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Getting Buy-In For Flexible Working, Even From The Skeptical – Interview With Emma Francis

Lack of flexible working was found in the 2019 Imposter Syndrome Research Study to be one of three hidden drivers of the gender pay gap. The increased out-of-hours commitment so often required in senior roles and the difficulty in fitting work around family was shown to disproportionately disadvantage women with school-aged children.

So Zurich Insurance decided to take bold action. Driven by data and a passion for diversity and inclusion, they have now succeeded in making 80% of their UK roles part time, flexi-time or job-share. And far from having a negative impact on the bottom line, they've seen astonishing results.

They're making measurable progress on closing the gender pay gap, and their employee engagement and satisfaction have increased. And all of this was during the challenges of the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown.

And in today's Lockdown Leadership Conference interview with Emma Francis, we're talking about:

Getting Buy-In For Flexible Working, Even From The Skeptical

What you'll cover in this episode
Listen or watch now
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What We Cover In This Interview:

In this candid and action-inspiring interview, Emma Francis - Head of Diversity & Inclusion for Zurich Insurance - shares:

what prompted them to take action
how they got buy-in from the key decision-makers
what people's concerns or initial objections were
how they overcame them
the benefits they have seen - it's not just gender equity
what advice Emma would give other companies who might be considering this route

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Click To Read The Transcript - Please Forgive Typos!

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If you've read the 2019 Imposter Syndrome research study, you'll know that it found

three hidden drivers of the gender pay gap. And these explain why so many companies

have been trying so hard to close it and their success has stalled.

Those three hidden drivers were:

1. The alpha- male culture in so many companies at the most senior levels.

2. The second factor was the lack of flexible working for women who have school age

children or caring responsibilities or commitments outside of work,

with that increased time commitment

outside of hours that so often comes in leadership roles.

3. And the third factor was Imposter Syndrome.

We found hard data on how women were

holding back on applying for those promotions.

They weren't being as visible, they weren't speaking up with their best

ideas, and they weren't asking for the pay rises that they knew they deserved,

because of Imposter Syndrome.

If you want the full details, the white paper link is below this video.

And something happened in the last few weeks that gave me huge hope.

Zurich Insurance has run a trial with turning 80 percent of their roles

into flexible working, part time roles or job shares.

And not only has it worked,

it has increased the proportion of women applying for more senior roles.

It has increased even more the proportion

of women who are actually getting those roles.

It is closing the gender pay gap.

It has increased employee satisfaction

and engagement, and they have rolled this out across the whole company.

I'm thrilled today that Emma Francis, who is Head of Diversity and Inclusion

at Zurich Insurance, has agreed to answer some of your

questions and some of my questions about how they did this.

What sparked the idea? How did they

overcome the naysayers, those who were objecting? How did they

make sure that this didn't damage the business and instead brought benefits?

And what advice would she give if you're looking at doing this in your business?

Thank you so much, Emma Francis, for joining me today.

So thank you so much for joining me

for this interview today about what Zurich Insurance has been doing on

part- time working, on flexible working and job sharing.

And I'd like to ask you a few questions,

and I'd like to start with:

what was the point where the team made the decision, " we're actually going to do this"?

How did you know the time was right?

So we had been measuring our gender pay

gap and we had also been tracking the representation of females at all

the different levels in our organisation for quite a few years.

And while our organisation is pretty much 50/50, male or female,

we had known for some time that our women tended to be overrepresented in the lower

grades and underrepresented in senior grades.

And we started on the journey of putting in place various interventions.

But the progress was slow.

I mean, this is difficult stuff, isn't it?

And nobody has got the silver bullet yet that fixes the gender pay gap overnight.

So there was an awareness that it was a tricky problem.

And at that time, the government decided to put some money behind some research

and they had commissioned some behavioural scientists to look at this.

And they happened to ask us, would you work with us on this program?

Would you be one of our partners?

So I'm always one for a freebie!

And so but I really like the idea of being

bold and really getting to the bottom of our data, which is what the behavioural

scientists were proposing to do , so that they could then design an intervention

that was focused purely on Zurich and our experience.

That would be a sort of

nudge approach to behaviour change and really

bring some improvements in our gender pay gap.

Now, we couldn't have done it if I hadn't

had a really supportive head of H.R. who was,

"Yes, let's go for it.

Let's give it a go!"

Steve is very committed to this issue and he's also

willing to take risks, you know, and it wasn't a huge risk anyway.

But of course, it takes time and effort

and the data team and spending a good deal of time on it.

So that was the

catalyst for getting involved.

So I think, you know, we had a thorny problem,

we weren't quite sure what to do about it.

It wasn't changing.

So timing, fortuitous contact with someone in government.

And and then before we knew, we were part of this program and really excited

about the insights that the behavioural scientists were giving us.

And, you know, we're a data based organisation, we're an insurance company.

We actually have these skills in-house.

But we had never looked at our data in that way.

And of course,

what the behavioural scientists then brought was some ideas around

the intervention that perhaps we wouldn't have thought of ourselves.

So it was it was very helpful to get their input.

Perfect.

So one of the things a lot of companies do is they spent a lot of time defending

the model and everybody works full time and it's only the lower skilled jobs

that could be part time or flexible working or even job share.

How did you get the buy in from the key decision makers in the company to say,

actually, we're going to do this despite all of those preconceptions and it will

not just not damage the business, it will actually benefit the business?

I think it was using the arguments

that we use around D&I more generally, actually, primarily it's about talent.

But how do we get the talented people into our business that we really want?

We say that we want to be the employer of choice, because we know that talent

drives business results and better outcomes for our customers.

So we said to our key stakeholders, this would hopefully open up all sorts of

new talent bases that we can't access currently.

Think of all those people who don't want

to work full time, but have enormous experience.

And actually, you know,

you might think that a company like Zurich attracts loads of applicants.

But the thing is, a lot of our roles are very niche.

And if you're trying to recruit a property

underwriter in Farnborough, they're not that thick on the ground.

So, you know, the average number of applicants per roll

prior to this intervention was 12.

So it's not that many.

And that was reflected the fact that some of our roles

will get hundreds and hundreds of applicants.

Some of them might get one or two.

But how do we open up that talent base?

But it's also about innovation,

about reflecting our customers better.

We need more diversity if we're going to truly understand and serve our

customers more effectively.

And also just being fair

and not having these sort of rigid rules on what a job looks like.

And, you know, there's no

reason why all jobs need to be full time. Some jobs, y es.

Perhaps customer facing

you do want somebody available for

35 hours or however long it is.

But some roles d on't need to be. They don't need to be full time.

It's just habit that we always say, "oh, yes, I've got the headcount.

So I must make it a full time role." And you don't want to lose the funding.

"I managed to persuade

the cost centre to give me however much money for a full time role.

So why would I give up some of that funding,"

Some odd thinking processes that go on sometimes!

That's brilliant.

And Emma, I know one of the things that many of us have come across anecdotally or

in personal experience historically is, for example, if a mother of a school- aged

child says, "right, actually, I want to finish at four today so I can go

to little Freddie's school play," that can be seen as a really

career- limiting decision.

How did you handle the cultural change

that needed to happen with everybody, not just the key decision makers on that?

So for a number of years now,

we've implemented what we call flex work, but it's agile working.

So this can apply to people,

whether they work full time or whether they work part time hours.

And it's the idea that you empower your people to work where,

when and how they choose, in order to deliver on their business commitments.

So we'd rolled that out across the whole

company in 2017 and I'm not going to pretend overnight

suddenly everyone was enlightened

and saying, "you know, off you go to your school assembly!" or whatever it might be.

But actually the majority were engaged

and it was a habit that we have picked up as an organisation.

And so the principle that you shouldn't micromanage your

people, that we employ adults at Zurich, we pay them good money.

Therefore, they shouldn't need to be micromanaged.

And that for in order to attract the best people, but also to retain the best people,

we need to understand that people have lives outside of work.

If you haven't got a child, then you've probably got a hobby,

or you've got parents you need to look after

or, you know, one of our employees is a vicar.

So he really likes to go off and do an occasional harvest festival service.

And we've all got interests outside work.

And sometimes the car needs an MOT.

So just allowing people that flexibility,

we have discovered that our employees then repay us

in leaps and bounds. The loyalty and the commitment.

So that that concept of allowing flexibility in the workplace was there.

When it comes to actually reducing your hours.

I think it comes back to just having a conversation.

So I'm going back to the property underwriter are in Farnborough.

The cost, ,

the people who can fill that role, there's not so many people who apply.

You want to talk to everyone who can do that role.

If they turn around and say, "well, you know,

I need a little bit of flexibility or I'd only like to work three days, four days."

Well, let's have that conversation!

Let's talk about flex work as well.

Does that does that give you more comfort

that you will be able to balance your work and home life?

And you know what?

Can we make work that works for the employee and the business?

So I think, with the part time job, our campaign

is very much about sending that message that we're up for conversation.

We can't guarantee that every role will be available two days a week.

But come to us.

Let's talk and let's see what we can make work for both parties.

That's brilliant.

It sounds like you laid the foundations already to move away from the culture

of presenteeism to actually, as you say with the agile working,

looking at, well, have you delivered your objectives, which allowed people to take

more responsibility themselves and will have started the cultural change that made

it easier for you when you set that intention of.

Right.

I think it is 80 percent of your roles now fit under this?

What's the figure?

Yes.

Yeah, that's right. Yes.

So very, very impressive.

And so I'd love to ask you what the benefits are that you've seen.

We've seen in the media some incredible figures on the percentage of women now

applying for these roles and actually the percentage of women getting these roles.

So I'd love to hear about that.

And also, what are the benefits

that you've seen for the employees and for the organisation?

Sure. So it's been really exciting.

And the the involvement of the behavioural

scientists means that there's been a very rigorous analysis of the impact.

So there's no skewing the figures with them, you know,

they're very academic in their approach.

So overall, we've seen a 16 percent increase in applications from women,

which is brilliant because, you know, we have

historically had fewer applications from women than men into our organisation.

But most excitingly I think,

the applications from women for senior roles has increased by 20 percent.

Wow. So that's a massive number.

And then I guess the ultimate aim of all of this:

we've seen an increase in appointments of senior women increase by 33 percent.

So, you know, that is

that's the ultimate aim, isn't it?

And the number of people working part time has increased massively.

But we put that down to the fact

that actually this conversation that we're encouraging people to have,

if people get the comfort that they've got some flexibility, even when working full

time, they perhaps don't need those part time hours in quite the same way.

And what has been also very encouraging is

that applications for men have also increased, so that average number

of applicants per role has more than doubled.

So that's very heartening, isn't it?

And it just shows that, you know,

men want that flexibility as much as women, we think.

And, you know, we've also introduced equal

maternity and paternity pay and we're seeing nearly all of the men

who qualify for that take the full four months that they're entitled to.

So that sort of message is coming back to us in a number of ways that are

male colleagues really want to be part of this team.

So when I think about the wider

impact, I think it comes back to that that talent piece.

You know, we we want the best person for the role.

And we acknowledge that not everyone,

that that person will want to work full time, or they might want some flexibility.

So, you know, getting some

great diverse talent into our organisation.

But it's also, I think, empowered our employees to

think about their own roles and how they

can really embrace flexibility. And for sure, Covid's

been one of the few silver linings of this whole horrible lockdown has been the

the proof that flexible working, that working offsite can absolutely work.

And we know, of course, it's not perfect and it would be fantastic

to see colleagues face to face for at least some of the time.

But we've surveyed our employees

and they've told us loud and clear that they want increased flexibility

whenever we go back into the corporate world in terms of

not being expected to sit at the desk in the office, 9:00 to 5:00.

So I think the culture has really

matured and that's come through in our

employee listening exercise that we did over the summer.

The numbers have increased hugely and in terms of employee engagement.

So that's not all down to flexible working, but I think it's generally around

that sort of grown up progressive view of employment.

If you empower your employees,

if you trust them, then they pay you back in commitment,

productivity, and engagement in spades. It's wonderful.

So Emma it sounds like you kind of took one for the team industry-wide by working

with the behavioural scientists and then actually putting this into action.

You took a risk that hasn't just paid off.

It's actually showcased now what we could all be achieving.

If you were to advise another company that's considering this,

say there's another head of HR or Diversity & Inclusion who's thinking, "yeah,

we know this is a factor in the gender pay gap, we're going to do it!"

Or if you the 'you' a few years ago when you first started talking about this,

if you were to give that 'you' some advice, what advice would you give?

And is there anything that you would do differently?

Yeah, that's interesting.

I would encourage people,

any organisation, to give it a go because of the good results that we've got.

And because you're not promising anything.

You're setting yourself up, you're indicating your willingness to talk

flexibility, your willingness to have a conversation.

But ultimately, if a role needs to be done full time,

then you don't have to give it to somebody who works part time.

So you've got nothing to lose. But if you do do it,

then all sorts of interesting people are going to come out of the woodwork

that you, you know, I've heard stories of managers

who were initially skeptical in our organisation.

But then when the talent came through,

they were just blown away by who was on offer.

So they was like, "well, obviously,

whatever it takes, I'll get this person in."

So, as with anything, give it a go.

And if it doesn't work out, then you can always change it.

You don't have to sign in blood.

And if I was going to go about it differently?

I'm not I'm not sure there's much I'd reflect on and regret.

There's still some of our roles that we,

the business leaders, feel would be difficult to accommodate as

part time, and that's my next challenge, to work with them,

to think about how it could be done more flexibly.

And that comes down to,

I always believe it comes down to mindset: if you want to do something,

you can always make it work, can't you?

If you've got that mindset that you want to achieve it.

Whereas if you think, "oh,

that's too difficult," well, you're not going to make it happen.

I think, work with the people who really believe in it.

Start with the believers. Get them to prove that it works.

And then you can move on to the people

who are perhaps more skeptical or who can't see how it will work for them.

And they'll soon be won over or their competitive streak will kick

in and they'll say, "you know, I want some of that!"

So, yeah, you can always start small or

trial in a certain business area if there is nervousness.

But, you know, it's been it's been a really positive thing for us.

And I always come back to, if you've got the data,

if you've analysed your data, you can prove whether where

the bottleneck is, the kink in the hose pipe

that's stopping people flow through, as I've heard it referred to.

Then you can address that kink,

really focus your intervention, because in the D&I world,

there are so many things that you can put in place aren't there , whether it's

blind CVs or mentoring or whatever it might be.

But you might be directing your effort and your funding at the wrong thing.

So, yes, just being clear on the issue you're

trying to solve and then designing an intervention that addresses that.

That's brilliant. Thank you.

And I love what you just said there about start with the believers,

because so often when we want to create change, we think we've got to start

with convincing the people who are anti. And actually trialling it

with the believers is a very easy way of convincing those who might be more

skeptical and as you say, bringing out their competitive streak,

so they want to be involved in it, too.

That's amazing! To wrap up:

Is there anything else that you'd like to say?

I just think it's

a sign of maturity, in a way, in an organisation,

I think if you can cope with flexibility, part time, full time workers,

because it's all about focusing on the customer and delivering

for the customer the absolute best for the customer.

And in business, we always talk about empowering our

employees, how important it is to empower them.

And then what I used to see,

you know, 10 or so years ago, was actually a lot of micromanagement and "oh, we

couldn't possibly let our junior people do do their own thing!

They need supervising!" Well, a lot of those junior people were

women who'd done the job for 20 or 30 years, were supremely

skilled in their role and experienced.

They didn't need somebody looking over their shoulder all the time.

So I just, as you can tell, I'm a massive proponent of this and I

encourage anyone in our positions to just give it a go.

And because, I think, it's it's the new world.

It's the future. And the sooner you get with the program,

the more you have the opportunity to reap the benefits.

That's brilliant. Thank you so much, Emma.

You're welcome .

Thank you again to Emma Francis,

Head of Diversity and I nclusion at Zurich Insurance. And for you watching this.

Thank you for taking the time.

I really hope that you found this useful.

The research study is below this video.

There's also a downloadable transcript of Emma's interview,

if you want to be able to share her key insights with those in your company to be

able to start this journey for yourselves or take it to that next level.

I'd love to hear from you.

What action are you going to take as

a result of watching Emma's interview today?

How might you find your believers

and start working with them so that you can create a positive wave of change?

That adult conversation,

as Emma describes it, in your business, to help close the gender pay gap so

that every role is available to the person who is the best fit for the role,

who has the skills, the talent and the potential,

rather than being determined by the number of working hours.

Get in touch. I'd love to hear from you.

And if you've got a story that could

inspire people about what you've been doing on diversity, inclusion,

closing the gender pay gap, Ditching Imposter Syndrome get in touch.

I'd love to interview you for a future episode.

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Take Action Now!

If you do one thing as a result of this episode, make it this! What one action could you take today to encourage and support more flexible working in your organisation?

For My Organisation

Which roles might we be able to offer more flexibly, to attract the best candidates and foster work-life balance?

For Myself

What does flexible working mean to me? And how might I have that discussion with my organisation?

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The benefits of making jobs more flexible - and how one company did it with 80% of their roles.Click To Tweet

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Why Starting With ‘How’ Gets Hybrid Back-To-Front – Interview With Janet Hitchen

Making Hybrid Work, Soul Led Leaders

Janet Hitchen's career has seen her advising leaders at companies from Apple to Nespresso, as a trusted guide in creating best-in-class communications strategies. Known as a 'rebel woman', she asks the questions that create breakthroughs, in ways that get everyone on board.

In her interview, she'll be discussing the cultural shifts organisations need to make, to allow their teams to thrive with hybrid working, and how to communicate them in ways that get people excited, instead of scared, about change.

Why Starting With 'How' Gets Hybrid Back-To-Front

What you'll cover in this episode
Listen or watch now
Take action now!

What We Cover In Janet Hitchen's Interview:

Why starting with 'how' gets hybrid back-to-front
The danger of making decisions from the view of power and control - yet why so many organisations are falling into this trap
How gaslighting employees back into the office risks becoming the new epidemic
The one core thing that has changed for employees, which means that 'business as usual' risks an exodus
The single most valuable thing a manager can do right now, to get their teams on board
How to avoid homogenised group-think and bring cognitive diversity into hybrid-working decisions
How to communicate our hybrid-working decisions in ways that inspire people to thrive, instead of getting them searching the job-hunting websites

You can connect with Janet Hitchen here.

Listen Now:

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Watch The Interview:

Click To Read The Transcript - Please Forgive Typos!

Note: the video and podcast audio also have captions.

Clare Josa
I can't wait to share this interview with you with Janet Hitchen, who is a world leading internal communications consultant who's worked and advised leaders the likes of Apple and Nespresso. And in today's interview, what we're going to be covering is why starting with how is getting hybrid back to front? We're going to look at the energy with which we make decisions, whether it's control or fear or whether it's empowerment. We'll look at how to create a genuine level playing field, how to make sure everybody feels their voice has been heard, and how to communicate the decisions that we're making on hybrid working in ways that inspire people to thrive and feel like they belong rather than getting them searching the job hunting websites.

Clare Josa
So this is for you, whether you're an internal communications or whether you're leading or advising a team or manager on how to communicate hybrid working decisions and how to make those decisions in a way that put people first but without compromising on results. So over to Janet. I want to introduce Janet, I know some of you joining us today know Janet already, but Janet's career as an internal communications and culture consultant has seen her advising leaders from companies as diverse as Apple and Nespresso.

Clare Josa
And she's a trusted guide in creating the best in class communications strategy. She's known as a rebel woman and she asks the questions that create breakthroughs whilst getting everybody on board. And that's exactly what we're going to be talking to you about today. So hello and welcome, Janet.

Janet Hitchen
That's a lot to live up to is now.

Clare Josa
And I think we're going to do that and more today, what we want to start with today is looking really at the process of how do we create the hybrid environment? What is the culture that we need to create and how do we get people on board? And Janet, I want to start with a real bugbear of mine. I know that you've got some really great stuff to say is everybody with hybrids seems to be starting with how the mechanics, how many days a week, how far distance to the desks, what do we do about how to make this work?

Clare Josa
And starting with how is getting hybrid back to front. I'd love to hear your take on the question.

Janet Hitchen
We should be asking ourselves instead why everything starts with the why. Simon Sinek said it best and we seem to have forgotten that. And it's really, really interesting. This is a whole new challenge. Nobody's done it before. It's brand new. And yet everyone seems to have thrown out all of the best practice and jumped to the to the how, because that's the bit that they're all a little bit really concerned, worried and and anxious about.

Janet Hitchen
But actually, that's not the bit that the employee cares about. First and foremost, the employee cares about the why, I think, yeah, we can get to the how we can get to the how far is my desk away and do I have a one way system and all that sort of fun stuff. But we can also sorry. Somebody is just trying to tell me what's typical isn't it. Something starts and someone calls you. So I think it's why I think we need to get straight.

Janet Hitchen
And what we need to do is from an internal communication standpoint, go back to the basics, write the brief, understand the problem you're trying to solve and sit in that problem for a little bit. So understand this from the employee perspective. How are they feeling? And this is where I think we always talk in Intel comes about. No. Do you feel sometimes you talk about say we talk a lot about a line, but here I think the biggest thing is feel because we've all been through.

Janet Hitchen
A chaotic 18 months, we've been through a really crazy 18 months. And everybody's feeling different. Everybody has a different sense of where they're at. So I think unless we understand that feeling and we understand how that communication is going to affect us and affect the people that we're communicating to, we're doing our the employees a real disservice. And I think the other thing is employee insights. So that was part of that briefing process. You might think, oh, well, we don't have you know, we only have formal employee surveys.

Janet Hitchen
OK, fine. You've got an employee survey, but what informal information do you have? Have you been running town hall meetings? Where you have Q&A is every month. Every week. Have you got coffee chats with your CEO where people are asking specific questions? What questions are they asking? This is about temperature checking and understanding how people are feeling right now, because where they were at the employee survey that might be once a year is probably not where they are right now with the information that's happening.

Janet Hitchen
So I think it's making sure you have really good, solid insights. And if you don't have those insights, go find them. I don't think oh, well, we got how we got to get out that quickly. No, you don't. It's more important to get it right first time, because if you don't get it right, first time, you're going to spend a long time working your way back to then work your way back down the way to work in the right way.

Janet Hitchen
So don't create more work for yourself. Do it right first time. And how do you find these employee insights? One second is almost just decided to come into the house. Interesting.

Clare Josa
While Janet is just having to deal with that, this builds a lot on the work that I do. So I work a lot with people on Imposter Syndrome. And it's the power of the word 'because'. When we can use the word 'because' when we're asking somebody to do something, it's much easier for them to feel like they've actually bought in. If we've got leaders saying we need you to come back into the office for this many days a week because it removes the fear, it gives people a reason.

Clare Josa
It helps them to feel like they in some way been involved, and it gives them that sense of connexion with the decision. One of the other things that I know that you've got some great views on, Janet, as said, so many of these decisions are being made from a place of control and fear. Maybe you could talk about that a bit.

Janet Hitchen
I think it's really interesting. We're doing a lot of reading and reading of articles, I'm not seeing other people posting on LinkedIn, so I'm seeing a lot of stuff, the same stuff that's getting churned. But I kind of go towards and yes, it's more American. But I think it's really interesting because I think it's still very relevant for for us here. And a lot of people work for American companies. So it's kind of, you know, it's important to get a full spectrum.

Janet Hitchen
And so I've been looking at things like The New Yorker and I've been looking at Inc and Wired and Fast Company. And actually even today I looked at something on the Atlantic. And I think what's really, really interesting is the word that is now starting to be used is gaslighting, which is really quite, quite a big word and not a word that we've heard before in a corporate or in a sort of a business environment. It's more the word that we've heard.

Janet Hitchen
You know, when your ex-boyfriend disappears or, you know, something something like that is more that kind of thing that we've heard. This is really interesting and it's about the use of language. And I think you and I were talking just before this, Clare, about how what's happening is people have been talking and using terms that sort of say, we know that you want to come back to the office. We know you've missed the office, do you?

Janet Hitchen
If you haven't done any of that employee inside work, if you haven't understood the why and then you're telling me how I feel. Yes, I do feel gaslighted. And that will get is that the right word? And that's not OK. That's only going to compound people's anxiety. That's going to compound people's the challenge that you have and make that even bigger. I think where are some of those pieces coming from? At the beginning of lockdown down one, I posted a piece about remote working because I've been remote working for ages a long, long time with remote teams internationally, having a team who was all around the world.

Janet Hitchen
So we went in one place at one time and it was really interesting because somebody sort of challenged me on it and said, but how do I know what they're doing? Like what? And it was a long time since I'd heard that kind of opinion expressed and I thought, OK, that's that's really interesting. All of is the work being achieved? Are you achieving your objectives as are things happening? Is your company making money? Yes. Right.

Janet Hitchen
Okay. Well, in that case, it's all good. Why do you need to sit over like an overlord? You know, this is no longer, you know, sort of a cotton factory or cotton mill in the 19th century. This is a little bit strange. And I think some of that is about fear. And there's a huge fear on, well, what does this mean? Does it mean I lose control? And I think there's a huge amount of work that can be done.

Janet Hitchen
And I think HRT is learning development teams could really, really support line managers here, particularly line managers who are getting who are going to have the brunt of this information, such as how to deal with to understand where what is that fear? What are you actually afraid of? Have those fears, are they justified and work through do that work, understand if those fears are justified? Because if you just have the I'm afraid, therefore we react, that's what we're going to do.

Janet Hitchen
That feels incredibly 19th century. If you understand that you're you have you're afraid of something. You're afraid that there's something that's going to happen because this is all new. This is all different. This is change in everyone collectively is going through it. Then actually, we need to do some work around where's that fire coming from? Is that fear founded? And how could you actually make that if it hasn't been working? Well, OK, fine. But if it has been working.

Janet Hitchen
What can actually moving to Hybrid working for you? Is there an opportunity? Do you have a lot of extroverted thinkers? Do you need those people to be working together and therefore they would benefit from coming together, but maybe once a month? Once a week? What and what does that actually look like? What is the work that you're trying to achieve and how do you get there? And then if you do that collaboratively, you have your why as to what it is that you're going to to achieve.

Janet Hitchen
And I think we're jumping to communicate some stuff too fast at the moment because we haven't sat in the problem long enough to actually understand what it is, what we're trying to do. Why is that? Why is that going on and how employees are going to feel at the end of it?

Clare Josa
And I think those are such important points, Janet. And I'm seeing so many organisations are starting with the decision of how many days a week, and they haven't necessarily thought through why they haven't really understood what is that going to do for our teams? And they're creating systems that will allow people to come in on random days, meaning that teams will never actually have a day together. And instead we could be looking at, well, what do we actually want to achieve while we want people to be able to have those watercooler moments?

Clare Josa
Great. What process do we want to put in place that facilitates that? How are we going to handle people having flexibility of choosing which days to come in and still make sure at least once a month there's a team day where people actually get to connect rather than just bringing their laptop in and doing the emails at work that they could have done from home?

Janet Hitchen
And I think the other thing as well is that we there are lots of companies who've been doing this for a while now.

Janet Hitchen
There are fully remote companies. A friend of mine works for a Start-Up that is fully remote. They I think they come in once a quarter, something like that. They used to they used to connect 14 days. And then and then everybody went back out remote KPMG. They're huge. They've been doing this for ages. Why is there no case study on what KPMG have been doing? Why are we not looking to them and saying, well, you guys have been making two days a week out of the they actually forced people out of the office.

Janet Hitchen
They do not come in two days a week. We don't want you here. And that was about real estate. And you know, how many bums on seats do you want at a certain time? They've got those teams have been making this work because, you know, when I last looked, KPMG were doing all right. So what are they doing? How have they managed it? What have their own managers got? What support they have? And I think where were those case studies where we can actually say so?

Janet Hitchen
People can't sort of think very simply that it's. Oh, well, that's a start up. We're not a start up. We're not like that where we're not, you know, 20 something and cool. That's got nothing to do with it. This is about the type of work that you do and understanding. Can that be done together or apart or hybrid or however. But I think that's that's been sort of really I've been really interested. There's been lots of jumping into a space.

Janet Hitchen
And I think you and I talking about this earlier today, sort of a this is brand new. Nobody's got the right answer yet. And there seems to be a land grab for what the right way to do this is. And we don't know that yet. And everybody seems to be a little bit nervous that there needs to be a right way and a wrong way. And actually, there's not there's lots of different ways and everyone's going to have a different way of being able to do this.

Janet Hitchen
This is an opportunity to rethink things that haven't been working. This is an opportunity to allow, you know, people who've been asking for flexible, working for huge amounts of time and have been told, no, we can't do that, to say, OK, well, we've made it work, we can do that. But I think the land grab for the narrative has got to stop.

Clare Josa
Absolutely right on that.

Clare Josa
And it's a great point. Come up in the comments and everybody who's with us live, do feel free to use the chat here.

Clare Josa
So I think the point about control and fair is so important. I believe some of it boils down to managerial skill set being based on physically ensuring the work is being done rather than adding value. Such a great point. And as you've just said, Janet, we've actually just done this for fifteen months. And yes, for some companies it hasn't worked, but for so many it has. And to suddenly tell staff that what they've moved heaven and earth to achieve over the last 15 months is somehow now invalid and they can't keep doing it, isn't going to work.

Clare Josa
And something I'd like to cover next is one of the things in life is our values. What's important to us tends to be quite that unless we go through a big life change like, say, becoming a parent or getting married or getting divorced, it can change your values. What's important to us as can going through a global pandemic and suddenly our entire sense of self and world turning upside down, what we've seen with so many people is suddenly they're realising, I don't want four hours a day on a train.

Clare Josa
I don't want two hours a day in a car. I want to be able to see my kids when they get home from school. I want us to be able to have a family dinner. I want to be able to go to the gym. And it's not five o'clock in the morning. People's values have changed and they're going to be voting with their feet to find organisations whose working patterns match with their values. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on that, Janet.

Janet Hitchen
There's really interesting, I read this as I say, I've been doing a lot of reading and I read an article the other day that said actually within the pandemic, lots of people have been finding new jobs, but a lot of people haven't been moving job because I thought, oh, security, I've got to got my thing. If they're not kicking me out and I'm not I've not been made redundant, then let's just stay still for a bit. So actually, for quite a large number of people, there's a lot of pent up.

Janet Hitchen
This was I wanted to move. I couldn't move. Now was the time to move. I've noticed an internal communications. There was a huge number of job opportunities at the moment taking mid level. I think there's a huge, huge number of companies that are sort of realise, oh, we do need internal communications. This really will help us. Whether they actually understand how that communicate internal communications is going to work is a different matter, because it seems to be they seem to be all over sort of a little bit all over the place with sort of the the jobs that are being offered.

Janet Hitchen
But I do think if you've got that pent up group who wanted to leave anyway and suddenly they hit a pandemic, the brakes have been put on. That's not good. Then you've got the people who, as you say, will suddenly be told. Right. Well, you need to come back in. I have some friends who have been told you need to now come back to the office and they had to move country. And they are no longer in the country of their of their office, and when they've sort of said, look what we've been doing this job for 50 months, we've been doing great.

Janet Hitchen
We're having, you know, we've delivered we're doing everything that you want us to and more they've been told yet doesn't matter. You need to physically be in this location. And I hear things like, well, it's tax law or tax law needs to catch up. Don't just cite tax law. If that person has been doing a really great job and those two particular people have left, have left their company not because they wanted to, but because they had to.

Janet Hitchen
So I think there's suddenly going to be this workforce that becomes incredibly... Instead of sort of sitting and we're standing still, we're not staying put, we're going to find a lot of people moving about and moving. Previously, we've known people move for managers. That's still going to happen because it might be my manager suddenly said I need to be in five days a week. And I think that's a crock. Or we might think actually they don't want me in at all.

Janet Hitchen
And actually, I really need to be with people. So I need to find somewhere that does that. I think there's going to be a huge amount of movement. I really, really do. I think it's going to be really interesting to observe, do I have any of the answers? No, but I think it's important to look, to observe, to listen and to to analyse why are people doing what they're doing, why the movements being made and where are people migrating to?

Janet Hitchen
I think it's I don't think there's going to be one or the other. I think it's going to be really interesting to observe at least over the next 18 months at least.

Clare Josa
Absolutely. I think there's going to be an awful lot - for leaders who are watching this, either with us live or on the replay - there's going to be a lot of us needing to watch out, because we're going to suddenly find that some of our key players are just going to leave and we'll be confused as to why. And there's a strong chance that whatever the decisions we've made on Hybrid working will influenced that. And as you said, Janet, it's not just people saying, well, hey, actually I want to work from home four days a week because this is now important to me.

Clare Josa
There will be the people saying, no, I want to be in every day and I want to have the right to do that because I hate having to sit on my bed and have my dressing gown in the background on live streams with clients. And one of the things that's really important, I know you and I have talked in the past on it, is that Leaders' Super Powers is going to they're going to need to include understanding that there are so many diverse opinions on this that is no right or wrong.

Clare Josa
There's no way to please everybody. But we need to try and find flexibility within ourselves and our organisations to allow everybody to now have the working experience that meets their needs and values. What are your thoughts on that one?

Janet Hitchen
I think it's huge. I think it's listening is an underrated skill. And I think in the beginning there's going to need to be a lot of listening that happens. And what I can see happening is certain line managers who in that fear are jumping to the I have to have the answer to the most valuable thing that you can do right now is listen and understand what what is your team make up? What what is the work that actually happens in your team?

Janet Hitchen
And this is about how does that work take place? What is the thinking work? What is the creative work? What are the innovative work? But also what's the executional stuff? How many meetings do you need? Have you had more meetings or fewer meetings? What does that actually look like? And actually take this as an opportunity to do a full reset? I think there's a huge opportunity to do that. But I'm really I'm worried about lone managers.

Janet Hitchen
I'll be really honest. I'm I my heart goes out to them. I think they've got a really tough job because yet you can't please all of the people all of the time. And I think it's about figuring out what is the right thing to do all day is somebody who sort of says, I don't want to work in the way that you've all collaboratively decided. Can you look at ways to redeploy that person within your organisation? Are there better suited roles for that person now?

Janet Hitchen
I think there's a lot there's a huge opportunity here, but it's it's massive. It's absolutely massive. I can understand why teams are sort of kind of going, OK, let's have a collective sort of inhale and let's have a moment, because this is going this this is going to be huge. I think one point as well that is really interesting is how you're communicating this and how you're asking your line managers to communicate this. People will also start to leave companies based on how your culture has been affected by these changes.

Janet Hitchen
And have you got a culture that has that says one thing, but actually because of what's happening right now, because it's a because it's new, because it's different, instead of being the culture that you aspire to be, you've become a culture that you actually are. And that's not what people have joined. They've joined the aspirational version, but not the actual version of what you are. And does that mean that people are feeling? Less certain about where they want to be, less positive about the fact that they want to stay.

Janet Hitchen
I think this is really interesting, particularly this communication piece at the moment, how the knock on effect that is going to have culturally on my managers, on the whole organisation, I it's really, really fascinating at the moment.

Clare Josa
Absolutely. And building on what you said about the most important thing a manager can do right now is really listening, with that communication we need to be finding ways to make it really clear to people that it's OK to speak up. You know, the example you just gave of everybody in a team has collaboratively decided this is how the team is going to work. It takes an enormous amount of courage for that one person saying, "actually, this doesn't work for me," to speak up, rather than either resent it or vote with their feet.

Clare Josa
So I think some of that communication is going to need to be about: we are also here to listen. It doesn't mean we can pander to every need - that's going to be hard - but we're here to listen. And that builds to a question that we've got from the audience here on the live round of the session is how does the sense of fairness play out in a hybrid environment? It's difficult to balance out flexible working for knowledge workers with front line operational workers who don't have that flexibility option.

Clare Josa
I'm not expecting you to have the magic wand for this, Janet, but from a communications point of view and a cultural point of view, what could organisations be doing or asking themselves on that?

Janet Hitchen
I think it's about clarity and it's a great question. I think it's about being clear about what you are going to do, because if you are a front line operational worker with no flexibility option. That should be clear from the start, so let's take an example of a retail employee. If you're working as a retail employee, you know that you can't do that job from anywhere other than that space. You have a choice to do that job or to choose to do another job.

Janet Hitchen
And so it's very clear, and I think it becomes very clear within within the job role and the type of role where what the options are, there are some which are very, very obvious, like a retail employee. If you work at Janet Lewis, you have to be at Janet Lewis. If you are in a store staff member, if you are in Janet Lewis, but you are behind the scenes and you work in I.T., then you might not need to be.

Janet Hitchen
And I think that's then about we start to to review roles based on what is the flexible option. And some people have been doing that for years. I know that there are certain websites that you pre pandemic that would be where you would go. I want to work flexibly. I know that I have these out outside of work obligations. Therefore, I will go. I use this website because this is where all the jobs that offer the options that I want and need for my life, that's where they all are.

Janet Hitchen
I can go and find that this just means that that is now across. It just becomes bigger. And I think it's really interesting to see people advertising roles at the moment. I see some roles that are advertised and they say, yeah, remote, remote is absolutely fine. Others are very clear. No, you need to be in the office and you need to be in that specific geographic location. I think that sort of we've all talked about this before.

Janet Hitchen
It opens up well, if if I could work for a company in the US. OK, well, it just means that my time zones are different. So I'm OK as long as I'm okay with doing that. So I think it's the fairness is about being clear about what that role is, where that role is, what the opportunities are, and it's about clarity. And then it's and then it's the individual's choice. If you if you make it the individual's choice, if you impose it on the individual and the individual.

Janet Hitchen
But I've been doing my job really brilliantly and now you're imposing something on me that I don't want that's different. If somebody says I can actually make a choice and I choose to do that or I choose to leave. But that's OK. As a choice, exactly, and as you said earlier, Janet, it's also about us having the flexibility inside ourselves to potentially ask to be redeployed if we feel it's not fair and it's something that is important to us, that value has come to the fore, then we need to make that choice.

Janet Hitchen
OK, I don't want to be there at the front line anymore. I want to be doing it differently. And one of the things that's heartened me is looking at traditional industries where there are people who've had to be in the office, in the knowledge workers, as described in the question, where it's been the assumption that they couldn't do it from home. Like, for example, in banks, people who are working on the trading floor, traditionally they've had to be in and they've been in throughout the pandemic.

Janet Hitchen
There are now international banks that have discovered we can actually pay for licences for them to have exactly the same software at home. That means they can do it there, they can do it securely, and it's having no negative impact whatsoever on the results that we're getting. So sometimes as an industry, we need to get away from that homogenised group-think into looking at, well, OK, if this is really important to this group of people, this segment of our teams, what could we do to meet that need that doesn't negatively impact the organisation?

Janet Hitchen
How could we be more flexible instead of just doing that stress based computers as an idea? Is it a wrap up today, Janet? Well, I'd like to talk about is bringing Cognitive diversity into the committees and the teams that are making these decisions. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. And if anybody's got any final questions for Janet, please let me know by the chat and I'll bring them in at the end.

Janet Hitchen
I think it's absolutely essential, isn't it? I mean, it's if you have a group of people who are all the same. And by that I mean diverse as a diversity, they all look the same. But cognitively, they are all the same because they all have the same challenges, issues, etc. then you're not going to get anybody who will raise their hand and say, well, have you thought about what it's like for a working mother if there were no working mothers on the committee?

Janet Hitchen
And we've we've seen this previously. We've seen this throughout the pandemic where things have happened and then suddenly someone is going, what did you think about this group of people? And think, oh, no, we didn't think about a group of people. We didn't ask them because we didn't have anybody on the committee who was he was thinking about that group of people and that group of people turns out to be women and just, you know, fifty one percent of the population.

Janet Hitchen
It's absolutely vital. And I think it's really interesting. I think with something that we can learn from Germany, in Germany, they have workers, councils, and a lot of people kind of go to workers councils. Really, it's really complicated. You know, it stops everything. It makes everything go much more slowly. But actually, in previous lives, what we saw was when you work together with that workers council, workers council represents all different types of of employee and everybody votes on who those employees are that will then support them.

Janet Hitchen
So it's up to everybody to decide how they get that their cognitive diversity within that group. That group then is Torg. It's the employee voice in the room. And I think having the employee voice in the room is vital and it means that you don't get that group think that, you know, lots of either leaders who maybe all look and have similar outcomes, similar sort of family set up or similar sort of, you know, all of a similar age, or you don't have an H.R. team who are all who will sort of look similar.

Janet Hitchen
You end up with a diverse group who think in diverse ways and who are thinking about this. And if you don't have that cognitive diversity, then you need to have some sort of question list to figure out. Are you thinking about all the different types of people in your organisation and all the decisions that you're making, or are you asking the right questions before we even get to the decisions? Are you actually asking all of the right questions? Because if you just make decisions and you completely forget working mothers.

Janet Hitchen
What percentage of your population have you just completely discounted? And coming back to the communication piece when you communicate to them, well, you don't have their insight, you've not considered how they feel. So it's it's not going to land well and they are probably going to end up feeling desolate. So you are going to go into that sort of negative cycle. So having the maximum amount of Cognitive diversity, having the maximum amount of diversity. And making sure that all different types of your audience are, you know, you get input from and you're not going to be able to please all of them, but it's about considering it.

Janet Hitchen
And a lot of times it's about perception. And as part of the communication, what you can do is you can talk about that process. If you've got a wonderful process where the employee voice has been in the room and you as an employee feel represented and feel like you've been hurt, you're OK. They did. They were talking to somebody. That was that was my sort of circumstances. So perception is you then being heard. So you are less likely to feel desolate.

Janet Hitchen
You can include that as part of your communication plan. We spoke to X number of employees. We spoke to a cross-section who were who covered this. You can give that information. And people feel colleagues and employees feel confident that they have been represented as decisions are made. And it's about, yes, you want them to feel right, but you also want the perception of what is being done to feel right, because it might be that you made all the right decisions and you did all the right things and you got all the right people in the room.

Janet Hitchen
And Cognitive diversity was amazing. But if you don't communicate that well, perception might be that you didn't talk to me. You didn't bother with me. You didn't listen to me. I still feel desolate and I no longer belong in this organisation.

Janet Hitchen
Exactly. So you've got to do both. There's got to be what you do and then how you communicate that to make sure that the perception of what has been done is actually what has been done and what.

Clare Josa
Absolutely. That's brilliant, Janet. And everybody, I've got one last thing I'm going to say with say to Janet and ask her about that. While I'm doing that, I'd love to hear from those of you here with us live. By the way, what is your big light bulb from today? What is the one thing that you're taking away from what Janet has shared so far? So one of the things that's really important to people is feeling inspired right now because people are on their knees.

Clare Josa
We've got sessions in the conference on how to prevent burnout because people are exhausted if somebody is a manager rather than an internal communications expert on it and they've got to communicate a policy to their team. What would be the one piece of advice you'd like to wrap up with today to give that manager on how to communicate decisions or options in a way that inspires rather than scares people?

Janet Hitchen
Put yourself in their shoes. OK, be the employee and. From an end, it's all about it's about empathy, if you go in and you're nervous and you just fire something out there and then you leave. How would you feel if your manager had done that to you? So I think a lot of it is about putting yourself in the employee shoes. You should know if it's your manager. Hopefully, you know your team. You know them really well.

Janet Hitchen
You've been really close to them. So you know how they're feeling at the moment. And that means that you can, with the standard communication that you pack that you may get. You can then dial certain things up and down depending on how your team will take it. But put yourself in their shoes. How are they going to be feeling? And then in that first instance, listen and don't feel that you need to have the answers. And if you even if you don't want to answer at all, just take take say, you know what?

Janet Hitchen
I'm going to write down all of your questions and make sure that you are actively listening. Take those questions away and then come back what you do, something that kind of goes because you've got everybody in the room who you are, what's going to happen. And it's very emotional. You need to take the emotion out. Listen, allow people. And is there a survey where they could fill it in if they don't want to say something out loud, allow people to be lots of different ways to be able to express what they're feeling and then reconvene to be able to respond.

Janet Hitchen
And I would do it and I would do it like that and always, always put yourself in the shoes of the people who you are communicating to.

Clare Josa
That's brilliant, Janet. And I particularly love your advice about it. If not for the line manager to have every answer, it's OK for them to say, I'll take away your questions and find that answer, because often the answers that are given in the heat of that moment will then be the wrong choice, the wrong decision. That's absolutely gold dust. Fantastic. So we've got lots of great food for thought, listening, consulting and empathy. Fantastic advice.

Clare Josa
Thank you for an excellent session. Allowing Anonymous is a great idea. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Janet, and everybody who's joined us live. I hope that's inspired you today. And I'd love to hear from you as we wrap up your one thing. You're going to do what you want, action you're going to take as a result of the session. And Janet, if people want to connect with you, is it all right if we send them over to find you on LinkedIn or do you have a way?

Janet Hitchen
Let's do LinkedIn. It's nice and easy.

Clare Josa
Read it. I'll make sure that your LinkedIn link is below the reply on this. Thank you, everybody, today. Thank you so much for sharing your time and your wisdom and your inspiration. And I can't wait to hear what people are going to go and do this stuff. Bless you and thank you so much for being part of this. Thank you, everybody who has joined us live today. And we hope to see you again very soon.

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Why Preventing Burnout Needs To Be At The Heart Of Hybrid – The Three Pillar Approach

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With the news from the UK’s health service that so many of its staff are close to burnout that it is jeopardising its ability to look after patients, describing burnout as being at ’emergency levels’, it is time for all of us to heed this warning sign, before it’s too late.

15+ months of remote working, juggling carer responsibilities, the stress of lockdowns, the anxiety of Covid, and now the threat / promise of returning to the office, and too many people are on their knees. The adrenalin and team spirit that took us through the early stages of the pandemic have fizzled out and people have drained even their reserve batteries for energy.

This chronic stress causes problems with:

Performance – there are neuroscience reasons why stress makes it hard for us to concentrate and perform to our best.
Productivity – chronic stress often triggers latent perfectionism, slowing projects down, and secret procrastination, as people avoid the tasks that cause them anxiety or worry
People – long-term stress damages relationships, both at work and at home, and it can turn a team toxic in just a few weeks
Profit – in addition to the above points, long-term stress kills creativity and makes innovation feel about as safe as a first-timer’s parachute jump

And these factors have also created a perfect storm for Imposter Syndrome. My 2021 Imposter Syndrome Research Study (results due in September) shows that rates and severity have sky-rocketed. And this creates another problem that leads to burnout:

Hypervigilance

Hypervigilance is where we become wired by stress to look for threats, and see them in things that wouldn’t normally trigger fear or anxiety. For example, a throwaway comment from a colleague in a meeting could be taken as personal criticism, or the tone of an email might be misinterpreted as an attack.

There are three ways that hypervigilance interacts with Imposter Syndrome (which affects just over half of your team members daily or regularly) to trigger burnout:

Helping people to come down from the chronic stress they have been experiencing and preventing it from recurring needs to be a non-negotiable part of our hybrid strategies, as people start to return to office working.

But cutting stress levels doesn’t mean everyone will suddenly be lazy and too chilled out.

The opposite of stress isn’t sloth; it’s relaxed alertness, which is the key to peak performance.

There’s more to this than the occasional wellbeing day or an online mindfulness course – they don’t tick the burnout-prevention wellbeing box, no matter how much we pretend they do.

There are three core pillars for achieving this urgently needed reduction in stress levels, to prevent the burnout epidemic that is fast on the heels of Covid:

1. We need to address environmental factors

These are external to the individual and include things like their commute, the office / home-working environment, the equipment people need to do their job well. They can also include their carer responsibilities and sources of stress outside of work.

2. We need to address cultural factors

So many of my clients are beyond exhaustion at the moment because their Teams ‘pinging’ feels like another inbox, to which near-instant responses are expected, or the ‘pinger’ escalates the message to their manager.Many of my clients find they have back-to-back meetings all day, leaving them no time to eat, and getting their ‘normal’ work done can only start when the meetings stop.

Many organisations have allowed employees to blur the boundaries between work and home, making it ok to still be replying to emails at midnight, not cutting workloads when people were struggling.It’s important to ask yourself, without judgement or getting defensive, which practices in your organisation could be triggering stress and anxiety for employees – and what you can do about them.

3. We need to teach people to become naturally resilient

Resilience has, rightfully, become a dirty word. It is seen as the need to bounce back from adversity and to be able to push on through stress and challenges. This actually makes stress worse and can lead to serious mental health issues – as well as the hypervigilance we discussed, above.

Instead, I teach the Natural Resilience Method™. In this, people learn how to calm their nervous system quickly and easily, how to Rewire Your Brain to tame the negative self-talk that can make stress worse, how to reset the hypervigilance response, and how to get back in flow, instead of forcing their way through their day with a furrowed brow and gritted teeth.

When we combine these three pillars, we have an amazing opportunity to shift our teams from surviving to thriving, with the ensuing benefits both for individuals and organisation.

To support you with this, I’m running the 2021 Lockdown Leadership Conference and this year’s theme is Making Hybrid Work.

I’m interviewing experts on everything from preventing burnout to how to create a genuinely inclusive working culture, when teams are split between home and office.

You can find out more and get your ticket (free) here.

And I’d love to hear from you:

What are you doing to prevent burnout in your organisation?

And how do you think we should handle companies where burnout is seen as a badge of honour?

Putting Wellbeing & Preventing Burnout At The Heart Of Your Culture, Without Sacrificing The KPIs

Making Hybrid Work, Soul Led Leaders

Kicking off the 2021 Lockdown Leadership Conference on the theme of Making Hybrid Work, we have a fabulous panel discussion with Nicholas Corrigan of Societé Generale, Liese Lord of The Lightbulb Tree, and Susi Fish of Boult Wade Tennant. We're talking about:

How To Put Wellbeing And Preventing Burnout At The Heart Of Your Culture, Without Sacrificing The KPIs

What you'll cover in this episode
Listen or watch now
Take action now!

What We Cover In This Panel Discussion:

How has lockdown and remote or hybrid work impacting wellbeing and burnout.
What triggers this?
Are there any mistakes that people or organisations are making, without realising, that make this worse?
What have you tried or seen others doing that has worked in helping to bring people's stress levels down?
How can leaders and colleagues support team members in returning to the office or hybrid working, creating a culture of confidence and wellbeing, with work-life balance, without sacrificing the KPIs?
What is your single biggest piece of advice for individuals and organisations who are looking at how to help people to thrive with hybrid working?

Your Panellists:

Liese Lord
Agile Working Consultant

Nick Corrigan
Managing Director,
Societé Generale

Susi Fish

Partner at Boult Wade Tennant

Liese Lord is the found of The Lightbulb Tree and she specialises in agile and hybrid working.

Nicholas Corrigan is the Managing Director and Head of UK and Northern Europe Leveraged Finance at Societé Generale and is also co-head of their Gender Network.

Susi Fish is a Partner and Patent Attorney at Boult Wade Tennant, specialising in aerospace and medical devices. She is also the co-lead for the Women In IP (IP Inclusive) committee.

Listen Now:

Subscribe Via Your Favourite Podcast App

Watch The Interview:

Click To Read The Transcript - Please Forgive Typos!

Note: the video and podcast audio also have captions.

[00:00:05.070] - Clare Josa
So welcome to the very first event in the 2021 Lockdown Leadership Conference, where our core theme is #makinghybridwork. And in this session, I'm running a panel interview on the topic that I think needs to be the absolute core of all of our decisions about how to move from lockdown into either full time back at the office or part time back at the office. That is preventing burnout, a supporting employee well-being. Because any decision that we make is a business that doesn't do that is going to affect performance.

[00:00:36.030] - Clare Josa
It's going to affect mental health. It's going to affect the people in our teams and it's going to affect profits. But how can we make well-being and preventing burnout the core of our decision making without badges of honour for underperformance and sacrificing the happiness? That is exactly what Susi Fish, Nicholas Corrigan and Liese Lord are going to share with you today. So please listen or watch. And then at the end, I'd love to hear from you. Let me know via social media with the hashtag #makinghybridwork and tag me Clare Josa.

[00:01:09.420] - Clare Josa
What is your biggest takeaway from this session? I'll remind you about that at the end. And if you want to catch every every interview and every panel discussion in the Lockdown Leadership Conference running throughout June 2021, you can get your free ticket at makinghybridwork.Com. Good morning and welcome to the first panel discussion for the 2021 Lockdown Leadership Conference. I'm Clare Josa, and I'm joined here today by Nicholas Corrigan, Liese Lord and Susi Fish.

[00:01:42.080] - Clare Josa
And Nick is managing director and head of UK Northern Europe, leveraged finance for Societe Generale, the International Bank. He's got over 25 years experience in the field and he heads up the leveraged finance in UK and Northern Europe. He's responsible for managing the European mid level lending activities as well, and he is co lead for the UK Agenda Network and also Mental Health First Aider. With Liese, she's an agile and hybrid working consultant and founder of The Light Bulb Tree.

[00:02:16.010] - Clare Josa
She has spent many years helping businesses to transform, to become even better places to work. And she has a special passion for hybrid and agile working that she's going to be sharing with us today. Susi Fish is a partner and patent attorney at Beltway Tennant, and she spent a long time specialising in this field in aerospace and medical devices with a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering. And she's also co-lead for the women in IP, the IP Inclusive Committee, which supports women under the IP Inclusive umbrella, is a cross profession nationwide initiative set up to raise awareness of an increased diversity across the IP profession in the UK.

[00:02:55.430] - Clare Josa
So welcome to our panellists and I hope everybody on the recording, everybody who is live, as well, can hear us. If you can give me a hello via the chat and let me know where in the world you are joining us from this morning. And I'm going to dive in with my first question for our panellists, which is, how have you seen lockdown and remote or hybrid working, impacting well-being and burnout? And it's over to our panellists who would like to take this one first.

[00:03:22.250] - Nick Corrigan
I'm happy to jump in. Thank you. Firstly, good morning, everyone. Welcome. Lovely to be here. Thanks for the invite, Clare. I think I want you to join because I think this is a fantastic topic and obviously clearly hugely relevant for today's working practice, from my perspective, in an investment bank. This has changed the world of how we've been working on the hybrid structure. We've been at home for for most of the last 12 months in and out between lockdowns following the government advice.

[00:03:57.470] - Nick Corrigan
And I think the one issue that I would like to point out about how it's impacted work, I think is around a few a few more obvious issues. But one is the commute time. I think when we first went in to the lockdown, I think there was a view that this was actually quite a good thing in a way, because many of us have been travelling quite some time and the commute into the office. And now we felt we had that time for friends and family and time away, which which felt like it freed up an enormous amount of time.

[00:04:38.330] - Nick Corrigan
And that, to an extent, I think has become true. And and it's not unusual, I think, for people to travel an hour into work one way as two hours a day, 10 hours a week, that's that's an extra day a week just in commuting. And if you could convert that into friends, family time, one would consider that to be a positive change. I think what has happened instead to some degree, and this will depend on some institutions, that time has been eroded away and has been given to work time, actually.

[00:05:15.410] - Nick Corrigan
So what has happened for many, I think, is that extra work day a week has been put into work and may be away from family and friends. So what some people are finding, I think, is that you've got six days work in five days. And if you combine that with the social elements of being apart from each other and being isolated, it has a great impact on people. So I think for me, I think that has been one of the most noticeable aspects is a feeling that we had freed up some commute time friends of family, but actually in some cases that has just been transferred into another workday a week.

[00:06:02.510] - Nick Corrigan
Overlay that with the social distancing and some cost pressures in the industry, it has had a significant impact on people.

[00:06:11.750] - Clare Josa
Thank you, Nick. Thank you, Susi. Any thoughts from you on how you've seen lockdown or remote or hybrid working, impacting wellbeing and burnout?

[00:06:20.330] - Susi Fish
I think there's been some positives and some negatives, and it's very easy to kind of focus on one of them. But following on from from something that Nick mentioned. I saw an article in the BBC and I thought it was quite an insightful one and actually had a tag line that said for millions of people working from home has felt more like sleeping in the office, making it harder to switch off. And I think that's been one of the things that I've noticed, not necessarily personally, but I've heard people saying and I think alongside that, I think, as Nic was saying, you know, there's been this this erosion of the extra time from the commute that maybe has fallen into work time.

[00:07:05.120] - Susi Fish
But I think also the positives have been that, you know, personally, I might work early on a Saturday morning and I might send emails to my team early on a Saturday morning. But I make it very clear to them that I'm not expecting them to be working then, because actually what I've done is been able to go and collect my daughter from school at half past three and take her time to have a snack with her. So so although ours may sometimes look longer, that doesn't necessarily mean they are it might mean that you've been able to increase your flexibility in some ways.

[00:07:38.560] - Susi Fish
And I think that that is going to be really important going forward to make that clear that you don't expect that from people because otherwise it can have a real negative impact on people. And I think one of the the real positives of this is that there have been some there's been a lot more openness around mental health. So I've had many more conversations with many more people around mental health that maybe wouldn't have happened if we weren't in lockdown. And I'm hopeful that that will continue going forward.

[00:08:09.490] - Susi Fish
But then again, on that that negative side, I think a lot of the uncertainty around the last 14, 15 months has had a real negative impact. And that's on me personally and on others. And I wonder how that will look going forward. And I think that makes it really key that we're quite intentional about how we move going forward to make sure that we we support people. But yes, so that's kind of how I see it. There are positives and negatives and it's really important to be open about those.

[00:08:42.580] - Clare Josa
Thank you, Susi. Liese, how about you?

[00:08:45.920] - Liese Lord
Really great points, and thank you again for the invite. It's great to be here. And Susi and Nick have brought some really good points out that I've definitely seen and also felt myself. So I found talking to other people and myself that particularly look down one, it was almost like we press pause. So we were still working, but we were able to sort of press pause and look at the world differently. We were all going through it together. So we called it the roller coaster ride that changed curve of emotions together and a little bit.

[00:09:18.880] - Liese Lord
But I think because we were all in it together, it was so much easier for us to talk about it and acknowledge that our emotional situation is changing by the minute sometimes. And everybody was in an individual bubble in all of the lockdown's. We've all been in individual bubbles, so our experiences have been slightly different. So our levels of anxiety have been slightly different. Some people have thrived in other people and even those that thrive. We still have this sort of up and down range of reactions.

[00:09:51.940] - Liese Lord
I think I've seen a lot of people working very long hours. It's almost as though we lost the respect for. Time that wasn't work time before. Bear with me just one second. Apology's hay fever and was almost like we lost that respect, so I was talking to two friends who were finding that in with US colleagues meetings of slotting in at 9, 10 o'clock at night or depending on the time zone, early mornings meetings are popping in because we almost had nothing else to do.

[00:10:28.240] - Liese Lord
So some people were good at keeping the boundary and other people felt that they they didn't know how to establish those boundaries. So I think that's a really, really positive thing to take away as we move forward. What do we learn from that? And how do we create new boundaries? Because as we've come in coming out of the restrictions, people are starting to find they want to use time for different things. And there's almost a guilt rising up in some people about, well, I used to work such long hours in lockdown and now I don't want to because I've got other things to do.

[00:11:00.340] - Liese Lord
So I think it's being fair on ourselves. Susi made a really, really good point, something that I used to encourage pre-lockdown when we were changing ways of work. And it's called time chunking. And it's about tapping into your own energy, is tapping into your own needs and doing things that you want to do. So if you've got family, pick them up from school, drop them off, but work in different ways at different times to meet the different tasks.

[00:11:28.670] - Liese Lord
It doesn't have to be crammed into this traditional blocks of time, but as long as other people understand how you're working and there's no obligation on them, I think that's a really good point that Susi made about that. I think the other thing that's going back to the individuality. People's different situations and trying to people, I think initially were very compassionate to each other situations as some people, home schooling, you couldn't avoid it. You could see the children sort of around in the background or the pets walking across the keyboard or whatever was happening.

[00:12:06.290] - Liese Lord
But as we as we move out of restrictions, I think it's respecting that. I think we still got some fluidity needed to react to what we don't know is ahead, whether this tear structure or something else. So I think for leaders that's challenging because we're going through the change ourselves. We're having to support other people and each person's situation is different. There isn't a one size fits all.

[00:12:30.350] - Clare Josa
Brilliant. Thank you, Liese. I've got a question now for those of you watching us live. I'd love to hear from you via the chat. Is in your experience, what are the main triggers, the burnout and overwhelm? What do you see pushing people towards burnout, either in your own organisation or colleagues working for other organisations? Let me know via the chat. And I want to move on to the next question then for our panellists to give you a time to do some typing is are there any mistakes that you've seen organisations or individuals making over the last 15 months that can add to burnout and overwhelm?

[00:13:04.190] - Clare Josa
We've already talked about lack of boundaries and these nine o'clock calls with the states out of our stuff. But is there anything else that you've seen that maybe well-intentioned that has accidentally increased overwhelm? Liese, can I start with you on that one?

[00:13:20.090] - Liese Lord
I think the really big one for me is the dictatorial demand that people will return to the office without actually talking to their employees about how does that impact on them? Because it's not like flicking a switch. Not everybody's situation has eased up enough for them to just go straight back to the the workplace. So I think for me, I've I've seen in a number of places and I get where it's coming from. However, I think it's it's definitely caused resentment, frustration, upset and real worry for people.

[00:14:01.610] - Clare Josa
Absolutely. And Liese, one of the things I know I've definitely seen is where a lot of us, the child care arrangements we had before that allowed us to go into an office still aren't replaced, is still not there. And we need you know, it's almost I don't know if you found this as well, Liese, Nick and Susi, it can feel like a shock of how we used to manage this juggling before. Why can't I do it now?

[00:14:22.010] - Clare Josa
And it's because a lot of the support structure we had around us to allow us to do that juggling isn't there yet. Thank you, Nick. What are your thoughts? Have you seen any sort of well-intentioned stuff that maybe has backfired or any mistakes people have been making trying to prevent burnout for themselves or organisations?

[00:14:40.280] - Nick Corrigan
Yeah, I think it's interesting because initially when we when we started working from home. The level of relationship interaction just fell off the cliff immediately and everyone resorted to emails much of the time and just trying to detail over emails and what we all have understood for quite some time, certainly when it applies to marketing and sort of general relationship building, is that a face to face meeting with somebody is the most powerful tool you have to build a relationship, in my view, at least.

[00:15:20.490] - Nick Corrigan
And sometimes it might be, you know, 10 phone calls that could potentially have the impact of one face to face meeting. And in my mind, maybe 20 or 30 emails before you start hitting the same relationship impact of one face to face meeting. So for us to remove that most powerful tool for relationship building overnight and everyone resorting to emails over the subsequent weeks and months, you know, you really felt that people were were actually isolated. And when you did speak to them, that you could tell that things were little more challenging.

[00:16:01.530] - Nick Corrigan
So the institution, quite rightly, and I did my very best at the time, is to ramp up those phone calls, get the video camera going, try as much as possible to get back to a face to face as best we can with the social media. And that was great, but then I think we tipped over and I hear this a lot from from friends in the industry as well, where there were just so many meetings put in the diary for people that actually, you know, with a very positive view of trying to make everybody feel engaged and together, that it became quite difficult to do the day job because you have so many meetings and calls and and so forth.

[00:16:52.450] - Nick Corrigan
So then for me, there needed to be a balance. And it's very, very difficult. It's it will be a different balance for each organisation and for each person. But try to find that optimum position between the phone calls, the meetings, the emails to try and and check in with people, because I think initially it took quite some time for people to realise, oh, I haven't spoken to this person for two weeks and they're my team.

[00:17:22.090] - Nick Corrigan
This is this is crazy. Typically, I would be speaking to them every day, just walking by the desk or by the coffee machine or whatever it might be. And so you need to be actually as a manager, I think, very regimented. And it sounds possibly too much. But you really need to be aware of how many times you're interacting with members of your team to make sure that you don't get to a point where you really haven't spoken to somebody for two or three weeks.

[00:17:48.520] - Nick Corrigan
And that can happen in this environment. And that I think when we move to more hybrid arrangement where we're in the office a couple of days a week. Three days a week and a home between the two, it will become a lot easier. But that for me has been some of the, you know, the difficulties of making this work from home. Finding that balance to make sure people are left out across the team and obviously even more difficult when you're managing significant numbers of people, I think.

[00:18:26.860] - Nick Corrigan
But that that really should be the role of the manager, I think, to make sure that you cover everybody.

[00:18:32.800] - Clare Josa
Thank you, Nick. Thank you. And Susi, what are your thoughts on this one? Any mistakes that you've seen? Well, even with the best of intentions, I think mine are very similar to Nick's. So the email inbox has become you know, we talk about triggers. My email inbox is my big trigger, to be honest, and the meetings. And I think one of the things I did very early on in lockdown, in fact, on day one of lockdown was set up a twice a weekly meeting for my team on Zoom, making very clear that it wasn't mandated.

[00:19:06.970] - Clare Josa
But actually that was that was a really helpful thing. And hopefully that has been helpful and not not a negative impact. But one of the things around meetings and this is less in my organisation, but I've heard it in others, is people booking in meetings even when people have already had their calendar full. And this then leads into what Nick was talking about is you can spend an entire day in meetings. Sometimes you're supposed to be in two or three at the same time, and then you're supposed to do your day job.

[00:19:36.880] - Clare Josa
And when are you doing that? And I think, you know, I'm not sure. And I have asked other people it is not my speciality, but Outlook doesn't seem to have this kind of thing where it says, actually, you can't book that person there. They're already busy. Stop it. You know, for example, my my husband doesn't work on a Friday and he regularly has three or four meetings booked in on a Friday. And you know that that's somebody's not looking.

[00:20:05.200] - Clare Josa
And and I think that is something that has been a real difficulty throughout this. I think meetings are great. And I think, you know, the the Zoom has been amazing. But but booking people into meetings when they're already in a meeting or when they are booked out is focus. Time is not helpful. And I have heard of that a number of times.

[00:20:27.310] - Clare Josa
Absolutely. Thank you for that, Susi. And yeah, I mean, what you're saying about your email inbox, one of the things a lot of my clients are finding, and it's actually come up in the comments here, is that you teams, for example, has become another email box. There's no opportunity to switch it off. There's an organisation I've been running a leadership development programme with to prevent burnout. And one of their biggest triggers for burnout is actually the constant pinging from teams which they're not allowed to turn off.

[00:20:52.150] - Clare Josa
And it can be 50 or 60 times an hour. And if somebody doesn't respond to that ping within ten minutes, it gets escalated to their manager and then the director and everything has suddenly become urgent. We've lost the ability to flow because everybody has been stressed. Yep. So we've got yet teams is great, but constant notifications on my personal phone is very stressful. Some of the other triggers people have listed is not being able to switch off after work.

[00:21:16.960] - Clare Josa
The lines between work and home becoming blurred, frantic juggling of all work and home elements without any downtime. Yeah, the commute. Although it was long, it was a time to decompress the work self-talk before switching to the homes of yet not knottier staff have not had the opportunity to share how they're feeling. So they're feeling isolated and overwhelmed, leading to burnout and not being seen. We need to pick up the phone and ask how you are. And this is a really key thing is sometimes actually picking up a phone rather than scheduling a call.

[00:21:48.040] - Clare Josa
It can actually feel like a relief going back to that old way of communicating instead of being on video. It's that mixing it up. Yeah. Other stuff that we've got through is far too many emails, which, Nick, you mentioned too many meetings. That could be emails. Yeah. Is because we no longer have to put rooms and we don't have to fly people in. It can be too easy to book meetings sometimes with people. Everything defaults to multiples of thirty minutes.

[00:22:14.860] - Clare Josa
So a meeting that you guys have described, you could walk past somebody's desk and it would take two minutes to answer a question, suddenly becomes a 30 minute meeting. And another comment we've got is lack of clear agendas, meetings, meaning you sit there for half an hour. I wonder why am I even here and what have we achieved? Yeah, so it's the really basic stuff that because everybody's been stressed and trying to do things is such an unfamiliar way, has perhaps got lost.

[00:22:39.880] - Clare Josa
It's been adding to the burnout triggers. So thank you. Do keep those comments and ideas coming via the chat as we move on to the next question. So for all the panellists, how can leaders and colleagues support team members in returning to the office or hybrid working, creating a culture of. Wellbeing preventing burnout. Yeah, without this burnout become like a badge of honour with everybody working so hard without sacrificing the CPI's, what sort of things are you recommending?

[00:23:09.860] - Clare Josa
What are you doing yourself? What sort of strategies could we be implementing? And Susi, if I can, I'd like to talk to you, because I've really been enjoying your LinkedIn posts lately where you've been sharing this journey for yourself as an individual with your day to day choices on this. And I know you've got some strategies as well that you've been implementing.

[00:23:29.930] - Susi Fish
Yes, this is something that is really key for me. And I mentioned at the beginning that I'm part of a group called IP Inclusive. And one of the things that they published recently was a top 10 tips into how to return to hybrid working, being inclusive. And we're kind of looking at how we can implement those within my firm and I'm looking at how I can implement them within my own team. And one of the things that we're looking at is for everybody to have a personal return plan.

[00:24:01.160] - Susi Fish
So with their with their manager to sit down and say how they would like to return. Now, being mindful of the fact there are people who want to come back to the office five days a week, you know, we have people who are back in already five days a week because that suits them. That's what what is better for them. And there are people who may have wanted to move away and therefore may be coming in much less frequently.

[00:24:24.380] - Susi Fish
And so obviously, not everybody will get everything they want. But once we've gone through that, that means that then we can look at the set up of work spaces and so on to accommodate those people. And I think that being open to change, not accepting that this is going to be a fluid process process going forward. And one of the other things I think is really important looking at this is presenteeism and being very wary, not wary. That's the wrong word, making sure that somebody isn't rewarded just for being there all the time.

[00:25:02.660] - Susi Fish
And somebody it's not detrimental if they are not there all the time. And I think that's going to have to be a lot of intentionality around that. And that's something we might come onto to to later. But it's about not making assumptions, you know, not assuming, you know, how people want to come back, you know, not assuming that just because I have two children that I want to be working at home all the time. You know, it's making sure that we challenge those assumptions and actually ask about what people are actually looking for. So that's my initial thought.

[00:25:34.970] - Clare Josa
Thank you, Susi. Quick one for everybody who's watching live. Have you come across organisations actually asking that question of employees, actually asking? I'm not going to name anybody, but let me know by the chat. Has your organisation asked you what you want? Do you know of any organisations that have? Because I'm really curious, is a really important thing to be doing. And I think what's been happening is a lot of people have got groups together that are making these decisions on behalf of people.

[00:26:00.660] - Clare Josa
And what you're describing there, Susi, with that personal plan, obviously accepting that not everybody is going to get everything they asked for, it allows people to feel had to feel they've bought into the Y. Yeah. And to be on board with the next round of decisions. Thank you. Nick, over to you, if I may, with that one.

[00:26:20.510] - Nick Corrigan
Yeah, sure. I mean, to just touch on the last point. Yes. Society in general has asked us in the U.K. what we would like, what the balance should be asking for. And coming up with a strategy, the difference between different teams, client facing middle office, back office, so forth, as to what works for everybody is that which I think is exactly the right way to go about the subject. I'm very pleased. I'm very pleased to say.

[00:26:50.420] - Nick Corrigan
And that's developing a work in progress as we as we move through the next few weeks. But from my perspective in in the team, you know, how do we prevent burnout? How do we migrate back to the more hybrid version? You know, I think we've touched on many of the points already. I think when we're at home, video calls are key, less of the emails, less of the meetings that that don't necessarily are not necessarily vital, but also focus on giving people that time, that balance within the old commute time to the work life balance issues.

[00:27:34.100] - Nick Corrigan
Friends and family taking a break for us on the investment banking side, we can work very long hours. That can be some we can work know can be quite tough for a period of time where where there are very strict deadlines. What's critical with that is that there's a period of recovery available for people who have engaged in the. Types of processes, I think one of the most dangerous elements of managing a team is not focussing on what people are doing and just putting them on to one process after another without a break.

[00:28:12.340] - Nick Corrigan
And a constant treadmill of very challenging timelines is is a recipe for disaster. Frankly, that needs to be more thoughtful recovery time for people. And that's all very easy to say in today's environment. The reality is it's extremely difficult because resources are tough at the moment. People are very cost conscious and maybe you don't have so many people to allow that process to work as it once did. But nevertheless, there needs to be an understanding that unless you look to provide that recovery time, you may not have a team to worry about in the future.

[00:28:53.960] - Nick Corrigan
So it's vitally important to to worry about that, that the other technique. I mean, I hate to say technique because it sounds a bit to sort of thought through, but I quite like the nonwork phone call from some managers or other colleagues where somebody actually just calls you and they're not talking about work. And I try to do this with some of my phone specifically to ask about everything other than work, not no deal processes. And it doesn't have to be half an hour.

[00:29:29.960] - Nick Corrigan
It can be a relatively short period of time where you just simply asking about how's the family? What did you do the weekend? Because there's so many other avenues to talking about work related issues and dual processes and team meetings and so forth to get that cool out of the blue from the managers. Just asking how you are and refusing to talk about work. You know, if the if the recipient starts trying to move onto a deal process, you move it away and really go at that time very carefully for the non-work issues.

[00:30:07.060] - Nick Corrigan
And I think that's very powerful, actually, and helpful. Certainly I find that helpful when it happens to me and quite reinvigorating actually getting back into things that we feel like some actually, this is a group of human beings working together as a team and not just a production line. I think that's quite an important process. So, yes, that's that's how I would see managing that process back between the balance of the office and home.

[00:30:44.560] - Clare Josa
Thank you, Nick. And that's a really great point you just made there. I know, Liese, as we come to you, it's something you're really passionate about with the leaders being human and not having to leave who we are at the door of the virtual office. Thank you, Nick. Liese, what are your thoughts on this one?

[00:31:00.970] - Liese Lord
Yeah, I absolutely believe that people should be here. And I think what I loved about the initial stages of the first lockdown was how human we were to each other and how compassionate. And I think keeping some of that going forward is really important. So moving forward and and I resist using that go back to the office because I think a lot of organisations are still feeling a little bit wobbly about, you know, do we do we flip back to the way things are or do we look at this opportunity to decide what we could do going forward?

[00:31:34.810] - Liese Lord
And also, I think things still feel unstable for people, so we don't need to find the final solution yet. I think it's it's keeping that curiosity to to try new things and work out what's going to work best for the next phase of beyond that, we can work out when we get to that. And I think that's that's quite a different way of thinking for some of the things that are really helpful to keep connexion and keep our well-being going around using a team centred approach.

[00:32:13.150] - Liese Lord
So you're looking after each other? I use team agreements in more hybrid teams where each team so an organisation might have a backbone of behaviours and guidelines. And this is what we want. We want people to come together with purpose. So come get together. It might be the office. It might not be. There's an awful lot of organisations that have pulled out of their office contracts and leases. And I just thinking, what do we do next?

[00:32:38.920] - Liese Lord
Or that might be reduced space. So it's thinking differently about how do we get together and how do we get together with purpose. So why are we getting together and what do we want to achieve? I think there will be resentment if we all look on laptops, intellect, sit and just do emails. And so we. You need to be thinking about why why are we going the big why? And I'm hearing a lot of people saying that, but there's almost not the bravery to set the organisation.

[00:33:06.920] - Liese Lord
And I think we need to be braver and set the organisation. So why am I coming back? What what's going to be achieved? Because I don't feel life is stable enough yet to understanding what each individual wants, connecting it to a team purpose. So that's where we can be held onto the KPIs we're looking at what does the team deliver? What's my individual contribution to that? And I guess leaders and managers and really good Chicken Way of sort of helping understand how each person is and how how we're delivering to the team objectives.

[00:33:44.390] - Liese Lord
And I think it's something to look forward to if we all know we're coming together to, you know, to work through this particular phase of deals or projects or what have you. There's an excitement about that. We we can overcome our anxiety or resistance or worry about the commute. And that's that for me seems to be the biggest worry for people. Whatever style of commute you have, getting to the work location, being in the work location, like being a home, like it's that bit in the middle that people aren't always that confident about.

[00:34:17.870] - Liese Lord
The other thing and I love I love individual plan. I've been helping organisations and people think about an individual return to work plan, a bit like if you've been off for a while, whether a sabbatical or long term assets or something, a gradual return. So come in for half a day and travel outside of because we are starting to see the Russia come back, travel outside of that, come in for half a day, because actually it's going to exhaust people.

[00:34:48.740] - Liese Lord
So from a well-being perspective, the exhaustion of returning to a commute, whatever our communities, that that will be tiring. I've done that myself and I've you know, I've got a corporate role as one of my business. And the first day I went back into the organisation, workplace was absolutely shastra. It's almost as bad as those back to back Zaim conversations. And you sort of fall onto the sofa at the end of the day after eight hours of meetings.

[00:35:19.010] - Liese Lord
So just being aware of that that transition in our own physical and mental health, it's really exhausting. I'm seeing some organisations use some of this, the travel budgets, the wellbeing budgets, because obviously a lot saved a lot of money on travel because we didn't go anywhere. It's not going anywhere. And they're using it for quite creative well-being. Some are giving people individual options, you know, giving each person this much money to think about how they can support their well-being, because obviously massages in the office, if you're not there, it's not really benefit, Jim.

[00:35:56.180] - Liese Lord
And people still aren't feeling necessarily that motivated about going into an indoor space. I do outdoor big camps now, which is awesome, except in the rain and quite refreshing. So and the other thing I'm working with people on is giving them giving the employees permission to say to the managers, I'm really uncomfortable about this. Can we talk it through? So helping managers coach more, that coaching style of leadership is just talk to people on a human level like you would your family, friends.

[00:36:31.040] - Liese Lord
What can we do to support you? How does that feel? It's just really coaching people through it because everybody is getting different levels of anxiety in different ways and we might not understand what's triggering that. I think that's really quite toxic.

[00:36:45.770] - Clare Josa
That's such a key.

[00:36:48.960] - Liese Lord
And then I think the thing that we spoke about, which I love to share with people, is the battery analogy. So I've got an analogy which I use, which is three batteries as us, as individuals, as our teams and as our organisations. So we have a responsibility to keep ourselves topped up. Whatever our wellbeing needs are and how that looks, we should always try and put ourselves first where we can. So it's the oxygen mask, isn't it?

[00:37:18.530] - Liese Lord
If we if we're not at our best, we can't do our best for anybody. So looking after ourselves and then keeping our team battery tops up, how do we keep connected to our team and charge that up? And then to the organisation is what are we doing to keep up with the organisation? How connected do we feel? How engaged do we feel? If we're not, what do we do about it and who do we need to talk to so and so that's a fantastic strategy that Suzanna, you had something you wanted to add.

[00:37:50.210] - Susi Fish
Yeah, it was following on from something they had mentioned and that I thought was really important around. Be calls about non-work related issues and the meeting I mentioned I'd set up with my team a couple of times a week, I think I've actually got to know my team better over lockdown because those calls, with the exception of maybe in advance, I might say, this is a work related issue that we need to discuss our non-work related. So it's talking about what did I do at weekends and so on.

[00:38:23.500] - Susi Fish
And it's been absolutely lovely, I think, to get to know them more. And I sit within a number of different groups in my firm. And and so I've had those meetings where I'm not the one running them. And so I think I've got to know some people much better through lockdown. And I think that's been lovely because of that intentionality around it, because of that making sure to have conversations that are not just about work related matters. And then as Liese was talking, there was something that really came out around what what people can do to help.

[00:38:58.330] - Susi Fish
And one of the things it's much like when you go on holiday, you know, a lot of it's in the excitement about the planning and it's coming up. And things we've been putting on quite a lot of events. So chocolate tasting, various cocktail making, it's not all around food. And and in the Easter holidays, we had doughnut making. That was for families as well as individuals. And actually having the the the the coming up to that, people talking about it something different and then coming out the other side.

[00:39:32.290] - Susi Fish
And so I'm hopeful that things like that will equally, you know, keep running going forward because we have offices in various places. But you can stay in contact with people in those different offices via these more virtual events. And I think that's been a very useful use of budget that, like they say, may have otherwise been used on on on travel and other events. So, yeah, just taking them from those two points that that were great.

[00:39:59.120] - Susi Fish
So thank you.

[00:40:00.340] - Clare Josa
Thank you. Thank you, Liese.

[00:40:02.320] - Liese Lord
Can I just add. Sorry, that's a really, really good point. Actually, Susi just reminded me because I used to look after well-being in corporate life. We did that intentionally. When we moved to more agile way of working. We set up events both virtually and in person to, you know, for people to enjoy and to connect with. And you literally could hear the bounce, whether it was virtual, whether it was particularly in the office, you could hear the race and people chit chatting about it and particularly food, food.

[00:40:33.490] - Liese Lord
Just seems a winner, doesn't it. When you juggle everybody's intolerances!

[00:40:44.230] - Nick Corrigan
I mean, I jump in on that because I think one of the one of the challenges working from home is you don't necessarily celebrate the successes of a business in the same way that you did when you were in the office, when you got for something great happens, you win a do whatever it might be, a new client and people, you know, get together, maybe have a couple of drinks after work or something, and you're all together. It's it's a great feeling.

[00:41:12.670] - Nick Corrigan
During lockdown, you might have the same situation and people just simply go on to the next situation the next day. You don't get together, you don't go out. And so I think celebrating that success is so important to bringing the team together. So wherever a deal goes the right way or something works in as you as you want it to be as a team, we try and set up a gathering. I know it's horrible, I presume, but we all get together.

[00:41:46.810] - Nick Corrigan
We all talk about the success and, you know, raise the glass to everyone's hard work in the process. And it's really important to do that because it's so easy just to send out the email to everyone saying, well done, great job, everybody. And then suddenly you're immediately into the next process and you feel like you haven't really achieved that much. I've been getting an email, so I think it is really important to celebrate those successes even more so when we're all at home.

[00:42:17.890] - Clare Josa
It's such a good point, Nick, as well. When we're doing hybrid, it's going to be so important to make sure that on the day we're celebrating, those who are not necessarily in the office are also included. It's going to be a new new way of juggling this. And I know for myself, you know, as a keynote speaker, we're after a panel discussion like this, everybody would finish on a high. There'd be a massive round of applause.

[00:42:38.710] - Clare Josa
We'd all go and have a cup of tea or something else together. And for me, I can get to the end of a 90 minute keynote and suddenly it's just silence for about 30 seconds later by the children whinging that I've not given them lunch yet, yeah. And it's so important. I've actually had to put processes in place to create that post event high for me or if we. Doing a launch with my team to create that celebration because we're not together in person to do the hugs and the high fives in the world, that was so great.

[00:43:06.540] - Clare Josa
So it is such an important point is to create intentional spaces, to celebrate what we're achieving together, not just the day to day meetings. Say thank you on that. We've got some great stuff in the comments here about, yes, we're being asked each quarter in our health and safety survey. Yes. Initial discussions happening about returning to work, looking at how to make everybody feel included and to wrap up one minute each piece, because I do want to finish fairly on time.

[00:43:32.220] - Clare Josa
If we kind of want to honour your time and everybody's time. If you had a time machine and you could zoom forward to a year from now learning what we will have learnt by then. What advice would you give people today on how to prevent burnout, how to foster well-being without sacrificing the KPIs? Just one minute each list. Could I start with you, please?

[00:43:54.630] - Liese Lord
I think for me it's using the power of pause. There's very few things that we need to rush into. It's it's for it's talking to people involving them and helping people understand what good, well-paying looks like. And that's a top priority for the organisation. And enmeshing that all the way through everything, so I think that's take the time to consider each step would be the advice for today.

[00:44:27.040] - Clare Josa
Thank you so much, Nick. May I come to you?

[00:44:31.720] - Nick Corrigan
I would hope that these types of discussions generate lessons for organisations. So, you know, in a year's time, if we are all going back to the office five days a week and everyone still back to the commute and time away from friends and family, I think that would be disappointing. I'd like to to hope that we do move into a hybrid environment. There is more working from home because it's so beneficial in so many great ways. Yes, there are costs and we covered a number of those today, but we haven't really touched on the benefits of working from home can provide around childcare, friends and family issues time away from the northern line.

[00:45:16.750] - Nick Corrigan
You know, there are some great things. So I'm hoping in a year's time we are in that hybrid environment and the best way that works for every individual and every organisation. And we learn about looking after people when they're not in the office, the mental health aspects that we that we've covered as well. So we find the best of both worlds because it's as in many times in life, there's always the balance between the two. It's never one or the other typically.

[00:45:46.990] - Nick Corrigan
And there's some great things to be had with the office and sorts some great things and vice versa with work. And we can find that optimum balance between the two. I think a lot of people will be a great deal happier with their careers and it will lead to greater levels of retention and well-being in the office. So fingers crossed, that's where that's where we are in a year's time.

[00:46:13.330] - Clare Josa
Thank you, Nick and Susi, over to you.

[00:46:16.390] - Susi Fish
Yes, I have a couple of things. I think one is to start setting up the hybrid now to make sure that there are maybe guidelines put in place for people running high hybrid meetings not to be trying to think of that when we are actually in the situation, but to be looking at it in advance, you know, making sure that the screens are in place, the meeting rooms are ready. And alongside that, if if people are wanting to have people coming back into the office, think about how we want that to look, you know, make that office somewhere that you want people to that people will want to come into.

[00:46:50.950] - Susi Fish
So really think about that now so that along that line of what we were talking about, about maybe having teams coming in for reasons do we have rooms there that you can get people to have coffees delivered into and, you know, those kind of things, nice breakout spaces. But to do that now, to start looking at it now rather than in a year's time when everybody is just coming back, as Nick said, hopefully not into five days a week, because that's how it works, because things aren't set up.

[00:47:19.930] - Susi Fish
So I think we should be looking at that now. But I'm really excited to see how this goes forward. And I'm really hopeful that it will end up in a situation where everybody can have things that work for them individually. And thank you, guys. Thank you for inviting me today.

[00:47:34.870] - Clare Josa
Thank you so much. And quick bit of audience participation as we wrap up. I'd love to hear from you over on social media, whether that's Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn using the hashtag #makinghybridwork. What is your one big takeaway from this panel discussion today? Take me. I'll make sure I pass your wonderful feedback on onto our brilliant speakers. So that's #makinghybridwork is the hashtag and Tagami Clare Josa. What is your biggest takeaway today? What action are you going to take?

[00:48:04.660] - Clare Josa
Thank you so much to Liese, Nick and Susi for giving your time today to help to inspire people to share your experiences. I have got so many notes. This has been a great session. So I know everybody that's been watching this live or who gets the replay is going to find insights and actionable inspiration. In the replay page, you'll find details of how to connect with Susi, Nick and Liese. If you want to, please pass them on a thank you and thank you to all of you for helping us to launch the Lockdown Leadership Conference.

[00:48:36.700] - Clare Josa
It's been wonderful to get to spend time with you today. And thank you for sharing your time.

[00:48:41.110] - Nick Corrigan
Thank you. Pleasure. Thank you.

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