Looking after your remote teams

you you okay good afternoon everyone I'm going
to get started and I hope you're all doing well and I hope that if you're watching this live that you managed to
have a good break over the weekend my name is Katie Jacobs I work at the CI PD my focus is HR
leaders but I've also been hosting the CI APD's coronavirus webinar series and this afternoon we're going to be
discussing how HR professionals can best look after people who are working from
home during this pandemic joining me today I'm delighted we've got a really
fantastic panel if we go to the next slide you see who they are we've got
Peter cheese CEO CIPD got Carrie Cooper professor of organizational psychology
at Manchester Business School he's also CIPD president and an all-round well-being guru we've got Helen Matthews chief people
officer at advertising agency Ogilvy and Andrew Willis head of legal and advisory
at HR inform the CIP DS employment law resource and as ever andrew is reliably
on hand to provide the answers to any tricky legal questions now before we
dive into the topic this afternoon just going to do some quick housekeeping please be aware that this session will
be recorded it will be available on demand by the webinar section of the CIO
PD website please do feel free to share it with your peers and colleagues you can also access recordings of our
previous webinars there and sign up for future sessions we're running two webinars a week at the moment on all
sorts of coronavirus related topics now if you want to submit questions during
the webinar could I ask you please to use the Q&A tab which you should be able to see bottom of your screen please
don't use the chat box for questions we don't tend to monitor the chat box and it's a little bit distracting if it pops
up all the time all attendees are muted so any questions need to be submitted by typing them into the Q&A box and we're
also going to be addressing some questions that we got submitted in advance just a reminder that for any
legal advice CIPD members can call our HR inform helpline that's available 24/7
and you get an individual response and we're updating the FA cues and resources on
our website all the time as new information becomes available you can head to the CIPD coronavirus hub come on
so let's get started Kovach 19 has bought on a mass in forced
working from home experiment anyone who's not classed as a key worker has been working from home for well over a
month now and we're all in different situations from those of us balancing working at
home with caring responsibilities to those living alone and feeling increasingly isolated as lockdown
continues for many of us lockdown is having an impact on many aspects of our
well-being from our physical and mental health to areas like social and financial well-being so how can HR teams
best support the health and well-being of people working remotely keeping people happy healthy and engaged and
creating the best conditions for performance even in this truly bizarre and unprecedented situation that's what
our experts are going to consider today offering practical advice and contextualized examples so I'll just
quickly take you through the running order colette stop Peters gonna set some context and he's going to share some
thoughts about the value of prioritizing well-being for the people perfection after that Carrie will give a short
presentation on supporting well-being remotely including offering top tips for
working remotely personally and for managing remote workers Helen will then
give a case study sharing what ocol be are doing to support well-being among its remote workforce and we're then
gonna move on to Q&A Anne and we'll be on hand as well in case any of those questions need a legal
perspective so I'm gonna mute myself now I'm gonna hand over to Peter to give a
bit more of the context thank you Peter Thank You Katie and good afternoon everybody thank you again for joining
this webinar and also huge thanks to Carrie in to Helen for joining us on this and Andrew is always providing
their legal their guidance and some of the questions that may come up happen as Katie said you know that we are in what
has been described as the bigger time working experiment ever I was just reflecting on some of the ONS
stats that were recently published on how things have changed across the workforce over these last few months and
they estimate that almost half the workforce is now working from home and yeah I think our experience might it's
just even slightly higher than that but it's interesting to compare it to the stats from previously which was one in
20 so it's not like remote working as an entirely new phenomenon but it's very clear this is much much bigger than
anything we've experienced before if it does of course and that instantly amounts to about 14 to 15 million
workers it does vary across sectors and so we know and I find this quite
interesting the many of the essential jobs that are performed in the economy
as we now understand them of course are not jobs that are easily done working remotely so it does vary across sectors
and there's big variation in places like financial services but obviously things are healthcare and something like a
quarter of businesses are temporarily closed and from our own surveys over 50
percent of organizations and we're going to see what that really does turn out today with the opening before by HMRC
but over 50 percent of organisations expecting to follow a hat will have done some fellow and and but they're also
couples many organizations with reducing staff levels and decreasing hours so it's not like furloughing is the only
way to respond to all of this but there are still many businesses are saying that they are carrying on and some of
course seeing massively increased demand as well so so this this whole will debate about how we're supporting remote
workers how the crisis is affecting different organisations of course is there are lots of different pictures and
lots of different stories and the other big part of this and the challenge that government of course is facing all the
time has had a triage if you well between their protecting us all not you know the constraining movement and so
that we can protect our people more from the social issues which we'll talk about a bit past and all of this so not only
are we in remote working but we are in remote working in some pretty peculiar circumstances with the lockdown and so
and other things and of course the effect on the economy which is profound
already and a lot of the estimates on the economic impact of this are huge and unprecedented you know 10 20 30 even
percent drops in GDP in a short period of time and even there we most
economists expect us to recover they have once said that the lockdowns begin to lift to some level there will still
be a sustained economic impact and many jobs last during this crisis so to frame
it also in what's important them in well-being for us has always been a very central subject we have often talked
about well-being as being one of the most important outcomes of work and even
if I go back to the history of the CIPD as some of you may recall we were the welfare workers Association started over
just a just over a hundred years ago in organizations that roundtree and Cadbury's Libre Brothers and so on all
organizations which is still here today where they seem to put the idea that workers welfare and well-being very much
central so their philosophy of the work now arguably we lost sight of an awful
lot of that in recent decades when it seemed to be that what we most reflect reflected on particularly in your quoted
companies and private enterprise there's more about productivity and making money rather than necessarily how well we're
looking after our people so this Christ this is I think in a positive way in many ways it has certainly called out
this idea of well-being much more strongly and from our own surveys again we know that its top of the list of many
organizations concerns about 70% of people that we've surveyed said this is the top of their list incentives of the
challenges which they're needing to address and understand they need to address is how they support their work
because in these very difficult times and in particular how they support people when they're remote working and
although as I said at the beginning some people have had experience of remote working we shouldn't forget that most
people happened and indeed we've lived through a long culture and business of
presenteeism where many people may have been able to work from home but are concerned because the cultures of our
organizations often to some extend the meeting against that so again this is an
opportunity through this crisis is to show that we can work in home we can work in more flexible ways and that
should be something that we take forwards and whatever emerges after this crisis and it's not to say that
everybody should work from home obviously but it is to recognize that we can work more flexibly and we can by
doing that give more people more opportunities to work in these different ways to bounce the different needs of
their lives hopefully it's to reduce stress and to find that indeed you know work is not all dictated by just being aware or in a
place of work I should say um but I think the other thing that we're also learning and this is perhaps part of
peculiar circumstance of all of this is that actually the social side of work is
really really important human beings are social animals at the end of the day and and what has also been encouraging in
terms of what we efforts they have the mob will talk a bit more about this webinar is that through this time of group of know working and home working
we have found all sorts of different ways to connect to all sorts of different ways in which we can check in with people all the ways in which we're
asking people how they're feeling all the ways in which we're using technology not just to work but took the keep
connected socially and I think that is also a fantastic recognition of what is
important about work but it is not just what you do it's how you connect a great social connection and how you heck
create healthy and supportive cultures which are the absolute roots and basis of well-being so that's probably enough
for me just in terms of context there we go out some great contributions obviously carrying this team we've
worked with a great deal over the years on the subject of well-being and we've been issuing guidance on remote working
and how to support remote working teams and Kerry's going to take us through
some of that and then we'll hear from Helen in some very direct examples of how they've been dealing with it at
Ogilvy it's okay so I'm going to hand back to you to so you can facilitate a conversation and then pass on to thank
you thank you very much Peter for that really great context setting and so
Kerry I'm always peel when I introduce you this is a man that needs no introduction when we're talking about
all things well being so if I could hand over to you to give a sense of what
organizations should be doing to support health and well-being remotely thanks Katie thank you very much welcome
everybody at lunchtime we have the next slide please Katie that's great what I did is I broken it down into two bits
one of the bit is tips for you as a remote worker and then tips about what
you might consider managing people who are working remotely now some of these
you think look kind of silly get dressed in the morning but guess what I just talked to somebody who actually did not
a video remote not a zoom remote meeting but did it by audio and he had his pee
jams on while he did it I was talking I said don't do that get dressed start the day this is Monday to Friday
the other thing about finding a suitable place to work you think that's well place but the Institute of Employment
studies found last week in a big survey they did that there was a massive increase in musculoskeletal problems
backache and so on because people weren't finding the right places to work and everything else so think about the
right space but I think what's really important in this area is having a
routine of one sort or another now this routine is going to be weird because we have those funny little things running
around our house called children quite a few of you have children so there's homeschooling going on
there's two people two out of every three families are working families so we have two people trying to do their
work who's gonna do what so planning a routine I think is really quite important it may mean by the way you
can't do a nine-to-five because if you're doing three hours of home schooling one of you in the morning and
the other one in the after in the afternoon or something like that you may one of you or most both of you may have
to work at night so but there has to be some kind of structured people I think need that kind of structure when it
comes to setting the ground rules I call it like the military call it rules of engagement I think these are really
important establishing roles by the way here's where I think we could really gain from this assigned as Peter said
flexible working I think it's now gonna happen big time a study I big study I did years
ago with working families found that men didn't apply for flexible working because they felt that they would that
would show that they weren't committed to the organization so now men we can see now the technology is available
wouldn't it be nice the other thing we could learn it's not just flexible working but maybe men should be playing
a more substantial role in the family than they have in the past I don't think they have played a major role the
evidence is clear that we have a new man but I think he's in Aberdeen at the moment touring the country so I think we
need more we need men to think about the role fees to be home and work as well so
in the course of having structured staying active exercise every morning from 7:00 to 9:00 my wife and I get out
we walk two miles mile one way in a mile back through a farm and you need to have
exercise sometime during the day either early lunchtime or an evening but you need the exercise so that's really
important so staying physically active but also cognitively active by the way I think it's also quite important which
means that you might consider doing something different that you haven't done the reality is we won't
our entry won't be that full it just won't be and because it's not that full and because you're not commuting you
have disposable time so learn a language think about something to do with work that you need that you hadn't had time
to think about before something novel some new products some service something about it
or learning a language or whatever so keeping physically active but would cognitively acted as well and then I
have down here on my list news junkie please stop watching the news do the six
o'clock news yeah 15 minutes of what you need to hear about stop it because you
know what it's just constant negative drip and it is affecting people emotionality I've been talking to my
neighbors on the road of course physically distancing by the way somebody Peter said is important whoever
came up with a notion of social distancing doesn't understand you human behavior they should say physical
distancing but social connection that really important so I think staying away
from the news a bit staying connected and that means social context that
doesn't mean just your work context of course you do the colleagues the people you like don't go to the people or our
glass and half-empty types stay with the people you like you have to be connected with and avoid the people who are kind
of negative in life we always get those kind of people but staying connected I think is important that's the way you
can kind of take control of things and the reason I say email is not always the
answer I'm very worried when we do emails we sometimes because it's so telegraphic say things we regret saying
and when you're in an office you can try to deal with that eyeball to eyeball but
to be honest with you when you're working remotely it's very difficult to do it be very careful what you say to
people on email anything that is potentially high-risk or there's a
potential conflict associated with it don't do that call them up or do FaceTime do it some
other way try not to do it by email I think that reduce a problem and the last one is reflecting on your work-life by
the way I think a lot of people are doing that right now I've talked to colleagues and neighbors and people and
they are all saying what's my career really like you know what should what
should I do with my job things I should do we have reflection time use it we
don't use it this is a real opportunity to link with your family and have work life not balanced but work-life
integration because we will be working more flexibly in the future Peter's a hundred percent right and and we may
have different priorities now and let's think about those priorities gives you an opportunity to do that just as an
individual am I in the right job sorry to say that but you people will be reflecting it on my on the right sector
is there something else I'd like to do you know this gives us an opportunity I think to reflect on life so those are
just some kind of tips about what you might do just for you as a person but
can we do the next slide that's great now this is about trying to manage people more remotely and now you
should do it now put face safety first is just it's the same thing about
looking at your office space as an individual this is you responsible for
your team who's working remotely do they have everything you need do they have printers do they have paper
to print off think about all those cons things do they have a desk somewhere
do they have appropriate because you know what the IES found that
musculoskeletal the problems were really very very high as well as emotional
problems by the way stress as well work in those conditions and again just like
with the family you're trying to organize your day in some kind of routine I think the same thing applies
to step away from your desk just means you know have a day you know make sure
you have a lunch do you know before you know pre kovat
19:20 people's average lunch was 22 minutes at their desk right well why do
that you have more disposable time have lunch have it with the family you know
dude have a break go in your garden take a walk get outside but have don't burn
yourself out out because I think that is a real worry in this that people are so insecure that they're gonna work through
everything and work into the night and we really need some kind of structures Woody Allen said something really
interesting he says I don't want to achieve immortality through my work I want to achieve it by not dying
so I think it's really important not to burnout and that is a real problem that
we could have minimizing stress that means you set the expectations of what you want and make sure everybody
understands it and don't set expectations that are too high and too
stressful at this point in time you know in any case to be honest to do we don't have as much work to do
but setting the expectations gives people the autonomy that actually the
lockdown is imposing on us in any case you know we're by ourselves we have to manage
this thing this is a good opportunity for managers to learn how to give people
control and autonomy and not to micromanage I think that's really quite critical having a virtual daily huddle
that's coming together as a group that's happening a lot I think I've seen that in all the meetings I've been in Boston
that the people I've talked to and looking at the surveys that are coming out we're holding a lot of team meetings
it might be difficult by the way in the team meetings to actually get a sense of
what people are actually emotionally feeling I'm kind of worried about that I think the evidence again from the IES is
that there is a lot of stress around a lot of worry about will my job be there
when I get back we'll you know it's just job insecurity financial insecurity and
all of that and this is not even talking about furloughing which is another big
issue and how you manage that I think in those scenarios by the way as a manager be very careful how you explain to
people when they're being furloughed why do they're being furloughed and being honest about it because they're gonna
wonder why I've been furloughed but fred is and you have to be really honest and
it's probably because Fred can deliver the revenue and he can do that because
of the nature of the role your role doesn't deliver the revenue but and and then think about what you can do to make
them feel valued that they job is more secure and that it's all about in my
view about for example if you can afford it you pay the additional 20 percent I think that's really important it's
showing you you value them so the 80 percent comes from government you paid the 20 percent or alternative you can't
afford a 20 percent the other option you could do is you could stay I will once we're up and running again and things
are okay and the bottom line is coming through and we'll make your salary up to the way it should have it something that shows that you valued
them by worried in this regard by the way is this requires
very good social and interpersonal skills a lot of EQ emotional
intelligence you have to use it if if managers have nothing else in this
scenario to learn is that is probably your most important thing you now have in your armory and if you don't have it
get it get some training or whatever because you need it because you're dealing with people who are working
remotely you're dealing with people are feeling insecure you're dealing with people who are a bit stressed a lot of
uncertainty and the like and that means you have to communicate a lot that's about fostering relationships
so in the fostering relationships is you can have your Huddle's and get together
but what is really important is you do one to once if I was a line manager
every single day I get in touch with everyone in my to direct reports unless I had a hundred if I have direct reports
you should be touching them every day but not about their work necessarily and that again requires social details
because you don't want them to feel you're micromanaging them that's the critical thing what you want to do is
find out how they're feeling and you know this has got to be done visually because people unconsciously through
their body language their facial expression and the like tell you what they're feeling and you should open it
up and the way you open it up by the way in fostering relationships is you be vulnerable yourself tell them how you're
feeling don't don't hide it you know yeah you know don't try to be the strong man and
a woman be show your vulnerability and people will be vulnerable and will tell
you how they're really feeling you know because we all are feeling strange under these circumstances no way any of us
feel this is normal beige and the uncertainty and how long it's going to go so be vulnerable that helps to foster
relationships the big picture and be prepared to flex but I think everybody is flexing now but
as a manager you you have to show that you're flexing as well that you're being
fairly adaptable you expect other people to do it but I think the
setting expectations and trusting your colleagues a real opportunity for us we've been talking a long time about
people not feeling to have control and autonomy over their job and that by the way it is a leading cause of stress and
remember last year HSE report in terms of sickness absence
long term sickness absence a large it's 57 percent of all sickness absence last
year was due to anxiety depression and stress can you manage him what that must be now if that was before that was pre
kovat 19 so allowing people autonomy trusting them checking up on them by not
checking up on whether delivering or not you'll know that anyway but how they're feeling valuing them making it and
particularly by the way people who've been furloughed you should be calling
them up to do not let them do not leave them alone they're gonna feel be feeling
insecure enough please call them up keep in touch with them get them involved in
meetings that you're having there's nothing wrong with that they can't do the work by law but they can attend the
meetings the Huddle's any meetings you have and that's about being kind and
looking caring about people and you know what since I'm what I have found it's really enlightening for me is how most
of the meetings I've been involved in how people have been more open
and revealing their feelings much more because they were doing it in the home context they're talking about kids and
they're talking about a whole load of things you know I was in a meeting with somebody who's talking about a relative
having cancer treatment and worried about whether they're gonna get the treatment in the middle of it you know I
mean so it's being human and being kind and really the discouraging presenteeism
is people will when they're feeling insecure as quite a few are they will
tend to work longer hours they will be sending you emails or stuff at 10
o'clock at night try to discourage it and if they're feeling ill tell them not to work right that is really important
because I'm worried about that people who are worried about it will say well I got to work I got a show on active even
if I'm not feeling very well you're not feeling well take the day off just don't don't try to be a present t we don't
need that and I think the other thing is if you send in your one two ones with
your staff of the people to your team that there's one or two who really don't
seem to be coping terribly well make sure you know what resources are available to you from a chart from your
organization because a piece can be done eyeball to eyeball through virtual
platforms you know a eaps being the end of the counseling service or whatever so
know what it's support is around for for your employees if you if you sense
there's a problem you who are not a counselor you can listen to people but if you think somebody's really suffering
you know point them in the right direction and do it but I think in
unbalance let's learn from this let's give people more control not on a job
that will make them more job satisfying let's trust them let them decide their
own kind of routine let's make sure we don't over stretch them we don't need to do that at this point in time and make
sure relationships are good in the team make sure you're seeing the chinking all the time and one-to-ones with everybody
frequently and I think we will get there will be we'll get out of this there's no
question about it we could get out of this and learn a hell of a lot we could be working much
more flexibly we could people will have more autonomy and I think if we treat
them well and are kind and and humane we
can all benefit and maybe have a tighter change and better working and more efficient teams so thank you very much
thank you so much Kari really insightful as ever I'd say doing these webinars is
giving me a reason to get dressed and even put on some makeup when I'm doing them definitely getting into a routine
I'm gonna hand over to Helen now and Helen's gonna give a an example of how
all this is working in practice a togepi and really bring to life how they're supporting their employees so over to
you Helen thank you so when I was asked about the case study for this and it's
been quite I was getting my head together in terms of what we have been doing and it's and I'm quite pleased
with the shape we've got into it's not perfect we're still building but I'm really happy to share with you what
we've been doing to my practical point of view so we as many other businesses
did we had a practice day just before we thought we were anticipating that this
might happen so we had a practice day where the whole business worked from home and this we must say that we could
not just test our IT capability and ways
of working in terms of team working but also so that we could really test out how people felt and how people's mental
health was and have and and the impact on that within very quickly today very
quick and dirty Survey Monkey for everyone so that we could do some quick
learnings from that and we galloped ahead because the very next day was the
day when we decided that everyone should work from home so that was the Monday I think before any official advice
and I would then write with our behavioral science team they're part of
overly consulting and obviously I'm really lucky that I can lean into that team so I shared with them some
guidelines for staff and managers and I'm really chuffed because Kerry I think
we got most of yours in there some way slightly different language but I was really pleased to see that we went off
beam so we worked together on those and collaborated and we broke those down into what we were thinking what we need
to be effective and our best selves we wanted to align these to our thrive program to ensure staff wellness during
this time both mental and physical point of view so we broke this down into happy
healthy and productive we then worked with that team to think of some
behavioral nudges and some ideas from each and actually this is totally free
to download if anybody wants it just either look me up on LinkedIn or I can
share the link with Katie but we've decided that it was totally free for anyone who'd like to access it so under
each with a series of nudges and ideas during this time we were also very
quickly building a craft Academy SharePoint so craft Academy is our Learning and Development offering for
the UK staff and we can very quickly built as sort of beta version on a
SharePoint we didn't be much to do that in four days my apprentice was amazing
and on there we've got all of our remote learning opportunities we've put free
staff we've put all our resources we've put curated articles helplines for
domestic violence all of that stuff that we wanted to make accessible to staff
when they're not in the office we are updating my team we're updating that
every day and some of it might be stuff like yoga for kids or tips for home you
know homeschooling which is a term I keep really struggling with because I have an 11
and a 13 year old I'm not doing any homeschooling I'm working full time the
13 year olds maths is way beyond me so I'm not going to pretend for one second
that I can homeschool so I think we need to be really kind to ourselves so we've
wiped a load of stuff on our craft Academy SharePoint we also brought forward our launcher and on mind which
is the partnership that we've chosen for wellbeing platform we were working with
our minds and we were originally launching to coincide discuss Awareness Week and but we've pulled that forward
with a little bit of a push to make sure that we could give it to staff as
quickly as possible and give everyone access so sort of week 2 there was a big
push on using on mind it's not just about mental health but initially we were pushing the mental health side but
it's also got really great access to and articles it's great access to stuff physical health
sleep I'm not sleeping well and I know it's impacting on me so you know I've
been using that resource quite a lot we then surveyed again we're just waiting
on those results that we wanted to do a pulse survey to see how people were the feedback from the remote working guides
had gone down really well and the feedback for the craft Academy SharePoint had gone really well and
we're now waiting to see sort of five weeks in how people are and we coincided
that in part because all of the feedback from a pack who has obviously been ahead of us on this was very much that week
five is a massive dip in remote working in this way and so last week was week
five for us so we did we pushed even more sort of remote yoga and some fun
staff stuff that people could engage with and and I'll come back to that in
just a second in terms of key behaviors that we've taken through from thinking
about our remote working guys and we have been we've been encouraging line
managers to use forms and what I mean by this and you couldn't see more about this in PI different but
he wants to look at it is in might and I'll I'll bring it to life by telling him how I use it so every morning I have
a huddle with my team and it all give our form school which is your school out
of one to ten and it's effectively checking in on everyone's mental health the reason why I love this is because
and even the quieter people the introverts on a call can be heard and it
also gives us this really inclusive it also gives us if there are any warning triangles so if someone's song score is
low then if someone else's score is higher I will ask that persons with the
highest school to scoop in if I can't or if for example I think it's going to make that team member feel uncomfortable
if it's me scooping in so I think it was that we were only in week two and that
flushed out the full of my team had their other half had lost their jobs
already so clearly they were under immense pressure and we were able to scoop in and to give them as much
support as we possibly can it also gives you the opportunity to just have a virtual cup of tea and we have
reiterated the need for contracting as a team so I my team now has a flow and I
know each team across the business we work in what we call crafts each craft has contracted in terms of ways of
working and two carries points for example if you've got someone who is
tag-teaming because they've got smaller children if they are there any mailing late into the evening because that's
their free time that actually impacts on people that have probably already done a full day's work so by doing that
contracting piece about what are our core hours we will not get back to
emails after so we've we implemented a policy that we've been working on some
time again we brought that forward which is we're calling the right to disconnect and this is basically saying you know
we've all build our smartphones we've all got so much going on but as long as you're working between four hours and
one we don't mean presenteeism we just mean available if you need to answer a question urgently and even what does
that look like so what are you soon for what do we use email for what do we use
whatsapp for so we all have a shorthand and it's it's already brought the noise
down week one I'm not gonna lie we were all headache a zoomed-out I couldn't I
couldn't understand why anyone would want to get on zoom at the weekend for quizzes because I was just like so we've
done that piece of contracting lots of lessons learned and things have definitely settled in terms of
communication my mantra always is you can never know to communicate and never
more so than now we have we've put in place a cadence through our internal
communication so every Monday for example is a thriving day for comms so
that's checking in with mental health it's reminding people about fun mind it's reminding people about the various
places that they can find counseling Wednesday we have a push to it to those
who are people leaders or people managers again with a series of nudges
or as the series of reminders so for example you know you deal with Mike
aggressions just as you would in the office for example that was one of the ones last week so just because someone
might be late to a meeting it could be that they've got crying baby in the other room so to not pull it out and to
not embarrass people and to just be kind we've also pulled together some specific
nights we initially started as I'm sure every business did with guidance for parents for parents working at home and
we then extended that with cameras and we've leased last week we published our
guidance for teams and for managers and for individuals in terms of for those who live alone because I think they've
been spotting and we've also pulled together a number of guides and
resources for grief and not just for the obvious grief but
also change so we've got a podcast that we are just pulling together this week
where we're working with a grief expert and that will again be put on craft Academy for anybody that would want to
listen in and it's just we're just reiterating that Stafford letting you
into their home in this time and not everyone is going to be 100% comfortable
with that I'm going to be honest my house is at a and it's not showing any
signs of improvement so where everyone's saying I'm going to do this and you know if my sister who lives in Sydney is like
I've passed bottom I haven't done that so right now I've screen on you can see
my virtual background in my daughter's bedroom it's reminding managers you are being let in someone's home
don't pass comments on it be kind remember to check in so again to Kerry's
point check in daily I had an example where someone hadn't even spoken to his
PA for a week and it's just like what are you thinking so we've been doing an awful lot of that
nudging pushing and I'm using this
opportunity to really push the leadership development and people management development whilst we're in
this time so kindness always and I think our resounding take away and most overused
phrase will certainly be your on mute I hope that's helpful
Thank You Helen and a timely reminder for me to take myself off mute before I
come to questions for everyone I'm just gonna ask you had in a specific one that somebody's asked is could you share some
of the things that you asked in your surveys things like do you feel a safe
place to work do you feel well set up we asked the specific question have you
looked at how to set a good workstation I'm currently piled up on two books and
to make sure because I know I was a little bit broken after week one so we are some really practical stuff
and then we ask some questions around I'm really happy to share Katie the specific questions some of the questions
were around how does it feel how happy how did you feel at the start of the day
how did you feel this was for the practice the questions that we sent just
now and more in depth so again it's asking in terms of a comparison to where we started five
weeks ago and how you're feeling now do you feel a lot of questions around feeling connected we have lots of social
stuff going on so we fastened two questions around that specifically so that we can share so we've got you know
kind of sexual pop quizzes going on it's all about learning lessons so that we
can share and build so else the question yeah thank you thank you so much and so
I love the questions out there and anybody can jump in somebody's asked is
there anything that we could recommend for team members who are single and living alone so people who might be
feeling particularly isolated I'm sure you use on that who wants to go first we
have that is the one of the guides that we were just finishing off last week actually because I think I think it is
there's a potential to forget that for those people it's even more isolating
we've actually worked with some of the people in our teams who we know are
living alone and they've been brilliant because they've been able to give us some other insights and I think it's
even more important to check in words that with those people and also for them to have a buddy and also for them to
think about if they fall ill who's going to look after them and how will we know how they are so again that connectivity
and just remind is I think again it's just reminding managers to really step
up on this but yeah we've we have written a guide specifically I think it's important you don't worry Smee
Helen I think people think that the younger members of your team into
20-somethings the Millennials we're not going to be troubled by this if they're alone in a flat in London they will be
they are gonna be a very very high-risk group in my view they're much more social that whole generation is and I
have found that if they didn't many of them tried to go back home which was interesting to go live with their parents during this period of time which
would have been great but a lot of them got stuck in London they couldn't get back in and I think they do need your
help desperately as a manager you must get into don't assume that they're young
and and resilient and they'll be able to cope many of them are not and they are much more social animals morning
Huddle's have been really helpful as well because where people haven't shown up that's giving me red triangles so
I've called them specifically to just check if they're okay nine times out of ten it really has just been that they're
all another call because to your point about when visiting but definitely definitely not in the people team but I
think it's a really valid point my stepdaughter is twenty-five twenty-six and we actually fished her
out of London for that exact reason and she was with us for a couple of weeks because we were quite concerned it's
definitely an absolute consideration all of this is recognizing each individual
need isn't it I mean we we've often the paradigm of work so often in the past has been well we'll treat everybody
collective here's our collective event up all of us isn't collective this and collective that this is a time to really
understand the individual members of our teams and you're right to call like younger people and we know that people
are living literally in a bedsit and having to work on their bed with all their papers around them and that is
incredibly hard thing to do you've got no boundary then between your work and your not work and but then of course
others with children as you said and all sorts of different circumstances are worried about their older parents
everybody's got a different circumstance and it's so important which is back this emotional intelligence and keeping
connected understand what we're doing for everybody in how we need to support but it's good to hear what you said Ellen I
mean certainly calling our particular context which we know quite common is important but I think we had when the
start to be were for getting some of these very basic things and thus human because we might have separate
workspaces leaders so many googled owned and they're all piled together gather children and there were all going on in
the same workspace and then it's really really hard to deal with one at one of the things from a previous
project I'd worked on elsewhere when we deserve aid when we were going to
further remote working then it was actually the younger people in flat chairs that didn't want to remote work
and I've seen it myself with a couple of nineteen when you're in a flatshare situation that's very different and it's
difficult and people are getting up at different times of the day and the
informality and also you know we had an incident last week where one of our
older members have started who lives alone and has absolutely lived for her dog and her dog had to be put down last
week and I cannot tell you how brilliant people rallied around because the minute
I found out I let people know and we all got our arms around her because I was deeply concerned that was that was her
one bit of company in this and I think it's I definitely think it's something that to your point Peter there's no
one-size-fits-all but this is where we can step up and treat everybody properly as individuals yeah thank you I think
that's that very human bits that Kerry was talking about and Kerry can I put this one to you first what are your top
tips for combating and always on culture during these times so people feel they can't switch off that really is an issue
I like what Helen said I am really into the right to disconnect I go along with
the French law I love it and I think it's very difficult now that we're working exclusively remotely not to be
doing emails but this gives us an opportunity given the platforms we have to talk to people but we can't they all
on the culture we shouldn't be all on we don't have as much to do crazy use this time to reflect on
what you're doing to make your connections with your genes I mean and
the emails I'm very worried about that I'm worried about people constantly sending I'm getting I'm getting a lot of
emails more than I normally would get and I think people want to stay
connected but that's not a good way to connect and I love tellings point about
try trying even in this period of time to say try at night not to do this if
you're aligned managers don't send people emails at night if you want to send an email to somebody again you're
doing your work at night because of your family arrangements because you're doing home schooling or whatever do it don't
stand at all the next morning leave you people alone because it is people do feel that they're on you know they have
to it's you know and if you're insecure you're gonna do that aren't you that's what it's all about insecurity drives
this workaholism behavior thank you I'm do if you're there could you just take
yourself off mute so there's a little bit of a legal angle to this question if you've got Colley's complaining about
their working conditions for example not having suitable desks or chairs should the company provide them with suitable
equipment who's responsible for that and I don't know and reviewed got any thoughts on that and maybe Helen if you
could share what you've done around that kind of more physical working space yeah certainly just picking up the point of
equipment it's really a matter for the contract between employer and employee because I mean many of us have managed
remote teams prior to this crisis and different companies will take a different approach some will provide
equipment some will say go out and buy the equipment you needing we will
reimburse you the critical thing here though isn't so much about who pays it's
the employers obligation to maintain a safe working environment for their
workers and that applies equally at home as it would in the office so really that should be at the forefront of your mind
and then making that happen is the important thing and that's a subject for negotiation really and
obviously this promise fairly quickly people have to that very quickly there wasn't likely
time to get anything in place in terms of providing equipment over and above
the RT that was needed in most cases but from here it's a matter for negotiation
but you do have that responsibility - safe environments I hope you need to get there you need to make sure that you're
doing some why Helen practically what did you do around this in the during the
first week before the country was on actual lockdown we were able there was a
core team that went in to see containers who did get things like where someone
had physically a back issue for example Stu had a special chair we were able to
get some equipment careered to homes as we've gone through we keep
reiterating around the DAC you know doing your self-assessment around your workstation and that we can help if we
can but on a practical point of view if our 800 people in C containers all went
and spent a thousand pounds on equipment you know that's putting additional financial pressure so we've asked people
to exercise judgment and common sense hence you know I've just I mean I'm
kicking myself because when they were left it was all new territory right so I didn't bring home my stand and my
keyboard and I'm kicking myself that but equally I've now found a way around that
so say we're helping on a case by case and whilst reiterating it is absolutely
health and safety is a statutory right so absolutely we'll make sure that you're set up to work comfortably and
effectively from home thank you I've got a couple of questions I'll put this to first Peter about how the transition
back into an office space we'll look I mean obviously we've said that you know
we might not be going back to an office 100% of the time all that might change but how would you suggest that
transition works yeah it's a such an important question I think you know the
period leading up to Easter Easter to me sort of embarked to move to the next phase in many ways I'm in his use of
Helen those first few weeks for all of us including ask society was pretty hectic trying to find the new taste of work and
so forth but I think we've all started to think much more now about okay what
does the transition back to whatever the new normals will be and we need to be careful with language first of all
because I have people referring to when we go back to work well I know we're all working now we're just working differently and so the thing is I think
first of all is begin to plan ahead and of course I think almost certainly more will happen not only as we've all
emphasized is is this an opportunity to say look we've learned that we can be more flexible so we don't have to force
ourselves also right even if you have somebody waved her wand and said as of Monday you could all go back to offices
but I don't he's going to happen and you wouldn't want to force that anyway so I think first of all it's going to be
gradual I think the government almost certainly would be advising a gradual return in whatever form that takes I
think their organizations themselves we would need to look at it that way as well and we will need to think about
provision in our workplaces because it's almost CERN that even if it starts
saying mid-lane a when you're early tomb and governments have reached the end of
these sort of Carlotta appearance that we will still have many reasons to keep
distancing to provide proper safety and support to people at work we will also
have many people and quite sure will say you know what I'm not comfortable going back to work because I'm not comfortable
that even though my work environment might be looking like it's okay I've still got to travel and I don't want to
say probably transport so we're gonna have to be I think very flexible as we think about the transition to work they
use that in a positive way which is to say we are not just simply forcing people back to offices we are we are
allowing much more flexibility we will allow more flexibility in working hours will allow more flexibility and where
and when you might use the office space and all of those have got to be seen as positive things and I think that's how
we should be thinking about transition but for us we're this is a subject we want to start to talk about a lot more
now you have more webinars on it took a lot more now about this transition post the crisis as to what does that
beginning to look like and how do we plan for it Carrie Helen have you've got any thoughts on this kind of return
we're just floating on it now actually and just to reiterate what Peter said I
was talking about it this morning my personal view is if anybody feels uncomfortable we've made this work so I
think we need to take that into account and I'll allow them to work from home for a bit longer if they're not
comfortable getting on public transport did those who might have people that
they're sheltering how does that work you know if you've got if you're caring for an elderly relative or someone who's
immunosuppressed and you know it's better to go back to work you know you're not gonna be in a position to
shield so to this point I think I'll start for tennis we're probably going to do a short survey again but we're going
to talk about once we know when the game back but at the moment we're just working out a little phasing and how do we face who we phase and what that looks
like we're also using weeds and many of you will have already been using on border but we were about to start using
on border for new joiners from boarding we're actually going to use that to be on board everyone and that's gonna be a
bit of a test case for us as well that's really interesting this time give me that as well actually on what Helen
just say obviously many of the people returning will have protected characteristics particularly
disabilities perhaps mental health issues or the like
what looked like a reasonable adjustment before the extent to which you could
have reasonably just before may look a lot different after this crisis because it is the huge experiment in home work
and it's been proved in many cases it can work so what may look reason when the future will be a lot and what
broader category of actions than what worked in the past I think there's gonna
be a lot of inhibitions about traveling traveling first of all business travel will probably die you know long distance
business traveling will die flying off to New York and the rest of it for a meeting which is dumb anyway but even
traveling on a train there's no way you can social distance or I'm not calling social physical distancing on a
train so there's gonna be a lot of reluctance about that you know if I was an employer I mean Helen has the is
likely to have the resources to do this yes Emmys less likely as soon as the antibody test is there I would offer to
all our employees all of them because you know what they'll feel much more secure if they know they've actually had
it and you could be much more flexible with the people who don't haven't had it for a period of the next couple months
because this isn't going away so I think the antibody thing would be worthwhile
for employers to invest it and probably it was there was employers if the CBI
and other employers were or organizations were smart they'd ask the government for that support I think that
that's true Carrie this is going to break new ground for us as well though isn't it I mean the amount of information that people will be and
perhaps need of willing to disclose about their own personal health where they feel they're going to be discriminated against because they have
or have not got the antibodies a whole new ground peg on that one as well but
you seem various companies announced this as those big announcement from Amazon saying and they wanted to be able
to test all their employees so there are other things that we're going to have to think about is are not in that entirely
disagree but it does raise other questions we have agree I'm just going
to ask one very quick question I think I'll just put it to Helen from practical point of view have you had to support
any colleagues back to work after actually having covert 19 and how have you done that we have a couple of people
who are quite poorly at the moment so we're not they're not back at work yet
and when that time comes we'll obviously talk to them about a phased return a
friend of mine who doesn't work with us is recovering now I hope and she's been
so poorly that I can't imagine anybody being able to just race back into work
so again I think we'll probably use our occupational health provider and work on
a solution with anyone that's been mean and badly affected
thank you so much for that um I'm afraid that's all we've got time for this afternoon um like to thank our panel
Carrie Peter and Helen and Andrew thank you so much for your time and your insight and just a flag that this Friday
at 12:30 we're going to be exploring this topic but from the other side so we're looking at how HR can support and
keep key workers safe and well so if you're not working from home and your workforce is out doing their jobs as
normal how can you best keep them safe happy and healthy you can sign up for that now by the tigt website and also by
our social channels just a quick reminder to keep using the coronavirus hub on CIPD website for all your
resources needs do use the CIPD communities for support and if you remember the HR inform helpline for
individual responses to your toughest legal questions and that's it from us this afternoon so thank you so much for
watching thank you for your questions and engagement and we will see you next time have a good afternoon thank you