the burnout of their value to the company.

The permanently-distracted

You know how it is. You’re beavering away on an important work task when you glance around your bedroom-office and notice a pile of laundry that needs putting away. It bugs you. So you decide to take a quick break, just to make a start on it.

Two hours later, you’ve hoovered the whole house, done the washing up and regrouted most of the bathroom. Yet your important assignment remains unfinished.

Businesses can help distracted workers to focus by setting clear deadlines for project deliverables. Communication is vital to ensure they can be open about regular distractions, school pick-up for example, and work flexibly to accommodate them. Time management techniques like Pomodoro could also help the permanently distracted stick with the task at hand, so don’t be afraid to suggest it to them.

The ghost

The ghost is on a mission. A secret mission to get all their work done as quickly as possible. That way, they can spend the rest of the day reading, baking or bingeing on Netflix. Anything that interrupts their flow risks compromising their mission. And once they’ve knocked off for the day, they’re pretty much uncontactable.

For team members who value collaboration, regular meetings and constant chatter, even virtually, it can be frustrating when the ghost seems to vanish off the face of the earth. So while some flexibility around working hours is part and parcel of home working, businesses should gently remind ghosts that collaboration with their teammates is important. Try setting specific times when all team members should be available and building regular time for creative collaboration sessions into employees’ diaries.

The UK is falling behind its competitors in promoting flexible work practices to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

European data from Selecta shows the UK has only the sixth-highest number of job listings mentioning flexible working, behind the Netherlands, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. In the study of 121 European cities, the only UK city to appear in the top ten for flexible working was Manchester, in ninth place.

A global survey by Instant Offices paints a similar picture, with the UK trailing Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, the United States and Canada on the number of businesses with a flexible employment policy.

As employees’ expectations on flexible working rise, not offering it increasingly impacts companies’ productivity and ability to attract talent. Many expectations link to longer-term trends, such as more mothers and older people in the workforce, and better internet connectivity, but they have accelerated during coronavirus lockdowns.

Harriet Calver, senior associate in employment at law firm Winckworth Sherwood, says the UK is likely to be behind other countries because its laws are comparatively rigid.

“While attitudes towards flexible working have shifted dramatically since the [national] lockdown, the law has not changed,” she says. “Employees still have no right to flexible working, only to request it. Other countries have different approaches, for example Finland gives employees much greater freedom over where and when they work.

“Other countries are also considering legislative change due to the pandemic. For example, Germany is proposing employees have the right to work from home. New Zealand’s prime minister has suggested a four-day working week to help rebuild after COVID.”

Changing to flexible working has made my team happier, healthier, better communicators and more productive

Two more barriers to flexible working in the UK are culture and internet infrastructure. The Netherlands ranks 11th globally on average internet speed, while the UK languishes in 47th, according to Cable.co.uk. The Netherlands is also known for its culture of trusting workers. In contrast, a study by Winckworth Sherwood suggests lower trust in the UK, with 46 per cent of human resources leaders believing that flexible working negatively impacts productivity, compared to 18 per cent of other employees.

Tara Tomes, managing director of public relations company East Village, has championed permanent flexible employment, but is surprised the UK is not lower down the flexible working league tables.

“We’ve never been great at adapting to change,” says Tomes. “But the pandemic forced the nation to work from home and make it a success. Changing to flexible working has made my team happier, healthier, better communicators and more productive. It also attracts more diverse workers.”

New laws needed

Pre-pandemic, the UK government had set out to make flexible working a reality for all workers by launching its Good Work Plan and Flexible Working Task Force in 2018. But another flexible employment champion Andrew Cowling, partner of accounting firm Wylie & Bisset, says the government has done little to encourage the concept since March and could do more.

For example, a PwC report says the UK is behind international best practices on incentives and legislation, such as entitling certain workers to care leave or offering additional childcare subsidies. Experience in countries with better practices, such as Sweden, suggests such measures can boost productivity and GDP significantly.

Calver at Winckworth Sherwood says employers also need to assess the various reasons why workers ask for flexible options to ensure policies work for all employees.

Yvonne Smyth, group head of equality, diversity and inclusion at recruitment firm Hays, adds that even the best employment policies will not work unless people feel confident and empowered to request access without fear of stigma. “To overcome this, lead by example,” says Smyth. “By seeing senior managers champion and adopt flexible working, employees feel they can do the same.”

Cowling says prospective customers and employees will drive this move by prioritising progressive firms and leaving those hesitant to change behind.

UK workers will not relinquish the new-found freedoms the pandemic has given them. Reluctant companies will find the genie is no longer working in its bottle, but somewhere more convenient instead.

Yes: businesses are better off working remotely

In May, Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey told staff they will be able to continue working from home “forever” if they wish. It’s one of the most high-profile examples of what may well be a permanent shift to remote working for many businesses. So are the days of the office numbered?

While he believes the office can work well as a hub for the occasional team meeting, Sion Lewis, vice president, Europe, Middle East and Africa, at LogMeIn, a provider of software-as-a-service-based remote connectivity, collaboration and support solutions, thinks the benefits of remote working extend far beyond business continuity.

“The office used to be an equaliser, separating our personal and professional personas,” he explains. “But it also encouraged unconscious bias as judgments were made based on a person’s handshake, appearance, clothing choices and more.

“Remote work has proved to be the great neutraliser; no matter how senior you are, nobody is immune to family, pets or deliveries unexpectedly interrupting a meeting and one beige wall in a CEO’s house is no different to another in the home of a graduate.”

Tamara Haasen, chief of staff at IOHK, a decentralised technology company that builds blockchains and cryptocurrencies, says virtual offices can also play a part in democratising workforce structures, replacing central hierarchies with self-managed teams.

“We have found this fosters innovation, with brainstorms happening on a company-wide level rather than being department specific,” she says. “Remote working can also improve employment opportunities and reduce urban sprawl, with jobs increasingly moving to people rather than people moving to jobs.”

Remote working needn’t spell the end of company culture either. “Remote working can in fact encourage natural friendships and creative communication,” says Haasen. “For example, companies can use instant messaging bots, like Slack, to randomly pair up employees in a private channel for ‘watercooler chat’, making it simpler for employees from different departments to get to know each other and facilitate collaboration across an entire company rather than one office or team.”

The reduction in costs associated with physical offices could also be invested in employees’ wellbeing and perks designed to make home working even more enjoyable, such as grocery assistance, fitness membership, a personal development budget and home office stipends, says Job van der Voort, chief executive of Remote, which aims to simplify how companies employ the best talent globally. In fact, he believes the question is not whether companies should ditch the office, “it is whether they will have a choice at all”.

No: businesses should stick with physical premises

“Should we ditch the office completely? Absolutely not,” says David Morel, founder and chief executive of Tiger Recruitment. “The office is vital for bringing people together. It’s a central place where people can meet, collaborate and connect in a way that simply isn’t possible when they’re working remotely.”

He also believes the office has a role to play in promoting positive mental health and wellbeing. “While some people enjoy and work effectively from home, many struggle with the loneliness and isolation. When we surveyed over 1,000 employees in May, more than half (55 per cent) told us that the lack of social interaction was the biggest challenge of working away from the office.”

Euan Davis, European lead for Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work, also believes a lack of physical interaction with colleagues is detrimental to wellbeing. “Most of us do not want to work alone; human beings are typically social creatures and thrive off connecting with other people, not just remotely,” Davis argues.

“For some, the flexibility and extra personal time from the lack of a commute have given remote working, where it has been possible, benefits that might make it preferable as a longer-term and more permanent option,” he adds. “However, for others there is a pressing need to get back in a work environment and be around colleagues again. They may not have been able to make the necessary adjustments to be comfortable and productive working from home.”

Productivity is often linked to the technology at our disposal and many freshly minted remote workers have struggled with poor connection speeds and lacklustre equipment. “In an office, you’re more likely to have a high-spec set-up and faster connection speeds,” says Morel.

Gavin Poole, chief executive of Here East, an innovation and technology campus situated in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, believes that while remote working has been successful for many businesses, and will “absolutely have its place in the future of work”, that is partly “because we have taken the personal and business relationships from our pre-pandemic office life home with us, and these cannot be sustained forever without being replenished”.

Verdict?

There are clear benefits to office facilities - but businesses must not rely on physical premises to generate positive company culture. Provided they step up their virtual game, a hybrid system of offices and remote working is the way forward. Joanna Swash, chief executive of outsourced communications provider Moneypenny, agrees. “During lockdown, companies have proved home working works. Employees love the flexibility home working provides,” she concludes.

The situation IT directors and chief information officers were faced with in March, when the UK entered lockdown, is one I suspect will stick in their memory for a very long time. Technology was central to companies adapting to lockdown. For businesses to continue to be operational, IT teams had to move at rapid speed, with barely any notice at all, to ensure large workforces could work from their homes both productively and securely.

If there is one positive we can take from the pandemic, it’s companies that were perhaps slow in realising it previously have finally recognised the strategic value of IT to the business. For many, the very continuity of the business was entirely dependent on IT providing remote access to vital systems and resources. IT often tends to sit in the background but, for a while at least, it was front and centre.

Companies have finally recognised the strategic value of IT to the business

This has had a particular impact in more heavily regulated industries, which were traditionally less open to home working, but lockdown forced their hand. Whereas before such companies and their regulators would take a conservative long-term view to IT adoption, suddenly they had to embrace technology very quickly, driving a giant leap forward in some organisations.

That’s not to say everything ran perfectly. Unsurprisingly in the circumstances, there was a lot of knee-jerk reaction to the pandemic, and I suspect many companies will get to their next budget cycle and question whether their product or service choices were best value or most suited to their needs. Organisations also had to roll out technology so quickly that perhaps they didn’t get the value realisation they would have had it been a more controlled deployment with user onboarding and training.

After that initial surge of needing to get people working and collaborating from home, there was a period of several months where companies used what they had. Now they are coming out the other side of that and want to evolve how their business operates. As a leading unified communications and IT solutions provider, Daisy Corporate Services is being called into many organisations to see how they adapted during that period of turbulence and to support and guide them through more strategic decisions to build for the long term.

IT review

Moving forward in the so-called new normal, IT teams now face the challenge of reviewing what they have and how it fits in more flexible, hybrid workplaces. Though offices will clearly continue to play a role, like many people I don’t see us returning to previous working patterns. There was so much time and productivity lost to travel, and lockdown illuminated the huge value of remote working.

Perhaps the new normal office facility will be a reduced space solely for meetings, drop-ins and those staff who cannot work from home, indicating we could see a wider embrace of co-working spaces.

The key will be preparing IT systems that are agile, but also resilient. Companies that wish to have the flexibility to adapt their office footprint, but still have systems in office comms rooms, will look to move them somewhere neutral such as a co-located datacentre environment or to software-as-a-service and infrastructure-as-a-service platforms.

In the rush to get people working remotely, organisations may have opened security gaps. Some of these gaps in security controls may even have already existed before, but because home working is now so much more prevalent, the risk is heightened and it becomes imperative to plug them.

Adapting to lockdown may have also resulted in some overlap and duplication of IT solutions or even rendered some services, such as office printing, obsolete.

Overall IT teams must take steps to eliminate such issues and ensure all technology and business processes align to the new normal. Whether that’s new procedures for activities traditionally conducted on-premise or on-network, such as user device repairs and replacements, and machine policy, patch and certificate management, or adaptation of security controls, such as web content filtering, device authentication and data loss prevention mechanisms, to deal with staff working off the company network.

With the strategic value of IT now being proven in businesses of all shapes, sizes and sectors, success in the future of work will rely on organisations building on the foundations of agility and flexibility that they laid down during the pandemic, and implementing the resilience and robustness needed to really thrive in the digital age.

For more information please visit dcs.tech