Hybrid working is here to stay, and organisations have to change to be more innovative and flexible. Those are among the key findings to emerge from a Microsoft research project on the future of work. The research also found that an innovative culture was more important than ever for organisations adapting to disruption.
“As part of the project we spoke to 500 employees and 108 managers in Ireland in August,” says Aisling Curtis, commercial director with Microsoft Ireland. “One third of the business leaders surveyed said getting their culture right was their number one priority while 76 per cent of them see having an innovative culture as key to retaining talent.”
Almost every business surveyed has had to adopt new ways of working. “Managers expect 91 per cent of the workforce to continue working remotely at least one day a week once the pandemic is over while 45 per cent of employees said they will continue to work remotely after the pandemic.”
Attitudes towards remote working have changed with 71 per cent of business leaders seeing it as positive and eight out of ten saying productivity was equal to or better than office-based work. “Almost 20 per cent expect productivity gains of more than 20 per cent,” adds Curtis.
Talent attraction and retention are among the key benefits of remote working with over 68 per cent of leaders seeing it as a powerful way to help retain their best workers. In addition, 74 per cent said they expect remote working policies to improve their employer value proposition in attracting talent.
An innovative culture is important to reap the full rewards of the change, says Curtis. “In an innovative culture, workers are far more likely to feel empowered to make decisions and approach their jobs in a way that works best for them. They can make a decision without a manager’s involvement or approval and they also feel it’s okay to make mistakes. But it takes more effort and energy to have an innovative culture in a remote setting.”
Benefits stretch far beyond productivity and talent attraction and can include step change innovation in sectors such as education. “This is a big moment of change in teaching,” says Gerard Culley, director of information technology at University College Cork (UCC). “Teaching is largely unchanged in a hundred years. A student in a class at the beginning of the 20th century wouldn’t see much difference in a classroom at the beginning of the 21st century.”
But change is coming as a result to the shift to digital classrooms and remote learning. “Technology is bringing about a transformation of the learning experience. Instead of spending half the class delivering content to students, teachers are giving them sight of it in advance. That gives students the ability to comment and discuss the content in class and break out into small groups to work on it. Classroom time is being used for a much richer experience. Covid-19 and technology are changing the pedagogy, the method of teaching. The habits and skills we have learned during the pandemic are never going to go back into the closet again.”
Another organisation to embrace innovation while shifting to a remote working model is Greyhound Recycling. “We had started the digital transformation process well before the pandemic,” says chief growth officer Neill Ryan. “We were coming to the end of the implementation process in March when we had to move quickly to remote working. We had more than 50 staff working in our contact centre and that’s now down to a handful. We are now in a place where remote working is nearly the norm. The plan for the moment is to be completely remote for as long as this thing lasts. If we do go back it will be in a mixed way of working. Productivity has been very good. As you can imagine with a lot more people at home, our calls and queries increased. Peak volumes almost doubled and we were able to handle that.”
The company is now investing in more technology to support the new way of working. “We have team leaders who used to walk the floor listening in on calls and were able to help agents if they thought they needed it,” Ryan explains. “Obviously, they can’t do that anymore, so we need technology that allows team leaders to drop in and out of calls and so on.”
Dealing with the sense of isolation people can feel when remote working was another issue. “We asked people to stop emailing and direct messaging if they can avoid it and to put everything up on Microsoft Teams instead. That lets everyone share and collaborate on issues and feel more part of a team. We live inside Teams now and it has really helped us to come together.”
The company continues to innovate and is making some radical changes at the moment and expanding outside of waste. “We are going to move into gigabit broadband directly into people’s homes,” says Ryan. “That’s our first foray into the new world of utilities. We are partnering with BT on that new combination offer of waste and wifi. As a completely digital company with Microsoft technology at its heart it is much easier for us to put combination offers like that together for our customers.”
The central role of technology in the response to Covid-19 is acknowledged by Gerard Curley. “Technology is the biggest industry in the world because it brings people together,” he says. “Covid-19 brought it to the forefront. Staff communication has become even more important and we run weekly town hall meetings for people to chat about different issues. People are impacted differently by remote working. Some people need communications and interaction more than others and over-communication can be the best option. People aren’t worried about the technology itself anymore, it tends to work, and people have settled into using it quite well. The main challenge now is to drive engagement more.”
In this context, Aisling Curtis points to the challenge facing many managers in the current environment. “For many of them, this year marked the first time they were responsible for leading people who were working remotely. More than half of them said they feel they have not yet effectively learned how to delegate and empower virtual teams and 51 per cent feel they have not effectively learned how to be empathetic with their teams. Managers need to be supported in leading remote teams.”
She concludes by stressing the importance of empathy. “It goes hand in hand with innovation. Making sure that policies and procedures are working for everyone is so important. Everyone is learning in the new environment and people should feel empowered to proactively suggest new solutions to challenges and ideas for more effective ways working. Bringing everyone on that journey is so important.”