The great work tug-of-war

Over the past six months or so I’ve had to get my head around the conversations we have on the Workplace Geeks podcast about progressive work ideas, 4-day weeks, hybrid/telework whilst also seeing (almost) daily instances of companies announcing that they are expecting employees back in the office X days per week because…….well because.

So, what’s going on? It’s hard to tell. 

Now I’m only speaking from my own experience here, but the evidence I’ve seen to support office mandates, etc. has been hazy at best. In a statement last year, the UK Civil Service announced that employees should “spend at least 60% in a government building or on official business, such as visiting stakeholders.”

How they expect to manage and track that second part is beyond me, but they later go on to say they would “commit to continue to listen to staff, to adapt to individual needs where specific changes may be required, and ensure the approach continues to meet business needs.” More on that in a minute.

But the justification. The view of Civil Service Leaders is that there remains “clear benefits to spending time working together face-to-face”.

And I’m sure there is. But what are they? How will you measure those benefits? What makes you think that this policy, specifically, will enhance work outcomes?

Now, I’m only reading a news story (when did we start getting news alerts about work patterns, by the way?), and I’m sure that there is more to it. It’s just not obvious—perhaps because it reflects a return to the assumed, ingrained legacy ways of working—so they may feel less need to invest in thorough research to justify the movement.

Meanwhile, you have people like Joe Ryle, who has run 60 organisations, a six-month study on the impacts of a 4-day week (health benefits, performance benefits, productivity benefits, I’ll have you know). We’ve seen Gemma Dale show us the health benefits of hybrid working (if employers help employees make healthy choices with their extra time not spent commuting) and that’s on top of people like Jack Nilles who has been banging the telework drum for fifty years (focused on the climate benefits) and more recently Nick Bloom who is constantly providing economic data about the benefits of a hybrid approach.

All of them show that there is value in providing and enabling flexibility.

When I see the Civil Service, Amazon and others making announcements about what they expect their employees to do, where to work, and how often, I do wonder what evidence base they’re using to inform decisions.

One of the most powerful conversations we’ve had on the podcast was with Rob Briner, who is an advocate for evidence-based management. In the podcast, he talked about how he challenged the HR community about the value of employee engagement surveys. He took us through a systematic approach to assessing whether evidence existed for whether an idea/theory/model would have a positive impact on a business, and employee engagement came up short. But you’d be hard-pressed to find an organisation that doesn’t do some form of annual survey to check in on how their staff are and what they think about their manager, benefits and whether they understand or align with the corporate values. 

Why? Perhaps it’s just because that’s what we do. We’re not sure why, but we go through the motions because we do. A brilliant example of this is the 5 wet apes story here.

Now, I want to return to the Civil Service statement on its commitment to listening to employees and adapting to their individual needs. It almost feels like it was a ‘get out’ clause for anyone that pushed back against this too hard or for an EDI reason.

 But why isn’t this just the approach? Why do we need blanket policies when we could empower teams to make their own decisions, based on their work, their approach, their people and their specific needs? Why isn’t the headline ‘Civil Service commits to listening to employees and working out an approach that suits everyone’. Everyone knows that it needs to work for the business they’re in, as well as their own personal preference. But why start with a headline and work backwards? Start with the commitment to listening. Because now it’s all framed around whether you’re aligned with the senior leader’s belief or have a special arrangement.

I’ve often wondered whether it’s because the whole system of workspace design and management isn’t designed to be flexible. Long leases, mega-multi-year IFM contracts that fix the KPIs at a point in time, fit-outs that come about every five years or so when capital budgets are replenished. None of it smacks of ‘flex’.

Which is perhaps why the flex office market is experiencing a huge boom. And whilst I’m sure that a big part of that is the flexibility in the commercial model (two-year commitments, monthly payments, everything included) is another part of it that they’re blending customer experience and workplace experience and realising that the easier, more flexible, and work centred their approach is the happier their members will be. And happy members do good work. And good work grows businesses. Who will need a slightly bigger room than the one they have now. Like many organisations in competitive markets, these organisations will be taking a jeweller’s eye piece to what’s working, what’s not and constantly innovating to stay ahead.

So, with all that in mind, let me leave you with the thoughts of the amazing Rory Sutherland (well-respected author and leading advertising thinker). He was recently asked about whether he thought home working was working. He finds it absurd that organisations are treating something that has been shown to increase productivity, save loads of money and the employees with such suspicion. He goes on to lament the fact that organisations didn’t bat an eyelid when introducing proven productivity killers like email and open-plan offices(steady on there, Rory) and suggests that no one cared because the employees didn’t like it. He concludes that this represents evidence that organisations are saying, “I don’t know whether my people are productive or not but if they’re happy I’m probably doing something wrong. That is literally the most extraordinary zero-sum thinking you can imagine.”

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