The ongoing debate about flexible workplace culture and remote work continues to capture global attention.
Here in Australia, more and more business leaders are announcing office mandates, with some going as far to link office attendance with bonuses, pay and promotions. While the benefits of having teams in person together are numerous, it’s important to consider the knock-on effect of such mandates.
As the Global CEO for Talent, a recruitment and consultancy business specialising in tech, transformation and beyond, I’ve seen countless organisations grapple with this issue. Talent has offices in Australia, New Zealand, the US, and India. We employ over 300 team members across these offices, and I’m proud to say that our Great Place to Work employee engagement rate sits at 94%, which is world-class.
This doesn’t happen by accident, though. A great culture takes a great amount of work, understanding, and above all, listening to your people. You also have the responsibility to create an environment where people want to come into the office.
From our own first-hand flexibility journey, and through talking with fellow CEOs, one thing is clear: you can’t mandate a great culture. In fact, having no policy can be a game-changing policy.
Flexibility Is More Than Remote Work
Many leaders think flexible work is just working from home, but flex is so much more than that. It’s not one-size-fits-all all. It’s job sharing, flexible hours, flexible start and end times, compressed work weeks and a whole heap more. We are in a world now where DE&I is an unquestioned business priority, and being inclusive absolutely involves accommodating different needs around flexibility. I have team members who work from home, work from the local café, or sometimes even work from the hair salon chair! It’s all about results, not where you’re located to do it. It’s all about seeing the bigger picture.
I’ve been on quite a journey personally when it comes to where and when employees work. Having always been a vocal advocate for high office participation, COVID knocked me for six. Like all organisations, Talent had to quickly pivot to accommodate working from home, and I’ll admit, I was very concerned about the impact this would have on our culture, productivity, and employee engagement.
Culture Lives Beyond the Office
As it turns out, culture is something that extends far beyond four walls. It is a living, breathing organism that exists within each and every person who represents your brand, wherever they may be. It’s how people talk about their job at a barbecue on the weekend. It’s how people interact with one another. It’s how they feel when they go to bed on a Sunday night. It’s how much they feel their company values and supports them. This is something that can’t be mandated or enforced.
Our culture not only survived the pandemic but also emerged stronger. We coined a new term – #OneTeam, to represent the psychological circle of safety we wrapped around our people – a term that has since evolved to represent our culture and mindset. As a result of everything we did to support our people during COVID, we emerged with a higher employee engagement rate, and Talent became the only recruitment company based in APAC to report increased profits at that time.
Face-to-Face Still Has a Place
Now that we are outside of the COVID bubble, we can find a happy medium. Rather than focus on the binary of work from home vs office, we should bring it back to the bigger picture of culture, engagement, and what makes somewhere a great place to work.
There is a large amount of training that does happen in an office, face-to-face with your team and your stakeholders, that could be hard to replace virtually. You don’t need to go into the office every day or attend every event, but you should go try to go to some of those events to establish connections and build relationships. Relationships are everything and a key part of growing your career.
Growth and learning happen in many ways, but a part of it does happen by spending time with your team and your stakeholders. If you’re a new team member, how you want to shape your career at that company might very well be building and maintaining stakeholder relationships, and some would say it’s a crucial part.
So much so, that statistics state around about 70% of learning happens from real experiences, 20% happens through interactions and exchanges with colleagues or others, and the final 10% comes from courses, workshops and so on – it’s the 70:20:10 model. Research from Forbes early on in the pandemic showed that non-verbal communication has been shown to carry between 65% and 93% more impact than the actual words spoken. It’s hard to pick up on non-verbal cues virtually or over the phone. With that being said, though, the overall message for leaders is still around what environment you are creating to make it appealing to be in the office.
Flexibility Works When It’s a Choice
I always find that forcing team members to do something never works out long-term. It’s like forced fun at parties; tolerable, but nobody leaves the party really feeling like they had a great time. Policies can be stifling and restrictive. A rule that people begin to dislike. By giving people the option and not enforcing a policy, you’ll more likely than not see people change their tune on it.
Ultimately, when you invest in your team members, listen to their needs, bring them on your journey, and put feedback into action, the results are endless. I challenge every leader out there to give this policy a go and watch the results. You might be surprised by what you find! Lastly, I wanted to share some quotes from the Talent team members on flexibility – it truly makes a difference.
“There is work work-life balance and flexibility to work remotely, which helps us manage our work commitments and focus on our personal life responsibilities.”
“I feel supported and empowered to really reach for the moon here at Talent. Leadership is fair, honest and highly motivating. I never feel left out, and I love working here. The team are all genuine nice people. Work-life balance is amazing. Best Job, Team and Leadership I have ever experienced.”
“There is a great feeling of inclusivity, I always feel supported and heard in my role, and it’s a great place to work. I am the happiest I have been in my career in many years and can see a great opportunity to grow.”
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