A remote new world: if flexible working is easy, why didn't we do it years ago?

 Dr Juliet Andrews

Almost overnight, organisations across the world have changed where, how and when people work, and under pressure, have done it with relatively little deliberate design.

As the pandemic fluctuates, one of the first questions we often hear in meetings is: “Are you back in the office yet?” The underlying sentiment of this question seems to be that we are craving a return to business as usual and by that we mean a ‘place’ to go, with work routines we can understand and predict.

It also begs the question: as leaders, do we feel we have more control when we work in close proximity to our teams? Even though all the research on flexible work and productivity disproves it, the notion of ‘presenteeism’ has long been a hurdle to remote working. Many leaders need to see their people in the workplace to give them comfort they are productive.

 After all, day-to-day interactions and observations – with a client, manager, or other staff – are a longstanding measure of “work” which help us understand what everyone else is doing, and how they are doing it. It is understandable, then, that leaders rely on these observations to determine what their staff do well and make note of areas where help might be required.

 Lending more weight to the correlation between flexibility and engagement, according to the EY Megatrends 2020 and beyond report, adaptive workforces, which are critical to success into the future, will be achieved by enabling teaming in ways that are increasingly flexible.

The trust issue

Working remotely requires high levels of trust that people will do their required work to an acceptable quality level – it shifts the measurement of performance from outputs to outcomes, often leaving the worker to decide how to achieve the task with minimal guidance. Prior to COVID-19, some team leaders struggled with the trust required to support their team without micro-management of outputs, and culturally many organisations have been a long way from truly supporting a flexible workforce.

As some teams begin to return to the workplace, we are seeing a blend of on-site staff and remote workers. Deliberate interventions will be required to organise how these physically-separated teams can best work together, so that all team members have equitable opportunity for contribution. For instance, without agreed changes to ways of working and protocols, we may go back to meetings where those on site are 'in control' of the meeting agenda and outcome and those joining remotely miss the side conversations and pre and post conference decisions taking place between those who are physically together. It wasn't that long ago when we all experienced the end of the meeting when we had been unable to get a word in, and "sorry, those on the phone - anything to add?"

Furthermore, when the workplace extends to the home, workplace health and safety (WHS) management becomes more complicated. Organisations whose policies require them to check home offices to ensure they comply with WHS standards are facing a significant workload if they need to check an increasing number and spread of remote work locations. And, will employers be responsible for furnishing home offices?

Business as unusual

Our understanding of workplace flexibility has to evolve beyond some of our deeply held constructs of work – these are invented constructs and we can reinvent them – but it will require consideration of a many parts of our operating environment.

The practicalities of managing a team of dispersed workers will require careful planning around task distribution, job design, workforce planning, technology, leadership, capability development and total reward, as well as customer relationship management. Before COVID-19, for many organisations these workforce management activities were not yet mature, and while this incredible social experiment has forced us to quickly adapt, to sustain these ways of working over time, we need to start paying attention to these elements far more closely. The sum of these will play out in our organisational culture - will it strengthen or fragment in this future?

For example, most jobs evolve organically over time, with little attention to design and allocation of tasks in a systemic way. In working remotely, many tasks have been added and some have been removed – how many of us have dedicated any time to the structure of jobs in this new world, to preserve capacity, productivity and effective use of time. Further, what about considerations of ‘online presenteeism’ replacing physical presence? What guidance do workers and leaders need to maintain the right balance between availability online and preservation of personal time and much needed time offline? As noted in the EY Megatrends report, while the benefits of technology in helping us work flexibly is incredible, the risk continues to be the erosion of boundaries around reasonable working hours.

To further compound matters, visibility with senior people has long been perceived as part and parcel of laying the pathway to opportunity and promotion. It will be a challenge for managers to equitably manage progression between those they see frequently (either virtually or in person), and those they see less frequently. These implicit biases may become a motivating factor for people choosing to return to the workplace to be ‘visible’ even if they would prefer to work from home.

New opportunities for all

The benefits of work flexibility are already well-known. Research suggests we are more productive, engaged and happier when we have greater choice of where, how and when we work. We know that achieving work-life balance also leads to positive diversity and equity outcomes.

The EY Megatrends report notes that we work (and live) in a world whose social fabric is strengthened by diversity. Yet there are people with diverse responsibilities and situations (e.g. caring roles, location of home to work, transport, technology) for whom some roles were already difficult to fulfill because our organisations did not truly enable flexibility, despite everything the policy described as possible. Will the move to remote work make these roles any more accessible to these segments of the population if we don’t consider more than just the location of work in our design?

We must also remind ourselves that some flexibility in the workforce is a very different proposition to an entire workforce changing the way it works. This could bring incredible opportunity and innovation to our work, but only if we think through these considerations.

More than a COVID-19 problem

While the COVID-19 pandemic has led to mandated remote work for many, 30 per cent of workers were working from home at least some of the time pre-coronavirus. At that time, McCrindle Research identified 80 per cent of surveyed employees would favour employers that offered work flexibility. Post-coronavirus, that number is expected to shift to 90 per cent, with 78 per cent of surveyed Australians agreeing that remote working will be the new norm.

The EY Megatrends report notes that while the technology that can facilitate work flexibility has been available for years, adoption of remote-working practices has been patchy. So, is work flexibility at scale genuinely sustainable and something employers want to integrate long-term, or will we drift back to our known habits when the pandemic is behind us?

The report goes on to say that while leaders understand that employee health and wellbeing is part of management responsibility, the rise of loneliness is the next critical area of attention. And remote working can isolate team members from one another. We know that people are missing the ability to learn from those around them and they are craving the social side of work. Human beings are, after all, fundamentally social animals and need connection with others. The workplace has always played an important part in that social fabric and we need to think about how it can be used to revitalise it.

 Ultimately, it’s only by addressing these issues and implementing appropriate design steps that work flexibility can match up with its potential. We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to really reshape how we work, but only if we do it deliberately and learn from what we have tried before.

 EY Megatrends expose leaders to trends and forces far outside their usual scope of analysis, reducing the risk of missing the next ‘big thing’. Join the conversation. #BetterWorkingWorld.

 The views reflected in this article are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the global EY organisation or its member firms.