With the Covid-19 being in full swing, the world has gone into lockdown. Businesses are across the UK are aiming to reduce the amount of contact that employees have with each other and clients.
Since the law changed in 2003 the UK employers have been having no requests for flexible working, with some companies choosing to not have offices at all, with everyone working remotely. While others have fought to keep everyone in the office on ‘normal’ hours as much as possible.
Now that Covid-19 has come about, UK employers are working at an alarming rate to ensure that their businesses can continue to function, even if this means remote working. My question is what will this do for engagement and wellbeing?
A month ago, requests would have been turned down by employers and now those same requests are being made possible to benefit the business. From one side of this picture – to employees – it looks like a sad state of affairs, not feeling trusted to remote work, only being “allowed” in these special circumstances. But from an employer-side – this is a troubling time, and while remote working might not be the first-choice method of doing business, this might be the only way to stay in business in these uncertain times.
So how do we as leaders change the narrative? How do we get the business through a tough time, but help the people feel valued and supported even when in isolation?
The first step is to re-frame the conversations, rather than discussing why we couldn’t and now we can – let’s focus on how we can all be most successful during this time. How this can be a time to test run the model and create evidence that it works in practice.
As a leader, set up team Skype calls once a day for everyone to check in – they don’t have to be long, but they can make sure that everyone is on the same page. We take for granted how much we pick up from just being in a shared space.
Most importantly, get everyone to focus on big wins, rather than everyone just manning their email accounts, get your team to focus on some of the projects that will make a big impact for the business, now is the time for leaders to step out in industries. For everyone to support their community and develop their purpose. If your team can harness this time of chaos to deliver on some of the greater goals it will not only secure the future of the business but it may be possible that flexible working will be viewed in a more positive light.
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