Emerging themes for 2024

Business Partnering.......and a return to the office?

It’s great to get back into the swing of things as the short, dark days of January begin to lift.? We hosted our CPO Zoom roundtable last week and were delighted to be joined by familiar faces and some new ones. What struck me the most, was the overwhelming consensus that to achieve their numerous objectives this year, our CPO’s stated Business Partnering will be the key to success. The strength of relationships and trust with stakeholders. Get that right and you are well on the way to delivering the hard metrics required of procurement by the CFO and Board. What then follows, as I am seeing more and more frequently and explicitly from my clients when looking to appoint new leadership, is the clear expectation of time present in the HQ and key locations of companies, in person. Leadership needs to be visible, not remote. What’s more, this is not about lack of trust, or even individual performance. It is about stepping out of a silo and building a culture, playing a wider role in the fabric of company life, and being around for others to learn from. Whilst companies may be having a harder time luring existing employees back to the office, they are not afraid to state very clearly expectations of new hires. Whilst nobody (or very few) is insisting on a return to 5 days in the office, they are increasingly clear that 2-3 (and preferably 3) is expected, for the long term, not just the first 6-12 months until you are familiar with the business. The flexibility of hybrid and remote working led some to state “the office is dead”. My observations almost 4 years on from the start of the Covid Pandemic, is that in many roles, and especially managerial and leadership roles, relationships have become more distant, and the ties that bind colleagues have become weakened when there isn’t enough regular time spent in person to foster culture and drive productivity at an enterprise level. I am observing that businesses are starting to flex this muscle again, no longer fearful that they will lose talent to other organisations that offer complete flexibility or remote working. And that this will gather pace and continued debate through 2024.

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This is underlined by a recent legal case in the UK and reported in The Times over the weekend.? A manager at the Financial Conduct Authority, whose performance record had been exemplary whilst working from home, was defeated on their right to work from home. According to the judgment, it was said that “while the manager’s work was good, there were six reasons why it would be better if they were in the office. They would be better at meeting and welcoming new members to the team, particularly during “department day” when the line manager wanted staff to spend that day together. Further, by working from home, they would be less effective in internal meetings, such as the weekly “cascade meeting”, and leadership sessions where senior bosses met to discuss key issues. They would also perform better if they turned up in person to events such as conferences, and be more effective at in-house training”. The full article can be found here https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/what-does-the-future-hold-for-working-from-home-gf8f2z7n3

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From the employee/candidate perspective and exacerbated by the cost of living crisis, the acceptance of the cost of getting to work is also changing. For some, it is no longer seen as a fixed cost and one we just accepted, and is now a variable one which we are acutely aware of. As a consequence, companies insisting on presence in certain locations for new hires are being requested to pay for this, either in salary or in additional expenses. The laws of demand and supply will settle this one.

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Where does this leave us? Whilst for every article and argument for more time spent in person in the office, there is one for the continuation of remote working. My sense however, is that 2024 will see a shift to office based roles under pressure to move back to being at least 50% office/key site based. Candidate pools and hiring preferences will become more focused on a specific geographies to enable this, ?or a requirement to relocate.? Successful business partnering and leadership depend on it. ?

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