Your Greatest Opportunity – Don’t F*** It Up! PART 2

Last week I shared five f***-ups organisations are making as they grapple with the new world of work.

It received such amazing feedback and commentary that I thought I would continue the theme and explore another five! Yes, there are many of them!

The bottom line is that the pandemic has granted your business one of the greatest opportunities you may ever encounter.

This is the chance to reimagine and reinvent the model of how, where and when we work.

The reality is most organisations are poised to f*** this up in a mega fashion.

Last week’s five:

1.     Everyone back to the office

2.     Hybrid with decree

3.     Everyone remote

4.     No thought

5.     Wasting time

 This weeks five:

6. Dictate it

7. It’s a project

8. Ignoring safety

9. Ignoring location

10. Leaders are ready

F***-Up #6 – Dictate it

This is organisational change management 101. Don’t do change to your employees – do it with them.

Regardless of the hybrid model you choose, dictating it to your employees will result in a backlash.

The pandemic has given employees a taste of flexibility and autonomy and they want that to continue.

Remember that employees are in the driving seat right now. The war for talent is in their favour. As we have proven that remote work can work, they have more choice of employer than ever before. They are not limited by their geographical location.

If you want to lose your talent – go head – dictate the future of how they will work!

The successful hybrid model is not just about policy, location or technology – it is foremost about your people.

This is about co-design with your people. They should be a part of the decision-making process.

They know what worked and what didn’t work during the pandemic, and you should be leveraging that.

Ask them what they want – some may want to be fully remote or office based whilst others want the flexibility of both.

This cannot be a top-down decision. Every employee should be given a voice to provide their input and help plan the way forward. This is not an easy process as it is multifaceted with many integrated and moving parts.

Once you have your co-created plan, it can be communicated to every level of the organisation.

Remember, communication is a two-way dialogue, so everyone needs an avenue to ask questions and seek clarification.

F***-Up #7 – It’s a project

If you think you can approach this seismic change in the way your organisation operates as a project with a definitive start and end, you are on the wrong page.

This is uncharted territory and there is no ready-made plan or playbook for you to consult.

This will be different for every organisation and must be approached and communicated as a learning journey.

The plan must be fluid and allowed to evolve and continually change as you move along this journey.

We are all on a learning journey and there will be bumps in the road and setbacks experienced.

Hybrid working is our new norm but striving to achieve the optimum model for your organisation will be an ongoing process accompanied with experimentation, innovation, creativity, and change.

Ensure that everyone understands this new reality and when presented with forks in the road are prepared to take the fork and change direction.

Whilst you are changing your will be subject to more change, and you might not see it coming. You will have to remain adaptable and flexible and prepared to plan and plan again.

F***-Up #8 – Ignoring safety

You cannot blindly announce that every employee can work from anywhere without considering their safety.

Do not overpromise what you cannot deliver.

There may be areas of the globe that due to political instability you would not want employees to work from as a consideration for their safety and wellbeing.

I am based in Australia and there may be many future workers in Australia who would like to take the opportunity to ‘work from anywhere’ and ‘cross the ditch’ to New Zealand.

A matter of days ago, it was announced that scientists have revealed a great earthquake, one of the biggest in New Zealand’s modern history, is due.

The magnitude 8 earthquake is likely to impact the South Island and the cities of Queenstown, Dunedin, Christchurch and Whataroa. The prediction is that it will happen in less than 50 years.

When this timeframe approaches, will you allow employees to work in this locality, again as a consideration for their safety and wellbeing?

You need to be aware of what is happening around the globe and set some geographical boundaries for the safety of your employees.

F***-Up #7 – Ignoring location

You cannot blindly announce that every employee can work from anywhere without considering logistics.

The freedom to work from anywhere would be an ideal situation, but unfortunately it also opens a hornet’s nest of rules and regulations on a vast scale.

You must consider where your people can work from; your compliance risks; and reporting.

Every country will have its own legislations that has to be considered.

If you plan to work for an Australian company even if you reside overseas and are not considering entering Australia, you will need a visa.

If you are an Australian business and you recruit a person overseas for at least 60 days, you are subject to Australia tax obligations.

Those overseas employees could also be subject to local employment laws so there could be conflicting provisions.

There are many tax rules and superannuation obligations for Australian residents working overseas

As a result, when saying an employee can work from anywhere, there are many compliance regulations to be considered. This is both for your resident employees working elsewhere and your non-resident employees working for your business.

You must avoid the repercussions of ignorance.

The other consideration is knowing where your employees are working from at any given time.

If they are truly mobile and working across several locations, what will you do when a natural disaster is announced or there is a political uprising in one of those locations? Which of your employees could be at risk?

You may have to put in place employee self-reporting so you always know where they are, but can you be assured that the reporting takes place?

A survey from Topia revealed that 93% of HR professional are confident they know where the majority of their employees were working, and 78% are confident their employees self-report when working in another state or country.

However, in reality, only 33% of employees report all those days, and 24% reported none at all.

You may consider employee tracking software. As Shawn Farshchi reports “the benefits of keeping tabs on employees’ whereabouts are twofold: 1) they don’t have to worry about self-reporting, and 2) companies don’t have to worry about them not. 

What would your employees want?

F***-Up #10 – Leaders are ready

They are not.

And finally, I close with not only the biggest f***-up being made at this time but one that has pervaded organisation for decades.

Now that employees, with the removal of geographical limitation, have the driving seat with a smorgasbord of organisations to choose to work for, this is the time to get this right. 

Otherwise, you will lose your talent, and no-one will want to work for you. You will become irrelevant.

Leaders are not ready to lead the hybrid team.

Even the good leaders that exist are going to have to elevate their competencies in many areas to lead in a bi-modal manner. Communication and collaboration skills require a significant uplift, as does the provision of positive reinforcement and psychological safety.

I introduced my hybrid leadership model back in February this year and it has continued to evolve to what now looks like this.

There are key skills and competencies that leaders now must develop to effectively lead the high hybrid team. There is no room for proximity bias, and equity and inclusivity for all employees regardless of location is paramount.

Leaders must lead with trust, empower employees, and provide them the autonomy to work where they want, when they want and how they want. For many this is a fundamental mindset shift.

 The greater mindset shift and behavior change will be to measure employee performance on outcomes not hours at the desk. Whilst this should seem a given, there are many bad bosses who still pervade the halls of our organisation with the delusion that seeing someone at their desk means that are productive.

This is the time to take stock and not only separate the wheat from the chaff – the good leaders from the bad – but to rid your organisation of the bad. This is of the utmost importance for your organisational survival.

Wrap

Now I haven’t even touched on the need to get rid of the zombie rituals that have existed in the past such as those pointless status meetings which should now be eliminated with our use of shared communication platforms.

They are dead but like the zombies, often hard to kill off.

This is a time to deconstruct old habits that no longer add value and streamline the way we work. All because it seemed like a good idea in the past, it is doubtful it will be now and into the future.

This is an opportunity being offered on a platter to every organisation regardless of size or sector.

It may not be easy but it is yours for the taking.

If you f*** this up, you will only have yourself to blame. There is a wealth of knowledge and leading thinkers out there, and ready to help.

You don't have to do this alone.