Remote Working Archives | orgshakers.com

You can do a lot in sixty minutes.

In 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright marked the dawn of aviation with FOUR successful powered flights in the space of just one hour!

In 2020 Mo Farah set a world record by running 21,330 meters in 60 minutes. That’s an average speed of over 13 mph, which is faster than most of us can run if we sprint just 100 meters. He just maintained that pace for a whole hour – try that on your next fun run!

Alternatively, you could make yourself a delicious meal of Beef Tacos with Homemade Guacamole. Our favorite recipe takes about an hour from ‘fridge to fork’.

What we see here is that while sixty minutes might not seem that long – the length of a team meeting, a workout at the gym, or an episode of your favorite podcast – it can also be incredibly productive and even transformative.

At OrgShakers, we believe in The Power of the Hour … 60-minutes where leaders can bounce around ideas, receive expert advice, or get the objective feedback they need to start something incredible. After all, every successful business we’ve come to know started with an idea – and someone who was willing to listen.

That’s why we’re excited to introduce our new consulting service: OrgShakers CL!CK.

OrgShakers CL!CK offers a one-hour, private and confidential online consultation with one of our experienced HR professionals. It’s perfect for those moments when you need advice to tackle a new challenge, to test and refine your HR strategy, or simply to try out new ideas to see what resonates.

With extensive global corporate experience, our team is equipped to provide guidance on any HR-related question, whether you’re dealing with everyday tactical issues or complex strategic concerns.

If you would like to learn more about this service and book in time with one of our team members, head over to https://orgshakers.com/orgshakers-click/

Up to 70% of companies with flexible work schedules are planning to increase the days employees must work in the office by 2025. However, with many major companies – including Disney, Apple, Google, and Zoom – issuing ‘Return To Office’ (RTO) mandates this year, there has been a significant rise in the latest ‘quiet’ rebellion … ‘hushed hybrid’ working.

‘Hushed hybrid’ working is when, contrary to company policy, managers quietly allow some employees to work from home or work flexibly. According to a survey by Owl Labs, 70% of managers have allowed team members to work from home despite an official company policy mandating otherwise.

The rise in this trend signifies a strong disconnect between executives and middle managers that could result in unwanted ripple effects if this gap were to widen.

As first point of contact between employees and the wider organization, it’s important that middle managers feel able to communicate employee feedback to the company’s leadership. However, the rise of this trend suggests that many middle managers believe senior leaders are not prepared to listen to employee’s views on hybrid work, preferring instead to stand behind their RTO mandates.

But whilst ‘hushed hybrid’ working may provide middle managers and their teams with a convenient workaround, it is an ultimately unsustainable solution that could damage the wider culture of the organization.

For one thing, managers letting some if their team quietly work from home whilst others are required to come into the office will inevitably create tension between employees. Pair this with the element of secrecy that is rooted in ‘hushed hybrid’, and you create a recipe that could result in a workplace culture which becomes ‘toxic’.

In addition to this, ‘hushed hybrid’ also plays a role in the widening the gap between policy and practice, which should be a huge ‘red flag’ for HR as, if RTO policies are not being followed by managers, it raises alarms of what other policies are being flouted or simply ignored.

All of this risks a collapse of trust across the organization.

Instead, middle managers need to feel that they can openly and honestly communicate with their leaders to give feedback on policies that don’t seem to be working well.

We have all seen the problems with the rise of these ‘quiet’ trends since the pandemic ended, so it’s important for employers to break the cycle of these hushed practices by fostering a culture of openness and honesty so that they can enhance their workplace culture and become an employer of choice.

If you would like to discuss how we can help coach your leaders in communication, as well as foster a culture of openness in your workplace, please get in touch with us today, or book in an hour with one of our experienced HR practitioners through our confidential online consultation service OrgShakers CL!CK.

You can accomplish remarkable things in just sixty minutes.

In 1969, Neil Armstrong’s first steps and initial exploration on the moon took about an hour.

Alternatively, you could make yourself a delicious meal of Beef Tacos with Homemade Guacamole. Our favorite recipe takes about an hour from ‘fridge to fork.

At OrgShakers, we champion The Power of the Hour … 60 minutes where leaders can brainstorm, gain expert insights, or get the unbiased feedback needed to spark something extraordinary. After all, every major breakthrough began with an idea and someone ready to listen.

That’s why we’re excited to introduce our new consulting service: OrgShakers CL!CK.

With extensive global corporate experience, our team is equipped to provide guidance on any HR-related question, whether you’re dealing with everyday tactical issues or complex strategic concerns.

If you would like to learn more about this service and book in time with one of our team members, head over to https://orgshakers.com/orgshakers-click/

‘Work from anywhere’ searches have risen by 145% in the UK, with recent research from MoneySuperMarket discovering that roughly six million Brits plan to use their flexibility to work abroad without telling their employer.

This rising trend has been dubbed the ‘workation’, a combination of ‘work’ and ‘vacation’ that is defined as taking a break from the work environment but not the work itself. Whilst these two things have typically been seen to be incompatible, the workation’s rising popularity seems to challenge this notion, as employees – especially the younger generations – are looking to find innovative ways to have the best of both worlds with their flexible working arrangements.

However, when we conducted our own poll asking if employers would be happy for their staff to work abroad without them knowing, 70% responded that they are happy for their staff to take a workation as long as they inform them. So, whilst the majority of employers also seem to be in favor of the workation, employees should communicate their movements to keep their employers in the loop of where they will be working from – especially if the time zone changes significantly.

It’s no wonder that we are seeing this trend emerge, as digital nomad visas have come into play in countries such as Italy, Spain, Dubai, and Thailand, to name a few. These visas aim to attract foreign employees who want to continue to work for their company whilst living elsewhere, eliminating any compliancy risks being breached by employers or employees (however, this would have to be revised if the employee decided to permanently move residences abroad).

While the workation therefore offers ample opportunity for employees to revolutionize their work-life balance into a comfortable blend of the two, there are a few things that employers need to consider to ensure that the workation remains a force for good:

Workation Boundaries – it’s important for employers who are happy for their employees to take workations to not confuse these with employees taking vacations. Workations highlight that remote working employees are able to work whilst also being away, but this doesn’t mean that when an employee does take paid time off that they become accessible or contactable. Having those clear boundaries in place is essential for the workation to be a driving force for work-life balance and wellbeing support, as a workation is still work!
Introduce ‘Core Hours’ – workations may see employees working in countries where the time zones can differ by more than an hour either way. If this is the case, consider creating a policy which introduces core working hours for all employees to be available no matter the time zone. This will ensure that there is always crossover but also means that those on workations do not have to work outside of typical working hours.
Rise of Workaholism – employers need to be mindful that employees do still take time away from work purely to rest and relax. With the workation becoming popular, some employees may slip into the habit of not wanting to take time off and fall behind on their workload now that they can take a workation. But employers have a duty to encourage time off work in order for employees to recharge and ward off burnout.

Overall, the workation is shaping up to be a popular benefit that employers with remote workers can consider offering to attract and retain top talent. This is without mentioning all the additional benefits it has to offer around fostering creativity, improving mental health by working from sunny countries, and potentially strengthening the interpersonal bonds between colleagues if your company operates on a global scale. However, it’s important for employers to ensure that the workation doesn’t replace vacation, and to monitor the permanence of a workation so that there are no legal or tax implications that may have to be considered.

If you would like to discuss how we can help your organization design policies around offering workations, please get in touch with us today.

Having a digital avatar is no new feat. With the likes of Bitmojis, personalised emoticons, and The Sims games, the concept of creating a virtual lookalike hasn’t come out of thin air.

But with the world of work becoming increasingly digital, especially in the wake of hybrid and remote working, this begs the question just what role a digital avatar of oneself might play.

For one thing, we know that the metaverse boasts for its users to create their own avatars which they can control using virtual reality technology. The idea is for employees to be able to attend a digital office, surrounded by other digital versions of their colleagues, whilst still working from the comfort of home. Whilst the metaverse has since lost some of its traction, discussions around the possibilities of having AI-powered avatars have continued to gain momentum.

Most notably, founder and chief executive of Zoom, Eric Yuan, believes that in as little as five years’ time, employees could be sending their AI avatars to Zoom meetings in place of themselves.

This is based on the idea that employees would have their own ‘large language model (LLM)’, which essentially uses the underlying services of AI tools like ChatGPT to train the model on their individual speech and behaviour patterns which would allow the avatars to generate accurate and personalised responses to queries and requests.

This may sound like the plot of a futuristic sci-fi movie, but the concept of having AI mimic us isn’t as foreign as you might think. After all, Gmail has an inbuilt AI tool which can summarise and suggest replies to emails based on previous conversation points and common phrasing that the user uses.

However, despite the fact that LLMs can do passable impressions of people, there is no evidence to suggest that they can actually do useful work on behalf of someone. Not to mention the fact that if an AI version of an employee is doing their job for them, at what point does the human employee behind the avatar no longer become useful? Should an employer pay someone when their virtual counterpart is doing the brunt of the work?

On top of this, having an avatar attend meetings runs the risk of completely losing any possibility of fostering friendships and connections at work.

Whilst AI technology enables employees to work smarter and optimize their skills, are AI avatars one step too far in this technological evolution?

Rising workplace sickness is costing UK businesses billions every year, with an estimated £25bn being lost through presenteeism, according to a new think tank report.

New analysis from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) reveals the annual hidden cost of employee sickness has risen by £30 billion since 2018.

Most of this increased cost, around £25 billion, is from lower productivity, with only £5 billion due to a rise in sick days.

Employees now lose the equivalent of 44 days’ productivity on average due to working through sickness, up from 35 days in 2018, and lose a further 6.7 days taking sick leave, up from 3.7 days in 2018.

Workers in the UK are among the least likely to take sick days, especially compared to other OECD and European countries.

Read the full piece here: https://www.hrgrapevine.com/content/article/2024-08-01-rising-workplace-sickness-is-costing-uk-economy-billions-every-year-think-tank-warns

As the tug of war between working from home and working from the office continues, we are now seeing a rise in return to office (RTO) mandates being issued across multiple industries. Indeed, one study has found that up to 70% of companies with flexible work schedules are planning to increase the days employees must work in office by 2025.

These forcible RTO mandates are expected to have a disproportionately negative impact on one group of employers: the ‘super-commuters’ – individuals who travel for more than 90 minutes to get to work.

Recent research from Trainline found that the number of super-commuters has increased following the pandemic. 47% of those who travel for 90+ minutes made the change either during or after the pandemic, and 84% of super-commuters said they were able to extend their commute because of their hybrid working pattern.

This makes sense – with employees expected to come into the office less, this affords them the ability to live further away from where they work and extend their radius of travel, as they will only have to do this commute two to three times per week. However, with RTO mandates rising, this will likely take its toll on those who have to now commute 90+ minutes each way on a daily basis.

Having to travel such long distances each day significantly increases the workday for these super-commuters, taking them from an 8-hour day to over 11-hours when including this added travel. This is likely to have noticeable effects on employee performance and engagement in the form of higher absences, lower morale, and increased likelihood of burnout.

One way employers can support their super-commuters, however, is by leaning in on the very thing that has made hybrid working effective – flexibility.

If employees are going to have to spend an extended period of time travelling to work, then one thing to consider encouraging is making use of that travel time. ‘Working from home’ has already evolved beyond the home with employees working from coffee shops, trains, and just about anywhere that has a Wi-Fi signal. So, if super-commuters are spending 3 or more hours getting to and from work, why not make this a part of their working day?

This removes the pressure of travel delays making them ‘late to work’, as they would have already been working on their way to the office! It also ensures that they are able to get home from work at a time which enables them to continue to sustain the work-life balance that attracted them to hybrid and remote working in the first place.

If you would like to discuss how we can help your business optimize your working styles and ensure that optimizes productivity, please get in touch with us today.

With the scope of HR continuing to grow, the profession is witnessing an increasing number of HR teams that are struggling to meet this increasing demand.

In a recent LinkedIn poll, we asked our followers to share where their teams were facing challenges.

Almost half of respondents, 43%, said CAPACITY (having enough of the right people available when needed), 23% cited CAPABILITY (having the right skills and experience within the team), and 27% stated BOTH were issues.

Just 7% responded ‘NEITHER – we’re in good shape’.

This means that an overwhelming 93% of HR teams feel that they are not properly resourced to deliver everything their organizations need.

The impact of this on practitioners is highlighted in a study by HR software company MHR which found that half of HR professionals are on the verge of quitting due to burnout. Indeed, a separate study by Gartner found that 71% of HR leaders believe burnout amongst HR teams is more of a challenge than it was pre-pandemic.

And it’s no wonder this is happening. Since the pandemic ended, HR have been at the forefront of responding to a seismic shift in the workplace – the rise of the ‘carpe diem’ mindset has seen a significant increase in the importance of employee wellbeing; the ‘quiet quitting’ phenomenon brought to light important conversations around boundaries and work-life balance; and all of this on top of the mass adoption of hybrid and remote working across the world.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Also thrown into the mix is the need for companies to focus on their diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies, offer learning and development opportunities around the assimilation of new technologies, manage the change fatigue that emerges from this, and create a bulletproof Environmental, Social and Governance plan… all the while maintaining their ‘business as usual’ HR processes!

In our experience, the best route forward in a situation like this is to take a step back.

At OrgShakers we have pioneered the use of the Program Acceleration Office (PAO) whose role is to work with individual project managers to align, connect, and optimise resources across the whole team. In doing so the PAO creates a shared ‘big picture’ vision for the HR function based on a common roadmap, defined dependencies and impacts, and agreed outcomes. And once the organization’s in-house HR practitioners are optimally deployed, the PAO can objectively identify those areas where external resources are required.

We offer a range of services and expertise across all areas of HR, including fractional HR generalist and specialist support to bolster your team. So, if you would like to discuss how we can help with your capability and capacity needs, please get in touch with us today.

According to The Harris Poll’s Out of Office Culture Report, 37% of millennial workers have admitted to ‘quiet vacationing’ – that is, taking time off without telling their managers under the guise of working remotely.

For those getting flashbacks to the days of ‘quiet quitting’, they may be appropriately timed. Much like how quiet quitting was found to be a misnomer for employees wanting clear work-life boundaries and balance, ‘quiet vacationing’ may also be misleading.

This is because the report includes other findings which can help shed some light on why ‘quiet vacationing’ has emerged as a trend – particularly amongst Millennials.

Why Millennials? The most probable answer is that people in this age group are likely to have school-aged children, and they are likely to ‘quiet vacation’ as a means of attaining the flexibility they need but maybe aren’t being offered by their employer.

‘Quiet vacationing’ may also be a symptom of employees who don’t feel they have a proper work-life balance, as the research also discovered that 78% of employees who get paid vacations don’t take all the vacation days they are allocated. The reasons cited for this are to do with demands from work and pressure from managers not to take time off.

Work-life balance is quickly becoming a pivotal factor for many employees, with one study finding that more than half (56%) of employees would be willing to accept a lower-paid job in exchange for a better work-life balance.

So, what ‘quite vacationing’ and ‘quiet quitting’ have in common is that if employees are not getting the work-life balance they need, then they will find innovative ways to create it for themselves.

With the increase of hybrid and remote working styles, employers have been forced to adopt a new mindset of managing employee output (tasks completed) rather than input (showing up 9-5 five days a week). And the fact that the existence of ‘quiet vacationing’ has only been revealed through this latest study highlights that employees are still getting their jobs done – albeit at times which better meet their personal circumstances.

If there had been noticeable and consistent dips in productivity, this phenomenon would have been identified already. But if deadlines are being met on time and the work is getting done, then maybe this is just a case of recognizing that as long as employees can do what is expected of them, it shouldn’t really matter when they do it.

Now, this isn’t going to be applicable to every type of role, but for the most part, employers should be focused on managing the output of their employees, especially in a hybrid and remote working world. After all, someone can sit in an office all day and appear busy. But if the productivity of someone periodically ‘quiet vacationing’ from home remains consistent, is there really a problem?

A third of executives say they would leave their organization if it requires employees to return to the office, compounding HR’s challenge of retaining a strong leadership team, according to a recent Gartner report.

The flight risk is concerning because, according to a 2023 Gartner survey of 520 HR leaders across a number of industries and regions, 80% of CHROs do not think they have a deep list of possible replacements for senior roles.

“If a mandate is put in place and a lot of executives leave, it’s a huge risk not to have a strong bench to fill those roles,” says Caitlin Duffy, research director in Gartner’s human resources practice. “That’s because it cascades down and impacts all the levels below and can be difficult to manage.”

Read the full story here: https://hrexecutive.com/why-mandated-rto-could-lead-to-massive-executive-departures/?oly_enc_id=4235F9720301H5Y

While many jobs still offer hybrid- or remote-working patterns, more bosses are mandating their employees to return to the office on a full-time basis.

But for some of these companies, getting workers fully back on-site comes with a high price tag. This is particularly the case in the US, which has seen the most dramatic shift to flexible working – by January 2024, around 29% of all paid workdays were still worked from home. “Employers who cannot compete on flexibility will have to compete more aggressively on pay,” says Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter, based in California.

The result is that US wages for fully in-office roles are surging. According to ZipRecruiter data, seen by the BBC, companies were offering on average $82,037 (£64,562) for fully in-person roles by March 2024 – an increase of more than 33% versus 2023 ($59,085; £46,499). The trend is cross-sector: compared to hybrid ($59,992; £47,211) and fully remote ($75,327; £64,320) roles, workers appear to be more likely to increase their salaries by returning to pre-pandemic office schedules.

Part of this is compensating for the loss of flexibility that workers have prioritised for the past few years – the greater the push to relinquish that autonomy, the more employers have to offer to compensate. The ZipRecruiter data shows that workers who swapped from fully remote to fully in-office set-ups in the US through 2023 received a 29.2% pay bump – nearly double that of those moving the other way.

Read the full article here: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20240322-us-salaries-higher-in-office-jobs

That’s right – another buzzword has entered the mix.

‘Coffee badging’ may sound a bit peculiar, but it is essentially when an employee comes into the office very briefly, taps in with their identity card, then grabs a coffee and mingles with colleagues for a short stint before leaving to work the rest of the day from home.

According to a recent survey of 2,000 full-time workers in the US, more than half (58%) of hybrid workers admitted to coffee badging.

The trend seems to be rising in popularity in conjunction with the increased return-to-office mandates we seem to be seeing. As companies continue to try and force their employees back into the office full-time, employees seem to be revolting against this by poking their heads in for a quick coffee and then slipping back out again.

A huge reason for this is that many employees enjoy having hybrid and remote working privileges; one in five workers dread working from an office, and less than one in ten (8%) want to be in an office every day. One study even discovered that companies that issued return-to-office mandates experienced no improvement in financial performance, and 99% of them saw a drop in their employees’ overall job satisfaction.

The tug-of-war between employers wanting their employees in the office and employees wanting to work from home has been going on since lockdown ended. And whilst some solutions are being trialled – hybrid working where everyone comes into the office the same days, a 4-day working week entirely onsite – we are not seeing any that seem to stick.

What employers need to do is reverse engineer the problem in order to find the solution; in this case, workers are dissatisfied with coming into the office because all the work they do in the office they can do just as easily from home (except at home, they can save money on travel, work more comfortably, and lessen commuting time). It’s no wonder many of them don’t want to come into the office, because there is not a clear incentive to.

This is where companies need to focus their efforts. Demanding employees return to the office without a real reason insinuates a lack of trust in your team. Instead, employers must consider the fact that the role of the office has evolved in the modern working world, and therefore focus on optimizing the areas of onsite working that cannot be mimicked at home.

The most obvious one is face-to-face collaboration. It can be creatively stifling to attempt to exchange ideas over a Zoom call, but in a meeting room you can bounce off of each other. In this sense, the office has taken on the role of an ‘idea hub’ whose purpose is to encourage cohesion and the exchange of innovative ideas – all the while strengthening the interpersonal bonds between colleagues and leaders.

So, if you would like to discuss how we can help assist you in optimizing your organizational effectiveness when it comes to hybrid working, and ward off the coffee badging mindset, please get in touch with us.