Beyond Hybrid Working: A Smarter & Transformational Approach to Flexible Working [1 ed.] 1032265744, 9781032265742

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“Beyond Hybrid Working provides an essential and compelling narrative for anyone delivering change in the workplace and improving the efficiency of their organisation. Crammed with practical advice, Andy’s first book Smart Flexibility was my playbook for developing TW3, the Governments’ own initial Smarter Working initiative: a game changer for modernising the Civil Service.” Richard Graham, formerly Head of Workplace Transformation, UK Cabinet Office “A much needed, clearly argued, practical approach to smart working, updated to encompass post-Covid challenges and opportunities. To negotiate our way to a more holistic approach to smart working, we need people who are able to communicate a joinedup vision of the future of work. Andy Lake not only does that, but provides a step-by-step guide to how to achieve it.” Mandy Garner, Managing Editor, wmpeople.co.uk “There’s something in here for everyone, whether they’re new to smarter working or have been doing it for a while. Andy’s insight into modern day working practices forms a strong foundation for transformational organisational change.” Su Jordan, Strategic Manager, Transformation, Durham County Council “Andy truly is a founding father of Smart Working in Europe. As researcher, author, lecturer, consultant and change agent he has observed, studied and analyzed the power of Smart Working. Steadfast about the principles and culture of flexibility, he has gathered a wealth of know-how articulated in a most comprehensive and actionable best practice book that is THE go-to for aspiring and seasoned practitioners, leaders and professionals. The writing is very accessible – reading Beyond Hybrid Working is like listening to a good friend around a fireplace with a glass of wine. I am grateful for his relentless awareness-raising, education and networking on all things flexible.” Philip Vanhoutte, author of The Smarter Working Manifesto and Co-Founder of the European Smart Work Network “One of the leading thinkers and writers on the present and future of work, Andy’s work is once again thoughtful, thorough and innovative. A must read.” Neil Usher, Author of The Elemental Workplace, Elemental Change and Unf∗cking Work “Insightful, relevant, and superbly written. The must-have book on workplace for 2024.” Paige Hodsman, Workplace Concept Development Specialist, Saint-Gobain Ecophon “We used Andy’s practical guidance and frameworks as the basis for rolling out Smart Working in the UK operation of a global engineering company, the trailblazer for the

subsequent global transformation. This helped us to think much more widely about a range of considerations that must be addressed when fundamentally changing the where, how and when of people’s daily work. By focusing on the cultural as well as the practical elements, this easy-to-read and often humorous account of the modern workplace provided a great foundation for the transformation.” Ben Hutchinson, Director, JCurv “Andy Lake delivers a comprehensive guide to ways of working during a time of profound change, and one that is both enjoyable, and practical. As many organizations grapple with evolving attitudes to work, new workspace options, and multiplying technical possibilities, an understanding of the topics Andy presents here is fundamental to navigating though that fog with any degree of certainty.” David Dunbar, Head of Digital Workspace, UK Department for Work and Pensions Praise for Andy Lake’s Smart Flexibility: Moving Smart and Flexible Working from Theory to Practice (Routledge, 2013) “… the book is a thought-provoking read and one that I feel should be essential reading for any managers wishing to take flexible working seriously within their organization.” Sandi Mann, Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 34 No. 6, pp. 588–589

“… a must-read for anyone interested in or embarking on workplace change. A combination of academic rigour, practical experience and case studies, it reflects Lake’s long-standing position as researcher and consultant in the field of smarter working. An adviser to government on the issue, his comprehensive book is based on over twenty years of experience in the field and has become an industry ‘bible’.” Heather Greig-Smith, Flexible Boss magazine, September 7, 2015 “I like the author’s use of humour to get the point across … and the book’s gentle meadowstream flow from one chapter to the next. I liked the arguments that he presented, and I appreciated the effort put into excellent research with real-world examples.” Quality World, April 2013

Beyond Hybrid Working Much more than a book about Flexible Working, Beyond Hybrid Working is an engaging and practical management book to help organisations rethink all aspects of traditional work in the emerging post-pandemic landscape and reap the benefits from working smarter. Many organisations that had rapidly improvised and implemented Hybrid Working now want to take a more strategic approach. ‘Smart Working’ is being adopted across sectors, from technology companies, through the financial services sector to the public sector. Andy Lake has supported implementations in businesses and public sector organisations for nearly 30 years, including advising the UK Cabinet Office. He sets out a strategic, comprehensive and integrated approach to Smart Working in the context of new possibilities for working on a more distributed basis, and the impact of new AI-based technologies coming over the horizon. He also explores the possibilities for greater flexibility for workers with hands-on and site-specific roles. Featuring detailed case studies, the book takes a pragmatic and evidence-based approach covering different sectors and types of work, and presents practical techniques for implementing change. This is essential reading for anyone involved in transformational workplace change and increasing the efficiency of organisations. It is written for managers who need to deliver change, and professionals and researchers in the fields of People, Workplace and Technology. Andy Lake is a leading specialist in implementing Smart and Flexible Working. He has also led or participated in national and international research into the impacts of new ways of working. He is founder of Flexibility.co.uk and the Smart Work Network (www.smart-work.net).

Beyond Hybrid Working A Smarter & Transformational Approach to Flexible Working

Andy Lake

Designed cover image: © Getty Images / gremlin First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Andy Lake The right of Andy Lake to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Lake, Andy, author. Title: Beyond hybrid working : a smarter & transformational approach to flexible working / Andy Lake. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2024. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2023028948 (print) | LCCN 2023028949 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032265742 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032265780 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003288930 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Flextime. | Flexible work arrangements. Classification: LCC HD5109 .L353 2024 (print) | LCC HD5109 (ebook) | DDC 331.25/72‐‐dc23/eng/20231002 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023028948 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023028949 ISBN: 978-1-032-26574-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-26578-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-28893-0 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003288930 Typeset in Bembo by MPS Limited, Dehradun

Contents

About the author

ix

Preface

x

Acknowledgements

xiv

Glossary – The ABC of Smart and Flexible Working

xvi

1

What is Smart Working?

1

2

Changing work in a changing world

12

3

Developing a strategic approach

38

4

Business case, metrics and evaluation

56

5

Who, where, when and why?

78

6

The Smart Working workplace

112

7

Working across the Extended Smart Workplace

161

8

Working in the Virtual Workplace

194

9

Embedding a Smart Working culture

229

10

Leading the Anywhere, Anytime Team

270

11

Smart, flexible and productive

296

12

Smarter homeworking

321

13

Smart Working, wellbeing and inclusion

349

14

Smarter government, public services and public policy

393

vii

Contents

15

Smart Working and sustainability

426

16

Beyond Hybrid: Smart Working now and in the future

455

Index

466

viii

About the author

Andy Lake is a specialist in the implementation of Smart and Flexible Working. He has almost 30 years’ experience, working with large UK organisations and international clients. He has worked extensively with UK central government advising on and supporting the implementation of Smart Working. He has also run training on Smart Working for overseas governments in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Andy has also run or participated in numerous research projects specialising in particular in the impacts of new ways of working on business location, land use, transport and public policy. Through participation in international research projects, publications and requests to present at conferences around the world, Andy has built up a very large network of global contacts in the field of Smart Working. His experience spans business, government, media and academic sectors. He has organised numerous conferences and seminars on Smart Working, and is a regular speaker and presenter on the subject. He is also a Founder of the Smart Work Network, which brings together people implementing smarter ways of working across Europe (www.smart-work.net). A graduate of Selwyn College, Cambridge, Andy now lives in Lincoln, UK. Further information about Andy, plus news, views and resources on Smart Working can be found on his website at www.flexibility.co.uk.

ix

Preface

This book aims to provide a guide for anyone interested in implementing Smart Working in their organisation. In a nutshell, it’s about taking a dynamic and transformational approach to working in more flexible, mobile and virtual ways. Beyond Hybrid Working updates and builds on my earlier book, Smart Flexibility.1 It’s written in the wake of the global Covid-19 pandemic, when we experienced various degrees of lockdown and forced homeworking in many countries across the world. As I write, many offices remain substantially under-occupied, and commuting has greatly reduced, as many people no longer wish to go to an office every day. There is much debate within organisations and in the workplace industry about what this means for ways of working and the future workplace. Organisations and their employees have discovered, if they didn’t know before, that people can indeed work effectively and productively away from a central, organisation-owned workplace. Survey after survey – many with impressively large numbers of respondents – indicate that the majority of people working from home during the pandemic believe they work more productively or just as productively away from their collective workplace. What is more, they mostly want to continue to do so. So the good news for Smart Working is that the experience of homeworking has given a major boost to overcoming barriers to change. There’s also been a great acceleration in the uptake of technologies to work at distance, and extensive innovation in the products being deployed. Use of video calls, for example, has moved from rare to routine.

x

Preface

The not-so-good news is that discussions have often been of a simplistic and binary nature: which place is better for working: home or office? A somewhat banal consensus seems to be emerging that in the future, work will probably involve a bit of each. The main question that people debate is how much of each. This concept of ‘Hybrid Working’ falls far short of what we mean by Smart Working. What I find constantly lacking in discussions about Hybrid is any real attempt to address the transformational opportunities that new ways of working make possible, about how to make work better. Working in more than one place has always been an element of Smart or Agile Working. But it’s one element only. Hybrid Working, as set out by many commentators, consultants and people writing organisational policy, often means little more than working much as before, just in two different places. This lack of ambition can also be found in phrases used to describe the vision of post-pandemic working such as ‘the New Normal’. During a time of upheaval and uncertainty, the psychological need to retreat to the cosiness of the familiar is of course understandable. But Smart Working involves challenging traditional ways of working, rather than accommodating them in a new setting. It involves finding ways to improve how we work, and to improve the work experience. It’s about seeking a whole range of benefits across the Triple Bottom Line. Flexing the place of work as needed is just one element of the ‘platform’ for Smart Working that we’ll explore in this book. It is part of a means to an end, not an end in itself. It’s always worth remembering that the majority of the workforce carry out hands-on, site-specific or directly customer-facing work in sectors such as manufacturing, construction, transport, engineering, bricks-and-mortar retail, logistics, health, social care and education. When you drill down into the data, respondents to the homeworking experience surveys referred to earlier are almost exclusively office-based knowledge workers. However, any consideration of modernising working practices needs also to consider how new and smarter ways of working apply to non-office workers and people who split their time and tasks between hands-on work locations and offices. This is an area of great interest to me, having spent much of the past decade working with organisations in sectors such as defence, engineering, nuclear and health, as well as with many that are primarily office-based. So key issues we have to consider include:

xi

Preface

• What kinds of flexibility and mobility might apply for people carrying out hands-on and site-specific work? • How does greater flexibility for knowledge-based tasks impact how hands-on and site-specific work is carried out? • How can we address perceived questions of equity and fairness if office-based workers have high levels of choice about where and how they work? • How should potential changes in the nature of work through automation, artificial intelligence and robotics – the so-called Industry 4.0 – be embraced in a comprehensive Smart Working strategy? • What scope is there, from an economic development point of view, to design homes and communities that can incorporate facilities for small businesses in hands-on sectors, so they can flourish without the need for taking on the expensive overheads of workplaces that are separate from homes? These questions are addressed throughout the book. Other areas of updated and new content reflect where there has been substantial research and innovation since Smart Flexibility was published, including: • A greater focus on health and wellbeing, reflecting new approaches to work and creating ‘human-centric’ workplaces • New approaches to biophilia and the sensory environment, in particular around acoustics/psychoacoustics and the smart workplace • How people on the neurodiversity spectrum and with different personality profiles respond to different kinds of work behaviours and work environments • New approaches to data for managing workplaces and ways of working • A separate chapter on ‘Smarter homeworking’ (Chapter 12), reflecting the renewed interest in this during the pandemic • A completely revised chapter on Smart Working in government (Chapter 14), reflecting the very substantial programmes of change in the UK government sector and in several other countries. Additionally, the research referenced, data cited and case studies are for the most part new or updated and have an increased international dimension. The case studies were developed through interviews and further discussions with the people quoted in them, with access to additional internal materials as appropriate. Several of them are of organisations I have worked with over the years.

xii

Preface

I’ve been working in this field, where flexibility meets business innovation, for almost 30 years. Flexibility has moved from the eccentric periphery to centre stage now. This makes for exciting times, but there’s still a lot to do to maximise the benefits for as many people as possible. That’s what I hope this book will help you to do. Note 1 Andy Lake (2016), Smart Flexibility: Moving Smart and Flexible Working from Theory to Practice. Routledge.

xiii

Acknowledgements

Having been working in the field of Smart and Flexible Working for almost 30 years now, there are many people to whom I owe debts of gratitude for influencing me with their ideas and achievements, and are too numerous to name. In the writing of this book, I would like to thank in particular Paige Hodsman of Ecophon for her expert input on acoustics and wellbeing, Philip Vanhoutte of the European Smart Work Network for his all-round insights and critiques, David Dunbar of DWP for his expert advice and contribution in the chapter of technologies and Bridget Workman (The Changing Work Company) and Richard Graham (formerly Cabinet Office) for their inspiration and review of the Government chapter. I’d also like to thank all the experts I’ve spoken with along the way: Neil Usher (author of The Elemental Workplace and more), Tim Oldman (Leesman Index), Adrian Burton (AWE), Andrew Mawson (AWA) and Lisa Whited (AWA and author of Work Better: Save the Planet), Ben Hutchinson (JCurv and Smart Work Network), Nicola Millard (BT), Rob Harris (Ramidus), Brian Elliott (Slack, and author of How the Future Works), Martine de Vaan (pioneer of outdoor working and walking meetings), Guy Osmond (Osmond Ergonomics), Andy Hawkes (Cardinus), Pauline Roussel (Coworkies.com and author of Around the World in 250 Coworking Spaces), Shona Adam (Scottish Futures Trust), Mandy Garner (workingmums.co.uk), Clare Kelliher (Cranfield University), Gary Thornton (Nulty Lighting), Tara Denn (Merseyside Police), Steve Keogh, (author and former Scotland Yard detective), Mark Catchlove (MillerKnoll), Jack Harvie-Clark (Apex Acoustics) and Sandra Panara (Relogix). It hasn’t been possible to quote

xiv

Acknowledgements

everyone, but the contribution of all of them to my thought processes is very much appreciated. Any errors and omissions are, of course, my own. For their help in pulling together the case studies, I’m very grateful to Dave W (GCHQ), Isabelle Gonnaud (Thales), Paul Clark (formerly of Poly), Clare Tibbitts (Poly), Adrian Burton, again (AWE), Paul Urmston (NatWest), Brian Elliott (Slack), Paul McKinlay (Cimpress), Stephen Collins (European Commission), Kate Guthrie (GPA), Sue Glew (BT), Cherry White (Versus Arthritis), Rob Macdonald (Government of British Columbia) and Grant Smith (HMRC). In our conversations they have shed new light on how organisations can work smarter and how the experience of work can be improved, as well as taking the practical steps to make it happen. Our guest speakers and participants at Smart Work Network events have also inspired with their insights and reflections, as have my fellow judges and colleagues at the WM People Top Employers Awards, and the many clever, determined and pioneers I’ve worked with in dozens of organisations as they implement Smart Working change. Many thanks also to the team at Routledge for their encouragement and support. Finally, I’d like to thank my wife Jan for her continuing support and encouragement for my writing, as well as in the rest of life.

xv

Glossary – The ABC of Smart and Flexible Working

Here is our glossary of terms commonly used in the worlds of Smart and Flexible Working, including in some cases an explanation of how they are used in this book. Activity-based working (ABW) ABW is a key ingredient of Smart Working, describing a) the range of physical settings used in Smart Working workplaces, which one uses according to the work activity one is doing at the time, and b) in a wider sense, being able to organise one’s work and choice of location on the basis of the activities involved. Agile Working In most uses, this is identical to Smart Working. It is sometimes used as the preferred brand within an organisation for their programme of Smart Working change. It puts an emphasis on agility and flexing the time and place of work, and sometimes who does the work, according to need at the time. ‘Agile Working’ as a term suffers from confusion with other uses of the word ‘agile’, as with the specific methodologies of agile software development and agile project management. Biophilia Biophilia is based on the concept that humans have an innate affinity with the natural world. It is an increasingly important consideration in designing humancentred and productivity-supporting workplaces to include natural elements, access to natural light, natural sounds, etc.

xvi

Glossary – The ABC of Smart and Flexible Working

Collective workplace This is the term I use for any workplace across the Extended Workplace where groups of people gather together for work. Compressed working week This describes doing one’s usual weekly hours of work over fewer days, e.g. four 10-hour days rather than five 8-hour days. This more traditional practice is leading to some confusion in discussions about moving to a productivity focused 4-day week. See Chapter 5. Coworking Coworking centres are professional spaces designed to be used by individuals from different organisations, offering a range of facilities and services and often with a focus on building community. See Chapter 7. Distributed Working Distributed Working is a favoured term of some commentators and researchers to describe the generic phenomenon of people working in multiple locations. It’s a kind of shorthand for geographically distributed working. eWork ‘e’ for ‘electronic, plus ‘work’. It was a word in favour for a while as a broader alternative to ‘telework’. But now there’s no need for the ‘e’ – it’s just work. Extended Workplace The term I use in this book to distinguish the totality of physical and virtual places where people work, as opposed to the traditional idea of ‘the workplace’ as a primary location for employees to go to. The concept is, wherever you work, the workplace extends beyond that and all locations within it should be treated as of equal value. See Figure 6.1 for a graphic of the five domains of the Extended Workplace: Organisationowned, Third party-owned, Public, Personal and Virtual. Flexible officing A term that brings together various forms of third-party space-as-a-service: more traditional serviced offices, coworking and a combination of the two. A very fastgrowing area of commercial property. Flexible Working A catch-all term to describe all kinds of flexibility in working practices – and in advanced forms is pretty much the same as Smart Working. However, it is more

xvii

Glossary – The ABC of Smart and Flexible Working

commonly used to denote a range of alternative patterns of work that employees can apply to do. As such it is supported in some countries by legislation giving (some) employees a right to request Flexible Working. As a term it is generally also used to include practices such as part-time working, term-time working and compressed hours, which have limited flexibility as set patterns of time and/or place are typically baked into agreed arrangements. In the book, I use ‘Flexible Working’ (with initial capitals) to denote these kinds of agreed arrangements that apply to individuals by agreement (formal or informal) rather than the more strategic and dynamic flexibilities within Smart Working. I use flexibility with a lower-case f to denote more general flexibility. Flexitime A pattern of work where employees can vary their start and finish times. It often operates with defined core hours when people must be available, but this is not always the case and it can be more fluid. Focus space A setting in a workplace designed for quiet concentrated working. It may be a small room or booth, or a library-style environment. Four-day week There are various kinds of 4-day week – see Chapter 5. The global campaign for a 4day week envisages a reduction of hours, with no reduction in pay alongside increased productivity. It promotes a 100-80-100 model: 100% of 5-days’ productivity in 80% of the time, with 100% of the pay. Not all uses of ‘4-day week’ follow this approach. Homeworking/Home-based working When people work from home, and in some definitions also when people use home as a base for going out to clients or other work activities. Although the focus tends to be on office-style work, in practice much homeworking is in traditional crafts and new areas of hands-on work. See Chapter 12. Hotdesking This is a loaded word that describes various forms of sharing desk space. See Chapter 6 for the problems with the term. Human-centred (human-centric) workplace A workplace that is designed around the needs and preferences of the people, rather than just for efficiency or on a one-size-fits-all basis.

xviii

Glossary – The ABC of Smart and Flexible Working

Hybrid Working A term that has come into vogue with the pandemic. It is mainly understood to describe splitting time between home and office. Industry 4.0 This is a widely used term for step changes in digitisation along with new areas of automation, artificial intelligence and robotics. With all of these comes increased capabilities for remote interaction with data, products and autonomous/semiautonomous/remotely controlled systems and machinery. Maker space Essentially, space for making things. There’s a growing phenomenon in coworking to provide maker space as a service, i.e. to be used by people from different companies and freelancers. It also has relevance to some home-based industries. Management by results/output/outcome A very important element of Smart Working is to have a strong focus on the results of work, instead of focusing on the time input or presence. See Chapters 10 and 11. Open plan office A term that is used in many different ways of many different types of more open work environments, leading to frequent misunderstanding. See Chapter 6 for deconstruction. PAS 3000 PAS 3000 (2015) – Smart Working Code of Practice is a British Standards document setting out best practice in Smart Working across sectors. It has substantially guided implementations in the UK public sector. Proximity bias Proximity bias happens when employees who are physically closer to managers and colleagues are favoured, or included more, in an organisational workplace compared to those who work elsewhere. It also infuses much thinking about where is the optimal location for certain activities. Remote First/Virtual First/Digital First These more or less interchangeable terms are used to describe a way of designing work and implementing change that ensures that everything works optimally for people who work outside the traditional organisational workplace, as a guarantee of equality between all colleagues.

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Glossary – The ABC of Smart and Flexible Working

Remote working Largely used to describe working from home instead of an organisation-owned workplace, but can refer to other locations as well. It arguably carries overtones of being distant, and not in the primary work location. Right to request Flexible Working In several countries there is a statutory right to request (some forms of) Flexible Working. In the UK this right is quite extensive, and applies to all employed workers. In principle, employers should only refuse for valid business reasons. See Chapter 5. Self-rostering Team-based self-rostering enables time-flexibility and greater autonomy for people who do shift work or have to be on call. It works by team members agreeing their times of work, rather than having a schedule determined by a manager. Smart-proofing Smart-proofing describes an approach to ensuring that every new policy, strategy, working practice, process, service plan and budgetary proposal in an organisation is compatible with Smart Working. Smart Working See Chapter 1, What is Smart Working? And the rest of the book! Team Agreement/Charter/Protocols These are agreements drawn up by colleagues in their teams to clarify their arrangements for working smarter. In Chapter 9 I outline a process for using these also to encourage innovation in ways of working. Telecommuting A term that has a historic feel to it, describing teleworking, but emphasising the elimination of commuting. Mainly used in America. Telework Working at a distance for an organisation using technologies for accessing one’s work and one’s colleagues. In practice, it’s mainly used to describe working from home. The term has a slightly archaic feel to it, but is enshrined in some countries’ legislation and is often used in academic research.

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Glossary – The ABC of Smart and Flexible Working

Virtual mobility A term used to describe being able to carry out activities virtually that one would otherwise have to travel for. An important concept for looking at the impact of use of technologies for travel reduction. Virtual Workplace In this book, I use Virtual Workplace as a description for the ‘fifth domain’ of the Extended Workplace. We may work in many different locations, but are always connected by the Virtual Workplace as a means of accessing our information, applications and colleagues. See Chapter 8. Workhub Another, slightly older, word for a coworking centre.

xxi

Chapter One What is Smart Working?

The many faces of work flexibility That the world of work is changing is undeniable. But how should we refer to the new working practices that are evolving? There are many words and phrases used to describe the changes. Flexible Working1, New Ways of Working, Agile Working and Smart Working have been the most commonly used phases. Now Hybrid Working has been added to the mix and gained widespread currency. Some terms seem to focus (linguistically, at least) on working beyond the traditional notion of a workplace. There are words and phrases like Telework, Telecommuting, eWork, Location Independent Working, WorkShifting and several others besides. These terms mostly have a 1990s or early 2000s feel about them. Telework, however, remains current as a term in some countries where it is specifically referred to in law, or where it has become part of extensive government programmes. There is also a substantial and growing corpus of academic research that uses the term – and in my view suffers the consequences of its limited and slightly archaic focus. Besides these, organisations often develop a brand for their implementation programme. It might be one of those already mentioned, or something like WorkSmart, WorkWise, Dynamic Working, Workplace Innovation, Better Ways of Working (BWOW), Our Ways of Working (OWOW) or The Way We Work (TW3).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003288930-1

1

What is Smart Working?

So let’s sort out the key differences (where they exist) between the main terms in use. ‘Smart Working’ has been adopted throughout the UK public sector, along with its almost identical twin Smarter Working for specific programmes. Central government departments and agencies were mandated to meet the standards in the Cabinet Office/British Standards publication PAS 3000 (2015) – Smart Working Code of Practice2, for which I was the technical author. It’s a term also widely used in Europe, though less well known in North America. Italy indeed has a law on Smart Working, though in many ways it’s not very different from Flexible Working in the legislation of some other countries. The definition in the Smart Working Handbook3, which in many ways formed the basis for the British Standards document, is set out here: What is Smart Working? Smart Working is a business-focused approach to flexible working that delivers more efficiency and effectiveness in work organisation, service delivery and organisational agility, as well as benefits for working people. Key features are management by results, a trust-based culture, high levels of autonomy, flexibility in the time and location of work, new tools and work environments, reduced reliance on physical resources and openness to continuing change. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has defined Smart Working as: An approach to organising work that aims to drive greater efficiency and effectiveness in achieving job outcomes through a combination of flexibility, autonomy and collaboration, in parallel with optimising tools and working environments for employees4. The other term most commonly used for this approach to flexibility-plus-businesstransformation is Agile Working. Some commentators have tried to make a distinction between Agile and Smart Working, but in all the essential features and in practice they are the same.

2

What is Smart Working?

I prefer ‘Smart’ to ‘Agile’ as there’s considerable scope for confusion with other uses of ‘Agile’, e.g. for agile software development, agile project management and the more generalised concept of organisational agility. While Smart and Agile (in the Agile Working sense) are pretty much identical, this is not the case with Flexible Working. Flexible Working is an umbrella term for a set of work arrangements that are atypical in the sense that they differ from the traditional 5-days-a-week, 7.5 or 8-hour days with a requirement to be at a specific workplace or workplaces. So this encompasses time-based variations such as flexitime, part-time working, jobshare, term-time working, annualised hours, time off in lieu (TOIL), time accounts, compressed working weeks, self-rostering, career breaks, phased retirement and voluntary reduced time. It also encompasses location-based variations such as working at home, or in a local office or coworking centre, either full-time or part-time. In the UK since 2003 and in many other countries now there is a ‘right to request’ Flexible Working, and a set of criteria for the employer to consider when making decisions about approving requests. There is clearly an overlap between some forms of Flexible Working and Smart Working. The key distinctions are as follows: • Flexible Working normally operates by request – either through a statutory process or various levels of formal or informal request to a manager for permission • Usually Flexible Working involves an application for a different working pattern from a default normal – it often involves a change to contractual terms, unless recruited on that basis to begin with • Smart Working by contrast aims to incorporate flexibility in a more dynamic way to provide flexibility as normal without the need for making a request – flexibility becomes the norm rather than the exception • Smart Working is about transformation – actively pursuing benefits by working in smarter ways, rather than being driven by the choices of individual employees. Ideally it provides a framework in which individuals and teams can make choices about the most appropriate times and places for work, and as far as possible balance individual preferences into the mix. Figure 1.1 illustrates how Smart Working delivers comprehensive change involving not only individual working patterns, but also workplace change, technology change, culture change and business improvement.

3

What is Smart Working?

TECHNOLOGY CHANGE

CULTURE CHANGE

HEALTH & WELLBEING

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION

SMART WORKING

WORKPLACE CHANGE

SERVICE DELIVERY BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT

FLEXIBLE WORKING

PROCESS CHANGE

INNOVATION

ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE

Figure 1.1: The elements of Smart Working.

It also taps into and seeks to inform and enhance wider programmes and initiatives around process change, innovation, new products and service delivery, environmental performance as well as health and wellbeing, diversity and inclusion and request-based Flexible Working. So it seeks to target benefits in all these areas through a strategic and integrated programme of change. Organisations often find that having this more dynamic approach to where and when people work reduces the need for people to apply for a different working pattern in accordance with their company’s policy or under national Flexible Working legislation. Flexibility is embedded in the normal ways of working. In drawing this distinction, I’m not intending in any way to denigrate Flexible Working. Having promoted the development of all kinds of flexibility since the mid-1990s, and as a judge for the workingmums.co.uk Top Employers Awards for over a decade, I’m well aware of the fantastic initiatives that make such a difference to work experience, work–life harmony, wellbeing, diversity and opportunity. There are also increasing numbers of smaller businesses and start-ups that embed Flexible Working from the outset. In these cases it is often a question of emphasis that distinguishes well-embedded Flexible Working and its energetic younger cousin, Smart Working.

4

What is Smart Working?

Making sense of ‘Hybrid Working’ A term that’s gained wide currency during and after the pandemic is Hybrid Working. It’s used to describe a range of responses that involve people working in the office, at home or both. As we see the world emerging from the pandemic, we find that Hybrid as implemented falls into a number of different categories according to the implementation. One of the main distinctions is the balance between control by the employer on the one hand and the autonomy of the employee or team to choose how best to work on the other. Figure 1.2 presents this graphically for organisations that have a workplace that people travel to. The four categories are: • Unreconstructed – everybody back to traditional ways of working • Controlled Hybrid – focusing on rules and roles, such as specifying days for homeworking and days for the office; generally retaining the norms and practices of the office as the basis for working remotely • Flexible Hybrid – having a framework rather than rules, focusing on tasks rather than roles, and enabling more autonomy and choice for employees • Smart Maturity – as for Flexible Hybrid, but with a strong focus on transformation and innovation, rethinking work on ‘virtual first’ principles and redesigning workplaces for maximal flexibility and choice, and for optimal interaction between people in the collective workplace(s) and people working elsewhere. It emphasises a focus on results and a culture of trust, rather than working practices based on presence or place. In the ‘Unreconstructed’ category are organisations like Goldman Sachs, whose CEO described remote working as an ‘aberration’5. Working remotely is seen as at best a poor substitute for working together in the same place: ‘Real work takes place in the office.’ Though Goldman Sachs is a high-profile example, such attitudes are widespread. A senior officer of the Bank of America, in praising full-time in-office working, is reported as saying, ‘We are a work-from-work company’6. How their employees managed to work remotely for 2 years and deliver record profits without being at work is brushed aside by the anachronistic equation of ‘work’ with ‘office’.

5

Unreconstructed

Controlled Hybrid Specified days in the office and remote

Presence-focused

Real work is in the office Flex by rare exception

Flexible Hybrid

Personas / Profiling

Rigid definitions

Greater autonomy

Smart Maturity “Work wherever, whenever – just deliver”

Nuanced guidance

Culture of trust

6

Flex/Smart - proofing Virtual - first Office sets the norms Flexibility/mobility/virtuality as normal Flex by request Rotas in office “Collaborate in the Collaborate anywhere office, focus at home” Flexible Policy / framework Regulations

Assigned seating

Open Plan Hotdesking

Role focus

Figure 1.2: Panorama of Hybrid and Smart Working.

Activity-based settings Task focus

What is Smart Working?

THE PANORAMA OF POST-PANDEMIC WORKING

What is Smart Working?

Similar views have often been reflected in the media, and were heard on the lips of some government ministers in the UK, seemingly unaware of their own policies to promote Smart Working over the past 10 years7. Senior politicians, including a former Prime Minister, have referred to the need for civil servants to ‘return to work’. ‘People need to get off their Pelotons and get back to their desks,’ said one Cabinet minister at his party conference8. In this worldview, homeworking is casually presented as shirking or lounging around, while being at an office desk is seen as the guarantee of serious and effective work being done. In Chapter 14, however, we’ll look at the reality of the UK government’s Smart Working initiatives over the past decade, and ministers’ active encouragement of remote working throughout this time. In Figure 1.2 there are two main categories of hybrid – Controlled Hybrid and Flexible Hybrid. Mandating days in the office is one of the responses in the category I label as ‘Controlled Hybrid’. This may in fact be the largest category coming out of the pandemic. Into this category are organisations such as Google whose CEO announced that, ‘We’ll move to a hybrid work week where most Googlers spend approximately three days in the office and two days wherever they work best’9. That’s a somewhat puzzling formulation. Why not 5 days wherever people work best? The Controlled Hybrid workplace is likely to develop role profiles (e.g. fixed/ anchor, flexible, mobile, homeworker) and link those to entitlements, e.g. to an assigned desk, or a shared desk based on a sharing ratio specified for the profile involved, and linked to permissions to work elsewhere. We’ll explore the use of profiles, the pros and the cons, in Chapter 5. A key characteristic is that the Controlled Hybrid mindset still sees the collective workplace as primary and other locations as secondary. How future work is envisaged is still based on the practices and rituals of the traditional office – perhaps slightly modified, but not significantly so. The layout of the Controlled Hybrid office is more likely to reflect that of the Unreconstructed category. It will usually have more desks, many of them assigned to individuals (probably based on their allotted profile), and fewer of the alternative settings that typify a Smart Working environment. ‘Flexible Hybrid’ describes an approach that is less about rules and definitions. Instead it provides guidelines and a broader framework for individuals and/or teams to decide for themselves where and when to work. It is also likely to include a more proactive approach to Flexible Working patterns.

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What is Smart Working?

The physical workplace in Flexible Hybrid will have a greater variety of work settings, more aligned to the tasks that people do when they come into the office. There may be some steps to ‘smart-proof’ (or ‘flex-proof’) work practices and processes. That’s about ensuring that remote and other flexible workers are considered when implementing changes and making decisions. However, in many ways a traditional mindset still influences thinking through how, where and when work should be carried out, e.g. the necessity of proximity for collaboration. Smart Working Maturity ‘Smart Working Maturity’, however, is all about transforming the ways we work. Traditional assumptions and practices are challenged across the board, with a view to improving both work and the work experience. So it’s more than finding ways to make multi-location working work. It’s about using the new possibilities to deliver well-defined benefits. Ways of working are designed around these benefits, and that informs the location of work, the range of choices that can be dynamically applied, the technologies to be used and the design of workplaces. As we’ll see, it moves beyond the generalisations that often characterise our two versions of hybrid, such as home might be better for focus, but collaboration is better in-person in the collective workplace. It’s about weighing up the relative merits of both virtual and physical presence collaboration, and making the best decision for different tasks as appropriate for the work in hand. In some of the case studies we’ll see an approach that is called Remote First, Digital First or Virtual First. This turns the typical hybrid paradigm around. Instead of trying to model virtual ways of working on office practices, or assuming that remote working is a pale imitation of the real thing, Virtual First aims to ensure that all ways of working work, and every practice, process and tool works effectively in the virtual domain. This is an essential first step for ensuring that there is a level playing field and that everybody is working within the same culture. Such a Virtual First approach is one indicator of Smart Working Maturity. Other key features are a strong focus on management by results, a culture of trust and very high levels of autonomy based on what works for the business, the individual and the team. Ways to maximise wellbeing and sustainability will be tightly embedded in the approach to ways of working, rather than being separate strands of organisational activity.

8

What is Smart Working?

Smart Working Maturity will also have an emphasis on the flexible use of space, with a higher proportion of shared settings aligned with a) the tasks people actually do and b) the flexibility and mobility provided by Smart Working. What about entirely virtual organisations? The panorama in Figure 1.2 provides a spectrum of how work is conceived and organised for organisations that provide premises for people to work in. Of course there are also completely virtual organisations, that have no premises of their own at all. There is much to learn from this growing phenomenon. We need also to recognise that increasingly people will make transitions between premises-less and premises-based entities. Indeed, during the pandemic thousands of people began their careers and carried on for months (or even a couple of years) without meeting colleagues or visiting a collective workplace. For them, working in a company office provides something of a culture shock. Office novices will ask, ‘Why on earth do we have to do that?’ However, we should not see virtual-only organisations as a fifth category to the right of our model, as inherently progressive. They do not, just by virtue of being virtual, necessarily exhibit the range of attributes that characterise Smart Working Maturity. Some can actually have quite regressive cultures, showing high tendencies to want to control and monitor how people work, rather than enabling trust and autonomy. There has been a rise, for example, in the use of surveillance software of various kinds to see that people are at their (remote) workstations10, with close monitoring of presence and hours worked. Command and control can extend out into the virtual world, and increasingly there are technology solutions for making it more extensive and invasive. So on the one hand we have progressive virtual organisations like Gitlab, with their high degree of Smart Maturity. On the other, we have a trajectory rooted in what we might call the bad old ways of exploitative homeworking, where employers now have the advantage of using technology to exert greater degrees of control. One thing that is interesting is the number of start-ups that begin life on a completely virtual basis. Even before the pandemic, more than 70% of new businesses began life at home, and there was already a growing trend not to acquire separate premises11. Into that mix has come the rapid expansion of coworking as a phenomenon, providing space as a service on an as-needed basis.

9

What is Smart Working?

Checking where you are and setting the direction of travel In setting out my panorama in Figure 1.2, my aim is to provide an initial diagnostic tool. Organisations can use this to reflect on the kinds of practices they have been introducing, and ask themselves the most important question: ‘Why?’ Why are we specifying a set number of days in an office or other collective workplace? Is that really necessary? Why are we trying to attract people into an office, rather than letting them choose according to the nature of the work in hand? Why do we need settings full of traditional desks if the workforce is much more mobile and people are primarily coming in to collaborate? Why do mature adults have to ask permission to work at different times and places? And for the features on the right of Figure 1.2, we can ask the question, ‘Why not?’ What’s the reason for not trusting people to work effectively and responsibly, and deliver the results? Why not have flexibility, mobility and virtuality embedded as normal ways of working? Why do we not go for a wider range of work settings than a desk-first approach? We’ll explore all these questions and more in the pages ahead, and techniques for thinking things through and gathering the necessary evidence for change. The approach I’ll be recommending in the coming pages for achieving excellence in Smart Working will be pragmatic, rather than evangelical. Organisations share many commonalities, but they will also have different starting points for change and differing sets of benefits to prioritise. In the last chapter, we’ll pull all the facets of Smart Working together in the Smart Working Maturity Model (illustrated in Figure 16.1). Using this and the evaluation techniques set out in Chapter 4, you’ll be able to assess what progress you have made, and how far you still have to go, for your organisation to attain Smart Working Maturity. Notes 1 The Glossary in the prelims provides a summary of all the key terms used in the book to refer back to. 2 UK Cabinet Office and British Standards Institution (2015), PAS 3000:2015 – Smart Working Code of Practice. BSI Standards. 3 Andy Lake (2015), The Smart Working Handbook. 2nd edition. Flexibility.co.uk. 4 CIPD (2014), HR: Getting Smart about Agile Working. Chartered institute for Personnel and Development.

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What is Smart Working?

5 Forbes (11 May 2021), The CEO of Goldman Sachs called remote work an aberration—here’s why his employees may disagree. www.forbes.com/sites/ robertglazer/2021/05/11/the-ceo-of-goldman-sachs-called-remote-work-anaberration-heres-why-his-employees-may-disagree/ 6 Gioia McCarthy, Bank of America’s market president for San Francisco and the East Bay, featured in BizWomen (1 April 2022), Bank of America exec on its fiveday return-to-office plan: ‘We’re a work-from-work company’. www.bizjournals. com/wichita/bizwomen/news/latest-news/2022/04/bank-of-america-execon-return-to-office-plan-we.html 7 E.g. the former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, who in his ‘Peppa Pig’ speech to business leaders said, ‘Mother Nature does not like working from home.’ Report in the Financial Times (22 November 2022), Boris Johnson urges UK return to office for ‘evolutionary reasons’. www.ft.com/content/454769a7-2d964d82-9a00–599ca9eb5c2e 8 Oliver Dowden, reported in the i newspaper (11 November 2021), Ministers rail against working from home, but it’s key to their own ‘levelling-up’ agenda. https:// inews.co.uk/news/working-from-home-wfh-hybrid-ministers-governmentlevelling-up-agenda-1243876 9 Memo to ‘Googlers’ from Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet (5 May 2021), A hybrid approach to work. https://blog.google/inside-google/ life-at-google/hybrid-approach-work/ 10 Surveys by the trade union Prospect, www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics59152864 and by cybersecurity firm Kapersky https://workplaceinsight.net/ working-from-home-surveillance-drives-rise-of-digital-presenteeism/ provide insights into this phenomenon and the issues involved. 11 Andy Lake and Tim Dwelly (2014), It’s Work But Not As We Know It. Research report, Flexibility.co.uk.

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Chapter Two Changing work in a changing world

Smart Working spreading across sectors The changing world of work is not something that began with the pandemic, though the experience during the lockdowns has certainly accelerated certain trends. Some of the largest and most successful organisations in the world were already giving their employees the freedom to work from wherever and whenever they choose, as long as it’s good for the business. If the work gets done, and customer needs are met, that’s good. Even better is that the new working times and locations can be used to improve productivity, meet customer needs better and at the same time reduce costs. The world of work is changing for organisations across all sectors. We are perhaps not surprised to hear that companies in the field of IT and telecommunications are doing this, or companies with large numbers of knowledge workers. But across all sectors new working practices are being introduced – financial services, manufacturing, construction, government, defence, health services and emergency services: no sector is excluded, as our range of case studies shows. The old ways of working – and their value The terms ‘new ways of working’, ‘Flexible Working’, ‘Agile Working’ and of course Smart Working imply that we need to move away from older, less flexible, less agile, less smart, more traditional ways of working that are now past their sellby date. The organisational model that we need to change is one based on factory

12

DOI: 10.4324/9781003288930-2

Changing work in a changing world

methods – herding people together and marshalling resources in significant concentrations, to manage them better and to achieve economies of scale. One mustn’t forget that these ‘old’ ways provided a model that has been highly successful and has achieved unprecedented prosperity, at least in the developed world. Although it may in the end be futile, resistance to change is quite natural. The old model is a tried and tested one, and one in which many of today’s leaders and managers have made successful careers. In historical terms, however, the old model is one of fairly recent vintage, emerging from the Industrial Revolution. Having offices organised as ‘clerical factories’ with regimented desks and a production-line approach to processes is even more recent1. This kind of regimented organisation of working life was intensified in the 20th century by the dominance of ‘collectivist’ approaches to social organisation, in both the capitalist West and the communist East. The regimentation of mass activity to achieve improved results is evident in approaches not only to industrial organisation, but also to mass transit systems, public health reform and public education, plus of course military organisation and strategy in two world wars and the conflicts of the Cold War era. The influence of having three generations in uniform in the 20th century cannot be exaggerated in terms of setting the norms for the workplace organisation and behaviours that have evolved. By the last quarter of the 20th century, the vast majority of people working in the developed world were employees, rather than being self-employed or having other variations of pre-industrial work relationships. Work for most people had become a place you go to as much as the activity you undertook. Long-term job security had become far more attainable, and the ‘job for life’ became the dominant expectation, backed up by solid pension schemes. A job for life, and a set 7 or 8-hour workdays for most people; the world of work seemed a well-ordered and simple place compared to the ferment we have today. Of course, in reality it was never so simple. There were always selfemployed people, people working all hours in small businesses, people working shifts, people moonlighting with second jobs, people doing part-time, term-time, casual or seasonal work. But we all knew what was normal, and there was a consensus in public policy that the best jobs to create were full-time, permanent jobs-for-life with regular hours. How and why did this consensus slip away?

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Changing work in a changing world

Reflections on the history of work – how we got to where we are now There has been a growing realisation that work doesn’t have to be organised in this way. Even in 1900, despite more than 100 years of Industrial Revolution already, most work was not in factories or offices even in the UK, the most industrialised nation. The home was still the centre of much enterprise and employment, whether one’s own home or working in domestic service. Living and working in the same premises was still a normal way of working, at all levels of society. Seasonal work and contract working were also much more common than they are today. Looking back before the Industrial Revolution, some commentators have even suggested there was no such thing as a job – only work. This is, of course, not exactly true. But there is a point to be made about jobs back then on the whole being much more fluid and less defined than in the modern world with its bureaucratic/regulatory payroll and taxation systems. Even so, more or less as far back as records go there is evidence of people having jobs, in the familiar sense of paid, regular employment for a single employer. That seems to be an inevitable part of running large-scale, complex organisations. Initially these tended to be palaces, temples and armies, then moving into other areas of administration – in the beginning was the public sector, perhaps. Then over the centuries, similar models were adopted in trading, banking and manufacturing. Regular, paid jobs, however, were in the minority and much coveted. Other work may have been more flexible, but carried with it the precarious flexibility of earning or not earning, surviving or starving. So it is no wonder that security and stability became highly prized. Generally, apart from a minority of adventurers and entrepreneurs, people are unwilling to risk trading security and stability for greater autonomy and control over their working lives. The experience of periods of substantial unemployment and the evils that arose from them underpinned the consensus between employers and the employed about the need for security and stability in the labour market and the workplace. For the post-war generations with ‘jobs for life’, regular hours, improving working conditions, health insurance and the prospect of comfortable retirement this was not a bad deal; and much better than anything their fathers or grandfathers had experienced. So one has to be wary of approaches to new ways of working that romanticise the pre-industrial past. Questioning the collectivist factory-style approaches to the organisation of work should not mean reviving some kind of romantic ‘artisan

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Changing work in a changing world

workshop’ ideal or ‘two acres and a cow’ idyll. These utopian themes are common to both 19th century ‘Merrie England’ romantic socialism and the late 20th century ‘telecottage’ movement, and perhaps can be seen in some of the commentary about the new generation of ‘digital nomads’ working from a beach in Bali. People want flexibility, and they want autonomy – but they also want to be secure and be sure that they have the means to provide for their families. Can we have it all? Both flexibility and autonomy on the one hand, security and stability on the other? And what is the balance between individual autonomy and collective organisation? It’s also worth reflecting on the fact that in ancient, medieval and early modern times, ‘corporate’ life was often more mobile than it is today. This is not so much in terms of having field workers operating nomadic styles of work – though there certainly were plenty of such people. Rather it is in terms of the whole corporate centre being peripatetic. Where the emperor or general or business owner went, so did much of the central apparatus of the organisation: advisers, secretaries, clerks, scribes (and their paperwork), security staff and organisers for the household, plus entertainers and camp followers of various kinds too, perhaps. The organisational centre was not so inflexibly tied to one particular place. The concept of carrying your office with you has made a return. We can all be our own king, queen or general, though for better or for worse we don’t have the same kind of retinue. We may not have scribes, runners and cooks in attendance, but we do have laptops, smartphones and remote access to our work and our colleagues. Such is progress, and the tools we need for ownership of our working lives. Working 9–5 is, however, a relatively modern invention. And a regular 8-hour (or less) day has been the culmination of campaigns and legislation to protect workers from exploitation and to ensure a better quality of life. In the 1890s, this was a distant dream for workers, a dangerous fantasy as far as most business owners were concerned. Having a 7- or 8-hour continuous working day with most people working at the same time, though convenient and reliable, is an artificial and often inefficient norm for working practices. And in recent decades there have been many changes in the wider world that have exposed weaknesses in the model. The context of work is changing – ten trajectories of change The ‘where’, ‘when’ and ‘how’ of our work arises from a combination of factors relating to power relationships, access to resources, levels of prosperity, available

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Changing work in a changing world

tools and technologies, mobilities, social systems, cultures and, somewhere down the line, individual preferences. Social change and changes in markets create new contexts in which organisations function. As we have seen during the pandemic, the ability to adapt to new contexts is crucial to an organisation surviving. It presents challenges, but also can create opportunities to do things better. The following ten trends provide the global context for change in moving towards greater flexibility and smarter working practices. Trend 1: Digitisation and accelerated technological change

The availability of new information and communications technologies (ICT) is having a transformative impact on society – on the ways we communicate, the way we socialise, the way we access services, the way we buy products, the products we buy and the way we work. Letter writing has all but disappeared. Social media have had a profound effect on behaviours and the way people interact, meet and arrange to meet. Online shopping, initially treated with scepticism by many, is having a revolutionary impact on the way we consume and on the nature of the products that we buy. Bookshops and record shops were already endangered species. Many high street stores have closed, and the survivors find that online sales make up an ever-greater proportion of turnover. These changes have impacts on mobility and on our activity spaces, i.e. the places we choose to do what we do. Places we used to go to are now often online spaces we visit. And things we used to buy as physical products are increasingly ‘dematerialised’, becoming online products or services. Sectors such as the entertainment, newspaper and advertising industries are also being transformed by new media. The same technologies are bound to have an impact on working practices, though the process has been slower for mainly cultural reasons. Computers and Internet access are introduced to workplaces as productivity tools, but in due course their use has a subversive impact on the workplaces they are brought into, by undermining the imperative to work there rather than somewhere else. Technological change outside the workplace often runs ahead of change inside the workplace. For many younger people, using webcams and social networking were commonplace at a time when many IT departments still banned their use, standing Canute-like against the tide.

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Changing work in a changing world

Video calls, long predicted, are now a normal part of everyday life, and not something reserved for a specialist videoconferencing suite that was mostly used, if at all, by senior managers. A host of new companies have set up to provide virtual alternatives for public conferences and exhibitions, with added features intended to capture a sense of the interactions that happen in a real-life in-person event. We’ll see over time which ones survive and thrive. Fast broadband is, if not quite ubiquitous, much more available. All-fibre networks are being rolled out. New generations of mobile technology (currently 5 G is being rolled out in the UK) create new possibilities for connected devices and systems in the so-called Internet of Things (IoT). This has implications for smart buildings and smart cities as well as for the ways we work. The technology tools we now use on a daily basis also interact with, and bring changes to, the spaces where we use them and the furniture, fittings and services that characterise those spaces. As computers and phones become smaller and more portable, screens become more intelligent and versatile and wireless technologies are deployed, everything we assume about the configuration of the office is open to question. The implications of this interplay between technology and the physical workplace will be explored in detail in Chapters 6 and 8. This is only the beginning. A theme of this book is that in using technologies for Smart Working, we’re still very much in a transitional era. What will we see over the next 10 years? Vastly increased use of video, increasingly immersive environments for meetings, new virtual environments for collaboration and for storing information, holographic technologies, reliable speech recognition technologies, extensive use of sensing and tracking technologies, virtual/augmented/mixed reality applications, varieties of artificial intelligence coming into every application … and many innovations we can’t yet envisage. Digitisation and the roll-out of new technologies are closely connected – or ought to be – with improving efficiency and productivity through streamlining or reinventing processes, and with implementing integrated enterprise-wide IT systems and systems to connect directly with customers and suppliers. It involves questioning the ways organisations operate, and the resources they need and how they are deployed – including the human resources. Through digitisation, organisations shift the channels of interaction with customers. App-based and online services remove the need for representatives to visit customers or have customers go to local branches. These have had profound

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Changing work in a changing world

impacts on space, mobility and skills, for example with bank branch closures and the demise of the itinerant insurance rep. However, it’s interesting that in the pre-pandemic years, companies investing in digitising their processes often retained traditional working practices for their premises-based staff. Some work might have been outsourced – but outsourced to people working in traditional ways, only for a different employer. Work became much more digital, but the need for employees to commute to a fixed workplace to work with these systems often went unquestioned. In effect, for some kinds of work, organisations have profited from outsourcing inefficient work processes to lower wage companies and economies. The challenge now, which smarter working practices can address, is to leverage greater value from the huge IT investments involved. This means challenging not only business processes, but also the assumptions about property, facilities, travel, working time, working culture and management techniques. Trend 2: More women in the workforce

Since the 1970s, the number of women in the workforce has increased significantly. In the UK, 53% of women aged 16–64 were in employment in 1971. In 2022, it was 71%. For men, the figures are 98% and 79%2. Associated with the ever-increasing number of women in the workplace is a rise in flexible/atypical working arrangements such as part-time work and term-time working. An overall rise in part-time working to around 26% of the workforce is driven by female employment, with women making up three quarters of part-time workers. There has been a strong association between flexible/atypical and ‘familyfriendly’ working practices. Family-friendly, however, has tended to be a highly gendered concept based on the assumption that women will do most of the caring and domestic tasks that maintain the family. Work–life balance for the individual is brought more sharply into focus when both partners in a family work. Before the 1970s there was a kind of consensus, whether fair or not. The man was the breadwinner, and the woman was the homemaker and primary carer for the children. In this way families managed the home–work interface, and had between them a balance. There was a man’s territory, and there was a woman’s one. Though some people think we should return to these ways, most of us do not. But we haven’t entirely found the solution. ‘Can women have it all?’ ask the

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Changing work in a changing world

women’s magazines, referring to having a successful career and a great family life. Now we should also be asking, can men? Gender stereotyping and genderist assumptions still pervade many of the debates and even the regulations in various countries about Flexible Working. Introducing measures to help combine caring responsibilities and work is seen by many campaigners as a key way to help women in their careers. Is this, in its own way, sexist? Or is it realistic and pragmatic? It starts from where we are, and looks to Flexible Working as a way to achieve greater equality between women and men. The data shows that women are far more likely to work part-time, term-time and have start and finish times to align with caring responsibilities. The evident benefits of this and of having a more diverse workforce provide a major element of the context for the growth of Flexible Working. We should note, however, that until the pandemic, while women were in the majority in terms of time-based flexibilities, most people working regularly from home were in fact men. There has been a trend in recent years towards parity, but it wasn’t until the lockdowns that women and men had equal access to working from home. That was an equality that was forced upon just under half the workforce by circumstance. We will need to see whether there will be a reversion to older patterns as we emerge from the pandemic, or whether the equality endures. A concern for women’s equality in employment has also spurred legislation in many countries on Flexible Working and parental leave arrangements, which we will return to in the next chapter when considering drivers for companies to introduce Smart Working. Trend 3: Demographic change and longer lives

The age structures of society are also changing. We have been moving from a three-generation workforce to a five-generation one. People live longer. And increasingly they also either need or want to work for longer. Or, if they are reasonably well-off, they may want to half-retire earlier and continue to half-work, or work intermittently, until they choose to stop. Currently around a third of the UK population is over 50. This is going to rise to half the population sometime over the next 20 years, according to current estimates. Around half of the children born around the world in 2009 can expect to live to be 100.

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Changing work in a changing world

At age 65, men can now expect to live for a further 21 years, and women for a further 23 years. Amongst other impacts, this is creating major challenges to pension provision. The trends to longer lives and challenges on funding them are clear. But what does it mean for the workforce, and for the nature of work? The dependency ratio – i.e. the number of financially dependent people over 65 years old as a share of the potential working population – increased throughout OECD countries from 22% in 2000 to 32.4% in 2022 and is predicted to rise to 52.7 in 20503. In countries such as Japan with its older age profile, it is at critical levels already. Many developing countries with a younger demographic have a ‘bulge’ coming through the years and have this in store in the future, especially as improved living standards tend to lead to lower fertility rates. The long and short of it is that people are living much longer, and not enough people are working to support them. Short of a ‘Logan’s Run’ type of solution – i.e. vaporising people before they get too old – what are the solutions? First of all, there are many things wrong with the view of a primarily dependent old age, and with a narrow interpretation of the concept of a dependency ratio. It brings to mind the observation of Lionel Shriver’s disillusioned doctor Cyril Wilkinson, ‘We’re not living for longer. We’re dying for longer!’4 Though there are of course real issues concerning pensions, health and social care for older people, in general people are living longer because they are fitter and healthier rather than because we are spending a fortune on propping them up. For all the problems, today’s pensioners are healthier and wealthier than at any time in history. Today’s older people for most of their later years are more likely to have people depend on them than to be dependent on others. Grandparents are increasingly finding themselves a ‘sandwich generation’: they have older, perhaps frailer parents as well as children and grandchildren that they support in many ways. They are also the most likely to be undertaking voluntary work. To a significant extent, society depends on the voluntary labour and spending of its older citizens. Increasingly, we are also depending on their continuing to do paid work past pensionable age. While think-tanks and politicians wrestle with the issues, the flow of the river of work into retirement has already burst its banks. People are working beyond pensionable age in greater numbers – some because they have to, and some because it’s what they want to do. What many don’t want to do, however, is follow the traditional patterns of working flat out in the old ways up to the point when they stop working altogether. ‘All or nothing’ is not acceptable to increasing numbers of older workers.

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This has been evident in what appears at first sight to be a contrary trend during the pandemic. Older workers featured strongly in what has been called ‘the Great Resignation’, or what some have called ‘the Great Re-evaluation’. However, numerous surveys have shown that rather than quitting the workforce altogether, most would prefer to continue to work if it can be done on a flexible basis5. And there is further evidence of that return to trend in the UK in autumn 20226. Some are looking to start doing work they find more meaningful or aligned with their interests in life, possibly running their own business rather than working for others. The connecting factor about these attitudes to working in older life is a desire to have more control and choice over the work they do. The trajectory of change is, and must be, towards blurring the hard divide between work and retirement7. We are now witnessing something of a ‘baby boomer effect’ as that generation reaches retirement age. They have been revolutionising their own 60s as much as they revolutionised the 1960s. They will continue to be demanding consumers, innovating socially and economically in their approach to older age. And they are also proving to be innovators in terms of employment, semi-employment, investing and enterprise. Michael Moynagh and Richard Worsley observed nearly 20 years ago that we are moving from lives that are divided ‘horizontally’ to lives that are divided ‘vertically’8. By this they mean that in the past, the norm was to divide our lives into clear phases based on age: from childhood to education, to work, through marriage and parenthood, and then to retirement. The ‘vertical’ divisions of life mean that transitions, or the options for transition, may be available throughout a longer life: into and out of work, back into and out of education, into and out of marriage, then maybe back into marriage again at some point. Like ageing boxers in pursuit of a payday, perhaps we will flex in and out of retirement as need or preference arises. The work/non-work interface is then not only about retirement or redundancy, but also about choice. This is a view also developed convincingly in Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott’s book The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity 9. It describes the shift from a three-stage life – education, work, retirement – to a multi-stage one which doesn’t orient itself in predictable ways on a beginning-middle-and-end basis. This multi-stage life will have ‘a variety of careers, breaks and transitions’. They note that the only way to make a three-stage life work financially over a 100-year lifespan is to have a long and probably tedious and increasingly arduous

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middle stage of work. So we need to plan for taking the opportunities to change career, reskill ourselves and take breaks for other purposes. We also have new generations coming into the workforce. Most of the differences in characteristics between generations that are commented on are overblown, Gen Z to Boomers and beyond (see Chapter 5). Much of it comes down to differences in life and work experience that inevitably change over time. However, the incoming generations are ‘digital natives’ having grown up with the technologies that are currently transforming not only the ways we work, but also the concept of workplace. The ways they collaborate on projects at college using shared documents and social media tools are well-suited to Smart Working. However, their initial experience in many workplaces may often seem like a step back in time. They have also had experiences now of remote learning during the pandemic. They know that it can be done, even if it is not always done well. Experiences of entering the jobs market in 2020 and 2021 may well have included the following: • Being recruited into an organisation and not meeting any colleagues for several months as the offices were closed • Being recruited into an entirely virtual or remote-first company where there is no expectation of regular in-person presence in an office • Working freelance or in ‘gig economy’ roles (part-time or full-time) for more than one employer and using online platforms to find or to deliver work • Working in a start-up that uses co-working space or public spaces as-needed, alongside remote work. These are very different kinds of initial experiences compared to the traditional recruitment and induction processes of former years. Not all their experiences will necessarily be better than the old ways, but will present a different range of comparators by which ways of working will be evaluated. Surveys have shown that in some respects, though, younger employees have struggled more with homeworking than their older colleagues, with 44% of Generation Z saying homeworking was a success overall compared to 72% of their Generation X elders, according to one large-scale global survey10. This relates to both their need to learn from others and often sub-optimal space at home for working. However, surveys also show they value flexibility very highly11 – it’s just a question of getting it right.

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Trend 4: Individualism, personal autonomy and the democratisation of aspiration

It’s not possible to get through the weekend’s TV without being exhorted in Hollywood films and the inescapable talent shows ‘to follow your dreams!’ The generations surviving conflict and rebuilding nations in the last century knew the opposite: you had to get real and moderate your dreams. But for baby boomers and the subsequent generations X, Y and Z who have grown up with the safety net held high beneath them, realising their dreams and becoming who they want to be is a key motivator. For the aspirational society we live in, the first few basic levels in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs can be taken as given, for the majority. We’ve got food, shelter, clothing – or at least we feel we have an automatic entitlement to them through the fact of being alive. It’s seeking the higher levels of happiness and self-actualisation that drive us. There is a lot to debate and critique about such trends, no doubt. The pandemic, cost of living crisis and conflicts around the world warn us that we certainly shouldn’t take being safe from harm for granted. What is notable, however, is that this urge to self-actualisation, and the resistance to external control that goes with it, are reshaping the way we look at organisations and employment. As mentioned earlier in our brief tour of the history of work, people are seeking more autonomy in their lives. They are impatient with the lowest-common-denominator collectivist solutions of the 20th century. They want to shape their world around themselves, rather than be shaped. This manifests itself in having two, three or even four different careers in a working life. To be a ‘company man’ in the 1950s mould, or to desire a ‘job for life’, strikes many people as being somehow inauthentic, even if not expressed in so many words. And increasingly, it is unrealistic. At a deeper level, however, what is actually happening is that in all areas of life people are more individualistic and crave more autonomy. It’s about the decline of collectivist mentalities and the rise of individualism. It’s why self-help books sell millions. And it’s why employees like to choose employers who enable them to balance their lives better and pursue interests outside of work. From some standpoints, we live in an age that is too individualistic and selfindulgent, that is seeing the breakdown of families, institutions and all the old certainties and solidarities. The rapid changes in society and attitudes appear to be a kind of fragmentation, to the point where some think that society itself is breaking down.

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It is of course possible to be too gung-ho either way when looking at these kinds of trends. There are a multitude of different attitudes and aspirations running side by side and sometimes in conflict with each other. Collectivist mindsets still abound, though are no longer so dominant. But few would dispute that the choices are greater, and the possibilities more extensive for being oneself rather than fitting into someone else’s groove. There is also an associated trend of what I call the democratisation of aspiration. What I mean by this is that groups formerly marginalised, disadvantaged or discriminated against can now ‘dare to dream’ like the rest of us. For the most part, this means aspiring to be able to have the same opportunities to do the same things as everyone else. So it’s about a woman’s aspiration to have a place in the board room, a parent’s aspiration to balance work and family life, a member of any minority having equal opportunity for employment and progression, or an older employee’s aspiration to keep on working or to start up a ‘sunset business’. For many people with disabilities or long-term health conditions, the traditional workplace is a disabling environment. The need to commute to it can be an additional hurdle to overcome. Smart Working is a facilitator of the aspiration to work for people with mobility disadvantages, who are unable to work long periods at one time or who need either regular or intermittent medical treatment. Our case study of the charity Versus Arthritis (see Chapter 13) provides clear insights into the benefits of maximising flexibility and working smarter. In most countries – though not all – society as a whole now accepts this equality of aspiration, even if we’re not always sure how to facilitate it in practice. It is no coincidence that in many organisations it is the Equality/Equity, Diversity and Inclusion people who push for the introduction of Flexible Working practices to overcome disadvantage in the workplace. And I would say, ‘More power to their elbow!’ even though I also believe that an equalities approach or a work–life balance approach is not sufficient on its own to achieve the full range of benefits that Smart Working can provide. Trend 5: Blurring boundaries between work and the rest of life

Boundaries between home and work are changing. This is only in part down to business-related reasons. It also reflects changing personal preferences with aspirations for a better work–life balance, as outlined in Trend 4. And the fact that new technologies mean that we can work in new ways also makes a difference.

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The boundaries are blurring because the nature of work is changing. We are leaving behind the Industrial Age – at least in the developed world. And with it we are leaving behind the imperative to separate the domestic environment from the dirty, smelly and hazardous world of industrial work, and the economies of scale of the centralised office. Other changes are taking place, shifting not only the places of work but also the times when work takes place. The accelerated emergence of global markets and an increasingly integrated world economy mean that the traditional 9–5 is not an option for organisations that need to compete or interact internationally. Hence the need for some people to make calls or collaborate at non-standard times for the country they live in, and which they may well do from home. We’ve also seen the stubborn development of a ‘long hours culture’, particularly in the UK. It is not clear that people are necessarily doing anything very useful in these extra hours ‘at work’ – but all the signs are there that we are using our time budgets differently. The headline figures on hours worked mask more subtle trajectories in the evolution of new ways of working. During both our working time and our wider life we are much more likely to be doing – or attempting to do – several tasks simultaneously. Sociologists of work have for some time been talking about a basic distinction between people who are ‘integrators’ and people who are ‘separators’ in terms of managing the interface between home and work12. The rigid boundary between home and work is fading. Integration and separation describe psychological rather than geographical approaches – a home worker can be a separator, and an office worker can be an integrator. It’s about how you intertwine or separate the tasks and concerns of work and life outside of work. Either way, the boundaries tend to be less hard-edged than in the old days. This has raised some concerns about work encroaching in undesirable ways into people’s lives. A strand of academic research associates home-based working with work intensification, and some policymakers seek ways to regulate this, e.g. with a ‘right to disconnect’. This is an issue we’ll come back to later as we examine what work intensification actually means, as there are a number of complexities and false assumptions involved alongside areas of genuine concern. Organisations have also changed. Concern for employees’ wellbeing, benefits such as workplace crèches or childcare vouchers take employers into territory that was once the preserve of the employee’s home life. Work–life balance can also involve taking more of your outside life into work.

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This blurring of boundaries has of course been greatly accelerated by the socalled ‘great homeworking experiment’ during the Covid pandemic. Most homebased work previously tended to involve working on one’s own, with occasional connections with employers, colleagues and clients. There were exceptions to this, e.g. with home-based call centre work, but it is generally true. The forced homeworking during the lockdowns saw a massive rise in collaboration with colleagues while working from home. One of the effects of this is to allow work colleagues virtually into one’s home to an extent that would not normally happen in the offline world. We may only be at the beginning of a long transition in this respect. Trend 6: Globalisation and the mobility of work

The acceleration of globalisation in the past few decades has had a profound impact on our lives, from the food we eat to the times and places that we work. Successive new technologies from the telegraph to the Internet, from steamships to jet planes, have played their part in overcoming the constraints of distance and enabling us to work closely with people from all over the planet. The Industrial Age ways of travelling and meeting, though, are not so well-suited to working in an integrated way with colleagues and customers all over the world. Flexibility in working time is needed to work effectively across time zones. Individuals cannot work 24/7, but there can be a need for companies to do so and to marshal their employees and subcontractors to cover around the clock as needed. And with the need to work in collaborative virtual teams across the world, the precise work location of members of the team reduces in importance. Employees also need to be able to work when they are travelling around the globe, and to work as effectively as when they are ‘in the office’. The impetus from globalisation to flexibility in arrangements does not only affect corporates. Smaller businesses access global markets using the power of the Internet and new platforms for work, and will be more successful if from the outset they incorporate Smart Working practices and flexible organisational models. Globalisation is a process stretching back well before the Internet. But there is no doubt that modern telecommunications and computing are having a profound effect. Being able to do ‘business at the speed of light’ and to cope with rapid market changes requires organisations to be increasingly agile, and this provides an impetus to adopting more flexible practices.

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Globalisation is also having an impact on the way that new models of working can be rapidly imitated across the world. Yesterday’s innovation in Silicon Valley can be today’s practice from London to Tokyo. Since writing Smart Flexibility13, we have seen something of a backlash against globalisation with the rise of nationalism and protectionism in some countries, and in particular resistance to immigration and freedom of movement. The Free Trade Agreement signed by the UK and the European Union following Brexit is perhaps unique in the history of free trade deals in that it creates more barriers to trade and mobility than existed by the previous arrangement. But it is intended to be balanced by ‘global Britain’, trading more rather than less with the rest of the world. In the new world of work, globalisation cannot easily be constrained by barriers to trade and employment. If it becomes harder for people to move for work, that doesn’t necessarily stop the work moving to them. Wherever there are skills shortages, barriers to mobility of people may well stimulate mobility of work, whether through outsourcing or by recruiting an employee who lives in another country. There is already evidence that the latter has been stimulated by the experience of remote work during the pandemic. Many companies have taken geography out of the equation when recruiting. Our case studies of Slack and Cimpress (see Chapters 9 and 13) are examples of this. And although there can be issues due to local labour regulations and tax regimes, it makes a lot of good sense to recruit the best people for a role, wherever they live. Labour shortages in areas of hands-on work, like agriculture, will increasingly be tackled through automation and robotic systems as they have been in manufacturing. And the people who make the machines, who programme them, maintain them and even operate them can in principle be anywhere in the world. Perhaps above all it is the competitive pressures arising from globalisation that are driving the impetus for change. Companies need to be more agile, quicker to adapt to competition in the market and to seize new opportunities, wherever they may arise. Trend 7: Beyond industrialisation – Industry 4.0

The nature of work has also been changing in the UK, as in most of the developed world, with the decline of manufacturing, the development of service-dominated economies and in recent decades the emergence of the ‘knowledge economy’.

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While Flexible and Smart Working have been developing in parallel with these trends, too often people make easy – and mistaken – assumptions about the relationship between flexibility and different sectors or different kinds of jobs. It tends to be seen as something more for the service sector or knowledge economy than for traditional industries like manufacturing or construction. While the knowledge economy may be based on bits and bytes, some sectors are irreducibly involved with ‘lumps and bumps’. But these distinctions between sectors are increasingly artificial and misleading. Manufacturing today is very different from manufacturing in the 1950s. Factories are far more automated and need fewer people to operate them. By comparison with the last century, far more of the people working for, or subcontracted to, a manufacturing company will be in occupations with high information content: design, IT, data analysis, procurement, logistics, research, sales, marketing, HR, administration and many managerial and professional functions. In historic terms, we are probably still just at the beginning of these changes. Further developments in artificial intelligence, robotics and automation over the coming decades will utterly transform our concepts of manufacturing and production. The boundaries between the knowledge economy and the manipulation of physical artefacts will blur. We will explore the impacts of these trends for how and where we work in Chapters 5 and 6. Those whose roles are intractably site-specific or focus on the handling of physical objects will increasingly be in a minority, even in a manufacturing-focused industry. This will particularly be the case in a company that outsources production to another country, while employees in the UK deal with the more creative and information-rich components of work. ‘This type of job can’t be done flexibly’ is increasingly a prejudice rather than an objective observation. There is usually some kind of flexibility that is possible, even if the tasks involved mean that not all flexible options are possible. Discussion about automation and robotics invariably focuses on what these technologies will be able to do, and often the simplistic question, ‘Will robots take my job?’ However, we also need to take account of the potentially profound spatial impacts of widespread uptake of these technologies. They take digitisation several steps further, by enabling people to work with intelligent, automated or semiautonomous systems. Numerous examples of this and the spatial impacts that flow from them are given in Chapter 6.

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What we are looking at is an acceleration of an existing trend in how workspace is used. Manufacturing, assembly, retail, warehousing and logistics will have fewer people, who work alongside automated systems. But not all of them need to be physically in the facilities they operate. Meanwhile, ever smaller offices will be more intensively used – not by the whole workforce at the same time, but on an asneeded basis. It’s not only hands-on work being impacted. AI is also impacting white collar work significantly too. Intelligent systems are not only able to do the low and intermediate-skill clerical tasks, but also some high-level analytical and creative tasks. This has an impact not only on who does what but on the need for workspace and the need to travel. These are trends barely recognised in planning systems and land use allocations, though it has been developing for at least three decades. The traditionally assumed relationships between size of workplace facility and number of employees no longer apply. Policy remains stuck in the Industrial Age for the most part. Trend 8: Environmental awareness and the ‘Climate Emergency’

The global climate may have been changing for more than a century, but it’s only in the last few years that it has moved to centre stage in public policy and the media. There are increasing amounts of regulation and legislation forcing organisations to look to their environmental performance – and there is sure to be more coming soon. Net zero is seen as both an imperative and an achievable goal. The environment is clearly on the agenda. In paperback thrillers, Hollywood blockbusters and international development conferences, it is the ever-present trope of big corporations, hand-in-glove with corrupt governments, making it their daily business to despoil the environment in search of quick profits14. I daresay there is some truth under the clichés. In real life, there is another side to the story too. Since the 1960s there’s been a growing awareness of the environmental impacts of the ways in which we live and work, and it has become embedded in our educational systems – in the curriculum, in our textbooks, even in the fiction we are given to read. I might be accused of naivety in saying this, but for the generation of corporate managers, civil servants and politicians who are moving into senior positions now, concern for the environment is not necessarily greenwash or cynical self-interest. In

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reality, not much change would be happening at all if there were not a much broader movement of understanding across people in all walks of life – not least in management. This trend has developed to a stage where proposals for Smart Working can and often do strike a chord with the environmental awareness of senior managers, who, even though they don’t glue themselves to motorways, are sharply aware of the imperatives to reduce the corporate environmental footprint. As yet, however, the actual environmental benefits of Smart Working practices are not well understood by senior managers and public policymakers. It’s easier to grasp concepts relating to making the office greener – essentially engineering solutions – than it is to grasp the environmental impacts of the interdisciplinary field of Smart Working. The environmental product pitch goes like this: ‘Use that bit of kit and your energy consumption is x. Use our new bit of kit and your energy consumption will be one tenth of x. And you’ll save money.’ It’s easy to grasp, and there doesn’t seem to be an obvious downside. By contrast, the environmental impacts of Smart Working seem to come packaged in ‘maybes’ and concerns about the possible downsides. Well it could reduce travel for employees and make them happy, but what will it do for business travel? How can I manage them if I can’t see them? Will their performance improve? Will they be isolated? This is a theme I will return to later in Chapter 15, and provide data and guidance on the way forward. There is an acceptance of the importance of improving environmental performance, and an increasing receptiveness to innovate to achieve this. But in terms of accepting sustainability arguments for Smart Working, the gatekeepers of change want some facts to back up the argument, and reassurance that it won’t cost the earth to save the planet. Trend 9: Wellbeing and the ‘human-centric’ workplace

Over the past few years health and wellbeing at work have moved centre stage, reflecting wider concern and motivation in society as a whole. Focus on physical wellbeing has been supplemented by an overdue focus on mental health. While the best employers have always promoted employee wellbeing, there has been a noticeable shift over the past decade from reactive to proactive approaches. Employers are realising that it’s not enough to fulfil statutory duties regarding

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health and safety compliance, ergonomics and responses to health crises. Instead we see organisations taking the initiative to promote healthy working habits, and to prevent problems before they occur, like stress and burnout or potential musculoskeletal problems. Organisations often now have work–life balance initiatives that provide an impetus for Flexible Working. Sometimes these are driven from the top. In many cases they are the initiatives of employee networks. Workplace design has developed to have a much stronger focus on health and wellbeing. Provision of height-adjustable or sit/stand desks improves ergonomics and discourages day-long sedentary behaviour. Activity-based settings (see Chapter 6) promote a degree of mobility with different settings for different tasks. Biophilic design, new approaches to the sensory workplace and the provision of outdoor space are part of an approach to creating human-centric workplaces. There have also emerged a number of standards and certifications for workplace wellbeing15, as well as an ever-growing number of vendors and service providers looking to sell into this growing market. The pandemic has further boosted awareness about health and wellbeing in relation to work. In part this relates to concern about keeping healthy in the face of a deadly virus – both physically healthy and psychologically healthy. There has been a steady growth in awareness and of the number of organisational initiatives focusing on wellbeing16. In the two cycles of Top Employers Awards that I was involved in during the lockdowns, this focus has boomed and initiatives taken new forms. We’ve seen initiatives at all levels of organisations, with a particular focus on psychological support. In part this is to do with the unfamiliarity of full-time homeworking, and an awareness that for some there was added pressure from juggling childcare, home schooling and work in the same premises. We will look at data around these issues and sort reality from myth with regard to issues like isolation and burnout in Chapter 12. Part of the growing human-centric approach is about recognising the diversity of humanity and developing working arrangements and workplaces that either work for everyone or provide a choice of settings and higher degrees of controllability. Trend 10: Flexible Working becomes mainstream

By 2019 Flexible Working was well-established as a set of options offered by organisations and in many countries supported by national legislation.

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In the UK a survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) in 2019 found that Flexible Working options were available to 80% of employees, and taken up by 59% of employees. Across the EU as a whole, it was 65% availability and 42% uptake17. The same report, however, referred to the ‘glacial progress’ of uptake over 15 years, but nevertheless there has been a significant increase in both those who have formal arrangements for Flexible Working and those who have informal arrangements or whose Smart/Agile Working programmes enable everyday flexing of time and location. While working from home grew steadily in the years 2001–2019, it was the pandemic that really brought it centre stage not only in those countries where it was already increasingly common, but across the world. An analysis by the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) found that 46.6% of people in employment in the UK did some work at home in April 2020. Of these, 86% said they did so as a result of the coronavirus pandemic18. Similarly, an EU survey found that teleworking peaked at 48% during the first lockdowns of the pandemic across the EU 27, compared to 11% in 2019; 33.7% only worked at home, and 14.2% worked at home and other places19. By spring 2021 a partial reversion to status quo ante Covid was being restored: 24% worked only from home and 18% combined working from home with working from their employer’s premises. When employees’ preferences for the future are surveyed, in the EU 27, 16% would like to work from home all the time, 31% several times a week, 18% several times a month, 11% sometimes but less often and 24% never20. Underlying the average figures are big national variations. Homeworking rates range from around one fifth in Croatia, Poland, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Hungary to more than 40% in France, Spain, Italy, Ireland and more than 50% in Belgium. Unsurprisingly, there is a strong correlation with the proportion of white collar work in a country. In the USA, a survey of a sample of 25,000 people by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that 15% who were already working from home were joined by a further 35.2% of people who began working from home during the pandemic21. A number of extensive private sector surveys of people homeworking measured the impacts of working from home. One of the most extensive surveys of employees was carried out by the Leesman Index. Leesman provides one of the most comprehensive employee surveys capturing how workplaces perform. During the

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pandemic, they extended this to capture the experience of people from client organisations who were working from home. Their data has, at the time of writing, over 270,000 responses from more than 2,300 organisations in 102 countries. Of the respondents, 85% report working from home. A key finding from this is that overall the home environment performs better than their previous normal workplace as a productive environment for work, and on a par with the best performing offices. Of the respondents, 84.8% report that their home office environment enables them to work productively compared to 64.4% who report the same for their office environment22. We will return to some of the more detailed data in Chapter 12, as of course there is considerable variation in the responses from different groups within the data. However, this finding of high levels of satisfaction with working from home is reflected in survey after survey, and in response to questions about returning to the office. In general, people who have experienced working from home have a preference for continuing to work 2–3 days a week at home. This has fuelled the drive towards organisations planning for Hybrid Working as they recognise both the potential to work from home and a strong employee desire to do so, for at least some of the time. The respondents to these surveys are primarily corporate office-based employees, so we need to be careful about generalising the findings to the whole workforce, as more than half don’t actually work in offices. The other caveat is that home-based working is not the same as Smart Working, and nor is Hybrid Working. In some ways, the conversation has become depressingly binary, focusing on two possible locations for work (home or office) rather than the transformational potential and the wider range of flexibilities that are possible. What we have, though, is a context in which people and their employers are more open to rethinking their working practices. Although the focus has recently been on homeworking, other forms of Flexible Working have also become much more established over the past decade. More countries have laws giving employees some rights to request Flexible Working. In the UK this looks set to be translated into a right to request flexibility from day one of employment instead of after six months. Only 14% of organisations in the UK did not offer some kind of Flexible Working arrangements before the pandemic, according to a survey by the CIPD23. The CIPD survey of just over 1,000 employers highlights the extent to which Flexible Working had already become mainstream by the beginning of 2020 and

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evolved over the pandemic. Before the pandemic, part-time working was the most common arrangement available. With the experience of enforced homeworking during the pandemic, both regular and full-time homeworking rose to the top of the corporate agenda for the future. The same study notes that although there is increased interest in other forms of flexible work arrangement, intended expansion of these options is more modest apart from for flexitime. Other surveys, like the Future Forum’s six-monthly Pulse Survey, have also noted a strong interest amongst employees for much more flexibility about time. Then there is the campaign for a 4-day working week, with reduction of hours but no reduction of pay. It’s predicated on increasing productivity by rethinking how work is done and cutting out wasted time24. New Zealand, Iceland, Denmark, Spain, Belgium and Slovakia are amongst the countries advocating this approach and, in some cases, implementing it for public sector workers. The European Parliament has voted for this model of a 4-day working week to be included in a new employment directive, which in principle the member states would have to implement in one way or another. Many companies have participated in trials. Trade unions across Europe are promoting it as part of longstanding campaigns around reducing workers’ hours. During 2021–2022 we have seen a big increase in the number of posts advertised as 4 days per week – but this includes jobs that are a traditional compressed working week (fewer days, longer hours per day) or part-time (reduced hours, less pay pro rata), so in practice a 4-day week is not a single animal25. But this concept, for a variety of reasons, is gaining a currency and may have unstoppable momentum. So overall it’s clear that positive attitudes towards flexibility amongst both employers and employees have now become so well-established it would be near impossible to turn the clock back. This trend and the ferment of ideas around it provide a positive platform for the more advanced practices of flexibility that come with Smart Working. The changing world This then is the context for developing Smart Working. A rapidly changing world provides a following wind, or indeed several following winds, that are driving change without clearly defining what those changes should be. Taking the road to Smart Working is to provide a coherent framework for change, embracing the positive aspects of these larger trends.

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We have seen that change is happening in the world of work, with a range of flexibilities and new forms of work driven by technological change. Not all of these are welcomed by managers, and they encounter varying degrees of scepticism and resistance. However, retaining working practices from an earlier area will become increasingly problematic for organisations that do so. So having identified the trends, we next need to explore the specific business drivers for change and the benefits that well-directed change should achieve. That involves having a clear strategy and programme for implementation. Notes 1 Rob Harris (2021), London’s Global Office Economy: From Clerical Factory to Digital Hub. Routledge. This book provides an excellent guide to the growth of the modern office. 2 Office for National Statistics (ONS) (15 February 2022), Labour market statistics time series (LMS). www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/ employmentandemployeetypes/datasets/labourmarketstatistics/current 3 OECD data (2023), Old-age dependency ratio, https://data.oecd.org/pop/oldage-dependency-ratio.htm#indicator-chart, accessed 16 February 2022. 4 Lionel Shriver (2021), Should We Stay or Should We Go. Borough Press, p. 21. 5 ONS (27 September 2022), Over 50s Lifestyle Study (OLS) wave 2. www.ons. gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/reasonsforworkersagedover50yearsleavingemploymentsincethestartofthecoronaviruspandemic/wave2 6 An Opinium survey reported by The Times found that 6% of retired people said they were likely to return to work in the next few months, which would translate to some 733,000 retired people nationally, while more than a third said they were concerned they would not be able to continue the lifestyle they wanted in retirement. The Times (2 October 2022), Retired will return to work after pensions fail to match price rises. www.thetimes.co.uk/article/retired-willreturn-to-work-after-pensions-fail-to-match-price-rises-s7fr2psm2 7 The impacts of the pandemic and the subsequent cost of living crisis are complex. By June 2022, official figures in the UK showed an increase of 174,000 in the number of people working beyond the age of 65 compared to March. This may reflect a return to the pre-pandemic trend of increases in working beyond retirement age. The Times (22 August 2022), Pandemic retirees’ return to work as inflation hits value of pensions. www.thetimes.co.uk/

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article/pandemic-retirees-return-to-work-as-inflation-hits-value-of-pensionszhvsg38s6 Michael Moynagh and Richard Worsley (2004), Working in the Twenty-first Century. The Tomorrow Project. Lynda Gratton and Andrew J. Scott (2016), The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity. Bloomsbury. Iometrics and Global Workplace Analytics (2020), Global work-from-home experience survey. https://globalworkplaceanalytics.com/whitepapers E.g. as highlighted in this Times article from 22 November 2021: Young call time on firms that refuse to be flexible. www.thetimes.co.uk/article/young-calltime-on-firms-that-refuse-to-be-flexible-z0l297s0g Christina Nippert-Eng (1996), Home and Work: Negotiating Boundaries through Everyday Life. University of Chicago Press; and Ellen Kossek and Brenda Lautsch (2008), CEO of Me: Creating a Life that Works in the Flexible Job Age. Pearson Education. Andy Lake (2016), Smart Flexibility: Moving Smart and Flexible Working from Theory to Practice. Routledge. One novel that turns this trope around is Andy Lake (2013), Shades of Green. Createspace. In this book, a determined green government is elected and moves to ever more radical measures to save the planet. The WELL Building standard is the most well-known and probably provides the most comprehensive assessment of relevant factors for organisations to consider for creating the spaces for healthy work. www.wellcertified.com/ A good source for case studies around initiatives to support wellbeing are the WM People Best Practice reports, www.wmpeople.co.uk/best-practicereport-2021/, and similarly the Working Families Best Practice case studies, https://workingfamilies.org.uk/employers/case-studies/ CIPD (2019), Flexible working in the UK. Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development. ONS (8 July 2020), Coronavirus and homeworking in the UK: April 2020. www. ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/coronavirusandhomeworkingintheuk/april2020 Eurofound (2020), Living, working and COVID-19. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions. Eurofound (May 2022), Living, working and COVID-19. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions.

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21 Erik Brynjolfsson, John J. Horton, Adam Ozimek, Daniel Rock, Garima Sharma and Hong-Yi TuYe (2020), Covid-19 and remote work: An early Look at US data. National Bureau of Economic Research. www.nber.org/papers/w27344 22 Leesman Index (2022), Leesman home survey. www.leesmanindex.com/ measure-remote-working/, accessed 16 February 2022. 23 CIPD (September 2020), Embedding new ways of working: Implications for the postpandemic workplace. Chartered Institute of Personnel Development. 24 This approach is advocated by the 4-Day Week Global campaign. The website carries details of various implementations and trials, at www.4dayweek.com/ 25 Andy Lake (2022), How flexible is a four-day week? https://flexibility.co.uk/ how-flexible-is-a-four-day-week/

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Chapter Three Developing a strategic approach

Seeking targeted benefits A Smart Working strategy is a strategy for changing working practices, based on a clear understanding of what benefits the changes are intended to achieve. These benefits fall into three broad areas: • Benefits for the business • Increasing organisational effectiveness • Reducing the costs of operation • Benefits for employees • Benefits for the environment and wider society. Table 3.1 sets out the range of benefits within these headline (and sometimes overlapping) areas. We will look at all these potential benefits throughout the book, and provide both evidence of impacts and ways to deliver them. We should also note that in one way or another these benefits are all measurable, as we’ll see in the next chapter on business case and metrics. In developing a strategy, it’s essential for organisations to target benefits that most address their needs, their vision for ways of working and the kind of organisation they want to be. So it may be a case of addressing a pressing issue, like difficulties in recruitment and problems in retaining employees. Or it may be the need to be more innovative

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DOI: 10.4324/9781003288930-3

Developing a strategic approach

Table 3.1 The quest for business, employee and environmental benefits Business

Employee

Environment

Improved productivity Improved service delivery Greater focus on results Improved and more effective collaboration Decisions taken at appropriate level Reduced business travel Improved innovation and adaptability Improved business continuity Reduced real estate requirements Workplaces better suited to the activities people do Improved recruitment and retention More efficient use of working time

Better work–life balance More choice and autonomy Culture of trust Reduced stress, improved health and wellbeing Working in healthier workplaces Better ability to manage disability and long-term conditions Reduced time and costs of commute travel More flexibility to manage caring responsibilities Equality of opportunity through enhanced inclusion and diversity Improved engagement and work satisfaction

Reduced transport energy for business and individuals Reduced energy costs of workplaces Reduced or eliminated paper Reduced consumption of material products through dematerialisation Reduced land-take and construction impacts for workplaces Reduced congestion and pollution Revitalised local communities Positive engagement between organisations and local communities

in rapidly changing markets. Or it could be to do with finding that employees are demotivated and disengaged, and you want to turn that around. These benefits will then be highlighted in your overall vision for a Smart Working change programme as key priorities. It’s important to note that this strategic approach to Smart Working doesn’t start from conversations about where to work (e.g. how many days to work in the office, how many at home). Those conversations should be some way downstream. This approach starts from thinking through – or rethinking – what kind of organisation you want to be, and the transformational journey involved to get there. Developing the vision In developing this kind of programme of change, it’s very important to make it really clear a) what is meant by Smart Working for the organisation, b) what its aims are and c) that it is endorsed at the highest level. This should be set out in a core document that describes in outline the programme, and is summarised in a short vision statement. I’ve met people who

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describe themselves as allergic to visions, having seen too many of them. And sometimes they are a bit ‘motherhood and apple pie’. But if not a ‘vision’, then a sentence or two you can call a ‘definition’ will do the job just as well. This should head up a hierarchy of guidance and a framework for implementation as set out in Figure 3.1. So the vision (or definition) is not just about getting some words down on paper as an aide memoir. It should capture the essence of a transformational programme that has executive commitment. When endorsing the vision, senior leaders should commit to promote and role-model the new ways of working. They will have a pivotal role in enabling and supporting change as the programme progresses. The vision also has a role in setting the tone and introducing the language that will be used in future communications and training. This isn’t usually about creating an overall vision for the organisation. It’s about a programme of change. So it’s not the same as an overall statement of an organisation’s purpose and value, though it relates to them and may even modify them. And it doesn’t need to be a short, catchy and over-eager slogan, like Zappos’ ‘To live and deliver Wow’, to which a normal human response is eye-rolling. So the vision isn’t about stating what the organisation is, but about why and how it plans to move forward through adopting new ways of working, creating different kinds of workplaces and promoting new kinds of work behaviours. This will of course vary according to the starting point. So the aims are less far-reaching than the company mission statement, and benefits by being more specific. The audience will be more internal than external, primarily employees at all levels. It may sometimes be relevant to external audiences, for example for recruitment and for including in annual reports. The following words have been used as a starting point for shaping their vision by numerous organisations: Our vision for transforming the way we work through Smart Working focuses on achieving the following benefits: • Increasing the effectiveness of our activities and improving customer service • Creating a trust-based culture that focuses on outcomes rather than time or presence • Meeting the aspirations of colleagues for an improved work–life balance • Creating workplace environments that facilitate collaboration, innovation and wellbeing

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RATIONALE: Clear view of benefits aspired to

CLARITY: Vision / Defini"on

People, Property and Technology strategies aligned to deliver transforma"on programme Key messages/language Leadership commitment and role-modelling

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CONSISTENCY: Principles that become the touchstone for decisions about Smart Working prac"ce

EMBEDDING: Team Agreements/Charters/Protocols

Focus on local implementa"on, improvements, andprac"cali"es of working smarter

Developing a strategic approach

Figure 3.1: A clear framework for Smart Working.

Support and upskilling for managers and teams

Developing a strategic approach

• Reducing the environmental footprint of our working practices • Becoming an employer of choice. Any of the benefits outlined in Table 3.1 might be highlighted. Here they are in effect grouped into headline categories in the bullet points. Arriving at the vision is usually an iterative process. It needs to be preceded by some awareness-raising with senior leaders alongside enquiry into what are the most pressing issues for the organisation that new ways of working can address. The programme may have a brand unique to the organisation, or use the more generic terms like Smart or Agile Working that draw on wider practice and knowledge from outside the organisation1. Either way, it’s important to establish the preferred term and its meaning at the outset – that this is something more ambitious and innovative than the familiar assumptions some people may already have about Flexible Working or homeworking. It’s about shifting the conversation to the transformational and fostering a strong future focus. Incorporating Smart Flexibility principles At the strategic level there needs to be a statement about the underlying principles on which new ways of working will be based. In this section I am taking a ‘maximal’ approach to introducing Smart Working – where flexibility, mobility and virtuality become the norm and the organisation is open to maximising the opportunities for these. This maximal approach to Smart Working is about taking a comprehensive and strategic approach to working practices, and is based on the following principles: • • • •

Work takes place at the most effective locations Work takes place at the most effective times Flexibility, mobility and virtuality become the norm rather than the exception Everyone is in principle considered eligible for working flexibly, without prior assumptions being made about people or roles • Employees have more choice about where and when they work, subject to business considerations • Space is allocated to activities, not to individuals nor on the basis of seniority • The costs of doing work are reduced

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• There is effective and appropriate use of technology • Managing performance focuses on results rather than presence • Smart Working underpins and adds new dimensions to diversity and equality principles • Work has less impact on the environment • There are positive impacts on the ‘Triple Bottom Line’ – benefits for the business, the individual and the environment. These principles are powerful statements to galvanise the reform of working practices, and to act as the touchstone when settling debates. For example, when making judgements about where and when people should work, in the final analysis it’s all about where it is most effective do get the work done. When considering whether managers should retain their personal office, for example, it’s a lot easier to make the call if the strategy has clearly set out a principle that over-rides egoism and power-plays. These principles impact on investment decisions too. When, for example, decisions are to be made to invest in new technologies for remote working, the tests are: does it reduce the costs of doing work (e.g. by releasing office space)? Does it mean that work has less impact on the environment (e.g. by reducing travel)? Does it help us to be more effective (e.g. by increasing productivity or getting closer to customers)? Beyond the principles, any Smart Working strategy will need to set out the goals that are to be achieved by modernising working practices, and set out the targets and timescales that should be adhered to. In the following chapters we will look at how to go about setting meaningful targets. Alignment with other strategies Smart Working change programmes can run into difficulties when existing policies and strategies are not aligned with them. A key question to ask at the investigative stage is, ‘What other strategies do we have that may help or hinder the implementation of a Smart Working strategy – and how do they need to change or evolve?’ In a Smart Working programme, there will be core workstreams focusing on People, Workplace and Technology. So the existing strategies that relate to these need to be reviewed to ensure they support the aims of the programme.

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At the development stage of Smart Working programmes, I’ve encountered situations where, for example, the roll-out of portable technologies has been opposed by the IT department as it’s not in their 3-year refresh plan. Or where IT has an outsourced provider who say it’s not in their contract or service level agreement. There might well be a need to upgrade infrastructure to overcome problems of patchy (or non-existent) Wi-Fi in buildings or to cope with a massive increase in virtual teamworking or the use of video. As well as budgetary consequences of these kinds of discoveries, there may also be interlinkages with key elements of other workstreams. For example, the cost of upgrading IT infrastructure in a building may raise questions about whether it is a suitable location. So that ripples on into the real estate strategy. Again, if workplaces are to be modernised, the nature of the buildings can either support or be a constraint on implementing Smart Working environments. So as well as thinking about the conditions of buildings, costs, lease breaks and future headcount, the strategy needs also to encompass Smart Working suitability and the opportunities for reduction of the overall real estate footprint, having some buildings as hubs rather than base offices, and use of third-party spaces on an asneeded basis. On the people side, existing strategies around recruitment may well need to be reframed to support recruiting people from wider geographies. Existing policies around Flexible Working and homeworking will almost certainly need to be upgraded. Policies and initiatives on diversity and inclusion can be enhanced with added possibilities. Looking back at Figure 1.1, all the areas of activity listed will need to be revisited to some degree. Sometimes this can raise issues of ownership – ‘Who do these people think they are interfering with the strategy we’ve been working on for the past year?’. So timely consultation and where relevant including people and their expertise in the programme team or working groups are important. We’ll explore the issues and options in more detail in the relevant chapters later. Having highlighted to stakeholders the need to be aware of linkages with other strategies, it would be a mistake to try and get all the strategies aligned before moving on with developing Smart Working. In many organisations, that would create too much delay, and possibly in-fighting as well. It’s an iterative process: developing the vision, making it clear that there will be change, getting the interdisciplinary team together and then getting them to offer what they can to the process, and seeing how the various other strategies can contribute and how they need to be modified en route.

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This process will bring some interesting challenges, and requires people to think and to gain new skills and insights outside of their traditional specialisms. Working through the strategies and the potential benefits of Smart Working in this way can be a useful part of awareness-raising work for senior managers, and forms a key element in developing and understanding the kind of organisation that will be there once working practices have changed. Inter-disciplinary high-level team Getting everyone on board at senior level is vital for making the strategy workable. One of the themes of this book is that for Smart Working to work, it must be approached on a broad front – because the benefits are intertwined across several areas of interest and across a range of disciplines. For this reason it is essential to establish at the outset a high-level inter-disciplinary team to drive forward the change programme and oversee the individual projects within the organisation. Who should be on the team may vary from one organisation to another. But it should contain senior representatives from HR, Property, Facilities, IT and Finance as well as senior managers from directorates undergoing change. Their role is to establish the vision, drive the process forward, set expectations and see that the necessary resources are allocated. They will oversee the process as a whole and keep it on course, monitor progress against the strategic objectives and also have a role in breaking through any logjams that occur. Beneath this high-level board will sit action-oriented project teams whose job is to deliver the new work styles and associated facilities and resources against agreed timescales. The high-level team has to demonstrate commitment to the principles and take a lead in setting an example. Making a song and dance about their own good practices is also very valuable, to communicate the key messages. So, however sceptical some people may be about new ways of working, one thing they shouldn’t be able to do is accuse senior leaders of hypocrisy. Core workstreams and activities No Smart Working programmes are identical. The differing nature of the work involved, different starting points and different priorities for the future provide the context into which any programme will fit.

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Most programmes have core workstreams that focus on Workplace, Technology and People. These correspond to the departments and disciplines found in most organisations (with some variations) of the key support functions in property, IT and HR. These are shown in the central column of Figure 3.2. As well as the three core workstreams, programmes sometimes add some more according to their priorities and the personnel available. So there might be a separate one on Learning and Development to take forward training. One programme where I was brought in to advise initially had two Learning & Development (L&D) workstreams, one for management awareness and training, and a parallel one for teams. But it made more sense to merge these as they went forward. Another had a specific workstream for Leadership, as they thought there was a particular challenge with some leaders getting to grips with what was needed. In a couple of programmes I’ve been involved in, there has been a separate workstream for security, which I haven’t added into the graphic. These were in industries with a very high requirement for both data security and the physical security of site and materials. It has to be noted, however, that not all activities require their own workstream. Security is one of those cross-cutting issues in most contexts and there can be mechanisms to ensure that security implications, along with health and safety, ergonomics and more, are always addressed in every workstream. In Figure 3.2, the other activities in the left- and right-hand columns are crucial to the development of true Smart Working, but can be addressed as important activities within the three core workstreams and/or the central programme team rather than requiring their own workstream. To take one example: Health, Wellbeing and Inclusion. These are major considerations for creating a great workplace and work experience, and relate to an overarching aim of being an employer of choice. In practical terms, the Workplace workstream needs to have clear objectives and priorities to create healthy and inclusive facilities, with acoustic and sensory excellence, and choice and controllability of work settings. In a Smart Working environment, these are not luxuries; they are not ‘nice to have but we can’t afford them’. A cross-cutting set of activities is around insight and metrics – gathering the evidence for change, and establishing measures that will help you know both what needs to be done and whether you are achieving your aims or if you need to make adjustments. We’ll explore these in detail in the following chapter.

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Workplace Redesigning workspaces, facilies and locaons as great places to work to support Smart Working

Health, Wellbeing & Inclusion Rethinking workplaces and practices to promote health, wellbeing and inclusion

Vision & Leaders Clarity around benefits and principles. Leadership commitment

Technology Rethinking technology provision and processes, and how they are used to support working smarter

Engagement & Communica!ons Communicaons and dialogue to bring everyone on board

Programme Management Tracking, managing and evaluang the changes

People & Culture Developing results - focused and trust - based culture. Embedding Smart Working in people processes

Capabili!es & Behaviours Upskilling to enable the changes in mindset, pracces and behaviours

Figure 3.2: Activities for an integrated programme for Smart Working.

Developing a strategic approach

Insights & Metrics Gathering data and views to analyse how, when, where and with what we work, and impacts of other plans

Developing a strategic approach

Senior management awareness-raising Getting senior managers all on board and singing from the same hymn sheet normally doesn’t just happen. It’s probable that there are some enthusiasts for change amongst the senior team, but it is unlikely to be all of them. And even amongst those who are enthusiasts, it is probably the case that they are not aware of the range of possibilities and the range of benefits achievable. Few will be experts in Smart Working. And why should they be? Each person will have their own expertise, and it is pulling these together in the context of change that is required. So an essential part of the process at the outset is to work with senior managers to widen their horizons about Smart Working. They need to understand better the possibilities for change, and explore how it can work for all parts of the business. This requires openness to new ideas. One problem is that for many people their outlook is strongly influenced by their experience of the limitations of Hybrid Working or permission-based Flexible Working. These are often the first things they think of. The holistic and integrated approach of Smart Working can still come as something of a revelation. It can be satisfying when you witness the scales fall from a sceptic’s eyes, as they start to realise and explore the possibilities for modernisation and improvement. It’s good to incorporate awareness-raising into management away days, with a good amount of time reserved exclusively for open and candid exploration of the options and issues, with less pressure to move on to other business. Nothing persuades quite like the business case, so presentations showcasing the achievements of other organisations are invaluable, and benchmark data about costs and benefits. The aim is to increase and deepen understanding about what is possible, and about the nature of the commitment that is needed to achieve change. Considering the possibilities and the issues in their area of responsibility, whether HR, Property, IT or an operational department, is a key part of awareness-raising. So it helps to move beyond the abstract and consider hard practical issues at the exploratory stage. Often there are already initiatives within the organisation that are not properly understood, or which have been constrained by lack of awareness at senior levels. Involving those who have been running the initiatives can help to deepen understanding. Awareness-raising is not a one-off event, but a process of continuous engagement as the strategy is developed.

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External support Depending on the level of expertise to be found in the organisation, it is usually advisable to bring in some external support to assist in the awareness-raising, if not in the strategy development as a whole. There are a growing number of companies that can offer the necessary expertise in this inter-disciplinary field. But there are also some caveats. Some companies may offer excellent advice and guidance, but also have products to sell at the end of the day – technologies and workplace design, or furniture in particular. So when engaging outside support, it’s necessary to go in with eyes open, watching where impartial advice starts to shade into a sales pitch for a product or service. A further caveat is that in the wake of the pandemic, there has been a veritable explosion of instant experts in remote working. Sadly much of the advice I’ve seen has moved on little since the 1990s, and can suffer from an excess of evangelism about the advantages of remote (home-based) working, while not getting to grips with the changing role and possibilities of the collective workplace. What external advice can bring of value is experience of implementations in other organisations. Good advisors may also be able to facilitate introductions to other companies, where you can hear from people who have travelled along the same road and you can see how they have put it into practice. Similar insights can be gained by attending conferences and networking events looking at the issues. The European Smart Work Network2, run by Flexibility.co.uk, is a peer collaboration network for people implementing Smart/Agile/Flexible Working in their own organisations. It’s a good resource for insights in a non-selling environment, and has meetings where you can see work-in-progress case studies where people share ideas, issues, problems and solutions. Sometimes external advisers are brought in to provide an impartial and objective viewpoint, where it is felt an internal voice lacks clout or is too likely to get mired down in internal politics. The external voice validates a programme that might otherwise lack internal credibility. That’s fine, up to a point. But consultants who take on this kind of job can find themselves landing in a can of worms. Introducing Smart Working into a dysfunctional organisation often requires going back to basics on strategy, leadership and culture in order to facilitate coherent changes.

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Weak management can be the greatest enemy of change Once the senior management have agreed the strategy and vision, it’s time for the rest of the organisation to step up. All managers should be motivated and ready to support the changes. These are the people who in many cases will be at the sharp end of change, facilitating the new working patterns that will be put into practice in their departments and teams. Managers may also be involved in detailed planning of new working environments, liaising with the relevant departments to procure the necessary resources, motivating their own staff and dealing with any hostility and opposition. So managers need to be sure where they stand, fully aware of the new strategy, the new targets being set and the expectations put on them to succeed. Their role is pivotal. Nothing undermines change like weak management. Weakness can come from two directions: their own management weaknesses, such as being indecisive or being too keen to be liked by everyone; or from lack of clear support and guidance from above. I’ve known managers who felt like they have been hung out to dry when trying to implement new ways of working in fractious departments. So managers need to feel empowered to bring about the changes that the strategy requires, and know they will have the resources, tools and top-level support to get the job done. Communicating the strategy A key part of making the change programme work is to let people know about it, and to reinforce key messages at every possible opportunity. When communication is poor, it is easy for rumours and misinformation to undermine change. A programme that involves consolidation of real estate may inspire cynicism, if the word gets around that ‘it’s all about cost-cutting’. It will be an uphill battle after that to capture hearts and minds. Any talk after that about employee benefits or environmental benefits from working smarter will just be seen as spin. So clear communication and dialogue based on a clearly defined programme, plus frequent updates, is needed to pre-empt the rumour mill. As the change programme moves on, there will be many more things to communicate: news, plans, updates on the roll-out so far, consultation exercises, new policies and protocols for new ways of working, success stories. Having well-

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planned mechanisms for communication and avenues for dialogue are essential for the change programme to succeed. The communication function in a change programme like this is not only – or perhaps not even primarily – about informing people on a top-down basis. It’s also about asking people for their ideas on how to achieve the vision. When we look back to our starting-point vision (p. 40), we need to engage people in asking the question, ‘How do we, using Smart Working principles and techniques, increase the effectiveness of our activities, create a culture of trust and results-focus …?’ And so on, through each of the bullet point goals. To keep it practical, people should be encouraged to focus on how this works in their part of the business, as well as for the business as a whole. This approach really works. I’ve been in numerous situations where the inhouse team has warned me that certain people will be difficult or obstructive in awareness-raising workshops or interviews, and they are pleasantly surprised when this turns out not to be the case. That’s because, if you engage people in helping to shape the changes they want to see, and help them to work through the ways in which working smarter will support that, sceptics can turn around 180 degrees to become advocates. People, quite reasonably, like to talk about things that matter to them. They may initially see Smart Working as an irrelevant corporate initiative dropped on them from on high, getting in the way of the real work they are doing. But once they start scoping the benefits in relation to the day-to-day work they have to do, it all starts to make sense. Keeping the dialogue going through the communications process, and having mechanisms for acting on suggestions and concerns, are necessary parts of a practical and iterative process to keep people pulling in the same direction – and encouraging some valuable innovation on the way. Embedding in Team Agreements We’ve looked at the benefits, the Vision and the Principles shown in Figure 3.1. The final element piece of the ‘clarity jigsaw’ is about Team Agreements. These might also be called Team Charters, Team Protocols or something that reflects a programme brand. Anyway, they are agreements at a more local level in the organisation about how they will make Smart Working work for them, and the benefits.

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We’ll deal with these further in Chapter 10. At this stage, we’ll just emphasise the point that these are not about creating a rule book. Nor are they about picking and choosing from the overall principles and aims of the programme. They work best where people focus on what benefits they can aim to achieve in their part of the business, and about what good looks like for them in the application of Smart Working practices. Bringing it all together Our case study of Thales provides an instructive example of an integrated and wellstructured implementation of Smart Working in a complex organisation. Strong endorsement from the top of the organisation is matched by involvement in change from the ground up. Our earlier observation that the future of work will be plural and multi-speed is reflected in this case study. Having a clear framework and mechanisms for support within the company ensures that different parts of the business learn from each other, and an overall consistency is maintained.

Case study: Smart Working at Thales Thales is a global technology business operating across aerospace, defence, digital security, transport and space. Globally, Thales employs some 83,000 people in more than 50 countries. With a wide variety of types of work, from hands-on engineering and manufacturing to high-skilled knowledge work, implementing Smart Working at Thales has involved a strategic and consultative approach. It has been important to ensure that everyone understands what Smart Working means for their team, from the factory floor to executive management. For Thales, there can be no ‘one-size-fits-all’. The French-owned company had seen regional programmes of Smart Working developed before the pandemic in the Netherlands, the UK and North America, but it was in summer 2020 that it was decided to launch at scale across the whole group. To endorse the Smart Working roll-out, an announcement from the Thales Executive Committee set out the intention clearly: ‘Now more than ever, we must accelerate our transformation and embrace the future of work.’

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Smart Working is defined as: … our new customer-centric approach of work where each team has the flexibility to reinvent its own ways of working to significantly increase our competitiveness and collective performance. Smart Working redefines not only where and when we work but also how we interact as teams. This new approach of work is based on: • • • • • • •

Trust and empowerment Management by output Acting with higher business and organisational agility Increased levels of autonomy, flexibility in the time and location of work Introducing new collaborative & digital tools and new work environments Embracing the need for change Wellbeing and work life balance.

A programme team was put together at group level, to create an overall framework to apply across the group and to ensure each part of the global business is supported as they move forward. There are six key areas of focus in the programme, based on the experience of the earlier programme in the UK: • Teamwork – Promoting agreed new behaviours and supporting the creation of Team Charters, enabling teams to set out their own protocols for working effectively together using the new technologies, workspaces and behaviours. • Management – Upskilling to make the fundamental shift from managing by presence to managing by results, building a culture of trust and skills for managing more distributed teams. • Travel & Meetings – Promoting new forms of remote and hybrid collaboration, rethinking the meetings culture and providing guidance to improve how collaborative time is spent, with a focus on reducing the need to travel. • Workspace – Creating ‘great places to work’, based on analysis of the types of work and user need, and providing settings for activity-based working.

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• Tools & Technology – Providing the technology tools to enable work to be more mobile and enabling Microsoft Teams and other collaboration tools, with the training needed to use them effectively. • Flexibility – Conducting a ‘smart-proofing’ review across policies which included a description of Smart versus formal Flexible Working to enable employees to make the best choices. These streams of activity are all underpinned by a strong programme of communications and engagement. An online toolkit provides practical support to teams as they adopt Smart Working. An internal network of 30 Smart Working Champions was trained to engage with teams and shared best practice across the business, helping to embed the new ways of working. Eight ‘Smart Function Leaders’ were appointed to establish the ‘cookbook’ of good practices and behaviours, streamline processes, operationalise management by output and support managers in their area of the business. Team Charters are central to the transformation process. These set out key areas for conversations in teams as the basis for establishing agreed protocols. These cover the essentials of how people work together on a more distributed model using the tools and workspaces, while keeping a sharp focus on customers, team purpose and the continuing need for security in both collaboration practices and data management. According to Isabelle Gonnaud, Director of the SMART Working & Performance Programme at Thales, ‘The aim is to change the mindset from awareness that Smart Working is possible to one of active adoption – they are not the same thing!’ A Smart Management game, ‘a game of cards and conversations’, is one of the tools used to help managers rethink how their teams work. The aim is to work through scenarios and find solutions, e.g. about managing by results or balancing the preferences of individuals with the needs of the team. While the central programme provides an overall framework, there are both different starting points and types of work in the various countries and business units around the world. A Maturity Matrix has been developed to monitor progress across each of the six areas of activity, with four levels of progress used for evaluation: Ineffective, Functioning, Improving and Seamless. Criteria are set out for each of these levels.

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Developing a strategic approach

This is accompanied by a continuing process of measuring key indicators, such as the numbers of people working remotely, percentage of teams that have developed charter, deployment of technologies, and impacts on work–life balance, recruitment and travel. One interesting finding from this, according to Isabelle, is that ‘In the parts of the business operating in more dynamic market sectors with the need to adapt quickly, there’s been a faster take-up of Smart Working. Others, working in more static markets, have been slower to change.’ This highlights the strong role Smart Working has in supporting innovation and helping companies remain competitive in a fast-changing world.

Keeping up the momentum Having established the strategy and the team to implement Smart Working, it’s very important to keep the momentum going. If a programme loses momentum, cynicism quickly sets in and it may be a struggle to get things moving again. As people are consulted and energised, the moment has to be seized to forge ahead with the changes. Chapters 5 to 8 go into detail on the changes to working practices, workplaces and technologies. But before that, we’ll look in more detail at the metrics that should support the strategy as it moves forward. Notes 1 In passing, it’s worth considering how the syntax of any brand will work in communications. For example, can it be easily used as a descriptor of various facets of the programme? ‘Smart’ is easily used to talk about ‘Smart Working environments’, ‘Smart technologies’, ‘Smart Working teams’, etc. This is harder to do with programme brands like ‘The Way We Work’ or ‘Our Ways of Working’, or mouthfuls like ‘Modern and Flexible Working’. 2 The Smart Work Network was initially founded in 2007, with its European counterpart starting in 2020. At the time of writing it has over 400 members from more than 300 organisations. It can be found at www.smart-work.net

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Chapter Four Business case, metrics and evaluation

An evidence-based approach ‘What counts in business is what can be counted.’ If, like all generalisations, it’s not entirely true, it’s still a good principle to have in mind. What you count, how you count it and how you interpret it once you’ve counted it underpin good business decisions. This is certainly the case with introducing Smart Working, because all the business benefits highlighted in this book are measurable. This applies to both the hard measures (like property costs) and the softer measures (like work–life balance). Most new ways of working implementations that fail to deliver the benefits – or just simply fail – do so at least in part because there were inadequate metrics at the outset. Others may succeed or fail – but no one actually knows, because no one put the metrics in place to measure if there have been any benefits. So the ‘insights and metrics’ line of the strategic programme (see Figure 3.2) needs to be well thought through and resourced. It feeds into the business case, which basically is about understanding why you are doing it and putting some numbers on the investment needed and the benefits that should result. It also provides a baseline for monitoring as the project develops, and for evaluation further down the line. First of all: do we still need a business case as ‘hybrid’ becomes normalised? There is an emerging view that the case for Smart Working – or at least Hybrid Working of some kind – is now so widely accepted we no longer need to have a business case. Some organisations may feel they can press ahead without one. The

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DOI: 10.4324/9781003288930-4

Business case, metrics and evaluation

case to change may already be evident internally, and there is an increasing amount of experience out there one can learn from. However, in many organisations there are still people who need convincing that the necessary investments are worth making, and will deliver a return. In other organisations it is a requirement for any programme or project to be justified with a business case in order to release the funds needed – and it’s a good discipline to have. Whether you create a formal business case or not, there’s still a need to gather the necessary evidence to provide insight into what needs to change and how. What should be measured? So to move Smart Working successfully from theory to practice, there needs to be a robust evidence base for change. Much of this will be gathered alongside the development of the strategy. Then it will be developed in more detail as the programme is fleshed out in detail. The evidence base should cover: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

What people do Where and when they do it Property and facilities costs Space occupancy levels Travel (including commuting travel) and travel costs Interaction with customers, suppliers, partners, etc. Teamwork and interaction with colleagues What technologies they use How much storage they use Number and usefulness of meetings What issues employees face Current flexible and mobile working practices Attitudes to other possible working patterns (time and place) Attitudes to current working environments Preferences for future working environments Issues in recruitment, retention and absence Environmental impacts of current working practices Levels of health and wellbeing Current work–life balance experience, and potential benefits of change Any planned changes to services and headcount.

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Some of this data will already be recorded, such as property, facilities and business travel costs. But often this kind of information is not kept in a way that is useful to a change programme. In the following sections we take a hard look at the main areas of costs and benefits that need to be counted in order to establish the baseline metrics and business case, and for monitoring and measuring the results of change. Where, when and how people are working Apart from where people are scheduled to work on shifts, or there are high safety or security concerns, organisations often work from assumptions about where, when and how people are working rather than having the detail. Sometimes the information exists, but in partial or fragmented forms across different parts of the business, and it is collected in different ways. The expectation that someone has a base workplace, and probably a desk there, doesn’t necessarily tell you much about what they actually do. Nor how productive or efficient the times and the locations they work at are in practice. Do they spend a lot of time out with clients? Do they have a formal or informal Flexible Working pattern – and how is that working out? Do the tools they use support their mobility? Are they doing excessive amounts of work in the evenings? What do they think would make them more effective, and happier in their work? What is needed is a baseline in how people work now, and both quantitative and qualitative information about a. what good could look like in the future, and b. what improvements might be needed to get there. Having this richness of information feeds not only into a business case, but will be of great value in developing the objectives and the structure of the programme, and a basis for monitoring progress. So, what are the best ways to get the information needed? In addition to any existing sources of information (see Table 4.2), new data-gathering activities should include: • Structured interviews with senior leaders • An employee Smart Working survey

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• Other focused consultation activities, such as: • Week-In-the-Life-Of (WILO) surveys to dive into the where and when of sample groups • Workshops with representative groups across the business as a ‘view from below’ to provide context and balance for the analysis of the senior leader interviews • Auditing the provision and use of space by direct observation • Auditing the provision and use of technologies. A key part of the value of the first three activities listed is the involvement of people at all levels in scoping the change. This is also an important part of the communications process, and introduces the concepts and vocabulary of Smart Working in a practical way. Structured interviews with senior leaders Structured interviews with senior leaders help to build a picture of how the organisation works, the different styles of work and who their departments interact with internally and externally. They also help to build the picture of how smart the ways of working are currently, the appetite at senior level for greater flexibility and where further awareness-raising is necessary. The interviews should also explore the strategic priorities of different parts of the business. Factors such as the development of new services or products, projected changes in headcount and plans for restructuring provide the context into which Smart Working will be introduced. These will provide possible opportunities for change, or highlight potential constraints. Understanding senior leaders’ own ideas and plans for modernisation is an important part of the interview process. Quite often there is a disconnect between various strands of change that would create much greater value if they were connected. For example, plans may be underway to introduce new technologies to streamline production or service delivery, but the connection hasn’t been made with the potential for new ways of working to enhance the benefits. I have conducted hundreds of such interviews, and in nearly every organisation there have been senior leaders who initially were sceptical about the relevance of Smart Working, but who become enthusiastic advocates once they see the potential for ‘joining up the Smarts’, as it were. It’s also a reassuring process for those who initially feel that Smart Working is not for their part of the business. They come to see that it’s not a one-size-fits-all

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solution being proposed (or imposed) but one that is strongly focused on the differing business needs across the organisation. Smart Working employee survey The best way – with some caveats – to find out how people work is to ask them. It’s not enough to try to draw some conclusions from existing surveys that were not designed for the job, for example the annual employee engagement survey. Nor is it enough to ask them their preferences for different kinds of work options. Many organisations have asked their employees how many days they would prefer to work from home. That’s useful information, but it’s completely insufficient for specifying new working practices and the facilities and culture needed to support them. A well-targeted employee survey about Smart Working should have a strongly practical focus. This will gather responses about: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

The nature of the work people do Where they do it Any flexibility of time or place they already have (formal or informal) Travel for work How productive they think their working practices are Options for flexibility/smarter working practices Constraints on increased flexibility and mobility View on current workplaces – what works well and what doesn’t Rating various aspects of current environment(s) Requirements for various kinds of settings in the workplace Rating of workplace overall Technologies used currently, and how important they are to them Technology requirements in the locations they work How well the devices, applications and infrastructure work for them Suggestions for improvements in technologies Potential improvements in processes to work smarter Rating of technologies used overall Assessment of working culture – key characteristics Perception of management support for working smarter How much learning and development, and HR policies/processes support the necessary working practices

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• How trusting and empowering the culture is • Perception of whether management is by presence or by results • How supportive the organisation is of work–life balance. The survey should also gather baseline demographic data and information on respondents’ position and role. This will enable segmenting of the responses to find out variations in response by department, role, level of seniority and also by age, length of service, gender, caring responsibilities, disability and more. Sometimes the extent of demographic information requested can be controversial, on the grounds of being too intrusive. But such segmentation really does highlight differences both in current work experience and attitudes to working smarter, especially across the categories I’ve just listed. Having the option ‘Prefer not to say’ and careful use of language will overcome most objections. It’s important not to be dissuaded by the loudest voice when the vast majority will be happy to answer the questions. Though it adds to the time it will take some people to do the survey – and, indeed, the time to analyse it – it’s extremely valuable to include opportunities for free-form comment. Comments often offer piercing insights and great ideas. Well thought-out challenges can be equally informative. In case the time-consuming nature of dealing with these free-form comments is off-putting, there are language-based AI-based analysis tools starting to come onto the market that offer the prospect of accelerating the analysis by recognising patterns and grouping them into categories1. No doubt such software will also increase in sophistication over time. The rich data that results is very useful for building the implementation plan and targeting the necessary interventions to maximise the effectiveness of the changes. The feedback on how the workplace and technology perform (and variations across the business), plus the identification of opportunities and constraints should feed into the design of the programme and the budget required. Knowing how much time people spend in the workplace and their preferences for the future, how much time they spend collaborating, how much time they spend with customers (etc.) will feed into the options for optimising the workplace for future ways of working. Findings on how people say they use the workplace and what they (would) value in it can be analysed alongside data gained from auditing and monitoring actual space use. Cost savings are often achieved by reductions in real estate

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requirements and reducing facilities costs. Savings are used to fund improvements to workplaces, improvements to technologies, training and culture change activities, as well as reducing the costs of work overall. Apart from the intrinsic value of the data collected, this kind of survey will also: 1. Develop a conversation about improvement and innovation at all levels of the organisation 2. Share and get people using the language of Smart Working 3. Contextualise other smaller-scale consultations, like workshops, focus groups and discussions with stakeholders such as employee representatives, shareholders, elected members and employee networks. Such groups can often amplify the louder voices for or against change. So having the quantitative data to feed back to them helps to put the differing views in perspective. We’ll explore some of the output from these consultation activities further and how they can be used in subsequent chapters. Dynamic consultation While the kind of more detailed Smart Working survey outlined in the previous section is essential for planning the transformational changes across workstyles, culture, workplaces and technology, it’s also helpful to have regular feedback on key indicators as changes are rolled out, innovations are piloted and people adapt to the new ways of working and new work environments. Our case study of Cimpress in Chapter 13 illustrates some of the kinds of indicators one organisation has found valuable to monitor around wellbeing, work–life harmony and productivity through regular pulse surveys, backed up by more detailed half-yearly surveys. Such indicators are presented in an online dashboard accessible to the change team. These help identify progress over time, and areas where further work may be needed. Gathering feedback and views in this way helps the change team and senior management to see what is working well and what might need tweaking or a complete rethink. It can also highlight the differences between teams or departments doing different kinds of work. And if all is going well, the data will give the leadership confidence to stick with the programme and, if appropriate, expand it to other parts of the business.

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Attitudes to new ways of working The initial Smart Working survey should pick up a basket of issues about how people are working now (where, when, with what technology, etc) and also begin the conversation about possible future arrangements. This includes whether they would in principle like greater flexibility in where and when they work. It’s best to consult on the widest possible range of options for temporal and locational flexibility. The simple ‘how many days would you like to work from home’ is insufficient for creating a rounded and fair-to-all approach in taking the strategy forward. The level of demand and the types of options people seek often surprises senior executives. I’ve also found that people are very practical in their responses, e.g. if they know there are specific constraints in the nature of their work. It’s important to identify these as well, so that a) people feel listened to and b) you can see if there is any potential modernisation of processes that would make a difference. Ruling out some options beforehand – like ‘our directors will never accept home working/compressed working week/voluntary reduced hours’ – should be resisted. All options as far as possible should be investigated, and taken seriously even if in the end sought only by a minority. It’s not only preferences for working practices that need to be investigated. People’s views and preferences for work environments, set against a background of communications, pilots or demonstrations that highlight new possibilities, need also to be part of the survey. The survey on existing working conditions and practices provides the context for analysing these preferences, and gauging the types of changes that are best, and the potential costs and savings involved. Identifying cultural change requirements Over the years, I’ve been involved in some projects where the need for investment in practical cultural change has been underestimated, or indeed neglected in comparison to the investments in workplace change and technology change. To some extent this is understandable: those tend to be the big-ticket items and there’s something more visible and tangible about what is to be delivered. What can happen is that I’ve been called in to retrofit, in effect, cultural change after an implementation that has focused almost entirely on changing the physical and digital environments of work, in a ‘build it and they will come’ approach.

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Possibly they will, but expect a lot of grumbling and frustration on the way. It’s far better to build culture change in from the start. Interviews and workshops are good mechanisms for getting honest and detailed feedback from employees about how effective training and support is for key areas of skills such as managing by results, managing and working as geographically distributed teams, virtual and hybrid meeting practices and more. There also needs to be an audit of people policies and processes. Do they support a dynamic and business-oriented approach to flexibility, or do they tend to view flexibility in a more rigid tick-box way, and as an exception to the norm? HR, OD (Organisational Development) and L&D managers are usually happy to be engaged in the early conversations, and are often full of ideas about improvement. Getting the necessary funding may be another matter, but taking the holistic approach to change and having clearly identified benefits add to the case for an appropriate level of funding. After all, if the people are not on board, the full level of those benefits won’t be achieved. Analysing the provision and use of space Obtaining an objective view of how space is used involves observation. This typically takes the form of either: 1. Observation of how space is occupied and used, over a period of a few weeks, using sensors installed temporarily, or by having patrols at frequent intervals by scouts who enter data on handheld devices 2. Reports of occupancy and mobility in a workplace drawn from continuous monitoring, using sensors that have been installed on a permanent basis, and which will allow for further iterations of change based on changing use. Over the past few years there has been a veritable explosion of products and solutions for sensor-based monitoring. These are increasingly integrated with booking systems, other aspects of resource management and/or with building management systems. This drive for workplace data was already well in motion before the pandemic, and during the periods of lockdown spawned a new wave of start-ups to join the more established players who have also upped their game. As the costs of sensors have dropped over the past 10 years, it’s an increasingly attractive option. The ability to integrate with other systems to provide a complete

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view of the workplace ecosystem means that the debate between the two approaches is largely decided in favour of the continuous monitoring approach. In one sense the data is more complete, compared to the older method of hourly or half-hourly tours to note how many people are doing what and where they are doing it. But there is also a value in the older approach of having humans observe what is happening. More insight and data can be gathered on what people are doing at a work position. Are they head-down doing focus work, on a call, talking with somebody nearby, or maybe doing nothing much at all? Or, what kind of interaction is happening in a meeting room? The ‘not doing anything’ checkbox can be a helpful one. I remember at one local authority there was one area of desks that was occupied for the most part only at the beginning, middle and end of the day. The main activities recorded when people were there were ‘nothing’ and ‘talking with colleagues’. These were people who were out and about most of the day. Their desks served primarily as open storage for their lunch, various bits of equipment and protective clothing. In other words, filling that space with desks had been a reflex action that had little correlation with the tasks they actually did. When there is a finding like this, it’s great to be able to look at the data from the employee consultation to see what this department thinks would be their ideal kind of space. What would serve them best is a space primarily to relax and have informal conversations, and with proper storage for their professional equipment and clothing. Very rich data can be derived from these kinds of monitoring. At a basic level, we can see how much space is being used. In a traditional organisation with desks assigned to individuals (one person, one desk, or 1:1 desk ratio), a typical finding was that average desk occupancy through the working day was 40–45%. Since the pandemic, in many organisations it is half of that. People sometimes refuse to believe these kinds of figures. That’s because their perspective focuses on their own team and immediate neighbours. They can recall days when ‘everybody was in’. But across the organisation as a whole, that won’t be the case. Peak occupancy happens at different times for different teams, so averages out across the building. When people are in the building, they do other things besides sit at their desk. They will be in meetings, having informal interactions, doing training, working in specialist facilities, socialising. There are people who are meant to be out of the building: seeing customers, visiting sites, working with partners or suppliers, inspecting equipment, troubleshooting on projects, and so forth. Holidays and sickness absence account for

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more than 10% of unused time at an assigned desk. Then there are people who are part-time. People working flexibly – working from home, term-time working, compressed working week, flexible hours – all these practices have spatial impacts. So in a traditional organisation with assigned desking it’s important for people to accept that it’s quite normal for the dominant work setting, the desks, to be unoccupied for half the time or more. Such data can be misused to make a business case for the very un-smart solution of having rows of hot-desks in vast open-plan areas. This is where one needs to dig deeper into the data to find a) the variations in desk occupancy in different parts of the business, b) what people are doing (or trying to do) when they use desks and c) how other spaces (meeting rooms, breakout spaces, kitchens, social spaces, etc.) are being used. So capturing information about desk use is only part of the story. We also need to capture data about all the other spaces. In organisations that have already transitioned to space sharing, it’s really about understanding how the whole range of activity settings are being used, and gathering data that inform changes that will improve the whole work experience. It’s interesting how perceptions are often at odds with measured reality with regard to meeting rooms. I’ve heard people say they can never find a meeting room, but when measured, the utilisation comes up at 25–30%. Why the difference? It’s because there are favoured times for meetings: usually mid-morning and around 2 pm. Everyone is looking for a room at the same time. We also typically find that meeting rooms are significantly bigger than is needed for the number of people using them. The average number of people in a meeting room is typically two. What that indicates is that larger meetings are relatively infrequent in most organisations. Also, many meeting rooms are occupied by just a single person when observed. That’s because only one person turned up. Or the meeting finished before the scheduled end, and one person has carried on using it. Or a meeting room was found to be empty, and someone popped in there to make a call or for some peace and quiet. So how do we make use of these meeting room metrics? It’s clear from those not untypical findings that the provision of meeting rooms and the actual need for collaboration space are not well aligned. Here there is obviously a need for more one-to-one space and probably more private solo space as well. As we’ll see when we look at rethinking meetings in Chapter 9, the provision of much more informal breakout space could take the pressure off the more formal meeting space at peak times. That comes down to a combination of both new settings and transformed collaboration behaviours.

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How well the space is performing One of the best ways to find out how the space is performing (which is not the same as how it is occupied) is to ask the users. That will be part of the wider Smart Working consultation and continuing surveys outlined earlier in this chapter. To get more granular detail about it, a survey like the Leesman Index will provide insight from employees across a range of workplace activities, physical features and workplace impact such as productivity. As the same questions are asked across multiple organisations, it provides a consistent benchmark about how your organisation is performing compared to others2. A consistent finding of the Leesman Index3 is that workplaces designed for smart/agile working with activity-based settings score higher. These dominate their ‘Leesman+’ category of highest-performing workplaces. Since the pandemic, the same questions have been extended to cover home-based working. So, comparisons can be made about the effectiveness of home and office as places to work, alongside the overall work experience. Whichever way you gather the data, it is important to see how well the spaces in which people work support their productivity and wellbeing. This applies to the Extended Workplace, including but not limited to the home. For example, how does their perception of their productivity correlate to having a separate place to work in when at home? Which place of work supports high concentration work better, or collaboration? These findings should be the spur for further focused conversations and investigations as needed. The real cost of space for the desk-based organisation The real costs of a workstation (desk) in an office comprise the whole range of expenditure on rent, business rates, furnishings, decoration, heating, lighting, ventilation, water, maintenance, IT, telephony (etc.) divided by the number of workstations that are accommodated within the net internal area (NIA). In the UK, these range from around £6k per workstation in a town like Nottingham to an average £12k per workstation in London mid-town, with premium offices in the most prestigious areas double that, according to the Total Office Costs Survey (TOCS)4, based on typical industry figures. In a traditional office, each workstation is allocated on a one-person-to-onedesk basis. So measuring the cost of individual workstations is the same as

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measuring the costs of the office per worker. That is something that changes when desk-sharing is introduced. We have seen how typically levels of occupancy in a traditional organisation are low, so it’s not a difficult calculation to make to see how much the unoccupied desk space is costing the organisation. I’ve found that many organisations have surprisingly sketchy data on how much their space costs, or they just calculate rent and rates to arrive at a figure. I’ve been told more than once that an organisation’s space is ‘free’ because they own the building. Well, that only takes out the rent element of the total office cost but there’s still all the rest to factor in. It also fails to take account of the opportunity cost of holding onto space that isn’t really needed. A building could be sold as you consolidate into smaller space, or some/all of it could be let as you take on the role of a corporate landlord. Or in the case of the public sector, an asset (or part of it) could be used for another purpose such as housing or community use, or transferred to a non-profit body that can make better use of it for a social purpose consistent with your mission and strategic objectives. So on the real estate front, a business case doesn’t only need to be made in terms of the financial value of a building. Storage audit At first site auditing storage wouldn’t seem to have a lot to do with Smart Working. But the relationship is intimate and practical, in two respects: 1. Nothing tethers people to unproductive working practices like needing to access files and physical materials. Getting rid of paper is vital to untethering the workforce to work smarter and more flexibly 2. All that storage takes up space on the office floor. It’s a very expensive use of valuable office space, and it needs to be reduced to a minimum both to save costs and make way for new and smarter working environments. Over the past couple of decades many organisations have made very big strides in digitisation, and some work in an almost completely electronic environment rather than being paper-based. However, this remains very uneven. I’ve seen big variations between sectors, and also internally within organisations. In some countries, there is still a culture of retaining paper either out of habit, or to meet government regulatory requirements.

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So there’s still a lot of work to be done in this area – just because leading organisations have transformed their processes doesn’t mean that the paperless office is here. Yet. At the stage of making the business case and planning change, getting an overview of the scale of the issues and the potential for reduction of paper usage and onsite storage is required. Current costs need to be assessed (of printing and stationery; the number, location and costs of running printers, etc.) and any inefficient processes relating to a paper-based environment need to be identified. Then the costs of alternate solutions such as electronic document management systems, digitisation of processes and archiving paper (if needed) should be calculated, plus the beneficial impacts on the better use of space in the workplace. There are more details about this in Chapter 6. Measuring travel How much people travel can be picked up through the Smart Working survey. The advantage of doing this within the survey is that it allows analysis linking travel with specific patterns of working, and it gets people thinking about the linkages. In any organisation, though, there will also be other ways of recording travel, through reimbursement of expenses, fleet records, centrally booked travel, etc. These provide the big picture of company travel, and it’s something chief finance officers are always looking at to find ways of reducing costs. Pulling together all this information is not always easy. But it is worth doing it and having the picture broken down by department and team, to measure the impacts of change. We have now, of course, the experience of a radical break from routine travel brought about by responses to the pandemic. We have found that much work can be done without travelling to do it. It’s worth putting some numbers to that. How much money have organisations and individuals saved by doing so? And what does the future look like going forward? Commuting travel is something employers should be concerned about too. Measuring employees’ commute journeys and targeting reductions in them forms a legitimate part of the business case for Smart Flexibility. This is in two respects: 1. Commuting travel should be counted in when looking at the environmental footprint of working practices (as should business travel, of course) 2. Reduced commuting can be seen as an employee benefit and part of the ‘sell’ to gain buy-in from staff.

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Quantitative data can be gathered from post-code plotting of where employees live, supplemented by data from the survey of how frequently they would like to work elsewhere. Taking on board the data from postcode plotting can also be fed into scenarios for retaining and disposing of buildings and/or repurposing them as hubs. Then the potential to minimise travel when people do come into the collective workplace can be assessed. There is another financial consideration too when looking at the impacts on reduced commuting. This relates to whether expenses should be paid to employees when they work from home. For most employees, though, savings from reduced commuting will considerably outweigh any increases in domestic bills for heating and electricity. Auditing technology provision and use Using new technologies has a key role to play in the strategic implementation of Smart Working. The technologies and processes that people use currently may either tether people to traditional working styles, or liberate them to work smarter. So it’s important at the outset to have an appraisal of what people use, and what needs to change. From this, the costs can be worked out of both the costs of change and future support costs. Data should come from both the IT department on what is being provided and the costs – primarily hardware, software, infrastructure, management and support – and from the Smart Working survey where people identify what they use, how they use it and how good they think the technology is. A close look at existing processes is also needed. It may be that paper-based processes are a brake on flexibility, and investment is needed to bring them online. Or it may be that there has been substantial investment in enterprise systems but no advantage has been taken of the potential for much greater flexibility that in principle they could facilitate. In any case, the point of the investigation is to identify the levels of investment needed to set up the technology platform that will support Smart Working. Before setting out on this audit, it’s important to have a clear vision of the future ways of working in the organisation. If the vision is not clear, proposed changes will sooner or later run into the buffers of existing priorities.

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The role of those carrying out the audit is not to see how the existing technology strategy can support flexibility, and stop there. The point is to see how both the strategy and provision need to change to maximise the benefits from working smarter. That tends to mean asking some uncomfortable questions, challenging assumptions and occasionally treading on some toes. Auditing processes is an opportunity for a thorough rethinking of what is being done, how it’s being done, where it’s being done and who is doing it. It’s sometimes assumed that the basic equation for costs when implementing Smart Working is that property and travel costs reduce, while technology costs rise. But this is not necessarily so. Unpacking the way work is done and repackaging it more effectively in a Smart Working context can bring substantial savings too, leveraging additional value out of IT investments. Factoring in productivity increases Smart Working ought to be more productive. If it’s not, why do it? Productivity, however, can be quite slippery to measure. We examine ways to do this and how Smart Working makes a difference in Chapters 10 and 11. While there may be some challenges, a good business case should include expectations of improved productivity. These will come from reductions in the input costs of work on the one hand and/or improvements in the outputs in terms of quality and quantity. We’ve mentioned streamlining work processes. The business case should consider questions such as: what improvements in efficiency can be achieved by this? How much time can be ‘liberated’ from unproductive practices such as unnecessary or ineffective meetings? Can more time be liberated to enable people to interact more with customers or prospective customers, whether in person or online? Or eradicate slippage in projects? Can time be liberated from meetings to do something more productive? There can be headcount issues in here too. If you’ve streamlined internal processes, the same work may perhaps be done more efficiently by fewer people. If home-based customer service staff are answering 20% more calls, for example, is it time to reduce headcount in this area, or an opportunity to expand sales and marketing operations? Or do you need to invest in reskilling and redeploying people elsewhere in the business, with an expectation of an increase in productivity further down the line in their new area of work, or to fill gaps in recruitment?

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Establishing metrics at the outset is crucial for future evaluation of the success of the project. Many evaluations of Smart Working are done after implementation, on the basis of asking employees and managers if productivity has increased. This can be valuable, but it’s also possible to set ‘harder’ metrics in place as part of the business plan, and setting targets as part of the justification for investment. Recruitment, retention and absence For many years organisations have been introducing Flexible Working specifically to deal with problems in staff recruitment and retention, or if they have significant problems with staff absence. Smart Working takes this a stage further, enabling a more dynamic kind of flexibility that has a strong appeal to both candidates and existing employees. These are areas where the existing situation should not be too hard to track down, and where improvements are fairly easy to measure. Becoming an employer of choice is about attracting more of the kinds of candidates you’re looking for. This will always be about having the right skills and being the right fit for the company, but it may also support wider ambitions such as being a more inclusive employer, attracting more women into scientific, engineering and technical roles, etc. And it’s about hiring people who will stay with you. There may be existing issues around retention. In the business plan, average costs of hire should be included. These vary across different organisations and sectors. But estimates generally put the costs of hire at around £6k per employee, rising to around £20k for a senior employee, once the internal costs and any costs of external recruiters are factored in. Sourcing more senior hires through an external recruiter can also come with additional costs, such as a sizeable percentage of their salary may also be payable to the recruiter5. Absenteeism usually falls when flexibility is introduced. Average absence rates in the UK are 6 days per year in the public sector, and 4 days per year in the private sector6. If absence rates in an organisation, or part of it, are a significant issue, it’s legitimate to set a target for reduction within the Smart Working project. The biggest growth area in reported reasons for absence is in stress-related mental health issues, and the greater degrees of autonomy that come with Smart Working can help in this regard, particularly if coupled with a positive and proactive approach to wellbeing in the workplace. We look at the issues in more detail in Chapter 13 on Wellbeing. But for the evidence baseline, it’s worth knowing both the level of absence, the reported reasons for it and the associated costs.

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Work–life balance – can you measure it? Using Smart Working as a way to deal with recruitment, retention and absence problems is to a large degree about enabling employees to balance their lives better, reducing stress and work–life conflicts, and stimulating greater loyalty and motivation into the bargain. But can you actually measure work–life balance itself? The hard measures are those outlined earlier, to do with workplace and technology costs, productivity, recruitment, retention and absence. ‘Softer’ metrics can be developed to measure work–life balance in a non-monetised way, by looking at the impacts on staff satisfaction and staff engagement, and asking specifically about employees’ perceptions of their work–life balance and conflicts. Using surveys before and after change to ask staff to rate statements such as ‘I enjoy my job’, ‘I enjoy working for my company’, ‘I feel stressed at work’ (etc.) is a way to measure any improvements. This can subsequently be monitored on an annual basis to see if your Smart Working and/or work–life balance programmes are having an impact. If improved employee satisfaction with their work–life balance is accompanied by improvements in the hard business measures, and changes to time or place of work, then there are positive correlations worth celebrating in company communications. Benefits, costs and return on investment From gathering evidence in these categories, it’s time to build the business case. You’ve got benefits that can be measured, and you’ve got a clear baseline about where you are starting from. And you’ve got a clear idea of costs. Table 4.1 summarises the main areas of costs and benefits. From these benefits and costs it should be possible to get a clear projection of the return on investment. Other benefits listed in the more extensive list in Table 3.1 might be additionally highlighted if especially relevant to a programme. It’s possible that seeing the scope of this, some people thinking about Smart Working may want to run a mile. It’s all too much, and a long way from introducing a menu of Flexible Working options! At the outset, I said this is an approach to maximise the benefits by achieving wins on as many fronts as possible. For some organisations, some parts of it may be seen as being less relevant or crucial. It may be that they don’t want or need any substantial changes to working environments, though they are interested in improving productivity, reducing travel and reducing absence and staff turnover. Or it may be that their focus is

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Table 4.1 Core benefits and costs of implementation Main areas of potential benefit

Main areas of investment

• • • • •

• • • •

Property disposal – capital receipts Facilities costs reduction Productivity improvements Travel reduction Reduced environmental footprint of work • Recruitment/retention • Absence reduction • Work–life balance

Refurbishment or new build Facilities costs Technology kit and infrastructure Culture change – awareness-raising campaigns, training, mentoring, communications • Continuing support • Project management

primarily on becoming more mobile and using their buildings much more effectively, while being less concerned about recruitment and retention. Even so, an investigation of all the issues is worth doing, to see if there are areas for improvement that have not initially been considered. A more comprehensive approach is much more likely to deliver the benefits, and to create a more robust case for change. Evaluation after Smart Working has been introduced Establishing robust metrics from the planning stage of the implementation is essential for meaningful monitoring of progress and a full-scale evaluation of Smart Working once it’s bedded in. You’ll be able to see whether the benefits aimed for are being realised – savings achieved, productivity up and your organisation is now an employer of choice. We also need to see how smart the Smart Working is – to what extent new behaviours have been adopted, and what any blockers and new opportunities might be. Table 4.2 sets out a range of typical benefits organisations will aim to achieve, how to assess them and some potential sources of data. I have carried out numerous such evaluations, structured around the nine areas detailed in Figure 3.2, and underpinned by British Standards PAS 3000. Another key tool for the evaluation, which can also be used in awarenessraising at the outset of a project, is reference to the Smart Working Maturity Model (Chapter 16). Using the 1 to 10 scale and asking people in interviews or workshops where they think the organisation sits on the maturity model

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Table 4.2 Ways to measure and evaluate Smart Working benefits Benefit

Example of measurement

Improved productivity

Varies according to type of work – see Chapters 10 and 11 Services can initially be challenged to come up with productivity targets once they understand the options and possibilities Improvements in quality Time liberated from unproductive tasks Improvements in achieving deadlines Survey data

Improved collaboration

Reduction of time spent in meetings Use of collaboration technologies and breakout spaces rather than formal meeting rooms Evaluation survey Costs savings of, e.g., time (salary) + travel costs avoided by new collaboration behaviours

Improved service delivery

Number and quality of interaction with customers and stakeholders Improvement to delivery time/reduction of slippages Feedback from customers and stakeholders

Improved use of buildings

Space utilisation audit/monitoring • Use of each type of space Colleague feedback Workplace experience survey Cost savings

Healthy working

Mobility in the office Use of sit/stand Use of specialist rooms (e.g. for fitness or quiet relaxation) Use of ergonomic tools Survey

Innovation thinking

Assessed through number and success of new initiatives and projects New patents

Improvements in retention

HR data Exit interviews

Reduced absence

HR data

Improvements in recruitment

HR data External benchmarking, e.g. via Glassdoor (Continued)

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Table 4.2 (Continued) Benefit

Example of measurement

Improved morale/satisfaction/ staff engagement

Engagement survey Net Promoter Score or similar

Improved work–life balance

Staff survey

Reduced commute travel

Staff survey Travel diary/‘week in the life of’ survey

Reduced business travel

Expenses data Staff survey Travel diary/‘week in the life of’ survey

Reduction in paper usage

Stationery purchasing data Data from printers

Reduction in energy usage

FM (facilities management) data Data from building systems Extrapolations from travel reductions

Cost savings

Capital receipts from buildings/land sold Reduction in rents, rates, etc. Reduction in FM costs Reduction in business travel Savings in resource use

stimulates great conversations and helps people to evaluate their progress across different trajectories. The resulting report uses a traffic-light system of progress and achievement, and highlights both excellence and where more needs to be done or something needs to change. This is very important in large organisations where different parts of the business are scheduled to change at different points on an overall timescale. So the learning can ratchet up best practice as it moves forward across the organisation. Our case studies of Thales (Chapter 3) and of the UK central government programme (Chapter 14) also highlight their own processes of evaluation. Now we move on from the insight and metrics to look at each of the main areas of intervention and the issues and potential benefits associated with them.

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Notes 1 One such workplace experience analysis tool incorporating AI to analyse openended comments is provided by Audiem, which also hosts the useful Workplace Geeks Podcast at www.audiem.io/ 2 Further details on the Leesman Index can be found at www.leesmanindex.com/ 3 We use with permission some of the Leesman data at various points in this book. 4 Lambert Smith Hampton (2022), Total Office Costs Survey 2021. www.lsh.co. uk/total-office-cost-survey 5 CIPD (September 2021), Resourcing and talent planning survey 2021. Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development. www.cipd.org/globalassets/media/ knowledge/knowledge-hub/reports/resourcing-and-talent-planning-2021-1_ tcm18-100907.pdf 6 ONS (2021), Sickness absence in the UK labour market: 2021, report and dataset available at www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/ labourproductivity/articles/sicknessabsenceinthelabourmarket/2021

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Chapter Five Who, where, when and why?

People and culture are central to Smart Working, and this is the first of our chapters dealing with the human factor. This one examines the issues around who can work more flexibly, and what kinds of work can be appropriate. It also looks at the balance between the individual’s aspirations for working more flexibly and the business issues around how it is applied. Do people want more flexibility in their ways of working? For more than 25 years I’ve conducted surveys within organisations in preparation for moves to Smart Working and evaluations of the results after implementation. There is no question that the great majority of people want greater flexibility in where or when they work, or both. And they appreciate the outcomes when it happens. Usually it was around 85–90% of respondents who wanted more flexibility, with the appetite for time-based flexibility ahead of location-based flexibility. The higher scores for time-based flexibilities relate to the hands-on or site-specific nature of the work in some of the organisations – everything from defence and engineering to building motorways and running castles. So it came as absolutely no surprise during the pandemic when survey after survey showed a very high demand for flexibility, as highlighted in Chapter 2. In particular, the surveys show a very strong desire to continue to work from home at least some of the time, from people who did so during the pandemic. Broadly, amongst those whose work is doable from home we’re looking at around 15% who would prefer to work remotely all the time, with only around 10% who wish to work full-time in an office. The rest are thinking in terms of 2 to

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DOI: 10.4324/9781003288930-5

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3 days per week on average working away from an office or other collective workplace. A demand for more flexible schedules remains high on the agenda. The Future Forum’s Pulse survey in summer 2022 found that 94% of respondents want flexibility in the times they work1. However, 57% reported currently having no time flexibility. The appetite is clear. But what is it driving this demand for greater flexibility? Many studies have confirmed that people want to have more choice and control over where and when they work. This is associated with improved work–life balance and improved wellbeing. It is also associated with reducing (or eliminating) the need to commute, along with the wasted time and additional stress that go with it. In past surveys within organisations, I’ve found the strongest correlation between the desire to work more flexibly and three key indicators: 1. The length or difficulty of the commute journey 2. Having caring responsibilities – key practical factors related to achieving a better work–life balance or integration 3. Age – as people approach the later years of their career, working more flexibly has strong appeal, although the practicalities and financial penalties around this act as significant barriers. While these factors are still good indicators of motivation, the experience of the pandemic has levelled things out to some extent. Now most people who think they could vary the time and/or location of their work want to do so. So the issue now is not whether people should work more flexibly, but about how best to organise it. For managers, teams and individuals, it’s about how to make the best choices for where, when and how work is done. Our focus throughout this chapter is on how to take a practical approach to doing this. What kinds of flexibility for which kinds of work? Smart Working involves the option of working at different times, in different places and using different tools and processes to do so. It requires new techniques for collaboration. And it can also include choices around different work patterns such as reduced hours and jobshare, using Smart Working principles.

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Putting these new options and techniques into practice requires taking a good look at the way people work and thinking, ‘How can it be done in ways that are smarter?’ This can be challenging, as it involves thinking in new ways about the nature of the work being done, how different tasks make up a role and in some cases how work activities are shared across the team. For engaging people in productive discussions and creating a coherent framework for decisions, it’s essential to recognise it’s about tasks, not roles. I can’t emphasise this too strongly, as I’ve seen organisations make poor decisions, stoke up problems for the future and generally tie themselves in knots when they start by creating categories of eligibility based on roles, then using that as the foundation for making decisions about working smarter. Please don’t do it! Figure 5.1 is a simple but highly effective technique for engaging managers and teams to work through their possibilities for working smarter. This exercise involves getting people together to think through the tasks involved in their work and assess how time specific and location specific the tasks are. That is, does that kind of task need to be done at a specific time – or is the exact time when the task is done less important, as long as it’s done by a certain deadline? Then ask the same kind of question about the location of work. Do the work activities have to be done at a specific place? Are they done at a specific place, like in the office, out of necessity or is it just the way things have always been done? Loca on variable 1

2 Time specific

1

2

3

4

4

5 Loca on specific

Figure 5.1: Deciding times and locations of work tasks.

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5

Time variable

Who, where, when and why?

Time-specific work might include dealing with calls in a contact centre, or providing emergency support services. One has to be available at agreed times in order to talk with customers. On the other hand, the exact time a task is done may be less important for activities like data processing or writing a report. Sure, there’s a deadline, but exactly when it is done leading up to the deadline is less important. Most people will have a mix of work that is time specific and time variable. Lawyers may have a certain amount of work that is client-facing or involves court appearances, which is time specific. However, they will probably have many other kinds of work where the exact timing is less important. Much knowledge work is in fact very time variable, except on occasions when an instant response is needed. Location-specific work could include activities like hands-on engineering work, or reception work. Sometimes this encompasses all or most of the tasks in a role, but not always. For example, a receptionist may have some other administrative duties as well that might be more time variable or even location variable. Or a team leader in a production environment may often need to be close to a team on site, but also have a fair amount of desk work that could be carried out anywhere, or meetings with people who are not in that environment, e.g. elsewhere on site or in a remote location. In doing this exercise, people should think of both the mission-critical tasks, and more generic tasks like reporting, supervision, team meetings or dealing with emails. Then each identified task can be plotted on the grid, as shown in Figure 5.2. The tasks in Figure 5.2 are a sample taken from workshops where I’ve employed this technique, and we will see how participants’ thinking evolved during the course of the exercise. A key principle for rethinking work and making the most of this exercise is to drill down into suggested tasks, dividing them up into sub-tasks as necessary. For examples, someone may locate safety-related tasks down in the bottom left-hand corner as being both very place specific and time specific. However, not all their work is about dealing with critical incidents where being at a specific place at a specific time is so crucial. They also spend a fair amount of time on safety inspections, which are less time-sensitive. They have more flexibility in scheduling these, though mostly this still needs to be at a specific location with eyes on the equipment, environment or behaviours being assessed. Reporting, however, is much more footloose and is located at the top right of the grid. Similarly with lab work. It’s easy to assume that scientists and engineers who use labs spend all or most of their time there. Sometimes they do – but do they always

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Who, where, when and why?

Locaon variable Invoicing

unch uct la Prod

Software development

Project review

1

2

3

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Classroom training 4 Invoicing

Critical safety incident

Lab work planning

4

?

Appraisals

Product launch

HR case work

Team meeting

Lab work

Report writing

Lab analysis

Appraisals 2

Time specific

e-learning

Team meeting

1

5

Classified reporting

Hardware build 5

Locaon specific Figure 5.2: Examples of plotting tasks in terms of time and location options.

Safety inspections

Time variable

Who, where, when and why?

need to? Traditional workbenches may in fact not be best suited to informationintensive or partly automated modern lab-related work. In fact, according to workshop participants for many types of lab work, it’s a minority of time that’s spent at a bench. Planning and analysis work can take place elsewhere. Trials may be set up and left running, and monitored from time to time. It’s also the case that the availability of good systems can make a big difference to where and when work is done. A good laboratory information system (LIS) can enable people to have access to information and systems from other places. Any constraints on where those other places are might depend on confidentiality and security issues, or the need to be close at hand to make physical interventions if required. So it’s important that people are prepared to think innovatively and ask the ‘what if’ questions. We can see this in Figure 5.2 in the arrow linking the two locations of ‘Invoicing’ on the grid. A paper-based system would require attendance in an office to have access to documents and printers. Moving to an electronic system frees people up to work elsewhere, though the time requirement to deal with invoices within a short timescale remains the same in this example. I’ve seen many examples of people thinking innovatively in these exercises. For example in both the nuclear and aviation industries people have come up with ideas for the use of cameras and drones for inspection of equipment and work-inprogress. In each case, some participants were able to refer to other companies that were already using such techniques. These technologies not only streamline processes and speed up the work, they also create new possibilities for who does what and where as well as how. We can see a somewhat similar evolution of thinking taking place around product launches, which were initially placed near the bottom left of the grid. Whereas previously these had always centred on a major in-person event or events, the experience of the pandemic has spurred innovation with the use of online product launches, and perhaps not with one event but a staggered sequence of them. And the hybrid world offers the opportunity to have simultaneous hybrid events in different parts of the world, also streamed remotely. In this case, the stretched ‘lozenge’ around the task in the top left indicates varying degrees of hybridity and virtuality, while the recording of the event presents different opportunities for reaching prospective customers asynchronously. The ‘Team meeting’ task is an interesting one. Before the pandemic, this would involve some lively discussions about how often people need to be physically

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Who, where, when and why?

together. The experience of virtual team meetings now makes most people doubt the importance of getting everyone together routinely – instead it needs to be for a special reason. We’ll explore rethinking meetings as part of the wider issue of rethinking collaboration in Chapter 9. Similarly, in thinking about the best location for appraisals, the default position seems to have turned around. After 2 years of remote appraisals, the majority view seems to be that for the most part a same-place, in-person meeting is not generally necessary. So let’s try this out – where would you put ‘IT support’ on this grid? A good conversation would break ‘IT support’ into different categories: whether the support needs hands-on work with kit, whether it could be done remotely, and how a request for support is triaged according to urgency. Hopefully it’s clear now why it doesn’t work to base decisions about flexibility on role. If you try the exercise outlined earlier based on roles, it soon falls apart. Nearly all roles involve a range of tasks that have different possibilities for time and location variability. So to put an HR officer in one part of the grid and a Health & Safety Officer in another would certainly miss the nuances, miss the opportunities for innovation and also lead to making decisions based on outdated assumptions from the old world of work about place and time. Other factors affecting decisions about the time and place of work We need to remember at all times the first two of our Smart Working principles, as set out in Chapter 3: that work should take place at the most effective locations and most effective times. So it’s not about trying to push as many tasks as possible up into the top righthand corner of our grid. Far from it. It’s about identifying the genuine requirements of the task, and what adds most value in terms of time and location. To understand this, we need also to think about: • Interaction needs – whether it adds value to work in proximity, or at the same time, with a colleague, either because of the intrinsic value or because their work on the task is constrained, e.g. by use of equipment • Security considerations – a task might well be in principle capable of being done at home, at a coworking centre, at a café or on the train, but does that expose the information, the system or the person to unacceptable risk?

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• Whether the task can be shared or delegated – members of a team, where for a large proportion of tasks flexibility is constrained, may benefit from bundling tasks with greater flexibility-potential together on a single day, e.g. by sharing or delegating more inflexible tasks. There are implications for multiskilling and job design here • Cost-effectiveness of changes that could change the flexibility-potential of a task – we may see, to take our previous example, the potential of using drones to support inspection work. But is it cost-effective to do so overall? What tethers you to the workplace? It’s important to critique the factors that tie people to traditional working practices when considering what kinds of flexibility are appropriate for which role. In traditional ways of working, people are tethered to places and time of work a) by the need to use something and b) by the need to be available. In addition, the prevailing culture, or just habit, may incline people to be in the workplace, even when objectively their work doesn’t require it. Figure 5.3 illustrates the factors that can stand in the way of greater flexibility. Most of these tethering factors can be altered. Paper files can be replaced almost entirely by electronic ones, accessible anywhere, anytime. IT systems and tools should not only be accessible in the company-owned workplace, unless it is very highly specialised, e.g. lab equipment. Most of what people say is specialist, e.g. particularly databases or software, can be accessed and used remotely as long as there is the will to do it. Face-to-face interaction may be necessary. But in global teams, people know that this will rarely be physically face-to-face. What is so distinctive about local teams to make physical presence a necessity for interaction? The answer is that it’s usually not necessity, but habit. Most of these factors can be changed to have less of a tethering effect. There may be some that cannot – or not yet – be reformed. These can often be grouped so that physical presence at specified times does not constrain the whole of working life. Working from a job title or from a generic term like ‘mobile professional’ is not adequate for designing appropriate new models of work. It comes back to analysing the tasks involved and scoping how they can be made ‘footloose’.

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Use of paper documents

Use of computer systems and IT tools

Being available CULTURE

Face-to-face interac!on with colleagues / clients

Face-to-face interac!on with colleagues Employee

86

Supervision / instant response to boss

Use of physical tools, materials and equipment

Site-specific responsibili!es

HABIT

Figure 5.3: Tethering factors.

Who, where, when and why?

Using something

Who, where, when and why?

Note: Using this kind of graphic, or building up to it, in a workshop setting is a valuable exercise for awareness-raising and analysis of working practices. Participants like to suggest other dimensions apart from ‘Using Something’ and ‘Being Available’. Key ones are perhaps ‘Personal Choice’ and ‘Lack of an Alternative’. I’m not sure ‘Personal Choice’ is really valid in terms of a tethering factor – after all it is a choice, rather than being tied down. Not having a viable alternative is a more compelling factor for driving people to be in the office. And again one can analyse factors that make the alternative locations unsuitable: lack of (separate) space at home, house full of noisy children, etc. I remember one person in a survey simply said ‘My husband is retired’ as being a reason for not being able to work at home. I guess you’d have to meet him to fully appreciate that one. Are there personal qualities that make people more suitable for Smart Working? Many published guides and studies over the years have set out the key personality characteristics that are needed for working flexibly, and provide recommendations for managers when making decisions about eligibility to do so. This is particularly the case for remote working, and the old teleworking guides are full of these checklists2. And I have seen many in-house guides work along similar lines. My advice is to approach with caution! Most of the advice on the kind of character traits required to be eligible or suitable for working flexibly ranges from the banal to the plain wrong. A typical list would say eligible employees should be: • • • • • • • • •

Highly focused Self-sufficient Self-disciplined Trustworthy Flexible Well organised Good decision makers Proven/high performers Good communicators.

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While these attributes may have you nodding your head at first, it is as well to think about the corollary of this. How many of your employees do you expect to be the opposite: • • • • • • • • •

Poorly focused Dependent Un(self-)disciplined Untrustworthy Inflexible Poorly organised Poor decision makers Unproven/low performers Poor communicators?

Because these are the ones that, by the same token, will be left working standard hours in the office. That’ll be fun. This highlights the weakness in seeking to identify special traits for smart workers. Shouldn’t all your employees be expected to have the attributes or character traits demanded of the people let loose to work in more flexible ways? When people come into the workplace – either physically or virtually – there should be an expectation that they will be wearing a professional personality that includes all those positive attributes. If they can’t do this, then their problems won’t only be with working flexibly. It’s possible that some people who fail this kind of eligibility test might prove to be trainable. Others, under constant surveillance and occasional whippings may be dragooned into working effectively. But probably the best advice is: if anyone fails to meet these requirements, best to lose them from your organisation as soon as possible! Caging the duffers in the office is no solution. The other main objections to this kind of approach are: • It’s invidious to make judgements on this kind of basis. It puts additional pressure on the manager, and can cause resentment between employees who (possibly rightly) perceive themselves as being treated unequally • It risks falling into the trap of treating flexibility as a kind of privilege, one conferred on the fortunate as an exception to a norm of working 9–5 in the office

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• Looking for some of those attributes may just be plain wrong sometimes. For example, some people who are poor communicators are in fact absolutely great at their job. They may be longing to be away from the distractions of the office when it’s full of other people. Johnny No-Mates may only communicate in grunts, but he’s the best programmer/designer/accounts clerk you could find. His challenging but existentialist T-shirt says ‘L’enfer: c’est les autres’3. Working when no one else is around him may be his idea of heaven. Who are we to say he shouldn’t authenticate his existence in splendid isolation? • Conventional wisdom says flexible workers should be good decision makers. However, for many jobs that can be worked flexibly, being a good decision maker is not in the least relevant. As long as they decide to turn up and do the work, that’s fine. Many of these proposed attributes betray a managerial/ professional bias – the same kind of bias we find in practice when surveys find managers working at home yet not trusting their admin staff to do likewise. It’s really about managing performance Underlying the list of positive attributes is really the question of performance. To deny the option of working flexibly, when in principle the work could be done flexibly, is more or less to admit at the outset that you’re not confident about managing performance. If employees ‘fail’ this kind of personal-characteristics eligibility test, it’s really an indication that their performance isn’t being managed effectively even when they are working standard hours in the traditional workplace. The assumptions in using such criteria for selection will undermine the transition to a new working culture and new methods of management. These criteria are saying that there is still an expectation of management by presence, and that this is both essential and the most effective form of management for a big section of the workforce. However, these are the kinds of expectations that the smart organisation needs to be leaving behind, rather than reinforcing. Interestingly, the ‘right to request’ legislation in the UK expressly rules out using personal characteristics as the basis for making a decision to approve or reject a request for Flexible Working. It has to be based on business considerations only. Past performance could be an issue if it has been flagged up as a cause for concern before, or if there is a disciplinary issue lurking in the background. But if it’s just a question of thinking that this person is a bit scatty and you doubt their ability to organise themselves, then that’s ruled out.

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To me, the funny thing about this approach is this. Say, for example, that Lucy is presently under your watchful eye, and is undisciplined and a poor timekeeper. Therefore you don’t let her work from home or organise more flexible working hours. The result is that you keep her in the office, working the same hours as yourself so you can keep an eye on her (assuming you are also in the office at the same times). However, her being in the office hasn’t made a difference to her scatty workstyle so far and is a distraction to you. What makes you think that the solution is to perpetuate this? The point is that that there is something not working here already that needs to be addressed. And if not, you’ve got a problem whether she’s in the office or out of it. The real question is, does Lucy achieve results or not? If she does, and her work is not absolutely time critical, then having some degree of time flexibility may mean that timekeeping is no longer an issue. As for being undisciplined in her style of working, allowing her to work somewhere else may reduce the intensity of the problem as long as she can deliver the results. And if she does not, then appropriate action can be taken – and that doesn’t necessarily mean hauling her back into the office, which is where the problems began. One halfway house for discussing personal characteristics is to have a practical checklist that the individual and the manager both consider and then discuss. For example: • • • • • • • •

Do you need the help of a manager or colleague to start or complete jobs? Can you work your own way through most problems without help? Are you good at absorbing and acting upon new information on your own? Are you able to judge the quality of your work and be motivated by a job well done without the need for someone else telling you? Do you draw your energy and enthusiasm from friends and colleagues? Do you enjoy working on your own most of the time? Are you able to organise your time effectively? Can you identify the signs of stress in yourself and others?

I think the idea of working through such questions and having a discussion is not a bad one. But I would want to question some of the assumptions about being out there on one’s own, not able to draw on support from one’s manager or energy from one’s colleagues.

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A good implementation will set all the mechanisms in place for good team interaction. We have the tools now for highly collaborative distributed work, and we should learn how best to use them. The assumption of professional isolation is misplaced and archaic. And in most cases, working elsewhere will be for only part of the time, so it’s possible to over-egg the danger of isolation and the reserves of self-sufficiency needed to deal with it. We need to be guided by the Smart Working principles: • Flexibility, mobility and virtuality become the norm rather than the exception • Everyone is in principle considered eligible for working flexibly, without prior assumptions being made about people or roles. So it’s best to avoid any approach that involves differentiation between workers on the basis of personal characteristics for working smarter. The same applies for when people are making a formal Flexible Working request to vary their pattern of work. Instead, one should stick to examining the nature of the work tasks undertaken for determining the most appropriate times and locations for work. Psychometric testing for flex-readiness Is it possible to do some kind of personality profiling to find aptitude for flexible working? There have long been discussions around this, e.g. David Lamond who explored approaches to personality in relation to telework back in 2002 and concludes that it’s a pretty complex arena due to the different kinds of work involved, though he still made a tentative stab at it4. And there are people who hope a Myers Briggs assessment or some variation of it can identify possible aptitudes for flexible work, i.e. being able to identify people on a set of sliding scales of Extraversion/Introversion, Sensing/Intuition, Thinking/ Feeling and Judging/Perceiving. People who go through this kind of psychometric testing will then be classified into one of 16 possible psychological types on the Myers Briggs Type Index (MBTI), depending on the combination of positioning on these scales. This approach is regularly used by employers and recruiters when considering people for job roles. Apart from wider doubts about the method, which seems to me lacking a robust scientific base and being somewhat circular in its definitions, the real point is this: Smart or Flexible Working are not about doing some radically different kind of

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work. It’s about doing the work you normally do, only with new tools and at varying times and in a range of different places. Possibly with some new processes too. So if you have a mix of different personality types working as a team in the office, what’s the objective justification for enabling some of them to work at home two days per week and some of them not, or some to vary their times of work but not others, on the basis of asking a series of questions that have nothing to do with their daily tasks? Now there may be some interesting academic studies to be done that look at how different personality types tend to opt or not for different working patterns. But I have seen no evidence at all to suggest that it could be an accurate predictor of their ability to achieve their work outcomes on a more flexible basis. What people are doing when they suggest this approach is putting on their old heads and funnelling ideas about smarter working through old assumptions about work. Then, essentially, they are coming up with a series of personality stereotypes to match against artificial stereotypes of smart/flexible work as being cut off from others, requiring exceptional degrees of autonomy, and so on. For me, this approach is a blind alley. However, as we’ll see, there are potentially valid uses for personality profiling when designing inclusive work environments5. Where personality assessments have legitimate uses Currently there is a lot of interest and indeed new research into the impact of personality on how we experience work environments, and consequently new thinking in the field of workplace design. Nigel Oseland in his book Beyond the Workplace Zoo: Humanising the Office advocates use of the Big Five Personality Inventory or OCEAN method of assessing personality traits in relation to the types of workplace settings and conditions that are most conducive to productive work for different personalities6. Similarly, his work with Paige Hodsman has applications in the realm of psychoacoustics, i.e. how psychologically we respond to sound and how that is impacted by personality. This has implications for how workplaces are designed for acoustic excellence, and the necessity to include choice and control to provide variety to suit different people, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach to suit a notional average person. We will explore this in more detail in Chapter 6, on Workplace, and Chapter 13, on Wellbeing.

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For and against the use of profiles and personas to determine levels of flexibility So pigeon-holing personalities is not recommended, but how about categorising ways of working and classifying roles under a range of work profiles or personas? This has been a popular practice in approaching workplace change for 30 years or more, and there are both advantages and disadvantages to the practice. It largely depends on how they are used. How it typically works is that people are allocated to one of several categories on the basis of the mobility (or anticipated mobility) of their role. I have seen examples where organisations start off with 17 profiles. When there are larger numbers of suggested categories, it’s often because someone has started off from HR lists of role definitions and tried to group them according to possible mobility and flexibility. Usually though, it boils down to three or four as follows: • • • •

Fixed/Static Flexible/Agile – mainly in office Mobile/Agile – mainly out of office Home-based/Remote.

Other versions favoured by some consultancies have variations with more colourful descriptors, like Anchor, Resident, Connector, Integrator, Gatherer, Collaborator, Soloist, Navigator, Nomad and Rover. The main advantage of this approach is in planning for future workplace requirements and/or IT provision. Popping people into baskets like these can provide an idea, for example, of the numbers of people who might be in the office, numbers who might be visiting more or less frequently, how much time they might spend there and what might be their primary kind of activity when visiting the office or elsewhere. For workplace designers, these are frequently used to calculate the numbers of desks that will be needed, and the mix of other spaces. Expectations, or even targets, are set for people in these categories to be in the office a certain percentage of the time: e.g. 80–100% for Anchors, 60–80% for Connectors, 30–60% for Gatherers and 10–30% for Navigators or Home-based. Arguably, they also help to take forward people’s ideas about different ways of working. Most of all, though, I think this kind of process gives people, especially

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sceptics, some reassurance that there is a structure to the new ways of working and it won’t be a chaotic free-for-all with everyone doing their own thing. For an organisation committed to continuous improvement, profiling might operate as a passing phase. In such a case, people find it doesn’t really work: the categories soon fade away and people adopt genuine Smart Working rather than some kind of halfway house. On the other hand, an organisation might simply get stuck in a moment, and need help to get out of it as the profiles become codified or culturally concretised as rules for behaviour. These are the key reasons why role-profiling can lead to bad practice: 1. It creates different categories of flexibility, based around roles rather than looking at the capacity for doing individual activities differently. Any approach that focuses on whole roles, rather than the tasks that make up the work of a team, just won’t deliver the benefits. 2. Who says who will be in which category? Usually this is left to the line manager. And different line managers will adopt different approaches, depending on how comfortable they are with the change as a whole. Sometimes someone at director level will intervene, and declare that a whole function must be ‘fixed’. A different director may take a different view. One manager will not allow anyone to be a homeworker, while another encourages it. It becomes a jumbled mess provoking resentment across the organisation. 3. Alternatively – there’s a tick-box approach. Flexibility becomes a bureaucratic exercise that ignores the nuances of different ways of working. 4. It gets set in stone. Potential improvements to working practice are prevented by policy. 5. Different cultures and routines of work set in for different categories of employee. As a result, face-to-face and management by presence may remain the default office culture, making life difficult for those who practice more flexibility and mobility. In one workshop I ran, a participant said his role was potentially very mobile across several sites, but his flexibility was greatly constrained by the requirements of the ‘two anchors’ he reported to. (You have to be careful about saying that quickly, though he wasn’t at the time.) 6. People resistant to or fearful of change fight to be labelled ‘fixed’ or as an ‘anchor’. They want ‘their’ desk and their fixed territory in the office. In one organisation I know, when they moved to a new smart working office, 72% of

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employees based there defined themselves as ‘fixed’. This led to a massive overprovision of desks, and average desk occupancy a few months later was just 22%. 7. The continuing desk-focused culture means that there is less space for the other desirable collaborative, quiet focus and touch-down spaces. In Figure 1.2, I highlighted how the use of profiles ranged from rigid definitions in Controlled Hybrid implementations, to nuanced guidance in Flexible Hybrid implementations. So my advice would be: if you are going to use them, make sure from the outset they are understood as nuanced guidance to help in the planning phase, or as conversation starters, but not continuing features of how Smart Working is organised. The process mapped out earlier in this chapter of drilling down into tasks is a better basis for creating the dynamic flexibility that will do much more to realise the benefits of working smarter. Critical Choice Factors Our first principles of Smart Working, i.e. working wherever and whenever is best to get the work done, in some cases may involve specifying or agreeing the required or optimal place or time. Sometimes, it is the only place or only time, but more often there is a range of options for some if not all of the work. Figure 5.4 sets out in a simplified way the basic choices for where and when work should take place. It may have to take place at a specific time and a specific place. The time of work or the place of work may be varied, and in some cases both. The boxes within the ellipse correspond to the four quadrants of the grid in Figure 5.1. Round the outside of these time/place combinations are a range of ‘Critical Choice Factors’. These are the factors that managers and teams should consider when making judgements about where and when work should take place. It’s not only a question of work being time/place dependent or independent. There are a range of factors that will have varying amounts of weight when it comes to deciding the preferred way of working. Priority should be given to business factors – being able to work effectively and to deliver the goods. One thing that doesn’t feature here as a separate factor is ‘Manager’s preference’. As employees themselves, managers can throw their personal preference into the equation. But, as a manager, ‘preference’ must be

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Security / safety requirements

Employee / contractor preference

Viability of alternaves

Crical service delivery needs FLEXIBLE TIME

FLEXIBLE TIME SPECIFIC TIME

SPECIFIC PLACE

Effecveness of me / locaon choice

SPECIFIC TIME

SPECIFIC PLACE

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FLEXIBLE PLACE

FLEXIBLE PLACE

Crical collaboraon needs Environmental cost of me / locaon choice Financial cost of me / locaon choice

Use of ‘handson’ resources

Figure 5.4: Factors affecting choice of time and place of work.

Customer preference / contractual requirements

Who, where, when and why?

Adequacy of tools + comms

Who, where, when and why?

based on objective business considerations like delivering the service, effectiveness and the potential to minimise the financial and environmental costs of work. ‘Customer preference’ is an interesting one. In many cases, changes to time and location should be invisible to the customer. But in other cases it may be a compelling factor if, for example, they specifically need or request a service to be carried out at their site or at certain hours. Sometimes their reasoning may be outdated, and working with them might feel like entering a time warp. In that case, the aim should be respectfully to bring them up the learning curve. But in the end, it may be a case of he who pays the piper calls the tune. Of course ‘Flexible Time’ and ‘Flexible Place’ for a particular task might be plural. The same critical choice factors apply. When real options are being considered, often there may not be a huge difference between some of the alternatives in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. There may be a range of viable choices – and that’s what Smart Working is all about. This is not a rigid template for coming up with prescriptive solutions, but a way to encourage a smart approach to the choices for Smart Working. Once the team gets in the habit of making choices with this kind of mindset, the manager can relax a bit, and trust that the team are making the appropriate decisions. Why mandating days in the office is not a great idea Many organisations, including some high-profile ones like Apple and Google, have taken to mandating a specific number of days in the office. Apple has even tried to specify which days everyone has to come in, and they are not alone in this. It’s understandable why some executives, or managers lower down in the food chain, would do this. It seems to provide a degree of control, and the comfort of the familiar. But it compromises two of the key benefits we’ve outlined, and creates problems of its own. 1. First, it runs counter to the first principle of Smart Working, about choosing the most appropriate time and place to do the activities you need to do on any one day. It’s based on presence, not productivity 2. Second, we know that employees seek more autonomy. This approach takes that away, with someone on high saying ‘we know best’.

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Then there are the practical problems such an approach creates. • If an employee fulfils all their objectives and produces excellent work and contributes well to the team, would they be disciplined for being in the office less than the requisite amount? • Who is going to monitor attendance? • For companies that go down this road, I think we can expect an increase in the number of people applying for full-time homeworking under right-to-request legislation, or even using anti-discrimination legislation to make a case for constructive dismissal. After all, they will have proved their pattern of work is viable, and that the employer is being unreasonable. • Requiring everyone to be in the workplace at the same time on specific days, but not on others, will create a very uneven distribution of attendance. This compromises an efficient use of space. For cash-rich organisations happy to have an excess of space, that may be fine. But most organisations are not in that happy position, and need to align and design space more effectively. We’ll be looking at how to do this in the next chapter. • Many people will choose to work for other companies that allow more flexibility and autonomy. Knowledge workers who say they have little to no ability to set their own hours report that they are more likely to ‘definitely’ look for a new job in the next year compared to those with moderate schedule flexibility7. Being smart about recruitment – flagging up Smart Working to candidates Survey after survey over many years show that people changing jobs and entering the jobs market value flexibility and autonomy very highly. Some surveys also show that people would take greater flexibility in preference to a pay rise. So offering flexibility in various ways can help to make you an ‘employer of choice’. Before the pandemic, not many employers were very good at advertising posts on a flexible basis. It was maybe the case that once you’re in, some flexible work options were available. But the default position for advertised posts remained regular hours, regular place. In 2020–2022 something of a revolution took place in this respect. In part this may have been prompted by the hype over ‘the Great Resignation’, when many

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people left their jobs during the pandemic. Others reported that they were thinking of moving on from their jobs in the next year or two. A couple of factors were probably at work here: the shattering impact of the virus prompting people to reflect on their priorities in life, and the experience of finding that it is indeed possible to do their work on a more flexible basis. An inclination to move on has been particularly associated with a disinclination to be forced back to old ways of working by employers. Many employers have responded to that by changing their approach to recruitment. Our case studies from Cimpress (Chapter 13), Slack (Chapter 9) and GCHQ (Chapter 8) show how across sectors some employers have adopted new approaches to recruitment that remove geography (at least to a certain extent) as a consideration for hiring. In the competition for talent, this is an important step employers can take. To flag this up requires hiring managers and recruiters to rethink how new posts are specified, as well as a communications framework that clearly sets out what Smart Working means for new recruits and how central it is for the company’s ways of working. Balancing the workforce by offering Flexible Working arrangements As well as an overall framework of Smart Working, there is still a place for the more traditional forms of Flexible Working (see Glossary) to meet the needs of individuals and to support greater diversity and equality in the workforce. It’s quite remarkable how the uptake of formal Flexible Working options can vary even within organisations. Take the example of two large teams within the same office-based department. Team A has many people part-time, jobsharing and doing term-time working, while in Team B these are virtually unknown. So Team A has, you can be sure, more working mothers while the latter has few employees with young children, and probably an interesting mix of younger and more mature workers with a bit of an age gap in the middle, at least in terms of female employees. Something I’ve found is that when this emerges through a staff survey, it’s usually news to the employer. Generally, organisations do not do enough to monitor at departmental level the uptake of Flexible Working practices or the impacts on diversity. They may closely monitor ethnicity, disability, gender and sexual orientation at the company level, but not the detailed profile of departments and how it is affected by recruitment.

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In the UK and numerous other countries, there is legislation that gives workers a ‘right to request’ Flexible Working. This is a help for people in eligible categories providing they are in work already. It doesn’t help applicants for work when the work is only offered on a non-flexible basis. There are two things a company can do here when recruiting: 1. They can offer jobs on a specified flexible basis, perhaps informed by known imbalances in their existing workforce overall or in specific departments or roles 2. They can advertise jobs as full-time posts, but make it clear they are genuinely open to proposals from candidates for alternative Flexible Working practices. The point is that there is a huge amount of talent out there not finding suitable work because most jobs continue to be advertised on a non-flexible basis. These people tend to fall into four categories: • People for whom the traditional approach to workplace and working practices is disabling. That is, many people with disabilities, and people with illnesses or health conditions that limit their capacity to work and/or travel • People with caring responsibilities – parents and carers of dependent adults • People with geographical challenges – that is, people living in remote areas, or areas remote from the availability of their kind of work • People who just want to do something else as well as work for you – e.g. train for the Olympics, run a part-time business, do a degree, have a portfolio career, etc. The new 4-day week: fewer hours with no reduction of pay There is significant momentum around the concept of the 4-day week. At the time of writing, there are many trials coordinated by the 4-Day Week Global campaign. Trade Unions and the Labour Party in the UK have endorsed a 4-day week as a policy objective. Several European governments and the European Parliament have given it their blessing. Governments in New Zealand, Iceland and Scotland have been looking at ways to introduce the 4-day week as standard, at least for public sector workers. The 4-day week as championed by the 4-Day Week Global campaign is based on a 100-80-100 principle: 100% of the pay for 80% of the time, producing 100%

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of the productivity. At the halfway point of the trials, 96% of the firms involved in the pilot said they will carry on with it after the pilots are over. The approach is based on cutting out wasted time and being more productive in the time available. Many of the techniques proposed are well aligned with Smart Working, like scrutinising processes and rethinking meetings. But the first thing to remember about a 4-day week is that people often mean very different things when they talk about it. So what are the varieties of 4-day week? 1. The innovative offer, as per the current global campaign: do your 5 days’ work in 4 days with full pay, and no increase in hours per day, i.e. predicated on a productivity increase of 20% 2. The compressed working week: do your week’s work in 4 days, with full pay, with longer working days so in total you do the same number of hours 3. Part-time: advertised as 4 days with pro rata pay 4. Reduced hours: the offer to reduce existing hours with pro rata pay cut 5. Just a shorter week, with the same pay, with no expected productivity increase, as an improvement to working conditions. A ‘3-day weekend’, in effect. All this tends to come under the umbrella of ‘Flexible Working’. But some versions are not really flexible at all, e.g. if a compressed working week is mandated and there is no choice over when you work. So, with all these different offerings, it’s really important that everyone is on the same page about what a 4-day week means. In some ways, the campaign to reduce hours is the next step from epic campaigns in previous centuries to shorten both the working day and the working week. A ‘longer weekend’ has a natural appeal, and focuses more on benefits to employees and work–life balance than on the productivity benefits championed by the 4-Day Week Global campaign. So a lot of the media commentary and support from trade unions is in reality the fifth interpretation in our list. The concept of the 4-day week is certainly worth exploring, because it involves engaging people in looking at how they work and seeing how they can work in smarter and more productive ways. My reservation is that it focuses on the time-input for the basic structure of work, more than the results output. If people find they can achieve their output in less than the 4 days, why be rigid about the number? There may be a risk of

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compromising the trust-based culture, choice and autonomy that are central to Smart Working, in favour of having a focus on a specified period of presence. It’s also the case that some people have more control over their productivity than others. For people on a production line, their productivity is subject to the efficiency of the machinery involved. Or for health professionals, there’s a limit to the number of people they can see in a day. In each case, for the employer, there’s the possibility of needing to employ 20% more people to get the coverage required. Andrew Barnes, founder of the global campaign, addresses these issues in his book on the subject8, and in an interview with me that you can see on the Smart Work Network website9. He has examples where it works, and stresses that productivity is about quality as well as quantity, reduction of stress and burnout, engagement and retention of motivated and skilled staff – so if there are extra costs, the investment is worth it. Building a company committed to Smart Working from the ground up For more than a decade I’ve been a judge for the Workingmums.co.uk Top Employers Award10, which I guess makes me an honorary working mum. Their awards have a strong focus on flexible working, as it supports inclusion, progression and wellbeing across a diverse workforce. There is a special category for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). I’m happy to report that over the years there has been a steady increase in the numbers of start-ups and small enterprises that build their business model around flexibility and being fully responsive to the needs and preferences of both their existing employees and candidates for employment. One of the key advantages of this is that there is a rich and under-appreciated talent pool of skilled and experienced women returners, older workers, people with disabilities and working dads who can offer high-level skills, but want to work in an environment that is more conducive to work–life harmony. At the outset, many smaller businesses have arrangements that are ad hoc or informal. There normally comes a point in a company’s growth where the founders are no longer able to manage everything on such a basis, and more formal structures are developed for personnel, recruitment and development. This is often a tricky point in a company’s growth, where they risk losing some of the dynamism of their origins, and bureaucratisation can start to set in. To a certain extent that’s inevitable, as part of the process of professionalisation of the employment offering.

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However, if a Smart Working ethos is embedded from the outset, much of the ossification into rules and restrictions can be avoided. Maximising flexibility on all fronts, and having it in the company’s DNA, provides a significant competitive advantage to help the company be agile in adapting to new market conditions and being able to recruit the best people, from wherever they are located. Smart Working for people doing hands-on, site-specific and highly secure work The focus of attention in recent commentary on working flexibly has fallen on people whose work can be done as well, if not better, away from the traditional workplace – primarily knowledge workers. In most countries, these are less than 50% of the total workforce. So, we have to ask, ‘What about the workers?’ This has become a significant issue, with the potential to create a divide in an organisation’s workforce. The question of equity, a balance of fairness, is something I hear often when speaking with people involved in delivering Smart Working. In some cases, they are reporting growing resentment towards people who not only have the ‘privilege’ of working from home, but also are in receipt of shiny new technology and some allowances to boot. So, how does Smart Working apply to people who do hands-on, site-specific, directly customer-facing (as in health work) or highly secure work? Is it relevant to them at all? Or as a director at a company in charge of hands-on production work told me, ‘Smart Working doesn’t apply to people in my part of the company’. Here are a number of ways to address the issues and avoid having a divided workforce: 1. Time-based flexibilities are often possible, if place-based flexibilities are not. Remembering that choice and control are highly valued by employees, having more freedom to determine the time of work by flexing their hours may be an option. Often this works better at the team level, so work can be coordinated. Team self-rostering is increasingly practised in the health service, and employees much prefer this to having someone in authority deciding who is doing which shift. And it aligns with people and teams being trusted and taking more responsibility for their work and the services they deliver.

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People who travel long distances for construction work have been shown to favour a compressed working week, to reduce the time spent away from home. There are various other approaches to a 4-day week, which we explored earlier. 2. Creating digital equality can improve both the efficiency of work and open up new career pathways and skills development opportunities, which are highly valued. I’m sometimes taken aback by the stark digital divide that can exist between people in knowledge-based roles and people in hands-on roles in the same organisation. Having seamless end-to-end digital flows for systems, data and communication across all activities in the organisation is necessary to have a single working culture of Smart Working. In practical terms, this means improved communication between people on the front line with their team managers, product and project engineers, HR and whoever people need to liaise with. It should eliminate the kinds of things that are regularly complained about, like long walks across sites for simple conversations, time-consuming meetings and/or paper job tickets to specify work, for monitoring work-in-progress and for addressing issues as they arise. This kind of basic digitisation is not new, but often the investment hasn’t been made in the technology and systems to make it happen. In terms of fairness, this takes away at least some of the feeling of being left behind compared with their office-based colleagues. Importantly, it also requires some digital skills development, and this has the potential to open up new career development possibilities. The message to go with this is that you don’t have to stay in the same role forever where the opportunities for more flexibility may be limited. 3. It’s when digitisation moves to the next level that we see even more possibilities. Many of the principles involved in this kind of routine digitisation are carried forward into ‘Industry 4.0’, or the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’. There’s a fair amount of hype and a certain degree of controversy about the term, but overall it is a coherent description of a range of changes impacting the ways we work and the nature of work. And these new industrial technologies can add new possibilities for flexibility and new dimensions to Smart Working.

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This stage of industrial development is characterised by the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, autonomous or semi-autonomous systems, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) platforms, virtual/augmented/mixed reality, advanced human–machine interfaces, wearable technologies, smart sensors, location detection technologies, 3D printing, machine learning, digital twinning, Big Data and new approaches to data visualisation. The impact is generally to replace (or partially replace, or modify) human handson or site-specific activity with automated processes. In essence this converts some hands-on activity to machine activity. This results in a higher knowledge-based component (and huge amounts of data) to be monitored and analysed by a human and/or an intelligent system, leading to further actions as necessary. Looking forward over the next 10 years, these kinds of Industry 4.0 technologies are likely to have impacts on both the kinds of services offered, and also the kinds of spaces and settings needed to operate and support them. In essence, as the work becomes smarter and increasingly knowledge-based, Smart Working practices apply more evenly across the business. There will usually still need to be people in set places building machines and/or working alongside them, but not so many people nor for all of the time. Those involved in programming, monitoring, analysing performance and sometimes supporting them will often be able to do so from a wide variety of locations. As with more basic digitisation, these technologies also have potential skills impacts. Those on the front line are likely to need additional or different skills to work with the systems involved as they work alongside new machines and systems. This has implications both for training and recruitment. Smart Working puts a strong emphasis on innovation. I’ve often found that leaders in production environments are often very innovation-minded. However, they don’t always connect their innovation goals with changing working practices in terms of place and time. Making this connection often turns them into enthusiastic champions of Smart Working, as innovations in products and systems and innovations in working practices become mutually supportive. And here, people on the front line often have great insights into what could be improved and how, so support for changes in working practices can be generated from the ground up. 4. More flexible approaches to employee benefits can help to level the playing field. This works in two directions. On the one hand, we’ve noted how Smart Working can help people manage caregiving issues that suddenly arise by

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giving them flexibility to deal with emergencies. Having a benefits package that provides emergency childcare support to all employees will provide support to site-based workers as well. Conversely, if the organisation runs a workplace crèche, then that is a benefit lost to parents of young children when they are not working on site, unless they make a special trip to take advantage of it. A benefits package that provides childcare vouchers as well covers that inequality. I give this as an example of thinking carefully about benefits that are locationspecific. We could apply similar considerations about having a workplace gym or fitness room as location-specific benefits. Supporting membership of health and fitness facilities is an alternative approach – and may also help to stimulate the local economy as a by-product. To be more flexible, many organisations are adopting individualised ‘perks’ allowances. This provides a budget that employees can spend on their choice of benefit, whether it relates to wellbeing, childcare, food, travel or something that might support their work better such as contributing to home broadband costs. The focus is on giving all people choice and controllability around their overall work experience and work–life balance. One important principle is that one shouldn’t think of benefits or facilities in isolation from providing more choice over how and when people work, but rather how to use employee benefits to enrich people’s work lives in multiple contexts. 5. Finally, in terms of achieving this balance between non-office and office colleagues, upgrading basic facilities for the front line goes a long way to creating harmony. Mess facilities, rest rooms, canteens and site offices are often the Cinderella facilities in dire need of some TLC. Modernisation of these should include comfortable settings that also take account of the need for frontline workers to use technologies both for work use like checking plans or doing timesheets, and for personal use in their downtime. Ensuring Wi-Fi works well in these areas and that there are some places for private calls are essential elements to provide. Smart and Flexible retirement The age balance in the workforce is shifting, and employers will increasingly depend on retaining and recruiting older workers.

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At the same time, there are clear signs that many people are looking for a change in their working patterns as they approach retirement. For some, there is an aspiration to scale down the intensity of their work in the pre-retirement period. The demand for part-time work amongst the over-50s is high – though penalties on the pension front are often a deterrent from taking this up. Additionally, there are many older workers who want to work beyond pensionable age, though perhaps this is not on a full-time basis. Work–life balance for them involves leavening home-life with a little work. For some, this will be a financial imperative – and this will increasingly be the case for today’s under-50s who probably won’t be looking forward to the same level of pension as many of their older colleagues. With living longer comes the prospect for most of us of being fitter and more active in the later years of life. Later working life and retirement need no longer be seen as a Death of a Salesman or King Lear process of decline, obsolescence and incapacity. People in their 60s and beyond share the same aspirations for autonomy as the rest of us, and this means working if they want to. Part-time work is the obvious workstyle that first comes to mind. For employers this means being able to retain skills and experience in the organisation. But it is not the only way. Contracting in services as needed from older employees who have become self-employed freelancers is an alternative. There are many people who have taken early retirement who set themselves up in business to sell their skills, and this often includes to their previous company. It can also be as an interim, taking skills into other organisations to manage projects or periods of transition. For employers it also means looking out for such people as an alternative to recruitment, particularly for time-limited projects where people are needed who can hit the ground running and bring their experience to bear. There are increasing numbers of older workers who are looking to downshift, and perhaps to set up in business using a skill, interest or hobby they’ve never developed commercially before, but have always wanted to. It could be that the combination of part-time work and a new ‘sunset’ cottage industry are the right combination for a member of staff. The mixture of employment and enterprise could be just the right balance for many older workers – in effect a move into being a portfolio worker. There are other forms of flexibility that may suit the transition towards retirement. Homeworking, flexitime and compressed working weeks may help to take

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out some of the pressure from daily travelling. And these ought to be considered alongside part-time and jobshare options. There is no inherent logic in having everyone stop working at a set age. Reasons for stopping work should be based on preference and capability, not drawing an arbitrary line in the sands of time. We need to develop a new culture of flexibility to inform discussions and support choices of whether or how to continue working when one reaches life’s later years. Capitalising on experience and expertise Employers should be ready to capitalise on having access to a pool of experienced and capable workers. Experienced staff will often have fewer issues in terms of motivation and selfdiscipline in working outside of the office environment. And in a trust-based and empowering working environment, the more experienced workers may be just the ones to help set the standards for effective Smart Working. This is an important point. Flexible retirement options are not just a way of dealing with age discrimination regulations and letting the fast-flowing careers of older workers trickle flexibly away into babbling brooks or stagnant backwaters. It’s about how the skills, experience, knowledge and passion of valued staff can be retained for the benefit of the organisation, as well as meeting their aspirations for a change of workstyle or work intensity. This can include actively using them to mentor or buddy new recruits, involving them in training or taking a leading role in projects where their skills are of particular value. When we think about it, the people most likely already to be working into their 70s and 80s are high-level professionals like judges, bishops, MPs, Lords, company directors, media celebrities that have become national treasures, the occasional monarch (etc.), and people with a skill and a passion such as artists and skilled crafts people. To a large extent these people have the ability to ‘own’ their work and integrate it into who they want to be, as well as often being able to regulate the amount of it they do. It doesn’t necessarily mean cutting down. It can sometimes mean the opposite, collecting new roles and responsibilities, or portfolios of work from different directions. The value brought to the work is based on experience and authority rather than the hours put in, and that is very much in the spirit of Smart Working.

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Smarter Flexibility across the life-course There are probably times in our life when different forms of flexibility suit us better. The focus on flexibility for parents that initially prompted the Flexible Working regulations is not wrong, though it has had a stilting effect on understanding the true nature and role of flexibility. Part-time working for one, if not both, of the parents may be the choice while the family is young; then term-time working and part-of-the-week homeworking for managing the home/work/school interface; and then other options according to preference as the kids grow up and flee the nest – all, of course, dependent on how preference can be dovetailed with the requirements of the work. Then again, moving forwards in one’s career, other factors from personal life may come into play to affect the choice. It could be a desire to retrain or take a further qualification. Or it could be the need to be able to manage the care of a dependent relative, or deal with changing health circumstances. And in time, flexibility and/or new entrepreneurial options can be incorporated into a review of one’s working life as a mature worker, whether it’s a new beginning or a phasing into retirement. All of this will work better within a framework of Smart Working, with its intrinsically dynamic and variable approach to flexibility. Trust, maturity and autonomy In this chapter we’ve looked at the people side of Smart Working: roles, personal qualities, selection issues and levels of flexibility. Key principles are: • It’s not about roles, it’s about tasks • It’s not helpful to come up with a stereotypical personality profile for smart and flexible workers • The aim should be to treat employees as grown-ups, and empower them to make choices that work for them and work for the business about the times and locations of work • A trusted and empowered workforce will be loyal, more motivated, deliver better performance and take less time off sick. So it’s not a question of finding the well-organised and self-directing individuals in the workforce and letting them out of sight for the odd day or two, or letting them

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clock in ‘late’. It’s about developing people through the application of new ways of working so that they can realise their potential as mature and loyal employees, capable of making good decisions about where and when work is done to the benefit of both the employer and themselves. In Chapter 2 we identified the quest for personal autonomy as one of the key trends in the changing context of work. Dan Pink has put forward the idea of the ‘Peter Out Principle’ as something that applies in corporate culture11. The best employees leave when the fun starts to peter out. Because while at one level work is about earning a crust and keeping the wolf from the door, for most of us this is not enough. We want work that is satisfying, psychologically rewarding, that makes us feel good about ourselves and our achievements, and which allows us some initiative and scope for innovation. In this way, we authenticate our existence through our work. And this applies not only to the content of the work, but also to how we do it. To make this happen, the organisation itself needs to mature and put more of an emphasis on trust. In Chapter 9 we’ll take a closer look at this, about how to develop a culture of Smart Working. Then in Chapter 13, we’ll examine the value to personal wellbeing of pursuing meaningful work. Notes 1 Future Forum (July 2022), Future Forum pulse summer snapshot: Desire for flexibility intensifies among knowledge workers – and they’re willing to walk to get it. https:// futureforum.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Future-Forum-Pulse-ReportSummer-2022.pdf 2 I have seen dozens of such lists of qualities over the years, from The Department for Employment’s Managers Guide to Telework, back in 1994, through to a compilation of 13 essential qualities of successful remote employees put together by members of Forbes’ Human Resources Council in 2020, at www. forbes.com/sites/forbeshumanresourcescouncil/2020/09/08/13-essentialqualities-of-successful-remote-employees/. The assumptions underlying these need some serious challenging. 3 ‘L’enfer, ces les autres’ translates as ‘Hell is other people’. From Huis Clos, the play by Jean-Paul Sartre. 4 Kevin Daniels, David Lamond and Peter Standen (2000), Managing Telework: Perspectives from Human Resources Management and Work Psychology. Business Press.

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5 There’s an interesting debate on this topic in an article in Flexible Boss from 2015, setting out some different views, Personality testing for flexible work: Useful tool or total ‘tosh’? Sadly the journal is no longer operating, but the website is still live and the article can be found at https://flexibleboss.com/2015/10/27/ personality-testing 6 Nigel Oseland (2021), Beyond the Workplace Zoo: Humanising the Office. Routledge. 7 Future Forum (July 2022), Future Forum pulse summer snapshot: Desire for flexibility intensifies among knowledge workers – and they’re willing to walk to get it. https:// futureforum.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Future-Forum-Pulse-ReportSummer-2022.pdf 8 Andrew Barnes and Stephanie Jones (2020), The 4 Day Week: How the Flexible Work Revolution Can Increase Productivity, Profitability and Well-being, and Create a Sustainable Future. London: Piatkus. 9 Interview with Andrew Barnes, Smart Work Network, at https://smart-work. net/why-we-need-a-4-day-week-interview-with-andrew-barnes/ 10 These awards are well worth entering. It’s an opportunity to see leading practice from a wide range of organisations, as well as winning an award. Further details from WM People at www.wmpeople.co.uk/top-employeraward-categories/ 11 Dan Pink (2001), Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself. Warner Books.

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A pragmatic, flexible and future-friendly approach to the workplace With the experience of enforced homeworking for up to half the workforce over the 2 years 2020 to 2022, there has been much speculation about the future of the traditional organisation-owned workplace. Advocates for the inevitable demise of the office and the triumph of remote working have abounded, while at the same time there has been no shortage of people banging a drum for the opposite. In what follows, we shall leave those debates to one side and focus on the practical. As mentioned in the Preface, the future in any field can be expected to be complex, plural and multi-speed. The workplace is no exception. Many organisations, owing to the hands-on nature of the work they do, still require a physical workplace where employees gather. Others will retain them out of habit or choice, at least in the first instance. Either way, workplaces will evolve as a result of the possibilities for working in new ways, and the need to remain competitive. So in what follows, I shall outline a course that recommends best practice to create workplaces that are not only great to work in, but are also flexible and adaptable to meet future needs and varying patterns of work. This will cover both office-based knowledge work (which is often the exclusive focus of remote-only evangelists) and workplaces where people interface directly with machinery, physical products, customers or patients. We’ll also explore a redefinition of ‘workplace’ to include the ‘Extended Workplace’, of which the organisation-owned collective workplace (the main focus of this chapter) is but one part. We’ll dive into the nature and requirements of

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the other locations within the Extended Workplace in the next chapter, and go into detail about the essentials for smart homeworking environments in Chapter 12. To get underneath the reasons for having organisational workplaces where people gather to do their work, we shall first take a brief excursion into the past, before moving on to the present situation and the choices we face. The historic advantages of concentration It has always been the case that there are many different locations in which people can and do work. And there always will be. What happened in the 19th and 20th centuries is that a particular model of workplace evolved based on concentrating people and resources together in factories and offices. Organising labour and production in this way has enabled business owners, governments and not-for-profit organisations to achieve economies of scale and greater efficiency in organising production, service delivery and business processes. We should not underestimate the impacts and scale of achievements of this kind of centralised work organisation. It has been responsible for unleashing dynamic, creative, transformative – and sometimes destructive – forces that have remodelled the world we live in. By concentrating in one location the innovation of great minds, a disciplined labour force, and energy resources derived from fossil fuels, organisations have been able to give themselves power and influence way beyond the sum of their parts. The psychological impacts of this kind of work organisation have also been extremely powerful. Organising humanity en masse was perhaps the key characteristic of the 20th century. Intensified by the experience of two world wars, governments of all variations of left and right sought collectivist solutions to social problems, whether providing factory-style health care, mass transit systems or dealing with water supply issues. It has long been noted that such solutions often depend on ignoring, deferring or ‘outsourcing’ the external costs. Society, the environment and future generations either suffer now or pick up the tab later. That is to say, both the perceived efficiency and the desirability of this kind of work organisation have perhaps always depended on having too narrow a focus. But what else is a business owner or manager to do? Effective management must focus on doing what is best for the business – and in strictly business terms the factory model of organisation has worked, and is still working across the world. We have all grown up in a world where this is how organisations have worked, sucking people from far and wide into buildings, setting them tasks within an

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overall framework of processes, and monitoring them to make sure everything is done in good order. However – it doesn’t have to be like this anymore. The advantages and implications of decentralisation Where the old world of work was all about concentration, collectivist solutions and moving people to work, the emerging world of work is based on trends to decentralisation. It’s increasingly more efficient to move work to people, rather than requiring people to travel to the work. If we look back at our list of benefits in Table 3.1, several of them are predicated on or enhanced by this dispersal of work from a single location. For the business, improved recruitment and retention stands out, being able to access a wider talent pool without requiring recruits to relocate, and reducing the risk of losing valued employees in the event of a family moving away from the area. Reduction of real estate costs and reduction of business travel costs are key factors in reducing business overheads, and that is one of the factors that feeds into productivity gains. That is, the input costs of work are reduced in relation to the output, as will be further explored in Chapter 11, on Productivity and Smart Working. There’s a whole range of (potential) benefits for the employee that relate to not being required to travel to a centralised collective workplace, as we’ll explore in Chapter 13 on Wellbeing. And the potential environmental benefits stand out in terms of reducing the need for new office space and reducing the need to commute to work – the latter accounting for up to three quarters of the environmental footprint of work for those who can work elsewhere. Environmental benefits, however, are not inevitable, and both organisations and individuals need to make intentional decisions to achieve and maximise potential benefits. In this context, with decentralisation often being more efficient and desirable than concentration, we need completely to rethink the role and purpose of the workplace. What is the workplace for? As we transition into a post-industrial world, it’s worth revisiting the question of what the workplace is for. For many of the functions we have traditionally allocated to centralised workplaces, we should ask the question: how important is it to do this?

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Table 6.1 What is the workplace for? Function of workplace

Necessity factor 1

2

3

Centre for production Centre for process work Centre for management/supervision functions Centre for administration Centre for specialist facilities IT and communications centre Place for individual work Place for teamwork Place to meet clients Place to meet colleagues Centre for learning Place for social interaction/developing personal relationships Centre to create/promote/reinforce corporate identity Place to showcase and demonstrate products and services

In Table 6.1, a range of workplace functions are listed, and on the right is space to score the ‘necessity factor’ for each function in terms of its necessity to be located in a central workplace. These should be scored in answer to the question: ‘How essential is it to use our workplace as a … ?’ where 3 is ‘essential’, 2 is ‘sometimes/ partly’ and 1 is ‘not essential’. How people answer these questions will no doubt reflect their personal preferences and their awareness of the alternatives. However, the idea is to stimulate conversations, with a critical eye on how essential each item is a) in the context of using new technologies and b) for how it works for different people and teams in the organisation. Let’s take a closer look at some of these functions, starting with the workplace as a centre of production. Production is a much-changed phenomenon in the digital age. Many products are now digital, and even where the final output is a manufactured

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product, relatively few people have ‘hands-on’ roles compared to the height of the Industrial Age. Of course there remains a need for factories and workshops, but there is no longer a pressing need for the co-location of many of the ancillary functions of the company. The manufacturing facility is something people not in hands-on roles will visit from time to time, as they need to, including people who create the programmes for automated production. Developing software products, digital services and new media applications are examples of digital production that can in principle be located anywhere. It is factors such as teamwork that bring about an apparent need for co-location. However, it is in these fields that virtual teams are most commonly found. So face-to-face teamwork involving physical presence may not be a day-to-day necessity, but something for special occasions such as brainstorming new products, developing pitches or finding solutions to problems. Is the workplace the place for management functions? If the assumption is that managers should be based at the workplace, then that is a significant constraint on them. With a mobile and flexible workforce, management needs to become more mobile and flexible too. Managers should be able to manage performance and all routine activities from wherever they happen to be. The probability is that any discussions about workplaces not directly involved in production will focus on the collaborative aspects of work, with the workplace providing spaces to meet colleagues and possibly clients/customers. Yet of course, there are increasingly many other – and possibly better – places to meet on many occasions too, as well as the option to interact virtually. There are organisations, of course, that are completely virtual or almost so. They really do cut back their office costs and the need for office supplies. Others have very extensive numbers of home-based and mobile workers, and any offices they retain perform a different function from the traditional office, with the focus on creating spaces that support collaboration and cater for individual work on an ‘as-needed’ basis. The workplace as derived demand An important principle is to recognise that for most people workplace, like transport, is a ‘derived demand’. That is, it is not something you want for its own value, but because it enables you to do something else of primary importance. So before deciding on the form, the nature or the amount of workspace, we need to have a clear understanding of what it is we want or need to do, and what is central to the value we create in our work.

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This is why it is so important to consider the range of activities we do, their dependencies (e.g. for in-person interaction, or for security) and how best to carry them out before specifying the spaces in which we do them. This means challenging all habitual practices and assumptions that have traditionally linked work and place, including assumptions about roles, and the things that are habitually put into contracts about place of work. Detaching their work from the place they have habitually carried it out is something that’s often hard for people to get their heads round at first, but the exercises in rethinking how people work in chapters 5 and 9 will help to get over this. Start from the vision and principles So how should we build on the conversations about ‘What the workplace is for’ to make decisions about the role and nature of the future collective workplace? In Chapter 3, we set out some ‘Smart Working Principles’ to underpin the vision for implementations. The key ones that apply to working environments are: • Work takes place at the most effective locations • Work takes place at the most effective times • Employees have more choice about where and when they work, subject to business considerations • Space is allocated to activities, not to individuals nor on the basis of seniority • The costs of doing work are reduced • There is effective and appropriate use of technology • Work has less impact on the environment. For many workers, much of their work will take place away from the collective workplace for much of the time. The most effective locations and the most effective times will be far more varied than has traditionally been the case. In addition to our generic principles, there may be elements of the company’s vision and their values that can be reflected in the workplace. For example, a company might stress in their vision that their aim is to increase innovation, or collaboration, or to create a culture of continuous learning. Such aims can be reflected in the balance of settings in the workplace that support such activities.

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Activity-based work settings For nearly 30 years, now, there has been a steady growth in the uptake of activitybased work (ABW) design. By 2019, it is fair to say that in many countries, new workplaces and refurbishments were more likely than not to involve ABW settings. The basic concept is a simple one. Most (office) workers do a variety of tasks each day, and these are not best carried out from a single setting. So there should be a variety of different kinds of settings for different kinds of activities. Employees choose the most suitable one for the task in hand. So there’s a great deal of overlap between Smart Working and the ethos of ABW. For some workplace consultants, ABW is primarily about organisational change, and in that sense is pretty much a synonym for Smart Working or Agile Working1. However, in the workplace industry as a whole, ABW is more commonly associated with an ethos and a practice of how offices are laid out rather than an overall strategy for change2. In the 20th century, office workplaces revolved around three dominant elements: desks, meeting rooms and storage. Desks might be in cellular offices, or in open-plan or ‘cube farm’ layouts. For the most part, each desk would be assigned to a named individual, though from the 1990s a growing number were organised on a ‘hot-desking’ basis. Such layouts tend to be intrinsically space-inefficient or unpleasant to work in, and often both. ABW design provides a way to combine greater space efficiency with much more attractive and varied interior design to create a more human-friendly work environment. What makes it human-friendly is in part the quality of design, but also the facilitation of more choice and control over where one works, and by encouraging mobility rather than sitting in one place for most of the working day. So what are the different kinds of work settings? These are likely to include: • Collaboration spaces – meeting rooms of various sizes (both bookable and unbookable), informal breakout spaces, spaces to gather round a screen or writable surface • Pods or booths for one-to-one meetings or use for video calls • Touchdown spaces for people working on the move who may only need to use a work surface for a relatively short period of time • Spaces for quiet and concentrated working – e.g. individual booths or bays, or communal library-style areas designed and expecting the behaviours for quiet, high-focus working • Spaces for confidential work and phone calls

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• • • • •

• • • • •

More traditional-style desks for use over a longer duration Team or project tables Resource areas Café areas and social spaces, which double as alternative settings for private work or informal collaboration ‘Street’ areas, offering a combination of different types of informal settings with refreshments and access to other facilities (e.g. shop, hairdresser, online shopping delivery point, etc.), usually acting as an entrance to a large building or connecting a group of buildings Learning spaces – not only specific rooms for training, but quiet nooks, alcoves and library settings to encourage a culture of continuous learning Special project areas Spaces to support health and wellbeing Outdoor work, recreation and relaxation settings Flexible/reconfigurable multi-purpose spaces.

There are many variations on the form of such settings. Workplace designers and furniture manufacturers are becoming more imaginative and innovative in the solutions available to meet the demand from organisations as they re-evaluate what they need in the workplace. Even very traditional organisations with assigned desks tend to include some of these spaces now, though they tend to be peripheral to desk-dominated layouts. So one finds informal collaboration spaces, perhaps in the form of sofas and coffee tables dotted here and there as informal breakout spaces, or stand-up spaces for those engaged in agile development projects. Some cash-rich companies have had the ability to offer everything – both assigned seating and an extensive range of activity-based spaces. However, most companies and certainly public sector and not-for-profit organisations need to marshal their resources more prudently, and ensure that expensive real estate is used both efficiently and effectively. ABW has always been closely linked with an awareness that many people can work in multiple locations, and that employee choice is central to this. As employee choices include spaces outside the collective workplace, the numbers using a building at any one time will be significantly lower than the total number of people who might use it as a base or drop-in centre. Sharing all, or very nearly all, settings is central to true ABW design.

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The new model of the workplace What we have, in effect, is a new model of the ‘workplace’ emerging in the postindustrial era. We should think of it as a single entity, an Extended Workplace, rather than thinking of people being ‘at work’ (i.e. the real workplace!) or ‘working remotely’. In Figure 6.1, I have divided this into four physical (‘in real life’) domains: • • • •

Organisation-owned (whether owned outright or leased) Third-party Public Personal.

Then there is a unifying fifth domain or layer, the Virtual Workplace. This figure highlights the role of ABW spaces within the Organisation-owned domain. Amongst Organisation-owned spaces there is usually a main workplace that employees are expected to go to, or can choose to do so. In addition there may well be a network of satellite workplaces, which will offer some or all of the kind of settings found in the main workplace. Within the Organisation-owned domain, Figure 6.1 highlights the main categories of ABW spaces. On the bottom left are the office settings, and on the right a sample of the hands-on, specialist and directly customer-facing settings. Similar ABW settings may also be found in some Third-party premises, and to a lesser extent in some Public ones. The principles of ABW for the Personal domain is one we will explore in Chapter 12. ‘Mobile asset’ refers to vehicles, vessels or portable facilities in which people work. For example, a navy or a shipping company will have vessels; health services may have mobile scanners to take to different hospitals or out into the community. Depending on their size and purpose, they may or may not contain a variety of settings to work – a ship might, but a mobile scanner is in a sense a single ABW setting in its own right. The Third-party domain is one that will become increasingly significant as we move forward, as we’ll explore in detail in the next chapter. Space-as-a-service, in the form of the more traditional serviced offices and the newer but fast-maturing sector of coworking spaces, is increasingly becoming a part of workplace strategy as organisations seek a more flexible approach to their accommodation needs and ways to introduce flexibility into office costs.

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Physical Workplace(s) Third partyowned

Client/Partner loca"on

Organisationowned

Hybrid flex space

Hotel Motorway service centre

Coworking space

Café, bar, restaurant

Public building

Field, park, beach outdoors

Holiday loca"on

Shared workplace Mobile asset

Personal

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No company Workplace

Home

Vehicle

Drop-in centre

Hands-on loca"on ‘Main’ Workplace

Quiet / focus space

Standard desk

Breakout area Café / Social space

Shared space

Local office / branch

Mee!ng space

Coworking se"ng

Touchdown desk/table

Project space

Learning area

Resource area

Se"ngs for calls

Wellbeing spaces

Produc!on area Customer area

Activity- based working areas in the workplace

Figure 6.1: The new model of the Extended Workplace.

Garden Building

Laboratory Specialist area

‘Hands-on’, very specialist or direct customerfacing work

The Smart Working workplace

Office work

Public transport

Serviced office

Virtual Workplace

Field loca"on

Public Club

The Smart Working workplace

There’s also a challenge for organisations here in becoming a welcoming thirdparty host for customers, partners and suppliers. In some cases, organisations can provide space for a more general public with whom they have no particular relationship, at least not in the first instance. An example would be a bank that has settings for its customers to work in. Public spaces include hotel lobbies, bars and business centres; cafés and restaurants; public transport and public transport terminals. Again, over recent years we’ve seen adaptation and upgrading by providers to meet the expectations of business users, in particular with fast and free Wi-Fi and many more power points. Open-air spaces too can be settings for work. It could be for just having a break from being inside and getting some fresh air, whether on your own or with colleagues, or taking part in a walking meeting (see Chapter 7). These can play a strong role in promoting mobility, health and wellbeing as well as productivity. Then we come to the Personal domain. The home office, however set up, is what first comes to mind. However, as we’ll see in Chapter 12, there are many more potential settings and structures for working from home, of which garden offices are but one. We’ll explore the fifth domain, the Virtual Workplace, in Chapter 8. The point to make here is that the workplace is as much a virtual one that we work in, providing a unifying layer that facilitates the smooth operation of work across all domains. It’s interesting how often conversations around location flexibility focus excessively on just two settings: home, and ‘my desk’ in the office. It’s an essential element of awareness-raising, training and communications to shift the conversation to consider the whole range of possible spaces people may work in, and the factors that should guide people’s choices about these. Space-sharing or ‘hot-desking’ – myths and realities For most people, the idea of space-sharing means primarily ‘hot-desking’. And hotdesking does not have a good reputation. I’m told that the term ‘hot-desking’ derives from the nautical practice of ‘hotbunking’. When a sailor came off duty he’d collapse into a ‘hot bunk’ just vacated by another sailor off to do his turn. An eminently sensible space-saving practice – though dubious from the hygienic or aromatic point of view.

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Through the late 1980s and the 1990s, hot-desking appeared in several guises in America and Europe, also being called by names such as ‘hotelling’ and ‘free addressing’ and the like. Early implementations, though, ran into trouble due to being over-zealous, people being isolated from their teams (on the 37th floor one day, in the basement the next), and lacking the right technologies to work effectively away from their own desk, let alone away from the office. One can barely read an article about space-sharing without someone debunking hot-desking, so to speak, on the basis of a failed implementation at an American advertising agency some 30 years ago. You’ll recognise this when you see it, but I’m not going to give it any more oxygen here by naming it. Time has long moved on – as have technology, property prices, efficiency demands and our understanding of how to make space-sharing work. Much as any of us might appreciate having our own personal territory carved out at work, the business case for sharing space is overwhelming. First and foremost, in traditional offices with assigned personal desks, average desk occupancy rarely rises above 50%, as we’ve seen. So employers are tying up huge amounts of money in redundant space. Secondly, when equipping staff with the kit and connection to work from home and on the move, we create opportunities for efficiency and savings. But we also risk doing exactly the opposite, by creating multiple ‘office’ spaces and duplicating technology investments, if we don’t streamline the facilities in the office. Introducing space-sharing is essential to justify the investment in Smart Working and to create the space for the necessary range of ABW settings. However, even when faced with a strong business case, there are always some people who don’t want to share. What is also needed is to change the culture of possession. At a culture change workshop I ran, one sceptic quipped: ‘I only use my bed for a third of the day, but that doesn’t mean I want to share it with strangers’. I had to think about that one. For me, it would depend on who the strangers are, I guess. But the point is an interesting one. There’s an assumption in this goodhumoured challenge that one has, or should have, ‘ownership rights’ in a collective workplace akin to the rights one has at home. This represents a historic practice of allocation of space, and people feel a cultural and emotional pull to that. Changing that can be an emotional wrench for some. So a key part of the process of adjusting to space-sharing is taking away the fear of change. And in particular, taking away the fear of loss of ‘ownership’. Doing work in a modern office is not about owning a particular desk, but having guaranteed access to the right kind of facility for getting the work done. This might

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be a desk, or it might be a quiet workplace in a resource area, a training facility or a touchdown space (etc.). Achieving this more business-focused awareness should be a positive exercise, where teams analyse the way they work, and the kinds of facilities they need access to. When teams and individuals help to redesign the way they work, they start to understand the trade-offs. And enabling a wide range of Smart Working options is a key part of the trade-off. Less personalised space is the trade-off for achieving more choice and flexibility across an Extended Workplace, and better-quality space overall. Team space – or not One of the most important issues for the collective workplace, now that so many people wish to work in other places, is how much space is needed for when teams get together and are in the building at the same time. There are two recommended approaches to this: • Non-exclusive team zones • No permanent team zones, but team space bookable on demand. A few years ago I would usually recommend non-exclusive team space, and this is probably still the right solution for the more cautious implementations of Hybrid Working that require a number of days attendance in the office, or where the nature of the work requires more in-office presence. The basic principle is that teams have a core priority area where they will gather when they are in the workplace. However, we need to recognise that with people working 2 or 3 days elsewhere, this ‘team zone’ should have a lower number of seats than the number of people in the team. This can be puzzling to people when they first think about it. They can all remember the days when ‘everyone in the team was in’. That is why the ‘nonexclusive’ part is so important. Though there may be team priority areas, there will remain the possibility of flowing into different team areas or other shared space (touchdown tables, etc.) during any peaks that arise. In addition, the days that everyone in the team comes in will be days when they want to spend much of the time collaborating and socialising. This should take place in appropriate collaboration or social spaces. So in fact peak desk demand will probably only happen for a small part of any day that the whole team is there.

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The alternative approach is not to have a specified priority space at all. This needn’t be a free-for-all – you could still have a preferred floor or a departmental area, one that is the usual (but not inevitable) destination for people in a team. With this approach we’re moving more towards seeing the building as a collaborative hub, which dovetails well with adopting a Virtual First (Digital First, Remote First) approach. In this case, what is needed when it’s required is an area that a team can book when they wish to get together. So, recognising that a key requirement is to collaborate and to bond as a team, one has to think through what are the right environments for that. It’s probably not sitting round a big table in a meeting room for long periods. It may be a room that supports movement for different activities, and is at least to some extent reconfigurable. It’s also the case that people will probably also need to do a bit of solo work for some of the time they are in, or have calls with people, e.g. customers, who are elsewhere. Maybe these activities can be accommodated in the other ABW settings available. But it could be a good idea to set up an ‘in-day suite’ which has some quiet spaces for the solo work, and small rooms or booths for those calls, attached to a main get-together space. There’s a phrase going around: ‘On-site is the new off-site’. That is, those special sessions when everyone used to go away to somewhere else for a team get-together can now be a special day on site, now that it’s comparatively rare for everyone to be in the same place at the same time. And in that case, it’s worth putting some care and attention into designing the right combination of flexible spaces that can be booked when the team wants to be together. ‘Open plan’ is not a single phenomenon, nor a useful term anymore There are frequent attacks in the media on open-plan office environments. Every now and then, academic studies pop up to show how open-plan environments cause problems, are full of noise and distractions, and reduce rather than enhance collaboration. Often, we find it’s an old familiar study doing the rounds again, just with someone new commenting on it. Resisting the ‘yawn and move on’ reflex, we can start to probe what’s actually going on here. And we should start by doing what these studies and articles always fail to do: define what kind of ‘open plan’ is in the firing line.

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In practice, there are several kinds of open-plan layout. These include: • • • •

Open plan with assigned desking – high density or low density Open plan with hot-desking – again, high density or low density Open plan incorporating cubicle layouts Open-plan desking areas (any of the above) alongside a limited selection of ABW settings • Any of the above with different degrees of screening between different areas • The fully smart/agile/ABW office with many different kinds of settings.

It almost makes no sense these days to talk about ‘open plan’ at all. You might as well say ‘floorplate’, as the open area just provides the context for including a range of different elements. Having said that, there is good and bad practice. Big barn-like areas of dense desking are by all accounts not very pleasant to be in, whether with assigned desks, desk-sharing or cubicles. In general, the order of my previous bullet points runs from worst to better in terms of the human experience. So when commentators or academic researchers make observations on one kind of undefined open-plan office, we should be very wary indeed of any conclusions generalised to a universal experience that embraces all kinds of open plan. My own conclusion is that we need to look at the source of what any issues are in larger open areas. Where they occur, these are likely to stem from: • • • • • •

Noise and distraction Lack of privacy Being too dense/crowded/cluttered Being uncomfortable with lighting, temperature, air quality Feeling constrained about possibly disturbing others Feeling uninspired or alienated by the monotony of the environment.

When we break down the problems like this, we find that all of them can be addressed positively, for example by good acoustics, having areas to go for quiet focus work or for calls, or having some degree of controllability, e.g. with task lighting. Having large areas of desks when there are few alternative settings means they have to serve as the base for too many different kinds of activities: solo routine work, solo high focus work, calls, in-person collaboration and socialising within the team.

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In reality, few employers are going to pay for the excessive redundancy that would come with a retreat to cellular environments, nor want the risks of increased silo working that go with that. But within a generally open and airy environment, it’s more than possible to create a variety of distinct settings for different types of activities, and create the visual and acoustic separation and attractive design to create effective, efficient and human-friendly workplaces. Paradoxically, the secret of good open plan is how you break it up – functionally, visually, aesthetically and acoustically. How do we know how much space we need? In Chapter 4 we outlined the best ways to gather data about how the office is being used and how it is performing. We also looked at how to gather the evidence for where and when people would like to work. In Chapter 5 we looked at how to determine the range of tasks people do, and how location-specific or variable they are. We also looked at the need to think innovatively about future ways of working, and ‘thinking with your new head on’. All this data and the capturing of new thinking about the where and when of work needs to feed into decisions about how much space is needed. It needs also to link up with the answers the organisation comes up with to our existential question, ‘What is the workplace for?’ and the necessity factors associated with that. So gaining an appreciation of how many people are likely to be in the workplace at any one time for different kinds of activities will be at the heart of the decision on how much space is needed. That’s a little more complex than deciding how many desks, but it’s worth spending the time capturing the data and working with people to understand how space relates to the tasks they actually do. On that basis, you can work out not only how much space is needed, but more importantly what kind of settings are most needed within the space. The mantra should, always be, ‘First design the work, then design the workplace’. And do that based on robust evidence, allowing for the almost certain need to change workplace layouts over time, to reflect changing needs. Desk ratios: how useful are they? A traditional way of thinking about how much space is needed once the gauntlet of space-sharing has been taken up is to come up with a desk ratio. Many

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organisations in the pre-pandemic period adopted an 8:10 ratio (i.e. 8 desks to 10 people, or looked at the other way, 1.2 people per desk). That was an initial, somewhat conservative, guideline in the UK government programme; in fact, it was subsequently modified to 7:10. I’ve always had reservations about starting with desk ratios. They set conversations off on the wrong foot, making discussions primarily about desks. This risks presenting Smart Working change as being about taking away furniture, rather than adding to the variety and quality of the environment and a lot else besides. I’ve also found that specifying an overall desk ratio can end up setting a target people want to achieve. They want their 16 desks for their team of 20, despite the fact that their work is mostly done away from the office, or spread across site working with different business units. A desk ratio is really an average, and that implies variation between different kinds of teams doing different work. So analysts sitting every day doing supersecure work on computers only available at certain desks need a different kind of ratio compared to a team of super-mobile workers. But that can end up being a bit invidious if more mobile teams, and new teams, find themselves squeezed into marginal spaces if we’re only thinking about the desks. The desk as a basic unit has also traditionally been used as a figure interchangeable with the number of people who can be in the building at any one time, a calculation that is necessary for thinking of various factors such as the number of toilets, fire escapes and so forth. But in a more flexible world, the number of people supported by the building will inevitably be greater than the number of desks. We’re moving into a world where we need to shift the focus from desks, useful as they are, to asking the questions, ‘How many work positions do we need to support the various kinds of activities that will be supported here – and how many of each do we need?’ The question of how many people the building can support needs necessarily to be decoupled from being related to any single kind of activity setting, such as the desk. The question of density The question of ratio is in great part also a question about office densities. There has been a trend over the past few decades towards having greater office densities.

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Smaller desks, enabled by the reduction of size in computer monitors, reduced requirement for paper and a bean-counter approach to greater efficiency in the use of real estate were all part of the pre-pandemic picture. Then during the pandemic, a new conversation was opened about de-densifying workplaces. Desks were taken out, or had a big X taped across them to keep people and their germs away from each other. A lot of Perspex partitions were hastily rolled out, and a lot of ink spilled about the end of desk-sharing and other odious/ unhygienic practices. One commercial real estate company made a pitch around the ‘6 feet office’ (i.e. layouts to keep everyone 6 feet/2 metres apart) as the workplace design of the future3. As the old saying goes, ‘Love your neighbour – but don’t tear down the fences yet’. This may have been a reasonable response in pandemic times given the way offices were traditionally laid out and the genuine risks of contagion. Now, as the world returns to a kind of normal, the Perspex has been taken out, the tape across desks has been removed and we’re actively thinking of a different kind of workplace altogether, one not so obsessively focused on desks. How do standards of density apply in this context? The British Council for Offices, in a report called The Future of UK Office Densities, recognises that there is a challenge in proposing an overall standard given the nature of activity-based office design and different levels of density for different kinds of activities4. Nonetheless, it proposes an overall figure of 10–12 m2 per person. This kind of average, as with many averages, is problematic: exceptions outnumber the rule. If the dominant use of a workplace is for collaborative and social activities, as many are becoming, then that’s very different to where the dominant layout is desk-based. And it’s increasingly difficult to pin down who the person is in the ‘per person’ standard when there is a very high throughput of people with varying flexibility in their work patterns and with different space needs at different times. What is the solution? In areas where people need to concentrate or do something more like traditional desk work, a good workplace should allow a bit more elbow-room and, as we have said, be broken up more acoustically and visually. But on the other hand, we want the building to work efficiently for the range of activities that are carried out there, with, for example, the potential for significantly higher densities in an auditorium or within a reconfigurable project space. So Smart Working needs an intelligent and nuanced approach to density. There’s a hard upper limit on the numbers who can safely be in the building.

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‘How do we get our people back in the office?’ One theme that emerged strongly as the pandemic ran its course was about compelling or attracting people who had been working remotely back into the office. This was driven on the one hand by employers talking, perhaps somewhat insensitively, about the ‘return to work’, assuming that being physically together is the most effective way to work, most of the time if not all the time. Some organisations required employees to return to the office full-time. Others mandated a certain number of days, or exerted leadership pressure like the UK government minister who, in a misfiring stunt, left notes on civil servants’ desks saying he expected to see them there next time he passed through5. Another approach has been to offer homeworking subject to a pay cut as one creative way of incentivising a choice to work in a collective workplace6. On the other hand, there has also been a more positive current developing, built on earlier trends, focusing on how to attract people back into the collective workplace of their own volition. At the heart of this is making it a much more attractive and human-centric kind of environment. A lot of thinking has been going into what makes a great place to work. In many cases, this is related to the ‘war for talent’ and becoming an employer of choice by offering a great working environment. With our existential question in mind (i.e. ‘what is the office for?’), we need to challenge both mandatory and voluntary approaches, and ask, ‘Why exactly do we want to get employees back in the office?’ If people have shown they can work perfectly well from home, or a coworking centre, or anywhere else – and they really want to do so – why would we try either to coerce or entice them to work somewhere else? To help managers think about this, it’s worth asking the question, ‘What should we focus on: presence or purpose?’ Presence just for the sake of it is pointless, even counter-productive. If we focus on purpose, this could include: • Certain kinds of collaboration where physical presence is felt to add significant value • Team cohesion • Some kinds of learning activities • Working in conjunction with colleagues who have hands-on work • Using things that can’t leave the site

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• • • •

Combatting possible isolation, if that has been reported as an issue Supporting new recruits Meeting customers and prospective customers Feeling part of an organisation and its culture.

Now of course all of these are in turn challengeable in terms of being necessarily done on site. So the real question is, in most cases, how often should we be there in person for these purposes? This needs to be worked through with teams to assess the numbers involved, the frequency of being there for such purposes and how many of which settings are likely to be needed for the kinds of work that will be done. Starting with a mandated requirement for presence and expecting it to fit with what people actually need to do is a recipe for both inefficiency and disengagement, as well as dysfunctional workplace design. To work smarter, we need to be much more purposeful than this. Booking desks and other spaces There has been something of a stampede towards booking systems as organisations look to ‘return to the office’ and implement some version of space sharing. I’ve even had conversations with one organisation that introduced desk-booking even though they were retaining individually assigned desks, to ‘get people used to the idea’. We will deal in more detail with this in the Technology chapter that follows this one. But for now, at the risk of being Canute-like against the tide, I would still advise a cautious approach, particularly to desk-booking. Why? Two reasons: 1. I feel it’s something of a comfort-blanket for people who want to cling on to territory or fear that they won’t be able to find a desk to work at. And this can act as a brake on cultural change. 2. People invariably book considerably more time than they will use the desk (or meeting room), which results in over-provision of the wrong sort of space, and limits the choice and variety of settings you can provide. Now, I understand the arguments and potential benefits on the other side. If you travel 40 miles to a drop-in centre you want to be sure of a good place to get on

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with your work. You want to be close to team members or other specific colleagues when you come in. So booking seems the best way to ensure that. And then there is the integration of booking systems with systems to measure and monitor occupancy and the use of the building, and the use of intelligent systems to distribute people around the building at different times of day to improve environmental efficiency and reduce running costs at times of low occupancy. However, it is quite possible to monitor and manage occupancy without adding booking into the mix, or only using it selectively in places with high footfall, for formal meeting rooms and for the kind of special bookable team space I mentioned earlier. And it’s good to have a range of non-bookable breakout areas, one-to-one meeting spaces and booths for calls – alongside some bookable ones if needed. With good planning, consultation and design, it’s possible, even desirable, to let people sort out where and when they will work on a more dynamic, informal and friendly basis. Usually, there will be plenty of space available. In summary: use booking systems where really necessary, i.e. where there is high turnover of people coming and going and genuinely high demand. But don’t assume it’s necessary everywhere and all the time. And knowing where it’s likely to be needed and not needed depends on understanding the nature of the work involved and how people will carry it out. How the future of ‘hands-on’ work impacts the workplace In Chapter 5 we began exploring how Smart Working applies to people in hands-on and site-specific roles, i.e. people who need to have direct contact with machinery, products, places, customers and patients. Now we turn our attention to the impacts that the changing nature of hands-on work can have on the locations where people work. The fundamental shift that’s happening relates to step changes in digitisation along with new areas of automation, AI and robotics – Industry 4.0. With all of these comes increased capabilities for remote interaction with data, products and autonomous/semi-autonomous/remotely-controlled systems and machinery. There are two key underlying factors to note here for the future of the workplace: • All these new technologies and capabilities have potential spatial impacts. They don’t just change how work is done, but where it can be done also • They also impact who does the work and the skills needed to do it.

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Examples might be an aircraft engineer working with an inspection robot that crawls through the engine of an aeroplane at a distant airport7, or a drone carrying out a micro-inspection of the fuselage, instead of the plane having to fly to a specialist hangar for the inspection8. Or a person working on a software upgrade to a robotic system in health care, or carrying out analysis of its performance. Or someone supervising the operation of self-driving vehicles or vessels, whether these operate in a mine, on the streets, at sea or in space. Clearly in those examples there is the need for a facility to build the systems involved and physical locations where they are deployed. But for those who innovate in this field, and who monitor, analyse and upgrade these systems – where will they work? In principle, it can be from pretty much anywhere. Much lab-related work, as we saw in Chapter 5, takes place away from a workbench. Good laboratory information systems (LIS) can enable remote monitoring and management of activities and equipment in a laboratory. This has led to more efficient use of labs and a trend to have shared labs where the work accommodated can be more generic. Retail has been moving in a similar direction in many ways. Bricks-and-mortar shops still require staff, of course. However, an ever-increasing amount of retail takes place online. People can run an ecommerce operation from a spare room at home. More substantial operations turn over billions of dollars without having any customer-facing premises at all, and in some cases without any inventory of their own and using third-party logistics and customer fulfilment. It’s about sourcing and supplying with minimal overhead. Within warehouses there is increasing use of robots, for heavy lifting, for product selection and transporting through a building. In each of these cases there are roles for humans, working alongside systems and robots or ‘cobots’ (collaborative robots). But the changes in processes create a new set of skills, relationships and interactions around the processes involved. Figure 6.2 provides examples of some of the kinds of work and sets out the spatial implications of the changing nature of these kinds of work. The Place-Independent Activities are the kinds of tasks that people can, with the right systems, carry out outside of the hands-on facility. However, there will be different requirements for proximity to the facility or to the machinery deployed. Some work can take place at a distance from the site – in a corporate office, at home or any other appropriate location, perhaps most typically at a partner or client site. Where closer proximity is needed, it could be in an office-type facility integrated at a hands-on site, or it may be that the corporate office and the hands-on facility

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SYSTEMS & APPLICATIONS Intelligent automa!on

‘Industry 4.0’

(Industrial) Internet of Things

Lab work

Big Data

Online retail

Lab Informa!on Systems

Design

Modelling Monitoring

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Programming

Telemedicine

Supervision/Support of onsite staff Customer interface

Home

Remote access

Remote maintenance

Online pla"orms

Trackers and wearables

Anywhere working

Analysis

Remote diagnoscs

Online health

LOCATIONS OF WORK

PLACE-INDEPENDENT ACTIVITIES

Physical access

ABW se#ngs at corporate office

ABW se#ngs integrated at hands-on site

HANDS-ON / SITE-BASED WORK BECOMING KNOWLEDGE-BASED WORK

Figure 6.2: Examples of how automation, artificial intelligence and new remote capabilities affect where people can work.

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TYPES OF HANDS-ON WORK

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are co-located at the same site in the first place. Reasons for needing the proximity on a regular basis would be for combining remote monitoring with hands-on inspection and maintenance, or having a supervising role for the people doing primarily hands-on work. So what kind of activity-based settings are appropriate for people who are interfacing at a distance from the systems and people they interact with? The short answer is that to a large extent they are the same range of ABW settings that has been set out earlier. However, the context of their location makes a difference. In many companies I’ve been to, the settings used by hands-on workers when not directly doing handson work can be pretty grim. Cramped site offices overflowing with paper, with paper plans pinned to walls; few and very minimalist meeting rooms, where the noise from production is inescapable; no informal collaboration areas; no quiet settings to make a call; shoddy relaxation or mess areas; canteens only slightly modernised from the 1970s. The list goes on, and a lack of digitisation often goes hand-in-hand with the Industrial Age facilities. Apart from a timely upgrade of facilities to improve the work experience for all, some of the specific requirements might be for: • Settings for large interactive screens to show plans and project progress – they need to be large enough to drill down into detail when required. Such screens may need to be mobile too, to get closer to engineers and technicians who need to reference them. Either way, they are often best located near at hand to the work being done • Sound-proofed pods for calls in or close to production and testing areas, so people can interact with a colleague, supervisor or remote expert, or perhaps deal with an HR issue • Desk spaces or other (shared) surfaces for working on any of the locationindependent tasks we’ve identified (design, analysis, programming, etc.) • Informal collaboration areas, again with additional acoustic protection if in a noisy area • Relaxation/mess areas with comfortable seating and also some touchdown surfaces where people who are not on shift or on stand-by can access internal and external digital systems from their portable device • Refreshment areas/cafés that can double as informal meeting areas or alternative work settings

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• Settings, most probably enclosed, where people can use virtual, augmented or mixed reality for research, training, exploring simulations of products or spaces, gaming and more. This may require space for people to move around, screens to project the virtual world they see as well, plus the capacity for people to connect into the virtual experience from other locations • Settings appropriate for agile teams, with appropriate settings for stand-ups, collaborative development, display of project progress, etc. • Library areas and reading nooks • Demonstration and customer experience areas. One example of bringing together office-based and hands-on functions is the design studio of Jaguar Land Rover, opened in 20199. Here the design teams working in an agile way are co-located with clay modelling and 3D printing facilities, bringing together the creative and engineering processes and streamlining the design process. So what does this mean for the future of the office – is it dead or not? Looking at the impacts of the ‘future of work’ on more hands-on and site-specific work, we can see that there are some quite complex effects. It’s not about the ‘death of the office’ and work becoming entirely or even predominantly remote, as some evangelists for remote working insist. We can see – indeed, we have seen in recent years – powerful trends to the decentralisation of work. There is a centrifugal effect, with people working away from offices. On the other hand, we can see the increased component of knowledge work in Industry 4.0 applications having the effect of driving work activities into office-type environments, as intelligent systems do more of the physical, repetitive, hazardous or complex tasks. But then some of these, too, can also often be done in other locations in the Extended Workplace. My conclusions from this are: • The office isn’t dead. It’s future, though, is smaller – certainly with regard to the traditional concept of the office as the dominant destination for knowledge workers and knowledge-based tasks • We need to think more in terms of the transformation of the office, as a response to major centrifugal and lesser centripetal trends, and be ready to adapt the design to the differing needs of end users

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• When thinking of the future design of the workplace, we need to shift our focus from offices to the Extended Workplace as a whole and focus on the various requirements across all the four physical domains in Figure 6.1. There is an apparent paradox here. Office-type work is increasing as a proportion of all work, yet the centralised collective office is getting smaller. This is partly because of a focus on space efficiency, but mostly because the kinds of work that could be done there can also be decentralised to many other locations. At the end of the day, we all need a place to work. For increasing numbers of us, that’s just not the same place every day. We could say that, while the organisational ‘office’ is getting smaller, the workplace as a whole gets ever wider. What makes a great workplace? What makes a great workplace? First, the space needs to support the tasks that people need to do. If they think, ‘I can do this better from home’, then it will be hard to persuade them to make the journey into the collective workplace. As has been said, employers need to ‘earn the commute’ that their employees undertake. What this means in practice is that as well as getting the balance of activity settings right, there needs to be excellence in the comfort factors: air quality, temperature, lighting, acoustics, toilet facilities, refreshment areas – all the things that people routinely complain about in surveys. We’ll explore these further in Chapter 13 on Wellbeing. There is really no excuse now for low standards in these areas. To this now we should add biophilia, which relates to our innate connection to nature. This is in part about ensuring access to nature, and in part incorporating natural features into the workplace. A key feature of the Smart Workplace will be the ways in which it connects to the Extended Workplace. Many of the tasks that people do in the collective workplace will by nature involve interaction with people who are working elsewhere. This has to be much more seamless than the familiar experience of ‘hybrid meetings’ in traditional meeting rooms, with people gathered round a table twisting their head towards a screen. This is an area of considerable innovation currently both in technology and the design of meeting spaces, and is one to watch. Not to mention, an important one to invest in. But for most people, a common experience will be of needing to jump on a call when they are the only participant in that call who is actually in the collective

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workplace at the time. This is one area where many of the workplaces are not yet getting it right in terms of providing the right kinds of spaces and enough of them. Taking calls at a bank of desks is far from optimal – unless they are set up for that and everyone nearby is doing the same, as in a call centre environment. Doing so will disturb near neighbours, and voices can carry quite long distances across open spaces. What is needed is a mix of enclosed and semi-enclosed spaces that are acoustically well isolated. Semi-enclosed ones are best suited to more of a business-lounge or coworking type of setting where there is a degree of noise-tolerance. Choice of enclosed or semi-enclosed setting should flow from the nature of the call in question, in terms of the need for concentration (for all parties on the call) and confidentiality.

Case study: Better workplaces at BT In 2019, telecoms giant BT Group commenced a major change and transformation project called The Better Workplace Programme. The original vision was to ‘bring people together in brilliant spaces, transforming the way we work’ – and this has never wavered even in the face of a global pandemic. This programme provides vibrant workplaces that support BT Group’s recently announced approach to flexibility which gives colleagues greater choice about whether to work in the office or from home. The newly designed offices are intended to act as a catalyst for developing a new working culture that enables greater innovation, collaboration and opportunities for connection and personal development. The programme, which runs through to 2024, will consolidate more than 900 buildings across more than 300 locations, into around 30 strategic locations across the UK. This includes ‘hubs’ which house several thousand colleagues in one building, in major cities such as Belfast, Bristol, Birmingham and Manchester. Designs are tailored for more modern working practices, providing a wide variety of settings, both bookable and unbookable, to enable choices of where to work. It’s a substantial change from having rows of desks, with instead a varied mix of task tables, collaboration spaces, quiet spaces and social spaces. There are team neighbourhoods, with design depending on the nature of work activities carried out, and ‘connect’ floors with shared coworking and

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collaborative settings. All these collaborative spaces are ‘business unit agnostic’. This is a deliberate choice, to enable more movement across teams rather than the old approach of having floors dedicated to specific units or teams. Feature stairwells are incorporated into the hubs, to encourage this movement and fluidity. A focus on wellbeing is woven throughout the design with ‘community’ floors incorporating cafés and restaurants, spaces for socialising, and quieter spaces such as multi-faith and no-tech spaces. The pandemic led to some rethinking about both how much space was needed, and the type of space needed. According to Programme Director Sue Glew, Initially we designed for all of our colleagues to be in the office most of the time, whereas post-pandemic and with the introduction of hybrid working, we know that won’t be the case for everyone going forward. So we’ve evolved our designs to reflect that. While homeworking has a long track record at BT going back to the 1990s, most people will have a base location rather than be contractual homeworkers. That said, many BT colleagues need to work with teams who will be based in other locations so will work from other buildings when they need to. The original programme covered all desk-based colleagues at BT Group (a substantial number). Some teams spend a great deal of time on the phone providing customer service. Some teams, like those handling 999 emergency calls, need to be located together for support in dealing with complex and sometimes distressing work. Having a range of spaces available is important to support all aspects of their work and wellbeing. As Sue says: People want to work in an environment that supports them to get their best work done – we have worked really hard to listen to what colleagues need to make this the case, and feedback tells us the spaces are much more conducive to work in. A challenge for many organisations is working with colleagues across the ‘Extended Workplace’, with people working at different sites, from home or

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on the move. ‘The technology that our Digital Experience colleagues in BT have provided is great for this’, says Sue. ‘The pandemic accelerated it for sure. Now, as we return to hybrid working, it’s about getting the behaviours right to make it work well, and really optimise the benefits of our new physical and technical environments.’ Developing new buildings has also provided the opportunity to incorporate sustainability into the design, and there are intelligent building systems to monitor and manage usage. Sustainably sourced natural materials have been used. Biophilic features include maximising access to natural daylight, living walls and plenty of planting, and some outdoor areas, e.g. the roof terrace at the Manchester hub. The open internal staircases provide sight lines and encourage mobility, to promote both connection and healthy working. The programme worked closely with BT’s Able2 network which represents colleagues with disabilities, and with the Business Disability Forum, to ensure that the designs of the physical spaces was inclusive. Earlier iterations of Smart Working at BT had demonstrated the value across a range of metrics. This renewed focus on the workplace is designed to dovetail with the benefits of well-embedded flexibility, and deliver further benefits in terms of engagement, collaboration and innovation. We asked the question, ‘What is the workplace for?’ (p. 114–17) The Better Workplace programme sets out its intention of creating environments that support the primary purposes for getting together at a physical location, within a wider framework of flexibility, trust and choice.

The importance of acoustic excellence in the Smart Workplace At one organisation that was transitioning to Smart Working, the new café was intended to be a place where people could touch down to work. There was a terrace outside too, so on fine days you could go outside to work, refresh and re-energise. Inside, however, the acoustics were terrible. When I first sat down to work there with my laptop, it was fairly quiet. But at the turn of the hour, it rapidly became busy as people escaped from meetings and sought refreshment to take in to the next

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one. The noise from the barista machines reverberated around the room, though it sounded like they might well have been reverberating through the cosmos. Soon everyone was raising their voices to talk over the noise of the machines and over the noise made by everyone else. It didn’t have to be like this. Retrofitting acoustic solutions is usually more expensive and less effective than getting it right from the outset. So the point of my story is the importance of thinking through what is required for acoustic excellence as an integral part of any workplace design programme. Unfortunately, it is a relatively common experience that as projects are salami-sliced to reduce costs, acoustic solutions or the expert design involved are amongst the first features to be dropped or downgraded. Noise, as is often said, is basically unwanted sound. As I’ve seen in many workplace surveys, noise is always in the top three things that people dislike about their workplace. Noise interrupts people from what they need to do, breaks concentration and can be a productivity killer. However, number one amongst the things people like about their workplace is their colleagues. Unfortunately, it’s colleagues rabbiting on when we don’t want to hear them that disturbs us the most. It’s other people speaking that disturbs us more than anything else. By nature we are attuned to try to interpret human speech, and have difficulty screening it out. So there’s something we need to think about here. The ‘unwanted’ part of ‘unwanted noise’ is relative. We don’t want to hear it, but it may be central to someone else’s productivity. And we want workplaces to be places for interaction. So the challenge is not only about reducing noise, it’s about hearing the right sounds, given the work we have to do and the environment we are in. Achieving acoustic excellence is a mix of good design, engineering solutions, setting-appropriate behaviours and, crucially, having a degree of choice and control about where to work. Paige Hodsman and Nigel Oseland propose DARE as a mnemonic to encapsulate good practice, which I’ve adapted slightly here: • Displace: Transfer potential noise distractions to the right place through easy access to informal meeting areas, breakout and brainstorming rooms. Provide quiet areas including quiet booths, phone-free desk areas, library-type space, outdoor space and the option to work from home (or other preferred place) • Avoid: Reduce noise distraction (e.g. avoid hands-free speaker phones in open areas, and opt for hands-free headsets). This includes reducing unwanted noise communicated through technology, for all people involved in calls. Zone teams

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whose work is noisier away from quieter teams. Consider personalities, for example enabling extroverts who thrive in noisy environments and introverts who prefer quiet to work in their preferred spaces • Reduce: Use good acoustic absorption in ceilings, walls, floors and furniture designed to reduce speech intelligibility and noise transfer between rooms. Take an active approach to soundscaping where appropriate. • Educate: Introduce office etiquette that reinforces consideration towards colleagues. Etiquette should cover phone use, loud conversations, music, headphones, managing interruptions. It may also include ‘do not disturb’ signals. Explain to staff the facilities available to them and how they can use them to control noise disruption. These may be reinforced through Team Agreements on how to use space when in the office10. Acoustics are often associated primarily with the ‘Reduce’ element. As can be seen, that’s only part of the story. Having a choice of settings with different acoustic properties and the etiquette and behaviours to use them well are also required. Jack Harvie-Clark, CEO of Apex Acoustics, was a member of the committee producing the acoustic standard, ISO 22955 (2021): Acoustic quality of open office spaces11. This adopts a more user-centric approach to acoustic standards, and recognises that different standards may apply to different settings. Three primary types of settings for different kinds of office work are referenced: call centre, collaborative work and individual work. Different targets and required acoustic levels are specified for each and for combinations of settings. It’s not quite that cut-and-dried, however. As Jack told a meeting of the European Smart Work Network, It depends so much on the context. If people have assigned desks, there is nothing they can do about an annoying noise, so they need greater protection from the source of the noise. In a Smart Working environment, where people are much more likely to be able to choose where they work, they don’t need as much protection as they can choose to work somewhere else. So the acoustic values you need depend on the context and the workplace strategy to begin with12. Jack believes that control is a ‘killer variable’. He cites a case study where new activity-based settings were introduced, but the overall acoustic performance did not change. However, people’s satisfaction with the acoustics saw a 21-point jump

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from 62% to 83%13. This comes down to being able to move to alternative spaces according to their preference and the nature of tasks they were doing. A key factor in planning for acoustics is the proximity of different settings to each other. An informal breakout space relatively close to a desking area where people are trying to concentrate will mean that different solutions for both kinds of settings are needed, in contrast to a similar breakout space located in a business lounge, coworking space or ‘street’ environment, where a greater level of ambient noise might be not only tolerated, but seen as contributing to the ‘buzz’ and the effectiveness of the space as a whole. So planning the separation and grouping of different settings is an important component of planning a great place to work from an acoustic point of view. A further factor in favour of maximising choice and control is highlighted by the emerging discipline of psychoacoustics. People have different sensitivities to noise (as to other aspects of the environment), and different personalities, temperaments and preferences in how they react to noises around them. We’ll explore this further in Chapter 13 on Wellbeing. For now it’s worth observing that it’s challenging, and may even be impossible, to design a specific team’s workplace around the specific preferences and personalities of your current workforce in a way that is future friendly. It’s better to design a range of spaces with different acoustic and sensory qualities to appeal to the broadest range of people, and ensure they have a great deal of choice of where to work both in the building and across the Extended Workplace. Biophilic design and the sensory environment To the uninitiated, ‘biophilia’ may sound like something contagious, or possibly something to do with yogurt. In fact, in evolutionary psychology14 it refers to the ‘innate human attraction to nature’, the idea that we have an instinctive bond with nature. Being able to see, touch, smell and be amongst natural objects improves our sense of wellbeing, and helps us to perform better in whatever we are doing. Biophilic design, then, is all about introducing into offices, factories, hospitals, schools and homes features such as views of nature, plants, flowing water, access to natural light and air and natural sounds like waterfalls, or waves breaking on an ocean shore. ‘Living walls’ or ‘vertical gardens’ – i.e. walls covered in plants – or ‘sky ceilings’ that provide views of the real sky and natural light are all part of the mix.

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Even facsimiles of such natural features can have a positive effect on productivity in offices or recovery time in hospitals. Use of natural materials and organic shapes are also part of biophilic design. Generally speaking, nature abhors a completely straight line. Rows of desks with everything we see laid out in straight lines across three dimensions creates environments that feel sterile and soulless. The use of more organic shapes and patterns in the layout of settings can create a more engaging and aesthetically pleasing environment. The biophilic approach should also be multisensory – involving sounds, textures and scents as well as the visual impacts15. The biophilic elephant in the room? However, I tend to think that there’s an elephant in the room – a big one. You might be tempted to think an elephant in the room would be a welcome feature of biophilic design. However, in a typical biophilic office, you generally won’t be doing work in genuinely natural settings, but rather working where natural elements are artificially grafted onto architectural business-as-usual. Or perhaps where you get a view of the sky or some planting outside. So while there are some interesting and innovative biophilic features coming into workplace design, isn’t there something fundamentally odd about the whole process? And the strange thing is this: developers, architects, interior designers, town planners, employers and employees alike – we have all expected workers to be taken out from our natural biological and social habitats on a daily basis and funnelled into concrete, glass and steel boxes to work. Then, having put us into what might be a naturally less comfortable environment, we try to retrofit some natural sensations as ersatz compensation for the uprooting. I’ve seen biophilic designs lauded where, in practice, there are serried ranks of desks divided by repetitive ranks of easy-maintenance plants in rectangular troughs on top of filing cupboards. For me, this is just decoration paying lip-service to the idea, and doesn’t contribute a whole lot to being a great place to work. So, in an age when work can be wherever we are, don’t we need a fundamental rethink about what the workplace is, and how it interfaces with nature? Now that we’ve experienced how much more work can be done from home, we have a great opportunity to truly embed biophilic principles into the whole workplace experience across the Extended Workplace.

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That means integrating access to nature, fresh air and natural light throughout the working day, wherever we are. And this is sometimes easier to do when working from home. Whether it’s being able to step out into the garden or go to a local park, or just work where you have a good view of natural surroundings, this gives a chance to energise and refresh, as well as working in more conducive settings over which you have more control. This is about behaviours and expectations, as well as about design. Meanwhile, for the organisation-owned workplaces, it means a fundamental rethink about its setting in the natural environment, as well as ways to encounter nature within a built structure. Reconfigurability Being able to reconfigure workplace layouts is an important consideration for the Smart Workplace. This should be based on a combination of observation and data about how spaces are used, plus the expressed preferences of the users. Analysis of how spaces are used can be based on data from sensors, information from booking systems and from periodic evaluations. These will show if people are voting with their feet and spaces are used less than expected, or if there is high demand for certain kinds of space. Gathering user feedback and responding to their suggestions for different kinds of space is also important. The feedback should also include responses from people who mostly work elsewhere in the Extended Workplace. Are the settings provided the most appropriate ones when they do come into the collective workplace for the things they need to do? Some caution is needed in interpreting data from booking systems. For example, it may seem that there is high demand for certain kinds of setting, but typically there’s a gap between the amount booked and the actual usage. So the real-time monitoring needs to be set alongside any booking system information before taking decisions to add more of apparently popular settings. Reconfigurability also applies to individual elements within a setting. For example, a project space can consist of furniture, screens and writable boards that can be moved around according to need. Similarly, meeting rooms can have movable elements depending on the nature of the meeting and the numbers of people attending. This gives a degree of choice and control for users of the space. This is not only to make themselves more comfortable, but also to help create the appropriate ambience for the type of activity being undertaken.

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Case study: Designing for human interaction at NatWest NatWest, one of the ‘big four’ UK banks, has made designing for human interaction central to their new office designs. This runs alongside a major rethink in how work is done, and the adoption of a coworking model to supporting the new ways of working. Before the pandemic, around 6,000 people were able to work from home at NatWest. Now, 65,000 can do so. So when people go to the office, it is important that the office supports the main purposes for getting together – collaboration, socialising and the kinds of teamwork that benefit from being together in the same place. NatWest’s headquarters at 250 Bishopsgate in London has been redesigned around four principles: • • • •

Fluid territories Human-centric design Great connectivity Active community.

According to Paul Urmston, Area Workplace manager for the South of England, The new space is designed around human interaction rather than the geometry of the desk. Rather than focusing on adjacency and fixed departmental teams, the new coworking model supports changing and growing teams. Communication is through technology, not reliant on being next to each other. That requires both seamless technology and new ways of communicating. There’s a range of activity-based settings: team tables, focus spaces for individual work or calls, huddle space, ideation space, one-to-one spaces, flexible meeting spaces, social and retreat spaces, and landing zones that support team get-togethers, briefings and networking. The human-centric design takes its references from home, hospitality and nature, with the aim of creating emotional responses and a strong sense of

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place. There are strong biophilic elements, including settings and lighting to encourage movement through the day. There is planting throughout, plus an atrium garden and a garden café. To support mobility, all desktop PCs have been removed and everyone is equipped with portable devices. There are workplace apps to monitor usage of the various settings, locate colleagues and book meeting spaces. There is a calendar of social events and workshops, wellness programmes, lifestyle perks such as gym membership, dry cleaning and concierge services, all of which promote an active community that is supported by an in-house community manager. NatWest has also changed its approach to recruitment. Previously staff were recruited to a fixed location. Now they are linked to a hub that can serve as their primary base. The increased flexibility on offer is important for attracting talent. The new ways of working have facilitated a significant reduction in the real estate portfolio. This was happening before the pandemic, reflecting both changes in the sector and earlier iterations of Flexible Working. The experience of the pandemic has both accelerated and changed the nature of this rationalisation. Since 2017, the number of branches has halved, and the number of offices reduced from 250 to 90. London offices have reduced from seven buildings to two. The main Manchester office is being redesigned using the Bishopsgate template. Local branches, where out of necessity many employees have to be there to see customers face-to-face, are also being redesigned to incorporate similar principles, with some of them becoming hubs incorporating coworking features. The savings from this have led to fewer but higher-quality work environments, and investment in the technologies for mobility producing a better work experience for employees. Productivity has been maintained or increased. The approach has been one of ‘freedom in a framework’, with guidelines based around three workstyles: Office First, in the office most of the time; Hybrid, in the office more often than not; and Remote First, with an

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expectation of being in the office three days per fortnight. However, as the general guidance is ‘don’t commute to compute’, the main reason to go to the office is for the experience and to interact with colleagues. At the time of writing, the change team is monitoring how the space is used and conducting consultation with employees, to underpin the continuing journey in tailoring the workplace for the best workplace experience.

The workplace as ‘perpetual beta’ and ‘minimum viable workplace’ In a sense, the emphasis on reconfigurability and responsiveness to user demand means that modern workplace is always a work-in-progress and never exactly a finished product. This is quite a different approach from the traditional one of having a refit that (it is hoped) will last for several years until the next set of major changes. Neil Usher makes the case for thinking of the workplace as being in ‘perpetual beta’. This, he writes in Elemental Change, comprises three mutually supportive elements. First, viability. Our initiative doesn’t need to be working 100%, as long as it’s working well enough to deploy and use. Second, co-creation. We maintain an effective open channel of dialogue with the consumers or recipients of our initiative to enable its continued development. We enhance its viability while being aware that external environment is also changing and therefore the expectations on its capabilities and performance may change, too. Third, evolution. Based on the first two elements, the understanding that our initiative will never be complete and is always becoming something else16. The concept of perpetual beta is taken from the world of IT, with the idea that you start out by delivering a product that works, or at least works enough, and then keep updating it in accordance with how it is used and as new possibilities emerge. This clearly has relevance for work environments that are adaptable and future friendly. It does require, though, a different approach from FM to support evolution over time in accordance with preferences and new requirements.

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Maybe we can’t go too far with the analogy. IT companies have had a habit of putting out software that is immensely buggy in the early iterations. It’s one thing to amend lines of code, another to deliver workplaces that irritate the hell out of users at first and then remodel the spaces while people, grumbling constantly, are working in it. So a new workplace design must work sufficiently well from the off, even if it’s designed in ways to facilitate adaptability and incremental improvements. But the principle of seeing Smart Workplace design as a journey, rather than setting something in stone at a fixed point in time, is an important one for Smart Working environments. Borrowing another concept from the worlds of IT and product innovation, we could also talk of starting with a ‘minimum viable product’, based on understanding user needs and putting a premium on the user experience. Perhaps it’s better to adopt the term ‘minimum lovable product’ as the starting point, especially in a world where the organisation-owned workplace has such a lot of competition from alternative locations. As people say, the workplace has to earn the commute. This is an important principle – to have an initial ‘wow factor’ and engender a feeling that the new workplace is a significant step up from whatever went before. This is very valuable for getting people on board and supporting the culture change programme. Neil Usher also has an interesting take on the Minimum Viable Workplace having a strong sustainability dimension. He defines it as: Only that which is required in a physical space to enable effective and efficient individual and group work, while understanding, respecting, balancing and responding to the needs of the people, the organisation, the host community and the planet as they change over time. And no more17. Neil strongly advocates taking a Triple Bottom Line approach. ‘There needs to be a much bigger push towards sharing space,’ he told me. There’s a responsibility to both the environment and society. Sooner or later we’ll see a lot of corporate space being shared. We won’t tolerate the waste of under-use and buildings being nearly empty. We should be heading towards a more stripped down but higher quality workplace. It’s not a question of choice anymore – it’s an imperative18.

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We will look at this further in Chapter 14 on the environmental impacts of Smart Working. For now we can pose the questions: • How many more offices do we need, given the changing nature of work and the environmental costs of new build or refurbishment? • How can workplaces be integrated more into their host community, to avoid duplication, to enable use by others, and to stimulate local economies rather than standing separate from them? These are questions not just for the users of offices and other workplaces, but also for those who provide them. Space as a service and its implications As new work environments are being used in a different way, with more people using it on an as-needed basis, there’s a need to rethink how space is both delivered and operated. Leading thinkers in the real estate industry Rob Harris19 and Chris Kane20 have put the argument forward for rethinking how real estate is provided to occupiers. This involves moving away from the traditional landlord and tenant model to one where the providers of workspace see themselves as service providers – moving from a building-centric to a people-centric model, as Chris Kane puts it. So rather than a fixed model of providing premises in which the occupiers have a long lease and then customise to their requirements, there is a more fluid model that recognises new ways of working, the need for more human and healthy workplaces, the need to be adaptable and the possibilities for shared use of the premises. This in part reflects the impact of the growing flexible officing and coworking markets that have been disrupting the corporate real estate market. Rob Harris makes the point that this shift reflects the changing nature of organisations. The adoption of digital technologies that has influenced office design over the past 30 years is now going a stage further and we are entering an era dominated by networked organisations with a blurring of the digital and the physical. Their relationship with corporate property changes, with a much-reduced appetite for a fixed corporate centre to accommodate most of their employees most of the time.

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The implications of Smart Working for facilities management The more dynamic ways that organisations and their employees interface with their premises in the context of Smart Working has consequences for facilities management. Traditional approaches to FM need to evolve towards more of a hospitality approach, along the lines of a serviced office or coworking centre. That is, when people do come into the workplace, they just need everything to work in all the settings they use. It’s no longer good enough to raise an enquiry with FM or to raise a ticket with IT, who will triage your enquiry and get back to you in a couple of days. There needs to be someone who can just sort things out in the meeting space or in the work position you use if there’s something amiss, or if you just need to be sure that a meeting room will be prepared, cleaned, refreshments provided and that someone will support you in joining an important virtual or hybrid meeting. The niggles we encounter often cut across the traditional areas of FM and IT. So a degree of multi-skilling to deal with basic enquiries is important. Reception staff with the requisite skills to welcome you and see that everything is OK, and/or a ‘concierge’ function is important. But some organisations are also going beyond this kind of practical support into enhancing the workplace experience by actively promoting community, as is done in many coworking centres. This may be especially important in organisations where people spend a lot of time away from the collective workplace. And for this to happen, it’s necessary to have good quality, welcoming and well-managed social spaces. Liberate the office by getting rid of ‘stuff’ Storage is often one of the most contentious issues when it comes to implementing Smart Working environments. Over the years, I’ve seen people ready to go to war to retain their valued under-desk pedestals, even though they will no longer have their own desk. Or retain an archive of documents stretching back 30 years. Or places to keep a hat, coat and handbag – which is quite reasonable. Or a place to keep their pencils (seriously) which begs a number of questions. As well as wanting to keep personalised storage, people will often argue to retain other artefacts such as personal printers or wastepaper baskets. As a result of working beyond the office during the pandemic, there has been an acceleration of trends towards having paperless offices – or, as I prefer to put it,

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Personal

Team

Physical

Electronic

On office floor

Off floor Off site

Figure 6.3: Trajectories for storage reform.

‘primarily paperless’ offices. As a result, many organisations have been able to make very substantial reductions in the amount of storage in workplaces – all those filing cabinets, filing cupboards, open shelving and basement filing archives. But still in many organisations, there is a huge amount of clutter in the office. It’s mostly an expensive waste of space. Rationalising storage needs to be dealt with on a strategic basis, with identified trajectories of reform, and acknowledging/integrating linkages to other policies. As an underlying principle, storage reform needs to work along the three trajectories identified in Figure 6.3. First, personal storage will be largely replaced by team storage – as per the Smart culture principle of there being an ‘emphasis on shared rather than individualised space and resources’ (see Chapter 9). Residual personal storage is not kept at desks or in a pedestal underneath, but in a separate locker area or similar. Secondly, physical filing should be replaced as far as possible by electronic storage. This is not only more efficient, but is vital both for remote working and for facilitating effective space-sharing. Thirdly, as far as possible any remaining physical storage, such as files that may need to be retained for audit or for statutory reasons, should be stored off the office floor, and preferably off site. Removing all this storage does liberate office space. If people object, they need to be reminded of the cost of the office floorspace taken up by the storage (including the circulation space required nearby) and the opportunity cost in relation to introducing better work environments. The office should be for people, not paper. Implications for real estate strategy Changes to ways of working and to workplace design have implications for the overall property asset strategy. It’s partly about how much property an

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organisation needs now that so many people can work elsewhere across the Extended Workplace. But it’s not as simple as working out how much the amount of real estate can be reduced. It should involve a complete reassessment of all property assets in terms of how well they can be remodelled to support Smart Working – and the various ways in which different properties in the portfolio can do that. Figure 6.4 sets out a process for rethinking real estate portfolios, based on the data we’ve recommended to inform the new ways of working (in Chapter 4 and earlier in this chapter), other sources of data and additional focused investigations and consultation. At the heart of the process are the need for a Smart Working Capacity Assessment, and a Smart Working Building Suitability Assessment. The Smart Working Capacity Assessment is about gauging the extent and impacts of Smart Working, in terms of where, when and how people will work. It is based on insights from the Smart Working employee survey and utilisation data. Existing HR data can be used to inform this also – e.g. employee home location data, and the numbers of people on formal Flexible Working arrangements and which buildings they currently have as a base.

P

Culture change

Technology & Process change

E O

Nature of work inves!ga!ons

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HR data SW Capacity Assessment

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U!lisa!on data

R T

SW Op!ons: Refurbish New build Relocate 3rd party space

Survey data SW Suitability Assessment

Sites data

Design of SW environment Facility upgrade needs

P E

Consulta!on

Tenure Buildings condi!on survey

Loca!on strategy

Design guide

Y Figure 6.4: Incorporating Smart Working in the workplace and real estate strategies.

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Further investigations are needed to understand the nature of different kinds of work that are carried out in different buildings – various types of hands-on or directly customer-facing work, contact centre work, teams embracing agile methodologies, etc. It also needs to take account of proposed changes to technologies and processes which will impact the potential mobility of people, both on the site and beyond. The Smart Working Suitability Assessment focuses on the suitability of individual buildings for supporting the new ways of working. It will incorporate the time-honoured elements of a condition survey – the physical condition of the fabric of the building, regulatory compliance, condition of the mechanical and electrical systems, environmental performance, its ability to provide any improved amenity and landscaping, and ability to support the number of people and traffic movements that may be involved in a more intensive use of the building. A key factor is the nature of the tenure of the building, whether it’s freehold, on a long lease or if there is an upcoming lease break, and rental costs. The temptation is often to dispose of the low-hanging fruit to reduce costs – but it’s possible that in doing so the best decisions aren’t being made about buildings that will best support smarter ways of working. There are some additional factors that also need to be considered beyond the traditional considerations in order to develop a new real estate strategy overall. These include key questions such as: • Will any or all of the buildings be used largely as drop-in centres for collaboration, and which buildings are best located to support that – both in terms of where employees (and new recruits) are located, and for serving customers? • Buildings might pass the condition tests, but are they well-suited for repurposing as activity-based working and being adaptable to future needs? • What is the balance between retaining or seeking to acquire your own drop-in space compared with using third-party spaces, such as coworking spaces or sharing facilities with a partner organisation (quite a hot topic in the public sector, and rightly so)? • Which buildings are best located and offer the best potential to reduce the carbon footprint of work, not only through the nature of the build/refurbishment and its operation, but also by reducing the need for employees to travel (both business travel and commuting)?

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• Is there the potential to upgrade the facilities for site-based workers, so they don’t see themselves as the poor relations of the knowledge workers with their new freedoms, super-smart work environments and fancy technology? Over the years I’ve seen many workplace projects that start from the consideration of a single building, catalysed by the need or opportunity to find new premises, or perhaps as phase 1 of a longer programme, rather than being part of a strategic programme overall. I have also come across organisations that don’t have consolidated or reliable information about their property portfolio, and the choice of buildings to retain or dispose of seems a bit random – the result of tactical decisions rather than a comprehensive strategy. So it’s essential to have a strategy fully based on Smart Working, informed by the best information about buildings and how they are used, and assess the opportunity to maximise the Triple Bottom Line benefits we have noted. This should determine which buildings should be disposed of and which retained, plus options for new build, refurbishment, relocation to purpose-designed new premises, and/or use of third-party space. Very possibly a large organisation will use a mixture of all of these options. Consolidation and decentralisation For some organisations this may mean the consolidation of disparate buildings on a single site. This was the case with Vodafone UK, which in its pre-pandemic Better Ways of Working programme brought together a disparate property portfolio that had grown over the years onto its Newbury campus, supported by high levels of work flexibility and new activity-based office environments21. As well as this kind of consolidation, there are also examples where smarter ways of working are impacting large industrial or former military sites that had previously been characterised by many separate buildings, including many from World War II and the Cold War, housing separate and often quite siloed activities. New ways of working enable organisations to bring more functions and people together within the site, creating more of a campus atmosphere with both a large central building and increased options to work in other locations across the site, as well as in an Extended Workplace beyond the site. This is part of the approach in our case study of AWE plc.

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Case study: Smarter Working and Workplace at AWE AWE (the UK Atomic Weapons Establishment) has adopted a phased approach to Smarter Working since 2016. This has included very challenging technology modernisation and plans for a central office building at the largest of its four sites as well as creating new engineering and research facilities. AWE is an arm’s length non-departmental public body owned by the Ministry of Defence. It supports the UK’s nuclear defence capability and carries out leading-edge research to support the UK’s counter-terrorism and nuclear-threat-reduction activities. As such, it’s work is both highly bespoke and has the highest requirements for security and safety. It’s within this context of operational needs that Smarter Working has been developed in line with the UK central government programme, tailored to their specific needs. Currently the organisation has some 500 buildings spread across its main Aldermaston site, a former RAF base. Some of these buildings go back to the 1950s, and many are coming to the end of life. The number of these has grown over nearly three quarters of a century, in line with taking on new responsibilities and projects. According to Estate Masterplanner Adrian Burton, much of the work was carried out on a strictly need-to-know basis, but the dispersed nature of the buildings has tended towards working in silos. The new building will support a more integrated system, with everyone based in one place’, says Adrian. ‘This greatly increases the potential for knowledge transfer and interaction between colleagues. It will be more effective in terms of collaboration and learning, with the shared spaces and facilities. The pandemic has also changed mindsets. There were previously many people who said they couldn’t work from home, but in the event they were able to do at least some of the work from there. This helped to shine a light on just how much people needed to be able to do their work on the secure network, ‘RedNet’. While some needed to use it

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all the time, about 60% of people use it for specific purposes, with other work being of a less secret nature. During the pandemic, some people came onto site every day, and going forward this will still be the case. As well as the nature of the work, there appears to be something of a generational factor here. ‘Younger people starting out want to get to know the world of work, while people reaching retirement and people with families were less likely to come in, but recognise their interaction needs’, says Adrian. ‘Going forward, there is not an overall mandate for time spent on site. Instead, it’s down to decision by local teams and captured in their Team Charters.’ Teams are allocated their own team neighbourhoods. Shared facilities include a wide range of different kinds of meeting rooms, focus rooms and project rooms. The project rooms are located in one area, rather than being spread around amongst teams and risk their being colonised. One wing of the new building is designed as a high-quality Learning Wing. This includes an auditorium, open and enclosed study spaces, and flexible meeting spaces that enable hybrid meetings. This reflects the need to be a learning organisation able to keep at the forefront of innovation. There is a high premium put on reconfigurability of space. For visual, and to some degree acoustic, separation of open-plan space, there are movable and customisable partitions that can incorporate writable walls, screens, bookshelves, planting, etc. These create a team identity and it is up to teams how to use them. While needing to meet government guidelines, the overall design resists high density, in order to provide better work environments. There are a wide range of different settings, which is part of the approach to providing a more inclusive workplace, so that people have a greater choice and can find environments that suit them and their work better. The inclusive approach also includes an innovative approach to providing settings suitable for people on the neurodiversity spectrum (which is discussed in detail in Chapter 13). The new building also includes outdoor spaces, with courtyards at the north and south to provide sun and shade. There is also a progressive approach to restoring the natural environment, with planting around the pond and work on the footpaths, with seating as places to reenergise. A biodiversity of gain of 40% is projected, though at this stage Adrian says it will essentially be ‘a large industrial site with a green oasis’.

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Overall it’s been a highly consultative process, with a strong focus on creating the right space for different kinds of work for different teams in an organisation with unique and highly specialised work. In some of the implementations I’ve worked on, part of the quid pro quo that has enabled senior managers to move their thinking forward on space-sharing within a smaller overall footprint has been the prospect, sometimes for the first time, of bringing all their people together in one location. For other managers, the attraction has been to increase the effectiveness of cross-team working by closer colocation with other teams their people often work with. To make this happen usually requires becoming acculturated to a blend of onsite and virtual working. So while there’s a consolidation of buildings, it is predicated on more effective working across a wider range of locations. This has all kinds of implications for the evolution of working practices across the Extended Workplace. For example, it can bring a new dimension to how project work is undertaken across locations, or how people are promoted into positions of responsibility. It’s about what works best, or what can only be done, at the consolidated site and what can be effectively done elsewhere – not only for employees, but also for contractors, partners, suppliers and customers. We’ve explored in this chapter how the organisation-owned workplace can change for the better with Smart Working. Subsequent chapters will focus on other parts of the Extended Workplace, with Chapter 13 on Wellbeing looking closely at factors that apply to all locations about the quality of the work experience. Notes 1 The term ‘activity-based working’ was coined in the early 1990s by Dutch workplace consultants Veldhoen & Co, though the concept has earlier roots. A number of workplace companies, in particular DEGW led by Frank Duffy, were developing similar approaches that have been very influential on workplace design since the 1990s. See www.veldhoencompany.com/en/activitybased-working/ 2 For a more detailed guide to ABW and how that translates into workplace design, a helpful guide is Juriaan van Meel’s (2020) Activity-based Working: The Purenet Practice Guide. 2nd edition. ICOP.

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3 Cushman & Wakefield, 6 feet office, www.cushmanwakefield.com/en/ netherlands/six-feet-office. I suspect this link may have a limited shelf-life. 4 British Council for Offices (20 September 2022), The Future of UK Office Densities, www.bco.org.uk/Research/Publications/The_Future_of_UK_Office_Densities. aspx 5 This high-profile publicity stunt attracted a great deal of media attention and social media comment, e.g. Jim Waterson (23 April 2022), ‘“Condescending”: Jacob ReesMogg leaves notes for WFH civil servants’, The Guardian, www.theguardian.com/ politics/2022/apr/23/condescending-jacob-rees-mogg-leaves-notes-for-wfhcivil-servants. That civil servants in the department concerned don’t actually have desks of their own seems to have escaped the attention of both the minister involved and most of the people commenting on the topic. 6 As reportedly offered by a UK law firm: see Jonathan Ames (2 May 2022), Leave office behind for a 20% work from home pay cut, The Times, www.thetimes. co.uk/article/leave-office-behind-wfh-pay-cut-w5rbv87gh 7 Andrew Wade (18 July 2018), Rolls-Royce robots promise maintenance revolution, The Engineer, www.theengineer.co.uk/rolls-royce-robots-maintenance/ 8 Stuart Nathan (11 September 2019), Repairs on high: Engineering innovation in aircraft maintenance, The Engineer, www.theengineer.co.uk/repairs-on-highengineering-innovation-in-aircraft-maintenance 9 Designboom, (10 February 2019), Inside Jaguar’s new 39,000 square foot design studio in Gaydon, UK, www.designboom.com/technology/new-jaguar-designstudio-gaydon-uk-10-02-2019/. A video can be viewed at: www.youtube. com/watch?v=G7JqnOkf_ak 10 Paige Hodsman and Nigel Oseland (2018), Design Guidance on Eliminating Office Noise: A Psychoacoustic Approach, available from Saint-Gobain Ecophon, www.ecophon.com 11 ISO 22955:2021 Acoustics — Acoustic Quality of Open Office Spaces. International Organization for Standardisation. www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:22955:ed1:v1:en 12 Presentation by Jack Harvie-Clark at the European Smart Work Network (July 2021), The new ISO 22955: Acoustic quality of open office spaces and creating a workplace to love. A recording can be seen at https://smart-work.net/catch-upwatch-our-july-2021-european-open-meeting/ 13 Jack Harvie-Clark and Richard Hinton (2021), The Value of Control for Acoustic Satisfaction: A case study. 13th ICBEN Congress on Noise as a Public Health Problem.

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14 15

16 17 18 19 20 21

Available at www.apexacoustics.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/ApexAcoustics_The-value-of-control-for-acoustics-in-open-plan-offices_-a-case-study_ ICBEN-2021_v2.pdf There’s an instructive summary of biophilia and its implications for design in Nigel Oseland (2021), Beyond the Workplace Zoo: Humanising the Office. Routledge. An authoritative source for biophilic design is William Browning, Catherine Ryan and Joseph Clancy (2014), 14 Patterns of Biophilic Design – Improving Health & Well-Being in the Built Environment. Terrapin Bright Green. www. terrapinbrightgreen.com/reports/14-patterns/. The Journal of Biophilic Design also has a range of resources at https://journalofbiophilicdesign.com/. Neil Usher (2020), Elemental Change – Making Stuff Happen When Nothing Stands Still. LID Publishing, pp. 275–276. Neil Usher speaking during a MillerKnoll Insight Group webinar, March 2022. In conversation with the author, April 2022. Rob Harris (2021), London’s Global Office Economy: From Clerical Factory to Digital Hub. Routledge. Chris Kane (2020), Where Is My Office? Reimagining the Workplace for the 21st Century. Bloomsbury Business. Case study in Andy Lake (2016), Smart Flexibility: Moving Smart and Flexible Working from Theory to Practice. Routledge.

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Beyond Hybrid – the real world of work is much more than home and office In Chapter 6 we set out a brief summary of the new model of the ‘Extended Workplace’. In summary, the model consists of four domains for the physical workplace, as in Figures 6.1 and 7.1: Organisation-owned, Third-party-owned, Public and Personal. These are also unified by a fifth, the Virtual domain. In this chapter we’ll go into detail about how to make a ‘great place to work’ across the whole of the Extended Workplace. As the home has become for many a valued work location, there is a further chapter exploring best practice in more detail (Chapter 12). Above all, we hope to take the conversation beyond the stale and clichéd ‘home versus office’ conversation. Most people don’t work in offices. Many who do work in offices use that as a jumping-off point for their mission-critical work. And where home is an alternative, for millions it isn’t the only or most important alternative. So, in the following we’ll pick up on the guidance elsewhere in this book about how to transform work, and apply that to the range of possible locations beyond the company workplace. En route, we invite you to challenge some preconceptions, including those embedded in words we use on a daily basis – like ‘remote’. ‘Everyone’s got to be somewhere’: the continuing importance of place There’s an oft-repeated phrase hailing from the 1990s, ‘Work is what you do, not where you go’. It challenges the often-assumed necessary connection between work and a specific place, as when people say, ‘I’m going to work now’.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003288930-7

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However, it’s not the case that somehow you’re decorporealised and float around the ether when you work online, as you might assume from some of the remote work or metaverse evangelists. Here I’m reminded of Spike Milligan’s anecdote about when, during his military service, his commanding officer berated him, ‘Why are you standing there, man?’, he replied, ‘Everyone’s got to be somewhere, sir’1. We have many options now for where that ‘somewhere’ is for working. This doesn’t mean that place is now irrelevant, but rather that there is an obligation to consider the physical characteristics, comfort levels and productivity-potential of all the places we work from. The previous chapter has looked at Smart Working requirements for one of those somewheres, the collective workplace, the one the organisation calls its own. Equally, we need to examine how to create the best conditions for anywhere else we work. No one is remote – or everyone is remote ‘Remote’ as a word can carry the connotation of being away from where the significant action is happening. You are disconnected. Isolated, even. When ‘remote working’ is an exception and nearly everyone else is working at what are considered the company’s primary premises, this disconnection is often a feeling shared by both those in the primary workplace and those working away from it. Back in the mid-1990s when I was first working ‘remotely’, it really did feel remote, albeit pleasantly so. We had a company base within cycling distance (about 3 miles away), but I would still regularly work from home. This was mainly, but not only, to do research and writing. Head down, with fewer distractions, on my good old Apple Macintosh LC2. At that time, I was connecting back to the base and to the fledgeling World Wide Web with a connection and dial-up modem from Cambridge Cable, one of the early cable pioneers. So back then, working remotely really was a very different, more disconnected experience compared to working in an office. There were so many things one couldn’t do, or could only do very slowly or with workarounds. This was, nonetheless, the era when many of the first formal teleworking/telecommuting schemes were set up. While teleworking schemes enabled remote working, the culture and policies around them tended to reinforce the notion that the people working remotely were exceptions. Teleworkers needed special permission, and any problems could lead to their being recalled to the office.

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The experience of remote working then was an incomplete experience, for all the advantages in terms of reducing commuting, improving work–life balance and giving the chance to get one’s head down for concentrated work. Mindsets were formed over this era too, and have only been partially upgraded by the experience of extensive home-based working during the pandemic. In the 2020s, there is really no excuse for ‘remote’ working to be considered an anomaly. It should not be in any way a degraded experience of work. People can be connected to all their data, systems and colleagues as needed, and there is a rich variety of media and channels for interaction. Being disconnected, isolated and left out of things ought not to be issues just because one does not attend the main company workplace on a daily or regular basis. In fact, we’re already finding there are times when it’s the people in the historic office who are in the minority, and most of the people they need to work with are working elsewhere across the Extended Workplace. In this situation, those who have commuted into the collective workplace are just as ‘remote’ as any of their geographically distributed colleagues. This needs to become a principle – that everyone is considered equal, and no one place has priority in importance when most or all of the tasks involved can be done at other locations across the Extended Workplace. This kind of thinking underlies the Remote First or Virtual First concepts embraced by some organisations, as in our case study of Cimpress (in Chapter 13). Working practices and processes are designed with this equality between locations in mind. Everything ought to work so that people who are working in a variety of places are included rather than excluded. An overview of the Extended Workplace We introduced the concept of the Extended Workplace in the last chapter. Where Chapter 6 focused on the changing role and design of organisation-owned workplaces, in this chapter we drill into more detail about the wider range of spaces for work that people use, and how to create the best work experiences and outcomes wherever people are working. This is a fast-moving area of practice, with a lot of innovation, increasingly blurred boundaries – and a fair bit of hype from both vendors and commentators about the future of work. So the approach here will be practical, and based on detectable trends that stretch back over many years.

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We’ll also be taking into account the wide range of types of work people do, rather than follow the trend of focusing solely on office-based knowledge workers. So hopefully, what follows will be well-grounded and resonate for organisations that have a wide range of work requirements. Figure 7.1 expands on Figure 6.1 in terms of the nature of the Extended Workplace across the Third-Party, Public and Personal domains. We assume the introduction of activity-based work settings in organisationowned work premises, and will mention their relevance to other locations as we work our way through the other domains of the Extended Workplace. In this chapter we focus mainly on the Third-party-owned and Public domains, reserving more detail about the Home domain for Chapter 12. General principles for working across the Extended Workplace Before moving onto the detail, here are some general principles that apply to maximise the benefits of this new freedom of movement: • Choosing where to work across the Extended Workplace requires a purposeful approach that takes into account the needs of the business, the customer, the team and the individual • There needs to be a well-planned and properly resourced process for deconstructing the old place-based assumptions and biases about ‘the workplace’ (as traditionally conceived) being the most important place to be for all or most kinds of work • Decisions about where to work should be based around the needs of the task – this often includes consideration of the needs of colleagues in relation to the task as well • The purposeful approach requires taking on board the critical choice factors outlined in Figure 5.4 when making the decision about where to work – e.g. the financial and environmental costs, security, collaboration and the needs or expectations of the customer • There needs to be readiness to use the variety of communications channels and techniques, as appropriate to the context and the task in hand • Wherever people work, it’s important to optimise the environment (e.g. ergonomically, acoustically, aesthetically) and enable users to choose the best setting for the tasks in hand within that environment.

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In the rest of this chapter, we’ll explore the various places people may work. Then at the end we’ll draw together some options, issues and recommendations about how best to manage the interface between these locations, balancing the needs of the organisation and the preferences of the individual and team. Working at client or partner sites – and being hosts to clients and partners Home and coworking spaces receive a lot of attention in the media and in research. However, often the most common places where people need to work is at client or partner workplaces or out on site. For some technical experts and consultants, this may well be the main type of location where they work. When you’re the visiting worker, to a large extent you just have to accept the host organisation’s ways of doing things. Sometimes it’s specified in a contract. As my role has been to offer advice, it’s within scope to offer some friendly critique if there are things that can be done better and smarter. Often these arrangements are just habit. Or restrictions might be applied wider than necessary, for example necessary restrictions relating to working in a controlled area for security or safety reasons are applied to office areas as well. I’ve been in a couple of organisations where IT contracts specified that the contractors must always work on site. On a Friday, these stranded souls were almost the only people working in the office. Yet their work was well-suited to being carried out virtually. It seems someone had wanted to make sure that the contractors were putting the specified hours in, and therefore they should be on site. That is a management-by-presence hangover that ought to be consigned to history. There are better ways to monitor productivity and the fulfilment of service levels. As visitors to a client or partner site, one has limited agency to change how the host organisation works and the arrangements they specify. We can, however, seek to engage and influence. Quite often a process of positive engagement identifies habits and practices that haven’t previously been considered. It can lead either to direct changes, or for champions for change to emerge in the client organisation. It might even prove to be an early step in their journey into flexibility. Many organisations are now doing this quite well, providing work settings that can be readily used by the organisations they work with. These will include: • Guest Wi-Fi that’s easy to access • Cafés with some settings acoustically suitable for getting on with work

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• Coworking-style spaces available to both guests and the organisation’s own workforce, with a mix of activity-based settings for different types of work • If at a highly secure facility, workspace that sits outside the controlled access areas, where visitors can use their own technologies • A balanced approach to physical access, so that e.g. a visitor doesn’t need to ask for help every time they want to make a cup of tea or go the washroom. It involves thinking of the needs of contractors usually based on site and visitors attending for a meeting or specific piece of work. The needs of such external parties are likely to include having to liaise with colleagues in their own organisation at times, or do a piece of unrelated work during gaps in their work for the host organisation. Many contractors or colleagues from partner organisations don’t actually spend much time working in offices. They may spend time out on site, e.g. at a production facility, a research institute, within a hospital setting or at a construction site. Examples include being a project engineer, a technical expert, an inspector, working as part of an outsourced function such as security, facilities management or being a partner in an R&D project. In all these cases, both the host organisation and the visiting worker can benefit from an inclusive approach that recognises the need for the worker to be well integrated into systems and the ways of working at the site, and to be able to maintain good contact with colleagues in their own company. In addition, companies should be prepared to explore the options for external partners (as well as their own staff) to work from elsewhere when appropriate to do so. For example, this could be working virtually alongside someone on site as a remote expert, or being able to monitor or inspect via video or having access to live data. In the public sector, there is a growing trend for organisations to share premises. In the UK, this is actively encouraged by the One Public Estate programme. Buildings are shared between different tiers of local authorities, or bring together different services such as local authorities, police and health. The central government Hubs programme provides shared accommodation for central government departments and agencies that previously occupied separate premises. Providing a great environment for the work of non-employees is part of building a good partnership and a solid working relationship. So there are examples of banks providing coworking facilities for use by their customers, and of local authorities providing coworking-type facilities for use by small businesses or social enterprises, to

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promote economic or community development. We will have a further look at the opportunities and issues for the public sector in this regard in Chapter 14. The role of coworking spaces The fastest growing area of commercial property over the past decade has been in flexible officing and coworking space. A report by JLL2 in 2019 analysed this growth, and found that in the top 20 markets for flexible offices internationally, growth had been about 30% per year. The basic idea of a coworking space is of shared professional workspace which can be used either regularly or on a more as-needed basis. They provide shared facilities for working with a variety of settings, facilities for meetings, shared services and infrastructure. They bring together people from different companies to work in the same place, and part of the idea is to develop a sense of community and cross-fertilisation of ideas and creativity. It differs from a traditional serviced office in that the serviced office will usually offer distinct areas for different organisational customers, whereas the coworking concept is much more about sharing the space as a whole. Many coworking providers, however, also have anchor tenants who do have their own rented offices within the building, while also sharing the more communal facilities. So there are three main types of supply into the flexible office market: • Traditional serviced offices providers, such as IWG (the group that includes Regus) • Providers of hybrid space that offer a combination of serviced offices that can be rented and coworking space that is shared between those anchor tenants and individuals who use facilities on an as-needed basis • Providers of pure coworking space (i.e. not including any private office space). Projections before the pandemic were that total flexible office/coworking supply could amount to 30% of corporate office portfolios. During the pandemic, all providers have been hit, WeWork being the most high-profile casualty. However, the sector is projected to bounce back with the renewed interest in working flexibly and reshaping property portfolios. Anecdotally, we are hearing that providers have found during the pandemic a major uptick in interest from corporates. Previously, apart from some IWG

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locations, clients had been mainly small businesses, start-ups and freelancers looking for professional space and places to collaborate. As the market recovers post-pandemic, despite unfavourable broader economic circumstances, there has been significant recovery. Flexible space is predicted to reach 10% of the London office market, and there is expansion in regional cities too3. Market research by Research Nester projects a compound annual growth rate of 16.8% between 2020 and 2028, with the flexible office sector reaching a value of $38 billion globally by the end of 20284. As coworking rises, the corporate office shrinks One trend that runs alongside the growth of flexible officing/coworking is of organisations looking to break out of long leases in favour of shorter ones. As I write, Meta (the parent company of Facebook) has just revealed that it is spending $2 billion to exit office leases over the course of the year5, as well as shelving plans for office expansion in cities such as Austin and Boston. This will lead to savings in the longer term. And they are far from being the only company to do this. It’s a rational decision, given the options for working across the Extended Workplace and the onward march of artificial intelligence. And Meta isn’t the only one. Alphabet and Salesforce have abandoned planned expansions too6. And as we’ll see in Chapter 14, governments have been shrinking their office space too and will continue to do so. In reporting this, we have to be careful to separate long-term structural trends in the market from cyclical changes in response to difficult economic conditions. What we can say is that the economic difficulties and uncertainties of the times are concentrating minds on how to optimise the use of assets and become more agile in the face of increased risks. A trend within this picture is the inexorable decline of second and third tier office accommodation, even while premium offices remain in comparatively strong demand in the most favoured locations. A decline in the total amount of UK office space since 2014 has been accelerated during the pandemic, falling from just over 90 million m2 in March 2014 to 84.5 million m2 in March 20227. That’s a fall of 5.5 million m2. This trend is unlikely to be reversed, even with a return to economic growth. As one example, at the time of writing, legal giant Clifford Chance has signed agreements to lease 30,000 m2 of new office space in the City of London – less than half the 65,000 m2 it currently occupies. As the chief executive of GPE, the

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developer that will be Clifford Chance’s new landlord, said: ‘Customers are leasing space for their working patterns of tomorrow, not yesterday’8. How does this relate to the rise of flexible space? Organisations are looking not only to reduce real estate costs, but to shift costs for office accommodation from a fixed to a variable basis by using flexible third-party spaces as needed. So what we are looking at is continued demand for high-quality office space, but organisations no longer willing to be tied to large real estate portfolios. Probably, most large organisations could happily manage with 50% of the property they have (or that they previously had, prior to adopting Smart/ABW Working), by making greater use of third-party space and home-based working. The location of coworking spaces When we carried out one of the earliest reports into coworking for the UK government in 2010, we noted the crucial importance of location for the success of coworking centres9. The focus at this time was more in providing professional quality premises for small local businesses and freelancers. Many of these early independent workhubs (as they then tended to be called) were based in provincial towns with an attractive location, within easy reach for a sufficient number of local businesses and freelancers. In some cases there was also a regeneration dimension to these, with the restoration or repurposing of former industrial buildings or redundant offices. At the same time, there was a new wave of coworking spaces in large urban centres, some of them backed by substantial venture capital funding, with a view to developing a chain or network of such centres across the country or internationally. Metropolitan locations are favoured, with easy access for large working populations and public transport. In just a decade or so, coworking centres have been popping up in every major city in the world. Now we are seeing something of a merging of these two trends as the coworking and flexible office markets mature. There is a greater demand amongst corporate employees for professional space as an adjunct or alternative to homebased working. In the private sector, this means corporates will be more likely to use premises also used by freelancers and small businesses. The demand for more coworking spaces in provincial towns and rural areas is likely to increase as a) more people relocate for a better lifestyle, as evidenced during the pandemic, and b) new recruitment practices lead to a much more geographically distributed workforce for many organisations.

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The economics of running a coworking centre as a profit-making venture are challenging, and particularly so outside of major urban centres. We will explore further in Chapter 14 the use of public money to support such flexible work centres and the potential regeneration role of coworking in less favoured locations. The working environment of coworking spaces Jeremy Myerson and Philip Ross describe the key attributes of coworking spaces as: a membership model and facilitated experience that centres on service with “community hosts”, coffee and beer on tap, and an activated environment that combines cool design with activity and energy … that is harder to emulate in the corporate workplace, even though big organisations are trying10. The ‘community host’ is a distinctive role that some organisations are indeed trying to emulate internally, in their own flexible workplaces or drop-in locations. The aim is to help build the sense of community and shared endeavour within the organisation, as well as dealing with practical issues. This is about supporting a sense of community amongst a more mobile employee workforce, whereas coworking centres aim to foster cross-fertilisation between organisations, and/or develop connections with the wider local community. Employers may value the cross-fertilisation between organisations differently – as threat or opportunity. A perceived threat might be leakage of commercially sensitive information to competitors or breaches of cybersecurity. An opportunity might be to get closer to customers and prospects, keep abreast of the latest innovations or develop potential partnerships. The Google Campus in London has an aim of hosting many of the best brains and their innovative start-ups – and then possibly ‘adding their distinctiveness to their own’, as the saying goes11. For an individual, it’s the human connection that may be most valuable. If they mainly work from home and don’t get out much during their working hours, being in a professional work location with other people from time to time can give them a boost. Or if, perhaps, their home environment is not conducive to working well, they can base themselves there for more of the time. It’s when we get to the cool and funky interior design that one needs to pause and be prepared to critique. In nearly all the images one sees in the media, there are

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people working hunched over laptops, sitting on wooden chairs, high stools or sofas that encourage poor posture while working. In trying to recreate the vibe of a coffee shop or bar, they also risk offering a poor acoustic environment with insufficient separation for different activities. In fact, the images often preferred by photographers and media outlets don’t show the full range of settings that coworking centres usually have to offer. These may be tucked away in areas designed for more concentrated working, or in smaller offices that are rentable for the use of a single organisation, as in the hybrid model outlined on p. 168. So as well as the buzz, local convenience, net cost savings, recruitment advantages, networking and wellbeing benefits of using third-party flexible offices, organisations and individuals need to think of the total workplace experience just as much as they do for the collective workplace or the home environment. In part that’s about choosing the right coworking/flexible office provider: in terms of the locations, work settings and culture on offer. And in part it’s about the kit employees are provided with or have access to. If working for more than an hour or two in a setting, they need to have an ergonomic fully adjustable chair, surface at the optimal height, a screen to connect to or a laptop/tablet riser (with separate keyboard and mouse) that sets the screen(s) at the correct height. There also needs to be the right level of acoustic separation appropriate to the tasks undertaken and preference of the user. In passing, we should note that at the other end of the scale to the best coworking centres, there are quite a few surplus offices, or desks in under-occupied offices, now being marketed as ‘coworking’ space. These can offer second-rate office environments with few of the social or other advantages of a true coworking centre or a properly managed serviced office. There is a big range in pricing, quality and value, so it’s a case of caveat emptor in this important and growing market! The immense diversity of coworking space If you want to dive further into the variety of coworking spaces, you could do no better than to check out Around the World in 250 Coworking Spaces, by Pauline Roussel and Dimitar Inchev. It captures the stories of the coworking spaces they visited over a 5-year period between 2016 and 202112. Since 2010 when we produced the Workhubs report for a consortium of UK government departments and agencies, the diversity of coworking spaces we found

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has continued to increase. While the dominant image of a coworking space is one where people are primarily involved in office-type knowledge work, in reality it’s much more diverse than that. We’ll see a similar underestimated – and under-valued – diversity in home-based working in Chapter 12. Many coworking centres across the world have a focus on specific sectors. While on the one hand it might be digital technologies, there are also many focusing on more traditional sectors such as fashion and textiles or food. These require different kinds of offering, with different kinds of space, facilities and services to attract small businesses and start-ups, or larger businesses in the sector looking for a space to innovate or to establish relationships with new talent in the field. Figure 7.2 provides an illustration of the types of target clients and external relationships to be found in coworking currently, set against the nature of coworking offerings. Some coworking spaces have a focus on specific groups of people, rather than sectors. There are coworking centres looking to support people into work or changing career direction, such as women, older workers, unemployed people, people with disabilities or ethnic minorities. In these cases, there is often support from local government or other agencies, sometimes associated with regeneration objectives as well. There are numerous examples of independent coworking spaces that are set up with these kinds of aims. Nearly all coworking centres aim to build community amongst their members. Beyond that, their goals tend to be driven by the values and passion of the founder(s), sometimes by the community there, and by the nature of their external relationships. An increasing number seem to be driven by strong environmental concerns, fostering the development of businesses in either more traditional or newer, more digital ways. This focus can be reflected in design, such as at Nest City Lab in Barcelona. With the use throughout of natural materials and planting, the whole approach is strongly biophilic. The space includes ‘400 m2 of permaculture space with an edible forest, an urban farm with aeroponic towers, a yoga and mindfulness space, a plant-based post-industrial kitchen, a plant-based cheese factory, a showroom for makers, a wellness space, and a shared space for entrepreneurs, startups, and small companies, housed in a restored foundry’13. As well as being a place for entrepreneurs, it’s purpose is as a ‘lab for ideas’. Coworking spaces being crucibles for ideas and innovation has also driven a strong interest from higher education institutions in coworking spaces. These

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operate as places to potentially incubate start-ups based on intellectual property developed through university research, or places where other small businesses and start-ups can interact with university researchers and facilities. Founders may also have strong commercial motivations, such as aiming to create a network of profitable centres, possibly capitalising on falling property prices as well as the rising demand for this kind of space. Very large amounts of venture capital have been raised for such organisations. Generally, these will tend to be found in major urban centres where footfall can be higher with not only a greater volume of start-ups and small businesses, but also the possibility of securing larger corporate customers to be anchor tenants with dedicated space or a higher number of employees signed up to use as needed. The rise of maker space We see again in this flexible space market, for the most part, a focus on (otherwise) office-based knowledge workers, whose work is by nature much more footloose. We are however beginning to see innovation in flexible space for work where there might be significant requirements for hands-on work. Flexible space company Plus X has developed innovation centres in Hayes, West London and Brighton, in the UK, that include engineering workshops for prototyping, electronics labs including 3D printing facilities, alongside coworking settings14. A number of companies across the world are setting out to become ‘the WeWork of manufacturing’, providing ‘co-manufacturing spaces’, such as Smart Factory Kunshan, a joint venture between Jiangsu provincial government and the German company Startup Factory15. Other examples around the world include DoES Liverpool16, WoMa in Paris17, Fab Café in more than a dozen global locations, including Tokyo, Kyoto, Taipei, Toulouse and Mexico City18, MotionLab in Berlin which has a special focus on transport engineering19, and THE Workshop, Bangalore20. Each has their own ethos, but promote and support hands-on fabrication. Now we also see the much-needed development of shared labs for bioscience, with organisations such as Princeton BioLabs21, SmartLabs in Boston, San Francisco and Philadelphia22 and others connected with universities, providing access to industry partners and possible investors. NSG BioLabs in Singapore provides shared labs and coworking space23. All these provide access to specialist equipment in certified safe environments. Such facilities can be financially out of

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reach for start-ups, or hard to justify in a speculative business case for a research team in a large organisation. Another interesting model is the labs provided in shipping containers by OpenCell in London, which create ad hoc communities of researchers and small businesses, located close to university and industry expertise24. These kinds of innovation centres with shared facilities and services for hands-on work and production are a different offering to more traditional business incubation models, which either tend to offer office space or empty space for workshops that the client then kit out for themselves. One feature of most of these maker spaces is having onsite expertise and services that create learning environments. This is a different level of service provision requiring a higher level of investment, compared to the typical high street coworking centre. In terms of ethos, a concept used frequently by providers is ‘democratisation’: of manufacturing or the specialist kinds of making and the equipment used, by bringing them in reach of smaller businesses, individual entrepreneurs and even, in some cases, hobbyists. In principle they have the advantage of greatly reducing upfront investment and overheads for both small businesses and teams in larger companies, as well as professional support and opportunities for networking. These are still quite early days, but I’m sure we’ll see many more of these kinds of spaces developing and different models of offering. What is also fascinating from a Smart Working perspective is how these handson facilities and associated coworking settings interface with the wider Extended Workplace. They increase the possibilities for accessing space-as-a-service on a wider front than simply accessing office space. They also have an impact on the possibility for ‘hybrid’ home-based businesses that also use the maker space for specific purposes. And for technologies used in computer-aided manufacturing – whether additive manufacturing (3D printing) or automated subtractive techniques using CNC machining – the work in designing the models and using the software that controls the production can in principle be carried out elsewhere, at least some of the time. So over time we can expect to see more of the kinds of spatial impacts and blurring of boundaries, as were set out in the previous chapter in relation to work in an organisation’s own hands-on facilities (Figure 6.2). Another transformative aspect comes with the flexibility and adaptability of the space providers, in being able to respond to the specific requirements of customers.

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This can have an impact on organisations that might in the past have decided to outsource R&D to third parties in order to control costs. With flexible maker space, it becomes more viable to outsource only the provision of space rather than the R&D itself, which now the in-house team can run for themselves. Future trends in flexible officing and coworking space Earlier in the chapter I highlighted some projections of the growth of this sector. But what of the forms that such growth would take, and the implications for the Extended Workplace? We come back again to the maxim that the future of work is always plural and multispeed. We live in volatile and uncertain times, and we’re looking at a sector that inspires a great deal of innovation, experimentation and speculative investment at almost every level. There will be advances and setbacks, successes and failures, plus plenty of hope and hype. But on the basis of past experience and current trends, we can expect to see: • A period of consolidation in the sector, with business failures, acquisitions, mergers, reinvention and rebranding. It’s possible that by the time you are reading this, some of the mentioned coworking providers will no longer be there. But overall we can expect the sector to grow and provide new offerings • Many of the providers targeting niche groups will either struggle or widen their focus to be more inclusive • There will be a significant increase in the number and variety of maker spaces, often associated with large companies or higher education and research institutions • There will be a growth in coworking offerings that target new technology sectors such as AI, robotics, virtual reality, the metaverse and gaming • There will be slow but significant growth of corporate interest in coworking space, primarily with providers that have larger networks of centres … but for the most part, large organisations will be interested in having dedicated space with flexible office providers (more than supporting individual employees to use a local coworking centre) – a kind of mix of contractual real estate flexibility and territoriality • The ethos of coworking and coworking design will increasingly influence how employers redesign their own workspaces, and some may outsource the running of parts of their workspace to successful coworking providers

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• The current public sector interest in coworking as a vehicle for regeneration will grow strongly, with many new ventures … However, coworking operators that depend on continuing funding from the public sector are likely to face a challenging future. They may go the way of the telecottages and telecentres before them that were public sector flavour-of-themonth, until their return on investment was questioned and their funding cut • Secondary markets around flexible offices and coworking, i.e. those companies offering services to the providers and their customers, will increase in line with the growth of the market overall. This is most likely to be in areas such as membership management, marketing, specialist technology provision, catering services, event management, real estate services (space booking, access control, visitor management, occupancy monitoring, etc.). Pauline Roussel, co-author of Around the World in 250 Coworking Spaces, anticipates a doubling of the number of coworking to around 40,000 between 2020 and 2024, the emergence of dominant regional players, and new areas of business in railway stations, airports and hotels25. We need to think what the world will look like when many people in the workforce will have developed their careers while working extensively from home and from coworking spaces, with only a minority of their experience formed within a more traditional organisation-owned workplace. Their expectations of the organisation-owned workplace will surely be different from those of people who have been acculturated to more traditional corporate work settings. Trains, planes and automobiles – working on the move Smart Working not only reduces the need to travel, it alters the relationship between working and travelling. Business travellers have long been able to undertake some work when travelling or waiting at a train station or airport. But historically, it was a disconnected experience, offline and often paper-based. Or travelling was a time to relax and enjoy being disconnected, the value of which should not be discounted. What has happened is that we now have the choice, if we so desire, to use journey time productively and, for the most part, have access to our work information, systems and colleagues. In former times when I was travelling up and down the east coast train line, the train Wi-Fi was so awful I would often arrive in London before any emails I sent en

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route. Though not yet perfect, the technology infrastructure available to customers on trains and at stations has improved. The settings for working, however, can leave a lot to be desired with cramped seating making it difficult or impossible to work comfortably on a laptop unless travelling first class. So there is still a lot that train operators and rail network companies need to do to facilitate an optimal working environment for their business travellers. When the train Wi-Fi fails, we can always use a mobile hotspot from our smartphones. However, in the UK there are still too many ‘not-spots’ for mobile telecommunications, which often makes calls and using mobile Wi-Fi frustrating experiences. And we don’t yet have mobile communications in the Underground (except when it goes overground) – despite other countries having cracked this nut more than a decade ago. So there’s still work for telecoms providers to do in partnership with public transport providers to create the seamless experience needed. People often work or have meetings at places like motorway service centres too. As well as providing places to touch down and catch up or do preparation work, they can also act as halfway points for meetings. Typically such meetings are held in café areas, which can be adequate but are generally not well set up for working. There have been initiatives to set up coworking spaces or business lounges at transport hubs, such as Regus lounges at some airports and motorway services. This is a trend that is likely to grow, even though organisations will also continue to curtail business travel in favour of virtual collaboration. Working in cafés, bars, hotels and other public premises Touching down to work when out and about will no doubt continue to be dominated by using cafés, bars, restaurants and hotel social areas. Providers have been responding to demand with better Wi-Fi and many more sockets to charge devices. People get to know their favourite locations for working – I prefer the ambience of bookshop cafés and some hotel café-bars as being more conducive to working. Another favourite when in London is the atrium at a concert hall, which has a variety of spaces for quiet working or meetings with colleagues. Acoustics are again a significant issue, particularly if one is having a phone call or video meeting. The latter is often an impossibility. That is something for providers to work on, I feel.

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Hotels that serve significant numbers of business travellers have long provided business centres and a range of business services. In my experience, these have often been of variable quality. The growth of anywhere working and of coworking are prompting many hotels to reshape their business offerings. The two primary trends are to: • Provide coworking spaces which are available to both guests and to people in the wider local community • Hire out rooms for the day for business use, to make greater use of underutilised assets. The Accor hotel group with property company Bouygues Immobilier has developed the coworking brand Wojo, and has been rolling out Wojo coworking centres and coworking ‘corners’ around the world, in both upmarket and economy hotels26. They, and other hotel groups, can leverage both their existing networks of locations and expertise in hospitality to provide quality coworking environments, combining them with the leisure services that provide the coworking vibe. This is an area where neologisms abound. Wojo likes to talk about ‘workspitality’. If that’s not clunky enough, you can always try ‘bleisure’ (= business + leisure, apparently). Still, ‘workspitality’ as a term does what it says on the tin, though I’m not sure it will make it into the Oxford English Dictionary. It’s possible that hotel-based coworking will inspire other coworking spaces to provide leisure services beyond ping pong tables and barista services, such as gyms, exercise classes and swimming pools, with a ratcheting up competitive combination of work and leisure facilities. For employers, there can be concern about the appropriateness of using premises open to the public as workplaces, and the kind of rules or guidance employees should follow. The key issues revolve around security and confidentiality. Organisations will usually have policies around data protection and mobile working that set basic standards. However, it can be a mistake to attempt to set out blanket rules or policies that cover every eventuality. It will probably also lead to unnecessary constraints if use of such spaces is specified by role. It’s really about the nature of the work that is being carried out, and this is usually best decided by the teams involved. A further consideration is health and safety. Working on a laptop or tablet for more than an hour or two should be supported by the use of a laptop/tablet riser to

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raise the height of the screen to eye level, or connecting to a separate screen. An organisation has a duty of care to their employees, wherever they are working. So recommending the appropriate behaviours and providing the right kit is very important. If using a laptop riser, then an additional keyboard and mouse are required. It’s also important that the chair and surface being used support best ergonomic practice. This is partly a question of provision, and partly a question of learning the right behaviours and making sensible judgements about choosing a suitable environment in which to work, related to the tasks in hand and the duration of the activity. There’s also the question of personality and preference. Some people thrive on being in an atmosphere with a bit of buzz, and can channel their attention well while drawing energy from the environment. Others may crave more peace and quiet. It is good to explore, through personal reflection and with colleagues, these kinds of preferences. Brian Elliott and his co-writers in How the Future Works recommend drawing up a ‘Personal Operating Manual’ that sets out amongst other things preferred workstyles. This is solid advice, and understanding why one prefers certain kinds of environment can be part of such an exercise27. Working in the great outdoors In Figure 7.1 I’ve included two types of outdoor working – ‘walking meetings’ and ‘field, park, beach’. We could also add in for good measure outdoor terraces at coffee shops, hotels and other public buildings, though they may provide less of a biophilic/nature-quotient benefit than being in the great outdoors. In principle, you can work from anywhere outdoors. The question is more, how can you be productive and comfortable while doing so? The lack of ubiquitous telecoms connection in the past spawned some interesting innovations, like the first Internet-connected park bench in Bury St Edmunds. The bench now has a plaque and its own Wikipedia entry28, but no longer has an Internet connection. Our smartphones do the job and we’re gradually getting to the point of ubiquitous connectivity. However, there is still a niche market for smart solar picnic benches that can provide lighting, Wi-Fi and USB charging points. These might be suitable for outdoor spaces on works sites, pub gardens, picnic areas and walking routes. There are actually a number of providers of such items.

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However, the main advantage of working outdoors – with or without smart benches – is being able to clear one’s head and be energised by being in contact with fresh air, real daylight and access to nature. We live in an increasingly urbanised world, where access to nature is limited and most of us spend the majority of our days living and working indoors. In his book Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder, author Richard Louv described a growing problem for children of their disconnection from the natural world – what he calls ‘nature deficit disorder’. He sees it as being comparable to a vitamin deficiency, which he later called ‘Vitamin N’ (the N being for nature, of course)29. This applies to adults as much as to children. Being outside is something we have mostly allocated to a portion of the time we reserve for leisure. Our ‘nature quotient’, as it’s increasingly called, is abysmally low for most of us. In the next couple of sections, we’ll look at ways that we can spend more time outdoors while working. Walking meetings ‘Walk with me’ became something of a catchphrase from American political drama The West Wing. President Bartlet would power-walk his advisers along the corridors of power in the White House, being generally decisive, listening actively or coming to a moment of realisation. This would mostly be walking indoors, apart from short walks outside to an awaiting helicopter. Walking outside purposively has benefits impacting productivity and wellbeing. Martine de Vaan, author of Walk Your Meeting30, says the health benefits of walking are well-evidenced, and most people don’t need much convincing about that. It’s the productivity benefits that Martine particularly emphasises when talking about walking meetings – or ‘weetings’, as she has christened them. ‘When you move, when you walk, you get better ideas. Research at Stanford University has shown that you get up to 60% more ideas when you’re walking,’ says Martine. And they can help participants focus on their goals rather than wander off topic. It’s important to have a well-chosen approach. Depending on the goal of your meeting, you can either use a more organic structure that you might use for some one-to-ones, or you can specify different points on the journey by which you should have achieved your goals, whether you are on track to

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meet the purposes of the meeting, and when to summarise and make notes. In either case the “weetingroute” helps you to keep time, when you see you’re arriving back, you know you have to make conclusions now31. Martine has identified several types of meeting which have different formats, e.g. for recurring meetings, such as one-to-ones, team meetings and progress checks; creative meetings, such as brainstorming, planning and decision-making; and educating and learning meetings, which can also be breakout sessions from larger learning events. One advantage that particularly struck me from Martine’s book is how walking meetings can make it easier to broach difficult subjects, especially between managers and employees, as you walk side by side rather than sitting in a room. This is the advantage of making use of an ‘active silence’, when the parties involved think and reflect. That could easily feel uncomfortable when sitting in an enclosed space together, but when outside it feels much more natural to pause and think while taking in the surroundings. You can also do walking meetings when the parties involved are in different places, something I have done on numerous occasions. You can use video, but unless your phone or camera is attached to your hat (for example), you’re going to get a very tired arm. And it probably distracts from engaging with the environment as you walk too. So voice-only is more natural. Having said that, it can help to build the relationship if you share views of your walking environment at times, or pause and sit somewhere en route (perhaps at one of those solar-powered picnic tables) to engage face-to-face. Having a well-planned and structured approach helps to ensure the focus is on the quality of the meeting rather than the quantity of the meeting – a lesson no doubt applicable to all meetings. There is now an annual Outdoor Office Day in June. It started in the Netherlands, but is now spreading worldwide32. Hopefully you and your organisation will be taking part. Now about these holiday locations … . In our diagrammatic outline of the Extended Workplace in Figure 7.1 I’ve included ‘holiday location’. And that may be a little contentious for some people. Even allowing for the hotel coworking trend mentioned earlier, surely holidays should be about getting away from work and recharging? In one sense, I’m just being

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realistic. People do work when they’re on holiday. And now there are tailored offerings described as ‘workations’, which I’ll come to shortly. When people look for accommodation online, good Wi-Fi is a must and is always highlighted on sites like Booking.com. We want good Internet connection not only to check restaurant reviews, but often to connect to our work. Does it add stress, or does it relieve stress knowing that things aren’t going awry while you’re away? The point is, you have the choice. I’ve put ‘holiday location’ overlapping into the Personal domain. That’s because although having a lodge in the woods, dacha or any other kind of second home is not common in the UK, in some countries it’s far from rare. It remains a dream for me still to live in a cabin by a lake writing the Great Workplace Novel, but one day it may happen. One day. The ‘workation’ as a specific offering has taken wing since 2020 for obvious reasons. But the concept is by no means entirely new. Back in the 1990s there were initiatives in Japan developing ‘Resort Offices’, usually partnerships between businesses and local authorities keen to boost the local economy. The promotional material at the time outlined the benefit as being a potential perk for hard-pressed employees to work in more pleasant environs. There was also a dimension to the concept as a benefit to family life. The man in a family, the salary earner, would be able to get on with his work remotely, while his wife and kids could enjoy themselves. And he could join in the fun too outside of working hours. Hopefully we’ve moved on from that gendered and regressive version of the concept. In practice, as I understand it, these resort offices operated pretty much like other telecentres in the mid-1990s, and were little used by family members. Some hosted corporate employees, while others operated like early versions of coworking centres, drawing clientele from local businesses and the self-employed33. Since 2020 we’ve seen a development in the concept of the workation as a result of the blurring of personal and work boundaries during lockdown. We ask ourselves, if we can work effectively from home, why can’t we also work from somewhere more exotic? Coconat, a workation retreat in the Brandenburg countryside not far from Berlin, describes itself as offering ‘community and concentrated work in nature’, with ‘space for anyone to be inspired, concentrate, work, and play in the countryside’. Coworking, workations and co-living are on the menu there. Centred around a historic manor house, there is an ethos of mixing work with having new experiences and making connections with new people and businesses34.

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Companies such as Workation35 offer tailored packages across Europe to attractive locations. The aim is to take the stress out of finding places that will support both the work and leisure experiences. Work-friendly accommodation and high-speed Internet are provided, and in some cases a public transport pass for the duration of the stay. Options might include a pass to a local coworking centre or gym. Packages can be tailored for singles, couples, families or groups. Large holiday companies like Tui are also recognising the appeal and have started to offer workations. And as high-speed Internet and anywhere working become normalised, we can expect to see most holiday companies and people letting properties promoting the capacity to work at their locations as a benefit. Despite this blurring of boundaries, there remains a qualitative difference between generalised holiday packages that provide a place you can work from and offerings that link coworking facilities and other elements of business and leisure support. There’s also a natural connection between the concept of workations and the rise of the digital nomad. Digital nomadism The digital nomad is someone who aspires to work on a more footloose basis as a central, and possibly permanent, part of their lifestyle. There is plenty of online information about the exotic places people have worked from, tips on the best coworking centres, beaches and bars, and advice on how to navigate (or evade) the myriad local regulations that apply. There is also an increasing number of sites specifically offering digital nomad work opportunities. There are now more than 20 countries that have specific digital nomad visas, allowing stays for work of variable duration. Typical stipulations are proof of minimum monthly income and of health insurance for the country concerned. Other provisions can be polar opposites – such as Germany wanting evidence of clients inside the country, and Mauritius requiring nomads to have clients from outside the country. Tax arrangements can be a bit of a minefield, as they can be for any corporate employee working for an employer based in another country. The majority of digital nomads are self-employed or involved in a small business enterprise. And most are young. Life as a digital nomad becomes trickier with children in tow, though the chance for children to grow up in other cultures may have an appeal – at least until they start complaining about being uprooted all the time and leaving their friends behind.

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In one sense this is all a natural progression for the digital age. There have always been people, mainly young people, who travel the world to work. At one time it would have been mainly doing bar work, working in hotels, on boats and so forth. Now we’re into an age where people can work digitally, and that opens up more opportunities. Airbnb has pushed out the nomadic boat on this one, allowing their employees to work in over 170 other countries for 90 days per year, per country, as well as working from home or any Airbnb office in their home country. This radical approach to locational flexibility in their Live and Work Anywhere policy of course aligns with their core offering of accommodation around the world36. Airbnb is also actively working with locations around the world to promote them as great places to work from. This is an area to watch for organisations, both in terms of the regulations that apply and also recruitment. It will be interesting to see how the HR department and hiring managers (and recruitment algorithms) react to CVs that show people floating from place to place over several years, and never having worked on the premises of an organisation. As an employer, would you welcome their enterprise and initiative, or does it all look too new age or maverick for your culture, and you wonder how they will fit in? Boundaries are blurring in the Extended Workplace There have been many research studies examining the blurring of boundaries between homes and offices over the past 30 years. They have tended to have mixed, even contradictory, outcomes, perhaps reflecting somewhat the preconceptions of the researchers in the way the studies are constructed and interpreted. As always, we need to look much wider than home versus office debates to understand the nuances of what is happening in the new world of work. We can see a cornucopia of blurring boundaries, between: • • • • •

Organisational space and customer space Public and private domains Journey time and work time Corporate workers and freelancers Indoors and outdoors

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• • • •

Space provision and service provision Organisational and home environments Work and leisure Physical and virtual environments.

These all present both opportunities and challenges. How organisations respond reflects mindsets tending towards control or towards innovation, as much as the context of the work tasks that people do. Impacts, options and recommendations for the Extended Workplace Understanding the options for working across the Extended Workplace is essential for taking thinking beyond the limited concept of Hybrid Working. It recognises, for a start, that most people do not work in offices, and the complex mobility requirements of the work that many people do, whether their base is an office, a lab, a production centre, the home or a third-party space. Employers need to: • Consider how the needs of the work are best served by working across the different locations – this requires a more nuanced approach then blanket approaches for all staff to spend time in the organisation-owned workplace • Ensure that employees have all the necessary access to the systems, data and tools that they need, by taking a strategic approach to the Virtual Workplace • Support teams and individuals making the most appropriate decisions that balance the needs of the work tasks with individual preferences • Take advantage of reducing the costs of work, by working through the opportunities to reduce travel and rethink or reduce their real estate requirements • Take account of the possibilities of the Extended Workplace for supporting new approaches to recruitment – which also raises the question of how geographically extended the Extended Workplace is. Do people need to be within reach of an office or other facility, within the same country or same time zone, or can people work anywhere across the globe? • Recognise the potential of providers of space-as-a-service, both flexible officing and coworking, and what it is they need from a provider for specific kinds of work, as well as issues such as how well do such providers support the need for virtual interaction between colleagues

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• Learn from the coworking sector techniques for building community amongst more transient populations, and taking a hospitality approach to facility management and IT support • Consider the potential local impacts of driving additional economic value in local communities, and engaging with local small businesses, freelancers and entrepreneurs, as well as building local awareness of brand. Understanding the Extended Workplace is also essential for start-ups and growing small businesses. The need to have a company-owned space is much reduced now. Employees working from home, from third-party spaces and at client premises is becoming much more the norm, and companies that take on additional staff and associates can expect to grow quite large using space-as-a-service to underpin their property strategy. The essential thing is to recognise that the old model of there being one dominant workplace for employees, with occasional exceptions, is slipping away, and one needs to design work around the opportunities for working more dynamically and seamlessly across the Extended Workplace. We will explore further the practicalities of doing this in the chapters on Embedding a Smart Working culture (Chapter 9), Leading the Anywhere, Anytime Team (Chapter 10) and being Smart, Flexbile and Productive (Chapter 11). The next chapter on Working in the Virtual Workplace goes deeper into the fifth domain, the Virtual Workplace, and the blurring of boundaries between the physical and digital.

Case study: Embracing the Extended Workplace at Poly One company that has grown and prospered while embracing Smarter Working is communications and collaboration specialists Poly – formerly Plantronics and Polycom, which came together in 2018 37. Both companies already had a strong history of supporting their 6,500 employees to work and collaborate over distance, and so Poly was well placed to make the switch to working from home during the pandemic. Poly (as Plantronics) initially embarked on its ‘Smarter Working’ programme as far back as 2008. What began as a project to rationalise office space and have a single UK HQ soon developed into a strategic programme to

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modernise working practices, improve the employee experience and make best use of the capabilities of the technologies they develop to work in more dynamic ways. This involved an integrated approach to change across the property, technology and people functions – or ‘bricks, bytes and behaviours’ – to deliver benefits across a broad front. The new culture that was developed focused on results rather than presence in the office. Employees were trusted to make the appropriate decisions about where and when to work, according to the nature of their work. This delivered results for both the business and for employees. Measured benefits include absenteeism reducing from 12.7% to 3.5%, and voluntary turnover of staff from 15% to 3.2%. Of the employees, 40% reported improved job satisfaction and 95% reported that they had a good work–life balance. Smarter Working is always a journey that evolves over time according to the needs of the organisation and the wider contexts of work and society. The bringing together of the two organisations followed by the onset of the pandemic brought about a move to 100% homeworking for employees in the UK and beyond, though only 10% had dedicated remote work contracts. Coming out of the pandemic, the future for Poly is one of Hybrid Working with employees able to choose where to work. This has prompted further rethinking about what offices are for. Hybrid work practices allowed for rethinking working patterns, fostering better collaboration and optimising the investment in real estate and facilities. Poly has been rolling out new ‘Experience Centres’ across the globe. These are designed both for the experience of customers and employees. The experience centres are the company’s real workplaces, designed with a varied ecosystem of settings reflecting the different kinds of work people do. As well as being tailored to the needs of staff, they enable an approach of ‘experience with’ for customers, more than ‘present to’, so customers can see and experience how technology is used in a real workplace. The workspaces have a wide range of activity-based settings, with areas for regular desk work, high concentration focus work, informal breakout spaces, huddle space, different types of meeting rooms and areas for relaxation and refreshment.

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The spaces are designed to accommodate different workstyles. Underlying this is a wealth of research into work personas to understand the varying needs of users of the space, in terms of their mobility, the balance of focus and collaboration work, whether their work is internally or externally focused and the kinds of technologies they need to use. This research involved surveying more than 5,000 workers across eight countries. This has had to take account of both changes in the ways people worked during the pandemic, and also their possibilities and preferences for working in the future. Video and audio technology is integrated into all settings. Enterprise-grade video bars, speakerphones, headsets and webcams help ensure that business processes are secure, protected and that technology is reliable and easy to use. The same quality of technology is available beyond the office too, with enterprise-grade home-setups, coworking spaces and satellite offices. Great importance is placed on the acoustic environment – for both the physical workplaces and the digital environment. The new Experience Centres are also designed to reflect and celebrate the cities where they are located – London, Beijing, Shanghai, New York, Bay Area and more to come. There’s a strong emphasis on inclusion, going beyond legislative requirements and offering a variety of settings that enable choice and control. Biophilic principles are also incorporated, with planting and maximising access to natural light. The latter, for example in London’s iconic ‘Gherkin’ tower, has also prompted new thinking in how cameras and screens operate in settings with high natural daylight. Overall, this results in a reduction of the real estate footprint. For example, the London office has seen more than a 40% reduction in footprint. The aim is for the ‘office’ to be a seamless blend of physical and virtual spaces, encompassing all the locations where employees work. One important principle for the new world of work is that allowing x square metres per person no longer dictates the workplace blueprint. Space has to be flexible, and variety is the answer, with a mix of spaces for different types of work. Smarter Working also involves continuing support on the cultural side. Poly has maintained its strong focus on managing by outcomes. This involves supporting colleagues, wherever and whenever they are working, and trusting them to deliver to objectives.

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Managers are given inclusion training to go beyond the usual day-to-day video meetings, such as virtual check-ins and celebratory calls for mini team wins. The organisation-wide effort is to ‘connect people, not things’, and the stronger culture that results reinforces the Smarter Working approach. According to Paul Clark, Managing Director, Poly EMEA, The big new battle front for hybrid working is “meeting equality”. Meeting equality is about the ability of all meeting participants to be heard with greater clarity and be seen with equal power, regardless of their individual locations. There’s a lot of innovation in this area, like having AI-driven camera arrays that can separate people in meeting rooms into separate streams, so they appear individually on screen. It helps give that equality of experience for people working remotely. Put simply, companies that understand the currency of total equality – between those in the room and those who aren’t – will be those defining and designing the future of work. 38

Notes 1 Spike Milligan (1972), in his unreliable war memoir, Hitler: My Part in his Downfall. Penguin Books. Versions of this exchange were also incorporated into The Goon Show. 2 JLL (2019), Disruption or Distraction: Is Flex Space Here for Good, or Just the Latest Real Estate Fashion? www.jll.de/content/dam/jll-com/documents/pdf/articles/ emea-jll-flex-space.pdf 3 Instant Office Group (4 July 2022), UK Flex Market Review 2022. www. theinstantgroup.com/en-gb/breakthrough-insights/industry-insights/uk-flexmarket-review-2022 4 Yashika Karodiwal and Radhika Gupta (2023), Growth drivers and challenges impacting the growth of the global flexible space market, Research Nester, www. researchnester.com/reports/global-flexible-spaces-market/3104 5 Jacob Wallace (27 October 2022), Meta expects to shell out $2B this year to get out of office leases, Bisnow, www.bisnow.com/national/news/office/meta-expects2b-in-losses-from-office-pullback-this-year-116066

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6 As reported by George Hammond and Cristina Criddle (22 December 2022), Tech giants ditch office space in London and Europe, Financial Times, www.ft.com/ content/3ef0d06e-3bf2-4dd1-9b0f-39b31aad74e7 7 Valuation Office Agency (30 June 2022), Non-domestic Rating: Business Floorspace, 2022. www.gov.uk/government/statistics/non-domestic-rating-stock-of-properties2022 8 George Hammond (21 November 2022), England’s stock of office space falls at fastest rate for 20 years, Financial Times, www.ft.com/content/132c6158-13c7487f-94fd-bc7e9efd9909 9 Tim Dwelly, Andy Lake and Lisa Thompson (2010), Workhubs: Smart Workspace for the Low Carbon Economy. Report for the Department for Communities and Local Government. Available at https://flexibility.co.uk/resources/ 10 Jeremy Myerson and Philip Ross (2022), Unworking: The Reinvention of the Modern Office. Reaktion Books. 11 For those not familiar with the phrase, it’s a reference to the phrase the Borg say when assimilating a species in Star Trek. 12 Pauline Roussel and Dimitar Inchev (2022), Around the World in 250 Coworking Spaces. Available at https://coworkiesbook.com/. 13 www.apocapocbcn.com/about 14 https://plusx.space/ 15 www.startupfactory-china.de/en/ 16 https://doesliverpool.com/ 17 https://woma.fr/ 18 https://fabcafe.com/ 19 https://motionlab.berlin/ 20 https://the-workshop.in/ 21 https://princetonbiolabs.com/ 22 www.smartlabs.com/ 23 https://nsgbio.com/#about 24 www.opencell.bio/ 25 In conversation with the author, December 2022. I am very indebted to Pauline for her insights and expertise in this sector. 26 For an outline, see https://group.accor.com/en/Actualites/2020/09/coworkinghotel-pop-up-offices 27 Brian Elliott, Sheela Subramanian and Helen Kupp (2022), How the Future Works: Leading Flexible Teams to do the Best Work of their Lives. Wiley.

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28 The Internet Bench’s Wikipedia page is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Internet_bench 29 Richard Louv (2010), Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from NatureDeficit Disorder. Atlantic Books. 30 Martine de Vaan (2021), Walk Your Meeting: Productiever overleg, meer bewegen en vaker naar buiten met weeting. Available in Dutch from Boom Publishing. An English edition is forthcoming. 31 A video of Martine de Vaan discussing walking meetings in conversation with Philip Vanhoutte, Co-Founder of the European Smart Work Network, is available at https://smart-work.net/walk-your-meeting-why-you-need-to-getout-more-for-productivity-health-and-wellbeing/ 32 Details of the Outdoor Office Day can be found at www.outdoorofficeday.nl/ english 33 Franklin Becker, Andrew J. Rappaport, Kristen L. Quinn and William R. Sims (1993), Telework Centers: An Evaluation of the North American and Japanese Experience. Cornell University International Workplace Studies Program. 34 Presentation at the Smart Work Network (February 2021). Further information at https://coconat-space.com/ 35 Workation can be found at https://workation.com/ 36 Airbnb CEO announced the policy in April 2022. The memo sent to employees can be found at https://news.airbnb.com/airbnbs-design-to-live-andwork-anywhere/ 37 During the time of writing and publication, Poly became part of HP. 38 In conversation with the author.

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The challenge – technology in a fast-changing world Effective use of technology is central to a strategic approach to Smart Working. Any book providing guidance about new ways of working needs to address the technology. But therein lies a problem: the pace of change is such that any book that focuses too closely on specific technologies is likely to be at least a little bit out of date even by the time it is published, and will become increasingly dated thereafter. So in this chapter I will attempt to provide focused insight that treads the difficult path between being specific and being generic. The aim is to provide principles to give guidance to the intelligent manager, who is not a technology specialist, about the role that technology plays in Smart Working. So here I’ll be analysing current trends, outlining some potential pitfalls and risking a bit of crystal ball gazing about what’s coming up on the horizon and how it may affect the increasingly flexible world of work. I’ll also take into account that while there are parts of the world where many organisations have made large steps towards smarter working, in other parts of the world they have barely started. Most of all, we’ll be exploring what it means in practice to see the Virtual Workplace as the fifth domain of the Extended Workplace. This involves considering the interaction and interdependencies of the digital space with the extended physical workplace and the ways in which we rethink work and culture for Smart Working.

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Principles for working in the Virtual Workplace In one very important way, the Virtual Workplace is essentially different from the other four workplace domains (Organisation-owned, Third-Party-owned, Public and Personal, as in Figures 6.1 and 7.1). That is, whenever you are working in one of the other domains, you’ll also be working in the Virtual Workplace – or at least need on-demand access to it. It’s the Virtual Workplace that connects us to information, applications and colleagues wherever we are working. It should support us frictionlessly as we move between settings in a physical workplace, and as we move between different locations. The following are some high-level principles to guide our approach to developing and working in the Virtual Workplace: • People should for the most part work with the same devices and systems, wherever they happen to be physically located • Technology and devices chosen should put a premium on supporting mobility – within places and between places • Processes are or become digital by default, while applications improve the experience of work and service delivery for the user • Processes and work practices will therefore be entirely or primarily paperless • Systems and infrastructure should be future-friendly and scalable • Everyone should adopt a willingness to innovate and experiment • The Virtual Workplace is not only internal – it reaches out for interactions with customers, partners and suppliers • There must be a strong focus on inclusion when specifying both technologies and ways of working with technology • There should be an openness to exploring new ways to communicate, collaborate and build community within the virtual environment • A respectful balance needs to be observed between keeping track of work, people’s freedom to choose where and when they work, and appropriate levels of privacy • Information security risks need to be managed appropriate to the context of both the nature of the work and the location it is carried out • The Virtual Workplace is not a ‘place’ as such – but wherever we work is (necessarily!) also in a place. The characteristics of the physical place may affect how we access the Virtual Workplace, and may at times limit access to

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information, systems and colleagues. Any limitations can be determined by rules, guidelines or team agreements, taking account of the nature of the tasks involved • Any non-technology changes in an organisation, such as restructuring or changes to the physical environments of work, work procedures, strategy or people processes, need to take account of the effective working of the Virtual Workplace – this is a key ingredient of ‘smart-proofing’ change. What kinds of technologies support Smart Working? Technologies for supporting Smart Working can be broken down into the following overlapping categories of technologies that: • Support mobility of work across the various settings within the organisationowned workplace • Support mobility of work across the Extended Workplace • Augment working practices and enhance output • Dematerialise resources used for work • Promote virtual interactions and new ways of meeting • Support the managing and monitoring of distributed working • Support health, wellbeing and inclusion. Pretty much any technology for Smart Working that you can think of will fall under one or more of these categories. And some, like technology for security, will be an underpinning feature of them all. Technology for mobility in the office Gaining the space-use efficiencies from Smart Working as discussed in Chapter 6 requires people to be much more mobile in terms of where they work in the organisation-owned workplace(s), and flexible in when they do it too. It involves space-sharing and working in a range of different work settings that are optimised for collaboration, specialist activities and short-term touch down between other activities. In terms of IT, this has to mean scaling back on the number of desktop PCs – even to the point of doing away with them altogether. The desktop PC as we

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know is likely to be a museum piece before long, in any case. What should be taking its place? At the moment, it will mainly be laptops and tablets. When people come into the office, they use the laptops they have taken with them on their travels, or ones that they keep in their locker, plus any ergonomic equipment necessary for working in their chosen setting. Meeting rooms and project areas need to be equipped with smart display technologies that are intuitive to use and easy to connect to, to enable collaborative work without recourse to using paper. In due course I am sure we will see all kinds of innovation in video walls, smart surface technologies and 3D applications that will augment the experience of working together – both for people physically present in the room and those beyond. Technologies for meeting rooms and other interaction spaces With the move to activity-based work settings and greater mobility within the workplace, there are more spaces for collaboration and interaction. In this context, the concept of the ‘meeting room’ has to evolve to encompass a range of settings with a sliding scale of formality to informality. The same room may in fact be reconfigurable to be more or less formal, depending on the nature of the activities involved. If we think of the range of settings where people meet to interact, these include: • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Large auditorium and town hall settings Large formal meeting rooms Demonstration areas Learning suites Small group enclosed meeting spaces One-to-one/two-person + virtual participant space Single person video call room/pod Semi-enclosed bay/booth for small group Semi-enclosed bay/booth for individual call Huddle/standup/(reconfigurable) project areas Informal breakout areas Touchdown tables Business lounge/coworking area Social areas.

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In or at any of these settings, interaction between people will almost certainly be assisted by having excellent audio-visual provision, which will vary according to the nature of the spaces and the tasks they are most likely to be used for. The traditional meeting room or boardroom layout with people craning their necks to look at 90 degrees at a screen was never good, and is now clearly past its sell-by date. Shifting the orientation of the seating with semi-circular or triangular layouts so everyone has more of a view of the screen can help both with the view of the screen for people in the room and for people joining virtually to see who is there. But that only takes us so far. Screens need to be bigger, even in the small group meeting spaces. Or have more than one screen so as to display a better view of the virtual participants, and also to see any shared materials at the same time. How people see each other and hear each other well is a major area of innovation. In more advanced solutions, artificial intelligence is able to distinguish who is speaking, to cancel out extraneous noise and provide an overall ‘meeting equality’ between participants, wherever they are located. This can involve cameras that turn to focus on people speaking, and/or an array of cameras to capture more of the dynamics of the meeting. Cameras pointed at boards that people write on and even with the capacity (using AI) to ‘look through’ the writer at what is being written can be part of the solution so people joining remotely can have a similar level of participation to those clustered around the board. As well as the technology involved, these kinds of solutions also require acoustic excellence within the room, and all participants adopting the etiquette required, so they don’t talk over each other. One- or two-person enclosed rooms and the semi-enclosed spaces (sometimes referred to as media booths) need a screen to connect with. For the semi-enclosed spaces, interaction with people joining virtually should be via noise-cancelling headsets to limit disturbance to others, and prevent ambient noise creating a poor audio experience for virtual participants. There is a view that any settings used for calls must have walls and a door, keeping sound sealed inside. While I respect that point of view, I think nevertheless there is a role for the more open approach, in areas that are well designed for that and where the ambience is one of a productive buzz, and with conversations that are not private or operationally sensitive. They work well in a more business lounge or coworking type of environment. Often such places are a favourite for groups to go and work when they have no virtual participants, and I think the style

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of that can be preserved when including people joining from elsewhere. Good acoustic screening remains a must, of course. Huddle rooms, spaces for standups, and settings for brainstorming and project work might be enclosed, or they may be partitioned off – sometimes with reconfigurable partitions, writable surfaces and smartscreens – within a more open activity-based setting. Cameras can be used to capture what people are doing and saying in such areas, as well as capturing electronically whatever is written on the screen. However, audio participation by virtual colleagues will be more problematic in such open settings. Except for such reconfigurable areas, it’s not a great idea to have mobile screens to push from meeting room to meeting room as needed. Clearly there are cost issues that drive such an approach to sharing technology between rooms, but over the years I’ve been in too many meetings that are slow to start because of setting up IT, and then finding for some reason it doesn’t work. And it’s unlikely to be optimised for the different room sizes and layouts. Besides, the need to have screens ready, there and waiting has risen dramatically. Not only should the technology be there and waiting, it needs to be a seamless experience for the users to just walk into the space, connect and get underway. Intuitive interfaces that don’t need a super-user or degree in IT to interpret are a must. Having on-hand support or a concierge service has become essential for smooth management of these interfaces across the Extended Workplace. Informal breakout spaces, touchdown tables and social areas need to have a good supply of power sockets for charging computing devices and phones. Apart from in the kinds of acoustically screened bays already mentioned, informal spaces generally won’t require screens to connect to. However, there are some social spaces that include large, even whole-wall, screens for visual connection between different workplaces, or to use for demonstrations, learning events and town hall-type events. They can also be used for decoration, using moving images to create different kinds of mood and biophilic effects. The kinds of spaces outlined here are all within the collective workplace(s). In Chapter 12 we’ll look at technology considerations for personal spaces in and around the home. There are a couple of important principles to remind ourselves of when we look at the requirements set out here: 1. The technology and acoustic needs of settings need to be worked through and budgeted for at the same time as developing the physical design and layout of the workplace

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2. Doing it well is not cheap. This is one reason why savings on real estate are important. The office is to a significant extent being transferred into the virtual space, and it will usually take a proportion of the savings on property to make this happen. My impression is that still many organisations that think they are embracing Hybrid Working are designing far too much of their space with a traditional mindset. This still results in a focus on desks, team areas and meeting rooms. Far too little attention is paid to mobility within buildings and across the Extended Workplace, and the centrality of virtual interaction to working with colleagues and external parties. Generally, there are too few places in most hybrid offices for people to jump on a call. The single-person phone booths are often poorly designed and uncomfortable, but are in high demand as the only option available. So having a far greater range of interaction spaces, both bookable and unbookable, enclosed or semi-enclosed, with seamless AV to connect to, is essential. Working and communicating across the Extended Workplace In terms of communications, flexibility is a must. Nothing frustrates plans for more effective use of space quite like inflexible telephony. Traditional ways of working evolved to where each employee had one desk, one phone, one phone number – all individually assigned. Moving desk involved a call to facilities and/or IT to reassign a phone to the extension number. And that made moves very expensive. The ability to log into a phone when you sit down at a desk has been around for many years now, using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). However, most organisations are moving beyond having handsets at desks, as calls (voice or video) can be made through a computer or smartphone. There is very little need to multiply devices, except in cases of high-volume use. Even then, it is arguably not entirely necessary. Though there is still a need for voice-only calls, these will mostly be through smartphones which of course have a wide range of other applications as well. And telephony is integrated into collaboration software such as MS Teams and Zoom. This gives the flexibility to use voice or video, share screens, work together cocreating documents or other artefacts, and integrates with messaging, calendars, contact lists, status management and other applications you need to use within communication activities.

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The same principles, and same technologies, should for the most part apply to working across the Extended Workplace. Economies of scale are achieved by being able to use the same technologies wherever staff are working. One of the key mistakes to avoid in deploying Smart Working is to consider mobile workers as having radically different requirements to other workers. Most office-based workers can be mobile to a greater or lesser extent. People working outside of company-owned work locations do need effective remote access to office systems and data. There are a number of different technologies for doing this, but typically it will involve using the Internet and creating a secure connection for accessing the services needed. This doesn’t necessarily mean accessing anything that is hosted on servers that are physically in the office. The trend is towards hosting office applications on thirdparty servers which could be located anywhere (subject to data protection requirements, e.g. keeping all data within national boundaries), with zero-trust network access (see section later in this chapter on Security for Smart Working). All the innards of this should be invisible to the individual worker, who just wants to log in and get going, wherever they happen to be. Making it all smooth and seamless for the user can be a tough call for the IT department, which has to make it all happen. How easy it is depends on where they are starting from. Older applications need to be made accessible over the Internet. However, it may not be worth doing that. If you know you have a database system that the users think is hopeless, there’s little point making an app for it. Often, it’s the day-to-day users who have the best take on this, and it’s surprising how often they are not asked about upgrades or replacements – it’s not only an issue for the IT department. So if systems need upgrading to make them accessible across the Extended Workplace, this is a good time to revisit how effective they actually are and improve the specification. There can be major budgetary impacts from this, so best to involve users in the specifications at the outset, rather than encountering surprises later in the transformation programme. Working outside the office, though, is not about working the same way as you do in the office, only somewhere else. Working more flexibly offers the opportunity to transform the ways you interface with clients and customers. People who have been stuck in the office can get out more, and they need the technologies to do it. It can be a chance to rethink not only the IT systems, but what people do where and with whom.

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For example, doing financial assessments for social care sitting alongside the citizen can save a lot of time, rather than going back and forth with letters, emails or calls. Speeding up decision-making by taking people through a process and gathering all necessary information at the time beats leaving them on their own to complete a baffling electronic or paper form. Increasingly, all kinds of field workers are using online processes for collecting and processing information in a structured way, which can then flow back to central systems. Handwriting recognition and voice recognition allow notes taken on the move and form entries to be processed into the format that is needed for subsequent use. There’s a basic principle here: enter information once and use many times. Whether the data is entered by a field worker, a contact centre operative, a customer or in fact anyone, systems need to be joined up to make the most efficient use of the data without rekeying. However, I know this is often not achieved, despite best intentions to go digital. For example, over the past couple of years I’ve had numerous trips to hospital for one reason or another, and have seen a remarkable array of not-joined-up systems. I was quite pleased to see on one occasion a paramedic entering notes into a tablet, whereas mostly I’d seen notes written first on paper for entering into the system later. However, when this paramedic got to patient registration in A&E, he had to read the patient’s details off his tablet while the receptionist re-entered them into their separate system. This was in 2021, after £billions of investment in NHS IT systems. There were many other instances of data inefficiency too, and from conversations with the staff, the lack of being joined-up is a constant source of frustration. The NHS is far from alone in this. Often within the same organisation there are parts of the business where the digital transformation hasn’t happened, and this can be a factor in uneven take-up of new working practices across the business. Factoring working across the Extended Workplace into all technology innovation and deployment It is quite remarkable how over the years key innovations in technologies and business processes have failed to address the question of where and when people work, except within traditional frameworks. A typical example is an organisation moving to online processes for interacting with customers. Before the pandemic, these kinds of ‘channel shift’ initiatives might lead to closure of local branches, but

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not really challenge the notion that the employees involved would need to work at an organisation-owned collective space. While the technologies and processes made the work footloose, the employees remained chained to their corporate desks. In some cases, the mobility of workers such as sales representatives was eliminated and they – or their replacements – became tied to a desk in a traditional office. The pace of technological change has accelerated further during the pandemic years. McKinsey calculated an overall 2-year acceleration of innovation during this period1. This acceleration was largely inspired by both the need to interact with customers in new and virtual ways, and similarly to deploy employees on a decentralised basis, relying on a virtual workplace to hold everything together. This synergy between strategic innovation and modernised ways of working should provide a valuable lesson for the future. That is, for any innovation or technological deployment, we need to factor in the implications for where, when and how people work, as well as who does what. This is part of what we call ‘smart-proofing’. It’s mostly about considering, ‘What additional benefits can we achieve if we also address how this innovation can improve both productivity and the experience of work, by creating new possibilities for working smarter?’ So Smart Working is not an afterthought, but factored into the development process from the beginning. For example, while the excitement around developing a digital twin of a building, a city or other system lies in the creation of the application and the benefits of its use, there’s also a necessary conversation to be had about where and when people can or should work when using the technology for different kinds of tasks. That’s a part of both the efficiency conversation and the talent conversation. The future: more immersive collaboration and new kinds of screen Over the next 5 to 10 years we can expect to see very substantial developments in communications technologies that will have impacts both on the ways we work and the tools we use. These include: Thinner and larger screens: larger screens are already in use in many places, and can help to bring different locations together visually. These can link spaces for socialising as well as spaces used for all kinds of virtual collaboration. Using larger

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screens can help give more of an impression of the whole person being there, rather than just a set of talking heads. So one can get more of the body language involved in group activities. Large screens can also be used for people to work with data and images, either together in the same place or in several places. This supports cocreation of ideas and products more effectively, and will help us to get out of the ‘linear rut’ of traditional ways of working (as described in the section, Dynamic collaboration and teamwork, in Chapter 9). Smaller, even tiny screens embedded in glasses or goggles, or miniature tablets worn a short distance in front of the eye, attached in most cases to headwear. These are already in regular use in some sectors, and we can expect much more sophisticated products to come on stream. Integration with cameras allows colleagues working elsewhere to see what the wearer is seeing in real time. So this is more about working together in a non-office environment or on equipment or products, rather than putting a premium on having a meeting to review what has been done in the field. Again, it’s about active real-time collaboration, making use of the capability to overcome the constraints of distance. Flexible screens: these are beginning to make an appearance, for example in foldable smartphone screens. We’ll be seeing screens that can be rolled up, additional screens that can be pulled out to create larger display areas, all of which potentially provide more flexibility of use in different situations. Intelligent screens and surfaces: there is a great deal of innovation in this field, with new (but often expensive) products coming onto the market. Here we’re not only looking at the more interactive whiteboards that are becoming a more regular fixture in meeting rooms, like the Surface Hub and equivalents. There are also developments in translucent screens, screens back-projected onto smart glass, virtual screens projected within the physical environment or via a VR headset, and more. These all offer different possibilities and requirements for how we design physical environments in which these operate. Integrating screen technologies into horizontal surfaces, and being able to easily move information between surfaces or between devices and surfaces is part of this future. Having screens as needed using partitions is probably part of the future in activity-based settings. It will be some time before we get to Minority Report types of screens, or go full Tony Stark (as in the Iron Man films), with the combination of virtual screens and voice and gesture control – but edging in that direction will, as it were, liberate content from the physical constraints of fixed screens in due course. More immersive forms of virtual collaboration: 3D conferencing and holopresence take us beyond the limitations of 2D as a sensory experience

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when we’re working together with other people. Such systems already exist, but at the moment (early 2023) they are not widely deployed in businesses. WeWork is advertising a capability for beaming in people by holopresence for events2, and Google Starline is a booth-based 3D conferencing technology that takes 2D telepresence one stage further in creating the impression of real presence3. We can envisage a commercial trajectory a bit like the earlier development of videoconferencing, perhaps. Initially it’s something studiobased or used for special events, e.g. to beam someone in at a large conference or company town hall. But as prices come down and the technologies develop further, a consumer market will probably develop ahead of a business market, due to the prospect of volume sales. Then we can anticipate increased adoption by organisations. In the meantime, more immersive 2D hybrid meetings are possible by having multiple cameras to give 360o coverage of a space, with cameras homing in on whoever is speaking, wherever they are in a room. These technologies will be introduced in the context of much greater mobility of work, and will enhance the possibilities for working effectively and creatively across the Extended Workplace. They will also go some way to address the issues some people point to about the advantages of physical proximity for certain kinds of work activity. Everything we do to interact more effectively over distance will add to the Smart Working experience. But it is not a simple question of making working-at-a-distance more like ‘the real thing’. The impact will be that much of the proximity bias will fade away with familiarity of usage. And these more immersive technologies will in themselves generate new ways of collaborating that will create new norms, taking forward the culture of innovating in new ways of working. Voice and gesture recognition Many applications we use daily also support voice recognition and text-to-voice capabilities. And many people already use these on a regular basis. However, we tend not to do so in offices: keyboards still reign supreme – even though few of us know how to touch-type! As mentioned, these can go hand-in-hand with new screen technologies, but it’s in the consumer market rather than the corporate market that we’re seeing most use of voice and gesture interfaces, e.g. for virtual assistants like Alexa or Siri for

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voice, and in gaming for gesture and movement recognition. And then there is the wrestling with voice recognition on customer helplines, with mixed user experiences. The big step forward will come when we are able to interact in natural language with data, systems and environments in work settings. This involves systems being able to recognise the person, and linking it to their work, their preferences and their permissions to access whatever it is they want to access. This will be integrated into developments in ambient computing and the Internet of Things, so in effect our own work and personal preferences are integrated into a wider ecosystem of work and the environments in which we do work. Whether that sounds attractive or nightmarish depends on how it is implemented, how much it improves effectiveness and the experience of work, and how we feel about privacy versus sharing of personal information. And in a work environment it can be a moot point whether the data involved is personal or professional. It’s part of the trend of blurring boundaries that we’ve touched on. We look at some of the issues around this in Chapter 13 on Wellbeing. For now, let’s think about the practicalities of interfacing with the systems we need for work via voice and gesture. What does the office look like in this context? What does it sound like? A decade and a half ago when we began more frequently to see people jabbering away to no one in the street (at least no one visible), it seemed decidedly weird. Now, it’s an everyday part of normal, if sometimes an irritating kind of normal. Perhaps office environments will go that way. Noise as a constant may be easier to ignore if everyone, including oneself, is doing the same thing. It may be more like an ancient or medieval library, where most people would read to themselves out loud. On the other hand, maybe it would sound the death knell for any kind of open environment, and we will retreat to cellular offices or acoustically screened bays and booths. More likely, however, is that it will be another factor in us going to other environments – like home – where we can do this while being in greater control of surrounding noise and distractions. Or using headsets to create our own acoustic worlds. However, these applications also have uses in collaborative activities, whether in learning situations, which will probably include a lot more gaming and simulations, and working on projects in development, e.g. with virtual 3D models.

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Virtual, augmented, mixed reality, digital twins and the metaverse There is a variety of new(ish) approaches to experiencing and interacting with digital worlds coming on stream, which will increasingly impact the experience of work. There’s a continuum of immersion involving – from low to high in terms of immersiveness – Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR) and Virtual Reality (VR). Collectively these are referred to as Extended Reality (XR), which when you think about it ought to be comfortably at home within our concept of the Extended Workplace. Augmented Reality allows for an overlay of digital information to the ‘real world’. For some time there have been children’s books that have an accompanying app you can download to your phone. Through the app, you can see additional material about the story or learning material you are viewing as the app recognises the images in front of it. In many ways, it’s like having a digital pop-up book. The same principles have a role in work settings. Overlaying a piece of equipment with digital data can help people assembling things, maintaining them, using them or learning how to use them. In health settings, there are numerous applications, such as professionals can summon up patient records by scanning a QR code, reducing the time needed for diagnosis and decision-making to assist surgeons in operations, or enhancing imaging to assist surgery. The overlay is displayed through either a handheld device or smart glasses. Virtual Reality immerses us fully into a digital world using a headset that covers the eyes. What we see may simulate the real world, or provide a unique digital experience. The main work application at the moment tends to be in training and onboarding new employees. It’s more scalable than in-person training, can overcome the need to travel, and also can be a lot less expensive, for example in not having to use real settings and situations to play out dangerous situations. It also can assist new product development, for example. There is also increasing potential for collaborating in virtual environments, which is more commonplace in gaming than in the workplace as yet. Mixed Reality involves a blending of real and digital environments, so that to greater or lesser degrees they interact with each other. In an MR experience, a person can interact with both digital and physical objects. A digital twin is a virtual model that accurately reflects a physical object or system – whether an individual product, a building, supply chain, a city or other

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complex system. They aid understanding of physical environments, can assist their management and can be used to model different scenarios that impact the system. So within a workplace, for example, a digital twin might incorporate the physical structure of the building and its systems, and also integrate performance data gathered from monitoring systems and sensors of movement around the building. This creates a very rich seam of data to be analysed and interpreted, hopefully leading to more efficient usage and improvements. And digital twins are an important building block of the metaverse. The metaverse, one of the words of 2021–2022, more or less brings together all these applications, creating immersive worlds that we can participate in. These may be linked to the ‘real world’, but will increasingly become entirely distinct environments with their own economies, based on production and consumption of digital products, and with distinct modes of social and commercial interaction. There isn’t an agreed definition of ‘metaverse’ as yet. There may never be, perhaps. A useful starting point as a description is, an expansive network of digital spaces, including immersive 3D experiences in augmented, virtual, and mixed reality, that are interconnected and interoperable so you can easily move between them, and in which you can create and explore with other people who aren’t in the same physical space as you4. The experiences within the metaverse are dependent on a range of other technologies, including huge amounts of data derived from, amongst other sources, the Internet of Things, digital twins plus large helpings of artificial intelligence, with blockchain and digital currency technologies for secure transactions and verification. Very possibly the metaverse won’t be one thing but many, as complete interoperability may well prove elusive in the teeth of proprietary interests. The metaverse may turn out to be a multi(meta)verse. Where an embryonic metaverse of sort exists at the moment, it is used primarily for gaming. The recreational and leisure potential is seen as the most lucrative area of business in a potential $3 trillion metaverse market by the early 2030s. One should note in passing that some of the earliest adopters of any new technology or means of exchange tend to be pornographers, gangsters, fraudsters and political radicals. So there is very likely to be a dark metaverse or two and various shades of grey or black digital economy intertwined – as is already the case

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with cryptocurrencies. That is unless, of course, governments and regulators keep ahead of the game in a way that never happened with the Internet5. But how is all this relevant to Smart Working, apart from being smart in the generic sense of the word? According to a McKinsey report on the ‘enterprise metaverse’, Organizations are set to look dramatically different in coming decades. We envision a world where the lines between physical and digital environments blur. Every asset, process, or person within and related to an enterprise will be replicated virtually—and connected. As a result, nearly every aspect of work can take place solely digitally or, at the least, before it does so physically6 (my italics). The work of people creating, maintaining and upgrading the metaverse or building applications, running businesses and selling digital products within it is pretty much entirely location-agnostic. The metaverse is everywhere and nowhere – or rather no specific place – at the same time. Accenture boldly predicts that by the early 2030s, the average adult will spend equal amounts of time in immersive virtual worlds and in the real one, and that the European Commission will classify a new category of workers who spend 100% of time in metaverse workspace7. That gives us a few years to come up with a new and catchy name for this kind of worker. Even allowing for a fair amount of exuberant hype, I think it’s safe to concur that some people will indeed spend their entire working lives in such digital environments. The need for people to come together at the same time, in the same physical room, may prove to be minimal if they are attuned and accustomed to using virtual collaboration spaces within the environments that exist in the metaverse, or that they create or customise themselves. And when we think of the kinds of underpinning work required to create, monitor, maintain and improve all the technologies involved, it’s very apparent that the people doing the work could be pretty much anywhere in the world. These are also environments and applications that have to be available 24/7. While support can be decentralised across time zones, within a country or a time zone technical and user support will require shift systems and flexible approaches to the working day, weekends and holidays to provide the necessary coverage.

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Smart Working in areas of technology-focused employment growth over the next two decades The principles that apply for the metaverse, in terms of physical locations where people work, also apply to many other types of work that are set to grow over the next few decades. This includes space and deep-sea exploration and exploitation, where remote interaction with autonomous or semi-autonomous systems will be the norm. It also applies to the industries working at the other end of the environmental impact spectrum in fields such as conservation, climate change and monitoring biodiversity. These involve gathering and interpreting huge amounts of data – and it will largely be done remotely in order to operate at the scale needed to be effective. So while there will still be people out there in the wilderness and rainforests making observations and deploying equipment, the main employment growth will be in the army of specialist researchers, data scientists, machine learning experts and more who make the systems work. And again, these can in principle work from anywhere. In Chapters 6 and 7 we considered how Industry 4.0 impacts existing forms of hands-on work, summarised in Figure 6.2. Essentially, it involves shifting much hands-on and site-specific work towards knowledge-intensive work as systems are digitised and automated, with higher levels of artificial intelligence. We’re looking at similar factors here for new industries, which will probably be less burdened by both legacy systems and legacy mindsets. The likely impact of generative AI At the time of writing, there has been a lot of excitement – with both positive and negative commentary – about the nature and quality of the intelligence at work in ChatGPT and other emerging forms of artificial intelligence that use natural language and can create plausible and accurate text in response to questions. There is speculation over its impact on education and learning, how we access knowledge, whether it will take over a lot of knowledge work, vulnerabilities to disinformation and how creative it can actually be. The range of questions about it is an indication that we’re still in the early stages of what these technologies can do. Perhaps, with the substantial steps forward that are being taken, we’re moving from embryonic to fledgling in its growth, and it will still be some time before it really takes flight.

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There is a huge amount of investment in this field. One of the big steps forward is in Microsoft’s investment in the technology and their integrating it into their suite of products. This is, amongst other things, a threat to Google’s dominance of the search engine market, by being able to have an engine that operates in a completely different way, providing written answers rather than a list of web resources where others provide answers. Google is responding in its own way, and we’ll see a ratcheting up of increasingly intelligent and articulate machine learningbased products with ever more impressive (and possibly controversial) capabilities as a result. I have written elsewhere about the potential of artificial intelligence to impact white collar work, and how we should respond8. One of the best studies that foresaw the impact on knowledge work is Richard and Daniel Susskind’s The Future of the Professions, written in 20159. White collar workers might have imagined themselves immune from the kinds of automation that have hollowed out the workforce in manual occupations. However, many routine clerical tasks have already been automated or outsourced, and now machine learning is making inroads into higher-skilled and creative work as well. In areas like medical or legal research, artificial intelligence can not only work much faster to search documents, but is increasingly capable of analysis and recommending courses of action. In (for example) architecture, engineering and workplace design, professionals work with intelligent systems that enable them to generate plans, models, designs and scenarios much more rapidly than they could without the AI input. We’re moving to a stage where professionals can specify the parameters of what’s required, preferred style (etc.) and AI can produce a first run, and then make adjustments as needed. We’re now seeing this kind of artificial creativity, if we can call it such, in art, music and writing. The point is, it turns out that human creativity is not so unique. A lot of it does ultimately come down to pattern recognition, either in what is produced or in recognising patterns in what audiences or consumers value. Futurists and other commentators often see human creativity as an area for humans to focus on, while AI deals with routine tasks. This misses the fact, as pointed out by the Susskinds, that complex tasks are usually an aggregation of less complex tasks. The hope that people cling to that higher levels of creativity will remain out of the reach of AI, reminds me of the ‘god of the gaps’ fallacy. That is, as science progressed and more of the world’s phenomena could be explained by natural processes, supernatural explanations retreated into ever shrinking spaces where we

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didn’t yet know enough. It’s similar for creativity and AI evolution. As AI capabilities increase, the distinctiveness of human creativity becomes less and less. In the end, the tools we work with will often be able to do a better job on their own. They may be using a different kind of intelligence, but the capacity to be creative in both human-like and distinctively different ways is set to keep on growing. However, in the short to medium term, we’re looking at generative AI being useful for organisations by operating within well-defined containers, such as libraries of medical or legal texts, archives of planning decisions, repositories of design schematics or images, and so forth. It is also having a significant impact in writing software. The wider issues that have caught the imagination, like a more artificial general intelligence coming up with definitive answers to any questions we throw at it – a universal answer engine – is fraught with issues about the questionable nature of the source material it will have to draw on. Indeed the capacity for AI to be used to generate misinformation and commercial or political propaganda at scale is sure to be very tempting for many interested parties. The first jobs to go, perhaps, will be the armies of human ‘content creators’ who pump out such products at the moment, as they find themselves outmuscled by the new generative AI. We may not mourn their demise, but the business of sorting the informational wheat from the chaff isn’t set to get any easier. In the long term, ways to accredit reliable information will be needed. But that, too, is fraught with ethical and political issues. Meanwhile, organisations will need internal processes to ensure that their source information is up-to-date or weighted for reliability to make sure that such AI generates the best output. This will involve human analysts and quality assurance professionals working alongside their new tools. But as with other kinds of robotic processes automation, the key benefits will be speed and liberating people to do higher value – or just different – work. Technologies for the home workplace Having spent a little time with our crystal ball, we now come right back down to earth and ask, what about technologies for the home as workplace? I want to look at this in two stages – first, what constitutes good practice from employers right now, and secondly, what should we be aiming for in the future as home-based work becomes even more ubiquitous?

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There’s a need to avoid duplication and achieve economies of scale. It will be standard to have laptops or tablets in preference to desktop PCs, and an ergonomic set-up for working for longer periods (laptop riser and/or screen to connect to, with separate mouse or keyboard). Lightweight laptops support mobility better. Having excellent broadband Internet connection is a must. Should the company pay for the broadband? Often companies have some kind of threshold, for example if an employee is working an average of two days or more per week from home or using home as a base, then the company might pay for the broadband – but in my experience, most do not. There is a view that a) most people have broadband anyway, so in most cases there is no extra cost, and b) avoiding commuting every day saves much more than people spend on additional heating, lighting and connection. There can also be tax implications about receiving a benefit that has non-work uses as well. Often there is a debate about whether the company should provide a printer for home workers. The default position should be ‘No’. While it is still arguable that long documents and detailed plans, etc., can be hard to work through on screen, people should have to make a very strong case to justify an exception to the rule, both to save costs and to save the planet. Better screen technologies, particularly on tablets and e-readers, make for a better reading experience than on a standard computer screen. Having a larger additional screen – or two – can solve the problem and also boost productivity when you need to have multiple documents or different applications open at the same time. Good-quality noise-cancelling headsets should be standard issue for home and mobile workers. As well as adding to the quality of collaborative work, they give the flexibility to work from places like cafés and public transport where the ambient noise may be greater. The days are largely gone (in most countries) when technology can be used as an excuse to inhibit remote working and mobility. Just a few years ago people would say, ‘I can’t work at home because I use such-and-such application and it won’t run on a laptop’, or ‘I have to be in the office to work with this or that database system’. It won’t wash any more. Pretty much anything that is done in most offices can be done almost anywhere now, unless the work has a very high security requirement (as in our case study of GCHQ later in this chapter). There are engineers working with CAD systems on the move, and people editing film and doing 3D animation from home, whizzing humungous files over the Internet to colleagues working all over the world. You just need the right tools

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for the job. The technology is there. When technology is used as an excuse for tethering people to the office, take a good hard look at what’s really going on. It’s not the technology but rather the vision, the will or the upfront investment that’s missing. For the future, domestic versions of the large immersive screens mentioned earlier will find their way into homes, including into home offices. In addition, to add to the quality of video collaboration and to any video content produced, having an intelligent high-definition camera and a studio quality microphone will be important for many people to work effectively (see Chapter 12 for use cases). If anything is important for productivity and the quality of experience when working, organisations should be prepared to budget for it. But it will be interesting to see how the balance plays out between the quality of technologies people buy for home and leisure use, compared to those that organisations are prepared to support financially. This takes us again into the theme of blurred lines between home and work, in this case technologically blurred lines. As well as equipment and infrastructure that doubles for personal use, technologies like AI virtual assistants may help organise one’s personal life as well as one’s professional one. This goes beyond the occasional dentist appointment being flagged up in your Outlook calendar. Monitoring productivity and surveillance software There have been numerous stories, plus some justifiable outrage, about the increase in ‘surveillance software’ for people working remotely. This includes software that monitors keystrokes, software that identifies what applications people are using and time spent on it, and requirements to keep cameras on when working. It is necessary, one way or another, to be able to keep abreast of work that is being done. In some instances, for example call centre work, all calls are logged and may be recorded. This is in the interests of accountability and training as well as productivity. The same systems apply for people whether they work at home or in a contact centre. Automatic call distribution depends on having real-time information in order to direct calls to an available and appropriate person. That comes with the territory of the work, and it’s the management culture of an organisation that will make this oppressive or not. It’s different for work that is less time critical, when more autonomy is possible in choosing when and how work is done. When surveillance software is

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introduced, it indicates both a lack of trust and the continuation of management by presence, albeit online rather than physical presence. So where it’s happening, this is a regrettable trend. This kind of software should not be deployed. Instead, there need to be other ways of managing by results, which we’ll explore in Chapter 10. Technologies for managing the Smart Workplace The extensive uptake of homeworking and the prospect of a ‘return to the workplace’ accelerated the number of offerings from vendors that measure and monitor the workplace environment and how people use workspace. The big growth has been in sensor-based technologies and booking systems, some of which we covered in Chapters 4 and 6. From a technology perspective, the innovation has been in the following areas: • • • • • •

Using sensors to monitor the occupancy of work positions Using the same sensors to monitor air quality Integration of these systems into building and resource management systems Integrating booking systems with usage information Using booking systems and sensors to be able to locate colleagues Integration of booking systems and location status with calendars and online user interfaces.

The most common form of sensor for monitoring occupancy are heat-sensing ones that use passive infrared (PIR) sensors usually positioned under desks, vibration sensors fitted within seats or wall/ceiling-mounted imaging sensors. These technologies can arouse suspicion about ‘Big Brother watching us’, but these fears are unfounded. The data gathered is anonymous, and basically tells you if a seat or room is occupied or not, or in some cases how many people are in a room. It’s a good idea, though, to have some awareness-raising before installation to reduce any concerns and rumours. Image-sensing is considerably more expensive, as yet. The advantages include being able to count people more accurately and to detect flows of people. There are innovations all the time. I recently saw a fascinating demonstration of imaging technology that can monitor (without video) people’s direction of gaze in meetings. That had a genuine purpose as an experiment in assessing engagement in the conversation and interpersonal dynamics, but possibly this degree of observation raises more questions than it answers10.

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Location tracking technologies are also offered by a number of companies. This works by tracking people’s smartphone locations via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. It works on the assumption that they have their smartphones with them, or will soon return to them. This does identify individuals, which can have advantages such as being able to find colleagues or link to profiles and calendars11. The same is also true of some booking systems. In either case, the location or booking information links to other data, including displaying the location on display boards in lobbies or within apps. So the use case is for finding colleagues easily within buildings, or to be sure that you can book a space near to specific people. In the latter case, the location tracking will generally be more reliable than the booking information. Experience shows that people book space much more than they actually use it, typically by more than 20%. One area of considerable innovation is in integrating occupancy monitoring systems with other environmental systems to gain a comprehensive view of how the workplace is performing. Features such as air quality, temperature, humidity, lighting and heating can be linked with how space is used to manage optimal usage, helping to minimise cost and improve environmental performance. Data can be seen by both FM to monitor performance on dashboards providing live data, and also by building users to help them choose the places to work that suit them best. Other monitoring and management systems, such as for visitors, car parking and asset tracking, may also be integrated to provide a complete picture of the workplace. In principle, data from other apps, such as wellbeing apps (see section on Health and wellbeing apps later in this chapter) and users’ rating of spaces can be integrated to provide an overall view of how different parts of the workplace are performing. Key questions to think through before implementing a booking/space management solution are: • Which spaces actually require a booking system in order to be efficiently and fairly managed? I’ve outlined my reservations about the appropriateness of booking systems for desk-based environments in Chapter 6. Unless there is very high footfall, such systems are more for reassurance than for practical value • How easy is it to unbook space when not actually required, and what limits should be put on both the length of time a space can be booked and how far in advance/how frequently spaces can be booked?

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• How intrusive does the data need to be? How beneficial is it to identify individuals and track movements, or do you mainly want to know how space is being used in order to improve the work experience? • What degrees of integration are you looking for, e.g. with environmental systems or other resource management systems? • Have you budgeted for the resource needed to make meaningful use of any data you gather? So at the outset, an organisation needs to have a very clear idea of the ‘why’ of investing in an occupancy or booking system. Overcoming digital divides at work Over the past 30 years there has been a big focus in the research literature plus many government-backed campaigns to overcome the digital divide in society. These focus on disadvantaged groups that don’t have Internet access or digital skills. However, I’ve found this is also an issue within organisations where one might expect employees to have a high level of digital familiarity and competence. The divide falls into three areas: • Employees’ digital skills can be very siloed: many people know the basics of any systems they need to use, but know very little beyond that – much less than is often assumed by people leading transformation programmes • A digital equity issue within the workforce: typically where people with more manual or site-specific roles are technology-starved and disconnected from the digital ecosystems of the organisation • Disconnection between different areas of work: e.g. between technologies used for manufacturing, laboratory work or health care and the corporate information systems. On more than one occasion I’ve been taken aback by the things people are unfamiliar with. For example, in one large organisation implementing Microsoft 365 (shortly before the pandemic), people were being introduced to Teams. It emerged that more than half of them had never even used Skype, FaceTime or any other kind of video communications technology, even though many already spent a day or two per week teleworking. It was completely new territory to them. Nor

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did many of them use anything but the basic levels of functionality in Outlook or Word. Yet these were all people with university degrees, who used specialised statistical software and whose work was entirely computer based (though they did produce a lot of paper output as a result). Hopefully the experience of forced distributed working and collaboration by Teams or Zoom calls during the lockdowns has taken things forward, at least a little. But the general point is, there are a lot more things that people could do with their existing IT applications to be more productive, if they only knew how. The best approach is to have a combined approach to improving digital skills and implementing new working practices that will have benefits for their work (e.g. with new forms of collaboration, co-creation of documents, etc.). This also needs an open culture of trust where people are willing to be candid about what they don’t know and have freedom to ask ‘daft questions’. Having a safe space to admit vulnerability, as it were, is an important part of a learning culture. For trainers, the challenge is to assume nothing while not coming across as patronising, which can be a fine line to tread. One of the biggest challenges for the ‘hybrid’ organisation is one of equity between people who have the option to work in multiple locations plus having all the new IT, and those who have to be (mainly) on site and carry out hands-on tasks. We looked at ways of achieving flexibility for the latter group in Chapter 5 (in the section Smart Working for people doing hands-on, site-specific and highly secure work), and overcoming a digital divide is central to doing this. It relates to digitising existing processes alongside modernising ways of working, plus developing the digital skills to work with new systems, especially those involving greater automation. It’s also necessary to think about issues like, how does someone working in a mainly manual role contact the relevant people about an HR issue if they don’t have easy access to the digital means to do this from their normal work location? This may be the case when an organisation is moving to more of an online HR self-service model, or if the person they need to speak with is working elsewhere. We also looked, in Chapter 6, on How the future of ‘hands-on’ work impacts the workplace. That’s both the various locations of the physical workplace, and the connecting layers of the virtual workplace. So, for example, the absence of a laboratory information system (LIS) may in effect keep people tethered to a workbench, when much of the work they do can be done from elsewhere on site or in another location altogether. They may only need to spend a portion of their

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time physically in the lab, but always need access to the systems and data for monitoring and analysis. In essence, what we are talking about is having a strategy to ensure that there is seamless access to everyone and everything one may need to interact with, and that this applies to people at every level across an organisation. Security for Smart Working Enabling working across the Extended Workplace requires a different approach to security compared to having everyone in an organisation-owned contained location. The traditional way relies on having a strong perimeter, a castle-and-moat approach. There’s an assumption that everyone inside the perimeter is trustworthy, and those outside are not. This is modified when some people are working outside the perimeter, usually by classifying them as different kinds of workers, and using virtual private network (VPN) technology to get access to resources inside the perimeter. Once you’re in, you’re in. Inside the perimeter, you’re basically considered a safe and trusted person. However, when large numbers of people need access all across the Extended Workplace, the risks multiply and a different approach is required. Most organisations are moving to a ‘zero-trust’ environment. Bearing in mind how much we emphasise the need for trust in a results-based work culture, it’s ironic that to support this we’re moving to having ‘zero-trust’ in terms of security. But there’s a very strong rationale for it. The essence of it is treating all devices as being outside the perimeter, creating equality between all the locations where people work. According to Gartner, zerotrust: is useful as a shorthand way of describing an approach where implicit trust is removed from all computing infrastructure. Instead, trust levels are explicitly and continuously calculated and adapted to allow just-in-time, just-enough access to enterprise resources … . [It’s] a way of thinking, not a specific technology or architecture12. The UK Department for Pensions (DWP), which has been implementing Smart Working in tandem with a very extensive programme of digitisation, has adopted a zero-trust approach to security.

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‘From a hybrid working point of view, the move to zero trust and cloud native devices is a very positive one’, says David Dunbar, Head of Digital Workspace at the DWP. We continuously validate the computer against a range of data points, alongside an equally real-time validation of the access rights of the person using it, and use these data to determine whether the activity is permitted or not. That sounds onerous but isn’t. It allows us to make much more nuanced decisions about risk, so ultimately we allow more freedom. Because every device sits outside of the corporate network, access is exactly the same if you are working from home or from the office, or anywhere else for that matter. Location is only important as part of the policy. So for example, our device won’t connect if it finds itself in a country we don’t expect it to be in, but functionally is completely location independent13. The five pillars of the US NIST (National institute of Standards and Technology) framework14 provide a good basis for security in distributed organisations: • • • • •

Identify – checking if you know your assets Protect – how to stop people getting into networks, antivirus, AI-led security products Detect – how to identify dodgy things that have happened or are happening Respond – how to deal with a security breach, depending on the nature of it Recover – e.g. from ransomware or malware attack.

The approach to security needs to be integrated with a clear strategy for digital transformation (including approaches to legacy applications that may pose challenges for secure access from flexible locations) and the overall strategy for Smart Working and the business benefits it is aiming to achieve. Bring Your Own Device – or not Although during the pandemic some organisations have relied on people using their own technology, best practice is for the employer to provide what is needed. Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), much touted a decade ago, hasn’t made the inroads some anticipated, mainly due to security issues. The acronym is sometimes reinterpreted as meaning ‘Bring Your Own Danger’.

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It’s not only the security issues that can be challenging for organisations, but also regulations around privacy on the one hand and requirements for accountability on the other. For example, in the public sector and financial services sector there are obligations to have extensive audit trails, or in the case of a serious incident any company might be obliged to hand over extensive information including text and social media conversations, records of calls and other information that may be interwoven with personal use of the applications or devices concerned. The UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) outlines the main challenges as follows: BYOD security challenges for organisations broadly include, but are not limited to: • Ensuring personally owned devices and their owners comply with company policies and procedures • Increased support for a wide range of device types and operating systems • Protecting corporate data • Protecting corporate infrastructure • Protecting the personal privacy of the end-user/device owner • Ensuring legal compliance and meeting contractual obligations.15 NCSC also points out the risks of encroaching on users’ work–life balance, as using the same devices for work as for home life heightens the risk of being ‘always on’. The advice continues, ‘The security challenges of BYOD should not be played down. However, with the right technical controls and policies in place, the risks inherent with BYOD can be minimised.’ At the DWP, David Dunbar says that though they have BYOD within their toolkit, it’s deployed primarily for third parties, e.g. suppliers taking calls on their behalf: These suppliers may use their own company devices, although even here we posture check for simple things like up-to-date versions of Windows and the like. From the point of view of the person using their computer, they just see icons for DWP applications alongside their own. When used it appears as if these applications run on their machine like any other piece of software, when in fact they are encapsulated and running on our estate. It’s more a case

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of ring-fenced access to specific applications than access to a desktop. This kind of corporate-to-corporate BYOD, rather than to individuals, is part of an approach to implementing smarter collaboration with third parties to increase efficiency and productivity16.

Case study: GCHQ Keeping the secret stuff secret, while allowing flexibility to attract new recruits and for existing staff Smarter Working at GCHQ is an example of a transformation that was led from the bottom up by a small, but highly motivated team of people keen to learn about the benefits of Smarter Working and how it could help GCHQ to become more efficient, effective and an attractive employer for staff from a wider range of backgrounds. GCHQ began its implementation of Smarter Working in 2016, although there had been an iteration a decade earlier that focused primarily on introducing activity-based workplaces. In this new phase, initially called ‘Flexible Working for Success’, GCHQ piloted portable devices to enable people to work remotely at a lower security classification. It was a small start with no established processes, nor best practice internally to follow. The team and the pilot groups learned by doing as the project progressed, supported by some external guidance and awareness-raising sessions for the pilot groups. By 2019 a more strategic approach was adopted, as the benefits of the shift to more remote working were recognised and spurred by the requirements of the UK central government’s Smarter Working programme (see case study in Chapter 14). The external factor that really propelled plans and shifted the pace of delivery was the COVID-19 pandemic, where it was necessary to rapidly shift to extensive offsite working. Moving to increased remote and flexible working was a major shift for GCHQ because for decades all work was done entirely in a classified, secure office-based environment. GCHQ knew that there was benefit from operating more at Official (i.e. a lower classification) and connecting to the Internet, however there were many challenges, in terms of working culture, benefits and the working practices, to ensure it remained secure and

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compliant. Balancing this risk was the key challenge in that, as an intelligence agency, a lot of GCHQ’s work must, unavoidably, remain secret. Technology-wise, the challenge of working on Official devices in an environment designed for the handling of Classified material wasn’t straightforward, and collaboration tools were only recently available. Progress in this area, which required a lot of innovation and a shift in risk appetite, was such that GCHQ won the 2019 Civil Service Smarter Working Award for technology. At the awards ceremony, spokesman Alastair P referred to the need to maintain a ‘strong perimeter fence’, yet still enable access for work, saying, ‘We manage rather than avoid the risks around Smarter Working in a highly secure environment. This has enabled thousands of our people to work outside the wire, improving productivity and reducing costs’. At first there was a considerable degree of not just resistance but discomfort with the approach. Managers worried about how they would manage staff, about security, and whether staff would work productively away from the office. So, for an organisation that had largely operated within the perimeter fence, this was a big change. New policy and guidance were developed, and a Working from Home Portal created. On the leadership front, a Strategic and Tactical Coordination group was set up to steer the changes. This would lead the shift to create a distributed organisation, with Smarter Working as central to its function. The new approach also included the development of a Hub model with a new location in Manchester and repurposing of the London office to go along with the remodelling of the Cheltenham headquarters. All workspace is now laid out according to Smarter Working principles as encapsulated in central government guidance and PAS 3000 Smart Working Code of Practice. GCHQ developed its own system for monitoring space usage on an anonymised basis. The data from this helped to align the future workplace layout and sizing to support the tasks people wish to do when they are in one of the offices. All this involved a major change of culture. Support included training for managers, and coaching support for psychological safety and mental health, as people adapted to the new distributed working patterns. Several channels for wellbeing were set up, and teams are encouraged to monitor the wellbeing of their colleagues on a weekly basis.

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In GCHQ’s 2022 staff survey, the new Hybrid Working patterns were rated as being very effective and received the highest number of positive comments. Several staff indicated that if it wasn’t for the new ways of working, they would have left the organisation. It is also seen as a positive for attracting new starters wishing to join. According to Head of Evaluation and Insight Dave W, One of the challenges is maintaining a position of “Re-imagine, don’t just digitise”, so as not to slip back to our old ways of working, for example to a meetings culture and a focus on inputs rather than outcomes instead of liberating time to be more productive, and we always have to balance our vision with the constraints that come from the nature of our work. The aim going forward is to embed Smarter Working practices throughout and link them to an organisational approach that is more adaptive, in which teams work seamlessly across different locations and security classifications, with management structures that support a distributed workforce.

The Internet of Things, ambient computing and an ‘appy’ work experience We’re moving into an increasingly connected world. A core set of technologies for this goes by the shorthand of the Internet of Things (IoT). And there are subsets of it too, like the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Basically the term describes how objects, whether within a workplace, home or public space, are allocated an IP address and can connect through digital networks to other things. So everything from light switches and coffee machines to sensors, vehicles, medical devices, industrial machinery and much more acquires a degree of connected intelligence that enables it to be responsive to its environment, to specific contextual information, to automated systems or to requests from humans. It may also involve the ability to recognise and respond to assets identified through various forms of tagging. This is happening, and some of it is not particularly new. I remember working with a company in the mid-1990s that had a project to equip its tractor engines with IP addresses for the purposes of remote diagnostics. So we have a three-decade

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period of gestation and evolution behind these developments. But it’s taken improvements in Wi-Fi and 5 G networks to bring about the possibilities of fully connected workplaces, homes, cities – and lives. We can add to this the possibilities of ambient computing. That is, when you enter a space, the environment recognises you. It can then update you about your work schedule, recognise your preferences and adjust environmental systems accordingly or recommend a place to work that is in line with your preferences. This may involve a virtual assistant (as mentioned before) that you interact with by voice or by information provided through an app. The idea of a virtual assistant assumes a level of integration between it (pronoun according to your preference), workplace systems and your systems for work. At the moment, we’re looking at the smartphone as being central to this experience. And as most people use their smartphone for personal as well as work use, this is another area of potentially blurred boundaries. Now all this may spur you to run away and go totally off-grid. Or it may be that you welcome the potential productivity advantages and the streamlining of the work experience. Artificial intelligence permeates these systems, recognising patterns of behaviour, analysing data and suggesting ways forward. It should also enable you to automate a lot of the donkey work you do in your role, liberating time to be more creative as well as productive. We commented in Chapter 5 on how the differences between (human) generations are overblown, and are mostly down to younger generations not being as beaten down by life experience, disappointment and mortgages as their elders. Their turn will come. However, the significant point of distinction is in having grown up in a world where digital interaction is just part of normal life. As the generations in the workforce turn over, these connected workplaces, homes and cities will be part of normal, with their blending of physical and digital worlds. There are many videos on YouTube giving examples of how a working day might be, blending experience across home and visiting a workplace. Some are a bit fanciful, perhaps, but when trying to raise awareness, it’s worth exploring some of these with colleagues17. Most aspects of this all-connected virtual workplace will be accessible to us wherever and whenever we work. In this context, the standard hybrid work ‘dilemma’ of ‘how many days should we spend in the office’ looks so 20th century, so analogue. The real conversations need to be about how we use the potential of these technologies to make work and workplaces (across all the domains) more

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productive, more inclusive, more sustainable, and enabling the best possible access to colleagues wherever they are working. Health and wellbeing apps There has also been an avalanche of apps that monitor health and wellbeing in the workplace over the past couple of years. And I’m sure this will continue, with more sophisticated and automated offerings coming on stream in the years ahead. These fall basically into two camps: those where a user reports back on their mood, assessment of their own wellbeing, their engagement or happiness, and those that are wearable and do various kinds of tracking and physical monitoring. They also typically provide access to other information, exercises (whether active or meditative) and advisory services. Some organisations have been providing these as a benefit to employees, and there has been a particular focus on mental health during and immediately after the pandemic. We’ll look more closely at these in Chapter 13 on wellbeing. Here our interest is more on how such apps can shed light on the work experience in the context of Smart Working. As these apps can gather data from individuals working across the Extended Workplace, this can help to provide insights into the relative wellbeing benefits to employees of working at different times and locations. A core competence of being ‘technologically curious’ I once asked a Chief Operating Officer of an organisation whether he thought there were any new management skills required for Smart Working. He thought mostly they were the same, though exercised over distance. Then he proposed a new competence, of being ‘technologically curious’. That doesn’t mean every manager becoming an IT expert, or interested in technology for its own sake. It’s about being aware of new technology developments, and reflecting on how these could improve the ways people work. I think that’s true. And it applies not only to managers, when you think about it. We’ll be looking in the next chapter at how to develop a culture of improvement and innovation that works at every level of an organisation. Technology is now blended into every part of work – and if not yet, it soon will be.

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Notes 1 McKinsey (5 October 2020), How COVID-19 has pushed companies over the technology tipping point—and transformed business forever. www.mckinsey.com/ capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/how-covid-19-haspushed-companies-over-the-technology-tipping-point-and-transformedbusiness-forever 2 Options are outlined at www.wework.com/info/holopresence 3 Brian Heater (11 May 2023), Google’s latest Project Starline prototype uses AI to make 3D images of people, TechCrunch, https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/10/googleslatest-project-starline-prototype-uses-ai-to-make-3d-images-of-people/ 4 Lau Christensen and Alex Robinson (2022), The Potential Global Economic Impact of the Metaverse. Analysis Group, a report produced for Meta. www.analysisgroup. com/globalassets/insights/publishing/2022-the-potential-global-economic-impactof-the-metaverse.pdf 5 Interestingly, former UK Deputy Prime Minister, and now Meta’s President of Global Affairs, strongly advocates early government involvement in devising a system for governance for the metaverse: Collectively, we can think of this process as developing a system of governance for the metaverse. And it mustn’t be shaped by tech companies like Meta on their own. It needs to be developed openly with a spirit of cooperation between the private sector, lawmakers, civil society, academia, and the people who will use these technologies. This effort must be undertaken in the best interests of people and society, not just technology companies. Nick Clegg (18 May 2022), Making the metaverse: What it is, how it will be built, and why it matters, Medium, https://nickclegg.medium.com/making-the-metaversewhat-it-is-how-it-will-be-built-and-why-it-matters-3710f7570b04 6 Joshan Abraham et al. (October 2022), Digital twins: The foundation of the enterprise metaverse, McKinsey, www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinseydigital/our-insights/digital-twins-the-foundation-of-the-enterprise-metaverse 7 Accenture (2022), Technology Vision 2022: Meet Me in the Metaverse – The Continuum of Technology and Experience, Reshaping Business. www.accenture. com/_acnmedia/Thought-Leadership-Assets/PDF-5/Accenture-Meet-Mein-the-Metaverse-Full-Report.pdf 8 Andy Lake and Tim Dwelly (2014), It’s Work But Not As We Know It. Flexibility.co.uk research report.

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9 Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind (2015), The Future of the Professions: How Technology will Transform the Work of Human Experts. Oxford University Press. 10 Presentation at Workplace Trends Research Summit in London in March 2022 by Rob Wright, Co-Founder of Spaceology, Decoding Participant Behaviours in General Conversations. 11 A useful guide to companies providing solutions is provided by WORKTECH Academy (2022), WORKTECH: Guide to Utilisation Technology, Volume 2, available at https://worktechevents.com/reports/worktech-guide-to-utilisationtechnology/ 12 David Ramel (23 June 2022), Gartner predicts big zero trust uptake, but most won’t benefit, Virtualization Review, https://virtualizationreview.com/articles/2022/06/ 23/gartner-predictions.aspx 13 In conversation with the author. 14 National Institute of Standards and Technology (2018), Cybersecurity Framework. www.nist.gov/cyberframework/getting-started 15 National Cyber Security Centre (2021), Device Security Guidance. www.ncsc. gov.uk/collection/device-security-guidance/bring-your-own-device 16 In conversation with the author. 17 These change over time, but there are always some interesting ones to find if you search ‘future of work’, ‘future workplace’ (etc.). And you can add into the search terms the names of leading companies that produce content in these fields such as Microsoft, Intel, Google, Siemens, JLL, Accenture, BBC, the Economist and many more.

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Chapter Nine Embedding a Smart Working culture

What do we mean by culture? When we talk about organisational culture, we mean the way things are done, both formally and informally, and the assumptions and expectations about how things are and should be done. This covers work organisation, the way workplaces are run, leadership styles, values and language, the way people relate to each other and the rules and conventions that surround how things are done. It includes mechanisms of power, trust and control. In this chapter we are interested in how to develop a transformative Smart Working culture, and specifying what this is. Smart Working practices require changes in behaviour. At one level, this is self-evident. Working in a different place or at a different time, in a different environment and with different tools means that we will, of necessity, behave differently. But how profound is the change? Organisations may have implemented ‘Hybrid Working’, but in practice not much at all has changed apart from (sometimes) the place of work. They work mainly in the same ways, with the same culture and expectations. We need to go beyond hybrid if we are really to make a difference. To maximise the positive impacts of Smart Working, the changes must do more than change the time or location of work. For a new culture to become embedded and take root, the behaviours and assumptions underlying working practices and the culture of work must change at a more profound and transformative level.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003288930-9

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Giving practical form to wider cultural change programmes Many organisations embark on cultural change programmes that set out the values and traits that characterise them or that they aspire to. These typically include statements around trust, empathy, respect, inclusivity, collaboration, passion, curiosity, sustainability, creativity, belonging and so forth. These are then given expression in internal communications, external marketing, recruitment, culture change and training. Inevitably, the focus tends to be on shifting mindsets and attitudes. Changing the culture of an organisation, however, needs to have a practical, rather than a theoretical, approach. As I’ve found in many a training session, people love to talk about the culture of their organisation, and usually they home in on specific problems. Often people feel strongly about them, and have a lot of issues to vent. The ethos and values of Smart Working are very much in line with the kind of values mentioned earlier. And it links the expression of these values with practical and new ways of working and achieving specific benefits. The CAN Test It takes a new way of thinking to relate working practices with the problems and fault-lines identified in an organisation. A good way to move conversations forward is to apply what I call the CAN Test. That is, Challenge the Assumption of Necessity about the where, when, why and how of doing things. This involves the following questions, about any working practice or process: • • • •

Why are we doing this (at all)? Why are we doing this here? Why are we doing this in this way? Why are we doing this now (rather than at another time)?

Challenging all assumptions is a crucial step when introducing new Smart Working practices. Many people, accustomed to the old ways and unfamiliar with the potential of the new ones, approach conversations about change with certain assumptions of necessity. It may revolve around a type of job. ‘This kind of job has to be done in the office’ is a phrase I’ve heard many times.

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But how true is it? Let’s have a look at a couple of examples where we can Challenge the Assumption of Necessity. Take assumptions about face-to-face interaction. ‘Flexible work is OK for some’, says the change-resistant middle manager, ‘but my team has a high requirement for face-to-face interaction. So there’s very limited capacity for flexibility’. A statement like this is packed with assumptions about how work necessarily is to be done. The big underlying assumption in this statement is that the best context for interaction with colleagues or the public is at the times and in the places that I, the manager, decide. Such a view is sometimes supported in advice about Flexible Working. I’ve seen phrasing like the following in guides to Flexible Working, about the types of jobs that could be eligible for Flexible Working: ‘Flexible Working is suitable for jobs where there is a minimal requirement for face-toface contact with other employees or the public’. There are assumptions here that: a. ‘face-to-face’ means physical face-to-face, and that b. (physical) ‘face-to-face’ provides more effective outcomes than other means of interaction. Possibly this is the case for some specific tasks, but it is not generally true. It needs challenging through the CAN Test. When challenged, for example, it may emerge that for the public to communicate with you, a time outside of your organisation’s working hours is best. In my experience customers value certainty and quality of response more than a face-to-face meeting. And many people would prefer that a transaction took place online, rather than fixing a meeting and having to travel somewhere. On digging, I would expect to find that an exaggerated value attached to colleague face-to-face is associated with an excessive meetings culture, which most employees feel is an obstacle to productivity. Challenge the assumptions! I was once working with an international telecoms company that was tentatively exploring the outer margins of flexibility. Given that many telecoms companies were already leading exponents of flexibility, their caution surprised me at first. From a series of structured interviews with senior managers, it

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emerged that one of their big concerns in allowing remote working was the potential breakdown of communication between colleagues and possible negative impacts on teamwork. At the same time, the interviews showed that in the R&D and operational teams there was already extensive virtual teamworking. Teams in the UK routinely worked as part of international teams, with colleagues from all over the world. So within the company there was extensive experience in working with colleagues without physical face-to-face contact. Several managers were obviously quite experienced in managing this. So what was the issue? The issue was really to do with traditional assumptions about where work should be done. Face-to-face actually didn’t matter as much in practice. What was of more concern was that employees should be based in, as they saw it, ‘proper’ workplaces where there was line-of-sight supervision. So people could work virtually if located in traditional workplaces, but doing so outside of one was not allowed. The issues here were really around the assumptions of most senior and middle managers about how they expected work to be done, in familiar office-based ways. And this meant that despite its being an environment geared to technological innovation, innovation in working practices was going to have a hard time making its way up the agenda. You might think that this attitude has been swept away by the ‘great work from home experiment’ of 2020–2022. But it’s this same attitude and associated behaviours that underpin unreasonable demands to ‘return to the office’. Our second example is a different kind of practice, a routine habit that has traditionally been part of recruitment processes for years. That is having rigid requirements in contracts for time and place of attendance for work. Such requirements are often unchallenged: ‘It’s just what we do’. With Smart Working and management by results, there need not be a fixed time or place for many kinds of work. So these should only be specified when actually relevant to the nature of the work. And assumptions about the nature of the work, and of the job design that goes with it, need also to be challengingly thought through. This challenge should also apply to standard requirements for contractors. These kinds of requirements can have very negative impacts on diversity too. One should think proactively about widening the potential talent pool to recruit from, and removing some standard clauses from contracts that have an excluding impact is part of that.

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From deconstructing to reconstructing Identifying and unpacking key cultural assumptions is crucial. That’s the first step in the CAN Test. Next is to assemble the alternatives. So after Challenging the Assumptions of Necessity there’s another set of questions, which focus on how things could change for the better. These questions focus on how working practices can ‘step up’ to become more fleet of foot and better targeted. We should look at everything we do, and ask: ‘Are there ways of doing this that are: • • • • •

Faster? More flexible? Lighter (i.e. less heavy on resources – time, energy, physical resources)? More in line with customer needs? More in line with employee aspirations?’

These questions have a strong practical focus, and may not at first appear to be questions about organisational culture. But they all have a cultural dimension, and exploring them inevitably raises cultural issues, especially when the questions are worked through in the context of where and when people work. Just below the surface will be cultural issues involving: • • • • • • • • • •

Hierarchy versus equality Rules versus relationships Centralisation versus decentralisation Authority versus autonomy Control versus trust Collectivism versus individualism Secrecy or ‘need-to-know’ mentalities versus transparency Tradition or conformity versus innovation Risk-avoidance versus risk-taking Linear/sequential approaches to activities versus non-linear/interactive

and so forth through various sliding scales of cultural analysis. For the most part, the Smart Working culture will align with values and behaviours that are in the second part of each of these statements. And if we

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imagine each of these as being on a sliding scale, we want to slide along to the right in each case. Discussions in the workplace may not use much of the more abstract language. But the issues will be in there, mixed in with the practical issues about whether this task or that task could, in fact, be done at home or whether a routine meeting could be replaced by asynchronous communication. So, in trying to initiate culture change, it is important to focus on activities where practical changes will bring about the changes in behaviours and values that will have the effect of changing the culture. People doing the work often have a good idea about where their work processes are inefficient or wasteful, where the company is missing a trick, and where changes would make a difference. And it’s useful to get people from different teams together to look at these issues. A challenge can often come from outside the team: ‘Why on earth do you do it like that? We do this …’ It’s often helpful to bring in experience from outside the organisation. While people working at the sharp end often know where the problems are, they may not be up to speed on the full range of alternatives being practised in the wider world. An experienced facilitator in the field of new ways of working can help people move rapidly up the learning curve, and provide examples from other organisations that are further along in changing the way they work. Table 9.1 provides some examples of the kinds of practices that are typically ripe for rethinking in an organisation that wishes to develop Smart Working practices. You can no doubt think of others that go by unquestioned in your own organisation or those you work with. Defining a Smart Working culture After deconstructing the way work is done and the underlying cultural assumptions, it is important to develop a clear idea of what you want the new working culture to be. Smart Working is not about doing things in the old way with some new technologies and redesigned offices – it is about new ways of working using new tools, new processes and new approaches to management and teamwork. This requires different types of behaviours and different expectations about how work is done.

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Table 9.1 Examples of practices to be challenged Practice to be challenged

Reason

Approvals processes and signatures

These can be a barrier to more effective working and a trust-based culture. Where paper-based these are very cumbersome indeed. As far as possible people should be able to access information and systems from anywhere. If there are security issues, can the risks be managed better? These days it’s possible to work collaboratively on the same document at the same time, e.g. in Microsoft Office, Google Docs, etc. This is faster, more flexible, ‘lighter’ (etc.) as per the CAN Test. Increasingly people have dashboards that display live data and from which you can produce automated reports. This shifts the emphasis in the work from processing data to analysing it and acting rapidly. Such requirements are often unchallenged: ‘It’s just what we do’. With Smart Working and management by results, there need not be a fixed time or place for many kinds of work. Only to be specified when actually required by the work. These requirements can have very negative impacts on diversity too. One should think proactively about widening the potential talent pool to recruit from. This challenge should apply to standard requirements for contractors also. E.g. do IT contractors have to be on site if the work itself does not need them to be there? Following on from the last point – often the best people with the right skills do not live locally. Smart Working enables people to be recruited from a much wider geographical area. Agreements can be reached about how often they will attend in person (or meet somewhere in between) and how work can be carried out from wherever they are. Where there is a right to request Flexible Working, either by statute or company policy, the application process is often based on tick-box processes, where the employee has to prove the working practice is not damaging. The assumptions need to be reversed – to ask: ‘why not?’. There should be a default ‘Yes’ unless the nature of the work genuinely makes the proposed flexibility problematic.

Having systems and data accessible only in specific places Working in sequence on documents, passing versions from one person to another for comments Extracting data from systems, or collating data from various sources, then producing a report for a meeting Rigid requirements in contracts for time and place of attendance

Expectations of relocation if a new employee lives far away

The way Flexible Working requests are dealt with

(Continued)

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Table 9.1 (Continued) Practice to be challenged

Reason

Excessive focus on time inputs to work and time recording/ monitoring

This is quite a challenging one. With a move to management by results the emphasis should shift from inputs to outputs and outcomes. But so much of work is oriented around time inputs, e.g. as the basis for how resources are deployed and how customers are billed. Management by results could be a whole training course in itself – but it is a recommended area for exploring in your organisations to see how any excessive focus on time-inputs can be remedied, and results brought to centre stage. People complain of email overload, while at the same time overloading their colleagues and customers with it. New entrants to the workforce from colleges and university do not use email so much. They use learning management systems for academic communication, and social media for personal communication. Entering a traditional workplace can be like going back to the 1990s. Messaging apps make for more dynamic communication. Attachments should be few – instead there should be links to where a single version of the current information is held.

Use of email

In essence, a Smart Working culture consists of: • Higher levels of collaborative working – between individuals, between teams, with external partners and with the wider public • The pursuit of continuous service improvements, in particular through the use of new technologies to increase efficiencies • Commitment to flexibility – being constantly open to new ways of working and delivering services, avoiding temptations to try to freeze Smart Working into a rigid or prescriptive formula • A culture of innovation, openness and curiosity • Managing by results rather than management by presence • A shared approach to trust rather than ‘command and control’ • Working in shared spaces and with shared resources when in organisationowned spaces, rather than with territorial or personalised ones

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• Higher levels of staff empowerment and autonomy, to maximise the benefits arising from the new working styles • A personal professional ethos of creating/sharing value, self-responsibility and accountability • Emphasis on using new ways of working to assist employees achieve a better work–life balance, health and wellbeing • Commitment to using new technologies and new ways of working to reduce the environmental impact of the organisation’s workstyles, processes and delivery of services • Commitment to using new technologies and new ways of working to recruit, retain and develop a more diverse and included workforce • A culture of learning, using the new technologies to help employees, wherever they are located, to develop their skills and capabilities and move forward in their careers. It is important to recognise that developing a Smart Working culture and ensuring that the changes become embedded is a collective responsibility, not one that can be imposed from above. However, strong leadership will be needed to ensure the changes are taken forward, and to galvanise teams to develop the new culture and new ways of working. From a meetings culture to a culture of flexible collaboration People in organisations regularly complain about having too many meetings. For some, this has become worse with moves to distributed working, if habits have developed where every interaction now becomes a diarised online meeting. This happens when there is an out-of-control meetings culture. It doesn’t have to be that way. It’s not just a question of managing meetings better, though that is part of the solution. Before getting to that, it’s necessary to ask some fundamental questions about the experience of meetings, such as: • Have you ever attended a boring meeting? • Or a pointless meeting? • Or a meeting where you’re given information at the last minute – possibly handed round on paper – and there’s not time to digest it or make reasonable decisions on the basis of that?

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• • • •

Or a meeting where no decisions are reached at all? Or a meeting where you don’t know why you are there? Or perhaps why half the other attendees are there? Or travelled to a boring, pointless meeting where information is provided at the last minute, and nothing is decided except to have another meeting?

All these situations will probably sound familiar. Why do we do it? There must be better ways. There are, and they are integral to establishing a Smart Working culture. Having too many meetings, and meetings that don’t achieve much, if anything, is a longstanding problem for many organisations, especially larger ones. For managers, it can be a chronic calendar condition. I’ve known managers who’ve started work at coffee shops around 6.30am to ‘get some work done’ before facing days full of meetings. Which is fine until their colleagues find out about this, and gate-crash their moments of blissful solitude for impromptu catchup meetings. So to change such a culture, it’s essential to rethink meetings. It’s not just about how meetings are managed. It’s about the whole essence of why we meet, and what meetings are for. Changing the nature of them can bring useful improvements, but doesn’t get to the heart of the problems of a meetings culture. What we want to do is move from a meetings culture to one of flexible and dynamic collaboration. This means focusing on purpose, rather than place or presence. And though meetings may take place online, often the basic structure and expectations of the meeting remain based on a traditional meeting-room event. In which case, the essential problems remain. Having new technologies doesn’t in itself make a difference. It’s what we use them for that does. Combining the most appropriate use of locations, technologies and most of all new behaviours, we can both reduce the number of meetings and interact more effectively. Reducing the number of meetings Promoting more effective collaboration and reducing the number of meetings involves: 1. Replacing meetings by doing something else 2. As a default position, holding meetings without expectations of being in the same room together

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3. Rethinking the nature of work so it leads to fewer ‘set-piece’ meetings 4. Addressing questions of authority and power-relationships so as to authorise decision-making at the most appropriate level 5. Looking at the added value of meeting a) physically face-to-face and b) virtually face-to-face, compared to other ways of achieving the required purposes. The following is a useful exercise for getting people to think through the purpose of meetings. Working through the template in Table 9.2, the task is to think through how much a meeting is required for the following interaction purposes. They should put in ‘P’ for physical face-to-face, and ‘V’ for virtual face-to-face. If the purpose can be achieved other than by having a meeting, that should be put into the last column. Pre-pandemic, I used a very similar exercise in many workshops, but with the focus initially more on deconstructing the need to be in the same place for these kinds of purposes. I think (formerly) office-based people have now become familiar with holding more online meetings. That’s not necessarily true, though, for people with more hands-on tasks in their work. Post-pandemic, I would expect to see more people putting virtual meetings as their favoured way of doing many of these. Typically, purposes for which people would still tend to favour same-place interactions are brainstorming, teambuilding, appraisals and (from the underlying activities) socialising/developing relationships. First meetings would probably have quite a few supporters too, but people’s expectations of that have changed a lot over the past 5 years or so. Let’s get into some of the possible alternatives, achieving meeting purposes by doing something else. One good way to do this is to follow the slightly over-the-top maxim: ‘Never use a meeting to provide information!’ Meetings are much more useful if people have the information they need well in advance and have had time to digest it. That way they can use it effectively and make informed decisions. That means effective use of shared documents, use of asynchronous messaging tools or business social media to share information and comments in a timely fashion before a possible meeting, and then to establish the need to meet or not. Doing this can reduce the number of meetings, and/or reduce the length of them. Virtual collaboration in this way can substitute for meetings, or at least for routine parts of meetings. Many meetings are held for routine updating about work in projects (and often generating a great deal of paper and a deluge of emails in the process). Having

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Table 9.2 How often should people meet face-to-face, either in the same place or virtually? Interaction purpose

Always/ Mostly

Sometimes

Rarely

Never

Alternative to meeting?

First meetings Talking to customers/clients Customer support Setting strategy Making key decisions Consultation Project review/updates Brainstorming Presentations Teamwork Teambuilding Appraisal Training Key underlying activities Exchanging information/ Reporting Decision-making Socialising/Developing relationships Learning Monitoring performance Note: It’s useful to invite people to add any other purposes that are not covered in the template.

better workflow or project management systems where everyone can clearly see what work has been done and progress on workstreams can reduce the need for meetings – and increase efficiency too. It’s also good practice to have a single shared location for the meeting information. This way you can avoid multiple emails with attachments, and problems

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with version control. Just a link to the latest version of the document in a shared area is all that should be needed. If the information-sharing part of meetings is taken out of the equation, it’s then a question, when you do meet, of homing in on the essential purposes of meeting. These should usually focus on: • Taking decisions, with options having been clearly presented in advance • Identifying risks, with mitigating actions or investigations agreed • Discussing/consulting on complex issues where there is uncertainty about the way forward • Coming up with innovative ideas if that is needed • Ironing out problems or disagreements that have been identified. These apply whether interacting in the same place or virtually. I said that the maxim, ‘Never use a meeting to provide information!’ is slightly over-the-top. The exception is where information is extremely complex and it’s a question of bringing people up to speed and ensuring they understand it. In which case, the purpose of the meeting is more about learning than about just sharing the information. So the approach can also be calibrated according to the experience and needs of the stakeholders involved, e.g. for new recruits, or stakeholders who may not be up-to-speed in the field brought in to assess a project or pitches from suppliers. Even so, sharing the information in advance remains essential. One thing that encourages information-heavy (or just plain useless!) meetings is scheduling of recurring meetings. My recommendation is that everyone should look through their calendars and identify every meeting that has a title, but nothing to indicate its purpose. This is about more than just seeing if it has an agenda. An agenda helps, but does not guarantee a purposeful meeting. So here’s another maxim: ‘Meetings should have a purpose, not a title’. If they don’t – strike them out. Or at the very least challenge the person who scheduled a meeting to clarify the purpose. Being more purposeful with virtual interaction Using Teams, Zoom and other collaboration tools means we can have face-to-face synchronous interactions based on virtual rather than physical presence. Or we can productively combine same-place and virtual interaction.

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These technologies not only help to reduce travel for meetings, but they can also be used to transform the nature of meetings, for example by: • Having participants on standby to address specific parts of a meeting. If someone is not needed for a whole meeting, they can be messaged a few minutes before they are on, and then just participate for the portions relevant to them – either online or if in the same building, trot up the corridor to join in. At that point, they can be given control of the screen if needed. Meanwhile they can get on with useful work • Extending a two-way call into a brief ad hoc meeting by adding new participants, to get the right expertise involved at the right moment • Saving a recording of a meeting and presentation slides in shared areas so that people unable to participate can get the necessary information later • Allowing colleagues working in different places to keep a channel open for long periods while they work, to support ad hoc business and social interaction. All these techniques can be used to: • Reduce the number of formal meetings • Make formal meetings shorter and more focused • Open up new possibilities for flexible collaboration and information sharing. It’s worthwhile for teams to consider setting targets to reduce the time spent in formal meetings if they feel they are suffering from a ‘meetings culture’. This can take the form of a target to cut the amount of time spent in meetings by a specified percent or number of hours. Can difficult conversations take place virtually? One of the issues that always came up in workshops when we looked at the added value of getting together in person, was about appraisals and having difficult conversations. Increasingly people have been doing appraisals online, even before the pandemic. But, people said, it was more uncomfortable to have difficult conversations when you’re not in the same room, and indeed when the party on the receiving end of criticism is in their own home.

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This always generated some debate, and the core issues were around the lack of body language making emotions more difficult to read, and the question of intrusion into the home environment. However, there is a danger of developing a practice where good news is handled virtually, but bad news requires a visit to the office, like a trip to the naughty step. As one workshop participant put it, ‘I don’t want to drive 40 miles just to get a bollocking!’ Not all difficult conversations are connected with performance, of course. It can be about difficulties that people are having in their lives, such as health issues or pressures from outside work. To some extent the choice of where and how to speak is about knowing the preferred communication style of the participants, and their existing relationship. It’s also about the seriousness of the conversation involved. Most conversations can take place via video, or even on a virtual walk-together. But if someone is struggling and is likely to need support, then being in the same place can be an advantage, where they are around other people. It’s worth noting that people who manage international teams have been doing this for many years. It’s a question of being able to exercise management skills at a distance, as much as anything. Trusting people to make decisions – and having the confidence to do so Excessive meeting practices often run alongside cultures that have low levels of empowerment for employees. Everything needs to be ratified by people at a higher level, or involve consultation with every possible stakeholder and their dog. Decisions are pushed upwards, sideways, in any direction except towards a rapid resolution. This generates a great deal of meeting time, often rehearsing information that many, if not most, of the participants have heard several times over. This is a sign of an organisation that is both risk-averse and lacks trust. If people are empowered to make decisions that are within their capability, this has a significant effect on both the pace of work and the nature of interactions. In many cases, no meeting will be needed, or perhaps just a call or informal chat with someone whose input or advice is valuable. After that, just a note to the relevant people or logging it in the system can be sufficient as a record that the action has been taken. The aim in reducing the number of meetings/time spent in meetings is to liberate time to do something more productive. In workshops over the past decade, I’ve challenged people to estimate how much of the time spent in meetings

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they could reduce by using these techniques. Estimates have ranged from 30 to 90%. I’ve only ever had one participant confidently declare that ‘all my meetings are valuable and purposeful’. Her opinion, however, wasn’t shared by her colleagues attending the workshop. Interestingly, at the time of writing, Shopify Chief Operating Officer Kaz Nejatian has sent out a memo saying the company would strike out all previously scheduled recurring meetings that involved three or more people. It would also impose a twoweek cooling off period before any of those meetings could be restored to calendars1. In 2020, a team at the Government Digital Service had a pilot of having no meetings at all. As these were people who worked with agile methodologies this was quite a challenge to the usual rituals that are part of the process when they are all in the same place. However, they reported that it worked better than expected. At the same time, they drove down email, working and communicating with Slack channels and Google Docs. They learned a lot through the pilot, and though there are occasions when a meeting would help, they say they won’t ever go back to how they worked before2. Synchronous versus asynchronous interaction – which is best for Smart Working? So far, we’ve been looking at synchronous interaction and the interplay of sameplace and virtual interactions. However, there are also good tools available for asynchronous teamwork such as Slack and Trello, and chat and channels within Teams and Google Workplace. There are a host of other offerings as well, and no doubt will be more as time goes on. ‘Asynchronous’ basically means that people interact, just not at the same time. There are strong advocates who insist that asynchronous is the best way to go for working on a distributed basis. That’s part of the advice from companies like Doist and Gitlab, great champions of remote working. The biggest advantages are around control and being free of distraction. You can control interruptions, and focus on your work. Brian Elliott and his co-authors in How the Future Works, make a strong case for ‘brain-writing’ as opposed to brainstorming3. There is evidence that supports the effectiveness of this, saying that people are more likely to come up with great new ideas when they are on their own, rather than when all gathered in a room and told ‘innovate now!’ According to Darren Murph, Head of Remote at Gitlab, asynchronous working helps people stay in control of their work and lives, and is central to reducing stress.

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Gitlab has a culture that maximises employee autonomy, enabling people to work wherever and whenever, as long as the work is done. As they have employees in more than 60 countries and work across time zones, one can see the logic in this4. Another advantage of asynchronous work is documenting everything, which in principle ensures that people don’t miss out when working on a distributed basis. It also makes the work people do more transparent to others. So when work is handed over to others, it’s clear how it reached the stage it is at. In summary, asynchronous work involves decentralised decision-making, documentation, clear areas of responsibility, clear priorities, manageable workloads with fewer but better meetings. It also helps support non-linear workdays (see Chapter 13), by enabling people to be more in charge of their availability. So here I’m recommending asynchronous work as part of the solution for moving from a meetings culture to one of flexible collaboration. But on the other hand, there are valuable ways to move in the other direction, working synchronously to add pace and dynamism to work. Promoting more dynamic collaboration and teamwork Traditional office work typically has embedded habits of linear working. That is, working in sequence on documents, passing versions from one person to another for comments. It’s characterised by email trails as people send messages and attachments to each other, routines around version control (hopefully!) and periodic meetings to review, then rinse and repeat until ‘perfect’. In the past, for some more bureaucratic organisations this involved paper bundles being sent in turn to the required people, who would make comments and sign that they had worked on it, and at the final iteration that they have approved it. In some cases, this paperround has been digitised but the basic sequence still remains the same. All the assumptions around these kinds of processes need to be challenged. The top half of Figure 9.1 illustrates a traditional linear process. One or more people hunker down to do their solo work, email it to others, get revisions or emailed comments back, then attend a meeting to present and discuss, and so forth. For several years now it’s been possible for groups of people to use standard office tools to work on documents, spreadsheets, presentations (etc.) simultaneously: revising, making comments, talking online to each other as they go. A single latest version of the co-created product exists at all times. If necessary, everyone can go away and have further thoughts, making comments and revisions through an associated channel.

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Or it may involve analysing data on a dashboard, whether by gathering round a screen, accessing it online or a mix of the two. Then a course of action can be decided on and documented, or people can work on an automatically generated report. This kind of process will be very familiar to most students coming out of university, but on joining the workforce they often then become acculturated to the linear processes of an employer. Clearly there are potential benefits here for productivity. But there are also benefits for the culture. If your aim is to promote greater collaboration and/or greater innovation, this is an important way to get into the routine of having people working together, wherever they are. It’s also an important step in combating proximity bias, as people become accustomed to working effectively without always having to be in the same place. Don’t buy the idea that ‘home is best for focus and the office is best for collaboration’ This is an example of why you should be prepared to challenge the idea that ‘home is best for focus and the office is best for collaboration’. It’s an idea that has grown during the pandemic, and is one of the reasons why some organisations in what I call the ‘controlled hybrid’ category (Figure 1.2) mandate a number of days or even specific days for people to get together in the office. It’s also why some think they are doing the right thing to mandate ‘no meeting days’ when people can work at home, get their heads down and focus. What’s wrong with this is the expectation that focus work is necessarily done on one’s own. We need to take three things more seriously here: 1. We need to think much more in terms of ‘joint focus’ as well as solo focus 2. We shouldn’t assume that collaborating with colleagues or working as a team from different locations is inferior to collaborating when you’re in the same place. If that’s the case, you’re not doing virtual collaboration very well, and need to learn to do it better. Virtual collaboration is just different, not a sub-standard substitute. And it can have advantages too, especially in saving time, enabling more choice and reaching out to more people than might otherwise be able to be there in person. 3. People do still need good spaces to focus for solo work when in the workplace. They may have to be there for a variety of reasons, e.g. for

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collaboration or to be close to hands-on facilities, etc. Or it may be their preferred choice as a work location. So while the balance of settings in workplaces shifts towards space for various forms of interaction, there’s still a need for a choice of spaces for individual work (both more and less quiet). So again, it comes back to our first Smart Working principle, that work takes place wherever and whenever is most appropriate to get the work done, whether that involves one person or more. Changing mindsets as well as ways of working It’s easy to assume that high technology companies that provide solutions for digitally based working naturally gravitate to Smart Working. The truth has been much more varied than that. Some of the biggest players in this field have proved in practice to be quite conservative about introducing new ways of working, opting for the ‘Controlled Hybrid’ approach, even when their employees are expressing clear preferences for much more flexibility. One technology company, however, that rapidly pivoted to embrace flexibility during the pandemic is Slack.

Case study: Slack The Journey to being a Flexible and Digital-First organisation Over the past decade, Slack Technologies has been one of the fastest growing global software companies, providing communications solutions for digital teamwork. Prior to the pandemic, however, Slack was primarily an officecentric company, with expectations that employees would mainly work at their headquarters in San Francisco and their other main offices around the world. The experience of successfully working remotely during the pandemic led to a rapid change in the ways of working as the company adopted a ‘DigitalFirst’ model of organisation. This is about more than a change of location – it involves a complete switch of mindset about how work is done.

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According to Brian Elliott, leader of Slack’s Digital-First change programme and formerly Executive Leader of the Future Forum 5, Digital-First means embracing a truly flexible way of working, one in which people are given the freedom of choice in when and where they work, in order to unlock their potential and enable their best performance. It’s about seeing Digital as your headquarters, rather than a building. That means in-person interaction supplements the digital, rather than the other way round. A key principle is that ‘Digital First does not mean never in person’. It’s about being able to work wherever and whenever works best. That does sometimes involve bringing teams together. But there are no centrally determined requirements to be in the office or elsewhere any specific amount of time. That’s worked out at team level. There is however a requirement that, ‘Executives shouldn’t come into the office for more than three days per week’. That helps to ensure role-modelling from the top. The change programme began in summer 2020 when the executive team, in reviewing the company’s remote working experience, decided there was no going back to the old ways of working. A Task Force was set up to establish new working practices, principles and policies. A core principle is ‘to provide the flexibility and freedom for people to do their best work’. The programme has involved a lot of cross-functional activity, bringing together IT, HR, Communications and Workplace. It also involved working with Slack representatives from different offices around the world, as well as with employee networks. The principles, guidelines and toolkits developed by the programme were tested with both champions and doubters to get comprehensive feedback and new ideas to pursue. Developing the new ways of working is seen as a continuous learning process that aims for progress, not perfection. Doing this involves a commitment to transparency and inclusivity, ensuring that people are aware of what is being considered and can both put ideas forward and also challenge. Recognising that one-size doesn’t fit all, a framework has been established for implementing flexibility through Team Level Agreements. These cover the key areas of what the team values in their working environment (digital

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and physical), how the team collaborates, how to hold each other accountable, how to build relationships and come together as a team, and evolving Team Agreements over time. A crucial area of change has been rethinking meetings. A meetings culture that existed in the physical office was exacerbated with back-to-back video meetings during the lockdown. A combination of reducing the number of recurring meetings, a shift towards asynchronous communication and a call for innovative collaboration ideas has freed up space to be more productive. Team Agreements are used to agree on both core collaboration times and ‘maker’ times (when people can focus without interruption), according to the needs of the team. There’s been a strong focus on unlocking creativity at all levels in the organisation. ‘Brain-writing’, as opposed to ‘brainstorming’, is a shift in concept that takes creativity out of the confines of a room, and extends it across time, as well with the ability to include more people in the process. In Brian Elliott’s words: Brain-writing gives us the ability to look at a much wider palette of ideas by not limiting it to people who can be there in person. And it’s not about just moving to video. Voice plus being able to manipulate design digitally, and using channels to keep the ideas flowing and documented can be even more valuable. Location has little to do with creativity. Brian is similarly sceptical about the value of serendipitous meetings in the physical office: ‘The odds of chance collaboration by bumping into each other are very slight. It needs to be much more intentional than that’. Getting teams together in person should have a purpose, such as teambuilding activities, project kick-offs and other events that are planned in advance. So space in the office is designed for teamwork and working with customers. This has an impact on real estate requirements and office design, an area where Slack is continuing to experiment and innovate. A couple of floors at Slack HQ have become ‘event spaces’, and the C-suite has been decentralised – there is no

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longer an ‘executive floor’. Employees who need to are able to use WeWork coworking spaces. In 2018, Slack had already introduced a new approach to skills development for managers based on a coaching model. This helped in the shift towards a culture of flexibility. Being self-aware, inspiring trust, creating clarity, embracing transparency and unlocking potential are core leadership principles that dovetail with a trust-based culture and a focus on managing by results. The move to Digital First is having a big impact on hiring. Slack is now hiring more broadly rather than needing employees to be close to San Francisco, New York or other global HQs. Time zones remain an important consideration for collaboration, and they still aim to bring teams together inperson occasionally. Slack doesn’t believe the company’s reached the end of its journey by any means. It’s about becoming a learning organisation, and evolving towards a future of work which they see as being increasingly flexible, and with many new benefits yet to be realised.

Trust is central – but how does it work? Earlier in the chapter, I mentioned how people can become very animated when invited to talk about their organisational culture. One of the things they get most passionate about is the issue of trust. People at all levels in an organisation do not want to be treated like children, as if they were still at school. But working life is often like that. Trust is a key element of working relationships. And the foundations of trust are plural. It can be: • Competence-based trust: people are trusted because everyone knows they can do the job and will get on with it. It’s based on expertise and experience • Incentive-based trust: both sides know that there will be a reward for doing a good job, and buy into this bargain • Trust based on the personal relationship: our dealings with a person let us know, or have the impression, that they are someone who acts in our best interests and will support us when needed

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• With any of these points, trust can be earned over time, or can start from a default position of trust: it’s there, in effect, to be validated or lost. Trust is the other side of the coin for management by results. And with the trust comes an expectation of individuals taking greater responsibility for their work. However, we have also to be aware that not all work is the same (of course), and therefore trust has to operate in different contexts. For some kinds of work it is critical that it is done correctly, and at the necessary time. For most of the kinds of knowledge work that are carried out from home, there is a deadline but it won’t be so time critical in most cases. So there’s time to remedy problems with the work. Some work is more down to individual responsibility, other work might be more about a collective effort where the trust in the team relationships is vital. We can examine this further in the next section when we look at the consequences when trust breaks down. The scale of consequences when trust is misplaced or abused When the trust placed in colleagues is betrayed, abused or misplaced, there is a sliding scale of consequences: • Disappointment – with work left undone, effort, attitude, etc. • Damage to the work of others, as the contribution of an individual is missing or short of quality • Loss of income and/or reputation to the organisation – which has its own rising scale of consequences depending on the amount involved or relationship with customers and other external parties • Potential for psychological harm, e.g. by adding to the stress of colleagues, misrepresenting others through to harassment and other unacceptable behaviours • Potential for physical harm, where safety procedures are ignored, or in sectors where there are potential life-and-death consequences (which we’ll look at further in Chapter 14 when considering services like policing, and the interface between trust and hierarchy), and breaches of legislation or regulatory requirements. We also need to consider what lies behind a situation where we feel trust has been betrayed. Is it an honest mistake? Is it the result of being careless? Reckless?

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Malevolent? Then again, has the manager, or team colleagues, made an initial error in trusting someone to do work beyond their expertise, or not providing the right support to ensure a better outcome? The framework of trust So our checklist of factors to take into account to give practical form to a culture of trust comprises: • • • •

The nature and context of the work The readiness and capability of a person to undertake the tasks The framework of support The structures we have in place for sharing work and monitoring progress towards results.

These apply to trust in any situation. By adopting the principle of flexibility as normal, it removes or modifies assumptions about proximity and presence. So some of the traditional fall-back techniques in traditional ways of working, like looking over someone’s shoulder or micromanaging their work, should no longer be options. I say, ‘should not’. There are, though, ways that employers can closely monitor employees’ work, wherever they are working – keystroke monitoring, reporting on how and when people use applications, requirements to have cameras on, etc. These practices will undermine the culture of trust you are trying to build. The trust that is being built is not only about completing work. It’s also about facilitating the trust that people need to manage the work/rest-of-life interfaces. This involves a subtle shift in the psychological contract between employers and employees about the way work brings benefits to both sides. We should also note the risk to a culture of trust when time requirements are applied, e.g. to being on site in ‘Controlled Hybrid’ implementations, or with practices such as having core hours. While the nature of the work may provide some justification for these practices, there’s also an interpretation that says, ‘You don’t trust us to work these things out for ourselves’. That’s why I have a preference for letting teams work these things out for themselves in their Team Agreements. And it’s why, if an organisation has gone for a Controlled Hybrid solution, it’s better to set a guideline of 40% of the time on average

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over a period of time rather than requiring two days on site each week. That facilitates more flexibility for the individual in choosing how to organise their work. Building the new working culture There will be a three-stage process for establishing the new Smart Working culture: 1. Understanding and assenting to it – agreeing it will work and buying into the concept 2. Learning to value it, even love it 3. Taking on the new ways of working as habit, so that operating in the new ways become second-nature. The processes of evidence-building, consultation and involvement described in this and previous chapters should go a long way to raising understanding, developing a shared language of change and achieving buy-in to the idea. It’s worth reiterating that most people do want more flexibility. Selling the concept will really not be as hard as some people are inclined to think when they focus on the potential problems, or listen to the immovable objectors and prophets of doom. Beyond that, the cultural dimension does need to be directly addressed. This is not a book to address in detail theories of culture change. Different organisations will have different approaches, and different levels of in-house resource to support this. My recommendation is to root the culture change in the practical. This involves discussing why things are done as they are, what could be better, how the new working practices will be implemented and how they will make a difference. It also involves direct discussion, particularly with managers, of the agreed Smart Working principles and the protocols that will govern the new ways of working. Let’s take one of the characteristics of a Smart Working Culture we looked at as an example: ‘Higher levels of staff empowerment and autonomy, to maximise the benefits arising from the new working styles’. There is relatively little value in addressing this in an abstract way. The conversation should be rooted in the real, everyday context of work. That is: how do we – our company, our team – put this into practice?

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The conversation will no doubt highlight areas where staff feel they are disempowered at the moment, and where having greater autonomy, freedom and being trusted more would make a difference. It will also highlight how particular benefits are related to certain styles of working, and how behaviours such as leadership styles, transparency, team communication, etc., will need to change to make things work effectively. Culture change is not achieved overnight, and won’t be after a single team workshop, however positive the feeling afterwards. To get first the intellectual and then the emotional acceptance of the new ways of working, and the new culture that supports it, will require frequent revisiting, so having a regular ‘How’s it going?’ item on the agenda for team gatherings is vital. Building the new working culture does involve well-planned marketing activity. Marketeers often think in terms of AIDA – Awareness (or grabbing Attention), Interest, Desire, Action. The culture change process needs to progress through similar phases. From initially becoming aware of the possibility, to interest (‘That would suit me’) to desire (‘I want that!’) to action (positively adopting the new workstyle). So there has to be a programme of communication and action that brokers this engagement, to see that staff are progressively involved and buying in not only to the new ways of working but to the culture that goes with it. Most successful Smart Working programmes have some kind of branding – WorkSmart, Workplace Agility, Dynamic Working, Next Generation Working, etc. How about ‘Beyond Hybrid’ as a brand, to emphasise taking things to another level? The branding is typically positive and progressive. But people know when they are being spun a line – so the actions in the programme must deliver genuine benefits. Regular communications under the brand need to keep people informed of the progress, and also of the successes. Nothing inspires like (genuine) cases of colleagues who have adopted the new ways and can spell out the benefits to them. Most people also want their company to be doing well, so reporting on benefits achieved helps to promote the emotional and aspirational involvement needed. Focusing on closely related issues such as environmental sustainability can help to achieve buy-in, e.g. by showing how colleagues in another department that has embraced the change have reduced their carbon footprint. Showing the benefits and eliciting a positive response to them helps to embed acceptance of the new ways. This then becomes a story, validated by witnesses, that starts to ripple through the grapevine and permeate people’s thought processes.

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Overcoming resistance Few implementations of change can be described as plain sailing. Introducing new ways of working inevitably encounters some opposition. Some of this opposition is reasoned, and some of it is not. Either way, it must be dealt with. There is often a link between resistance and people’s vulnerabilities. They may feel exposed when required to work with new skills, particularly with new technologies and/or new requirements to communicate more effectively. They may feel insecure in a shared office setting, and the prospect of encountering new people who might sit next to them from time to time. Or they may just be very comfortable in the old ways, and refuse to see or accept the corporate need for change. Middle managers are often pinpointed as key figures in resisting change. This makes some sense, as they are completely central to making change work. However, I think they are much maligned in this respect. There are several possible reasons why middle managers may be resistant to change: • Feeling that they are working flat out working on the day job, and have no time to consider changing • Lack of trust in their staff to be responsible • Wanting to be liked, so caving in to stubborn opposition from below • Indecision • Fear of loss of status • Uncertainty about how to manage in new ways • ‘Not invented here’ syndrome – being resentful of new ideas they didn’t come up with themselves. This can especially be the case in key functional departments such as IT, Property and HR • Dislike of change agents’ perceived superiority – i.e. their claiming to know what’s best for their department, when the manager is actually the expert in this field • Feeling that it’s all too much trouble – ‘I’m not paid enough to care!’ • Dislike of the senior managers instituting change. However, it is important not to view all such opposition negatively. Scepticism about change may be reasonably founded on past experience of botched change and genuine fears that new systems may lower standards from old. Opposition may be based on a strong and genuine commitment to deliver quality and real concerns

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that quality may be eroded. And some organisations have a track record of ‘initiativitis’ – new plans and schemes come and go, so wise managers keep their head down and just get on with doing the day-job. The way to tackle any middle manager resistance is fourfold: 1. Make it absolutely clear that change will happen, with or without them 2. Provide the awareness-raising and training needed to help them understand both the principles and the corporate benefits of change – a Smart Working 101 workshop 3. Involve them as far as possible in helping to design the details of the changes 4. Provide the necessary support and resources to overcome problems. Analysing resistance There are many different kinds of resistance to change. Resistance can be: • • • • •

Overt and challenging Two-faced Passively stubborn Talking the talk but not really buying it, so not walking the walk Backsliding – starting off meaning to change, but slipping back to the old ways.

It’s a useful exercise to try to analyse the opposition and put it into categories. Figure 9.2 segments the kinds of reaction to new ways of working that one is likely to come across. People may embrace or reject change in principle. How that translates into action is central to analysing the different kinds of resistance to change. The first thing to note is that in most organisations most people will fall into the category I’ve called the ‘compliant majority’. This comprises mainly dutiful doers, who will do what is asked of them even if some don’t fully engage with it, and a vanguard of enthusiasts and champions. Overcoming resistance is really about dealing with a minority who express their doubts or opposition in different ways. People who are sceptical about change may split across the compliance/noncompliance divide. Inside the camp are sceptical followers – they adopt new working habits but for one reason or another doubt that these will bring benefits. They are joined by people whom I’ve styled ‘minimalists’, i.e. people who will do

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= Compliant majority Figure 9.2: Grid of acceptance and resistance. Note: This figure is illustrative of types of acceptance and resistance. It does not attempt to represent any idea of the quantity of people in any category.

the minimum possible to comply. They don’t really have a view on whether the change programme will work – they just don’t want to make the effort to change. These two groups will probably be the first to slide back into the old ways if the momentum starts to fade, or if the project runs into problems and seems to fail. Ambivalent leaders, who might exist at any level in the organisation, go beyond lip-service but sometimes may do things that undermine the changes. More likely this will be out of habit or trying to appease loud voices. Mavericks may be highly enthusiastic early adopters, but may charge off and do things their own way, which can be a good thing or not so good thing for their colleagues and the success of a change programme. Opposition outside the camp will probably take a number of forms: • Cynics who just doubt the value of every workplace initiative • Moaners and shouters. These are the people who are disgruntled about many things, and the change programme is one more thing to get upset about

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• The Reasoned Opposition. These are people who engage with the change process but are not convinced by it • Heel-diggers are people who don’t make a fuss, but just won’t comply. They sit in meetings with arms firmly folded and say little, thinking ‘I’m not doing that!’ Heel-draggers are their slightly more agreeable soulmates • Saboteurs are the small minority of negative influencers, who actively try to undermine the changes by defying the new ways of doing things and by trying to subvert others to do likewise • Prophets of Doom are people who are willing the programme to fail so they can be proved right but are not sufficiently active to be real saboteurs, even if they encourage them • People who pay lip-service to the changes can also, in a quieter way, sabotage the changes. Typically these are managers and team leaders who say ‘yes, yes, yes’, but continue to behave in the old ways. These are terms I have come up with to describe generic kinds of acceptance and resistance. It can be enlightening, and perhaps fun as well, to create such a grid as a team exercise and without naming individuals categorise the different responses to change in one’s own company. The point, though, is not to pillory people but to come up with different approaches to drawing different kinds of resistor into the camp of the compliant majority, and to pull those who are on the inside upwards towards the vanguard of enthusiasts and champions. This won’t necessarily be easy. Getting over the Hump of Unfamiliarity Even with all the elements of change in place, Smart Working can still face a number of hurdles before it becomes embedded as ‘the way we do things here’. Figure 9.3 illustrates the change curve for achieving a transformation of culture, moving from traditional ways of working to Smart Working. Physical changes to the workplace and the new technology tools provide the platform for change, and inevitably due to their visibility and cost these gravitate to the centre of attention during the change process. However, unless there is a process of addressing the attitudes, behaviours and relationships that make up the

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Ins tu onalisa on 1. Valley of Iner!a 2. Pla"orm of Apparent Virtue 3. Hump of Unfamiliarity

Figure 9.3: Smart Working cultural change curve.

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organisational culture, change initiatives risk becoming a Sisyphean process of uphill struggles and sliding back into previous working practices. Figure 9.3 presents a journey in part based on a typical change curve, but also to some extent inspired by John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress in the naming of the obstacles and traps we may meet on the way6. Without any attempt to change the culture, an organisation will probably remain rooted in position 1, stuck in the Valley of Inertia, with the traditional culture only slightly modified by the increased uptake of Flexible Work options or Hybrid Working. Even substantial investment in the tools and new environments may not make much of a difference. If the groundwork is done for moving from theory to practice, there should be a good dynamic for the change programme. The arrows from the left show the business, personal and environmental drivers giving the programme momentum. Incorporating them into organisational objectives focusing on the benefits takes forward the impetus. Consultation and involvement can bring most of the staff behind the changes to working practices. Now the culture change programme, training and a wellfocused communication strategy can take the changes forward so that the new working practices are embedded, and the new working culture takes root. But the problem is – despite the momentum and enthusiasm engendered for change, and despite all the protocols and policies – it is human nature to revert to the familiar. It may seem the resistance has been overcome, but it is a mistake to see resistance only residing in a few individuals. Adaptation to change is on a sliding scale in all of us, and it slides back and forth. Habits of one’s whole life do not change overnight without offering resistance. Position 3 in Figure 9.3 is the dangerous point. It’s at the top of our Hill called Difficulty, the Hump of Unfamiliarity. Everyone’s been working hard to get the ball rolling, but everything is still an effort. The new ways have not yet become embedded as the familiar ways. And people have other things to do apart from changing their behaviours – they have jobs to do, careers to push forward, and they are not yet comfortable in doing this within the new culture. In a cultural change programme, much of the effort is typically put in at the beginning to get the ball rolling. Just at the moment when one last big push is needed to get over the Hump of Unfamiliarity, the energy is not there anymore. The momentum dissolves as support for change unconsciously fades along with the rest of yesterday’s news. Then the momentum can go into reverse as gravity takes over.

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Maybe gravity doesn’t take you all the way back to point 1, but halfway down and rolling off onto the Platform of Apparent Virtue at position 2. People use the new environments and technologies, they do flex their work locations and work times – but not so much as to achieve the benefits. Everyone follows procedure, but are not driving for the benefits. This is the point where the programme team may find themselves wallowing in the Slough of Despond, and wonder if it’s all been worth it. The new technologies and the changed work environment(s) are just the platform for Smart Working. Many implementations don’t invest sufficiently in the ‘people bit’, but sit on their laurels at this point. New technology and new workplaces can give the outward impression of being ‘smart’. Building the platform without doing ‘the people bit’ is to adopt a ‘Field of Dreams’ approach: ‘Build it and they will come’. Well, they did in the Kevin Costner film, but it seems the players and spectators only turned up the one time, so I guess somewhere there’s a baseball stadium sitting seriously underutilised in the middle of that corn field. It’s like that with Smart Working. Unless conscious effort is continuously put into getting people to use the new platform effectively, work will slide back into traditional patterns. The main difference is that people will have the option to use some more expensive toys. Culture change is a continuous process, and requires more than getting the consultants in at the outset for a session where they cocoon you in flip chart paper and post-its. It’s about linking change to practical measures that will help to change behaviours and attitudes and reinforce the pattern of working in new ways. ‘Thinking with your new head on’ – tackling the innovation gap To engage people with the process of change, there needs to be, as it were, an extended CAN Test covering the key components of both the existing culture and current ways of working. This involves not only looking at the work culture in the wider sense, as set out earlier, but also more specifically at key aspects such as: • • • •

Assumptions built into the concept of a role Assumptions about presence and proximity The weight of habits and routines, as opposed to necessity, for various tasks Assumptions built into expectations and how they are expressed, formally and informally • Emotional attachment or disaffection to existing ways of doing things.

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As well as building on people’s reflections and dissections of the current culture and how that’s expressed in processes and ways of working, measured data (as outlined in Chapter 4) can be fed back into the exercise to help people identify the key issues and areas for potential improvement. This is also important for transparency about how data is used by the change programme. The potential pitfall in evaluating and deconstructing culture and how it is manifested in working practices is that too often the solutions people propose are rooted in the familiar. Clear examples of that are specifying in-person team meetings, regardless of the alternatives and the other tasks people need to do, or implementing a desk-booking system without really investigating if it’s necessary. These are examples of the cognitive bias of ‘functional fixedness’, i.e. not being able to see beyond how things already function. So the rethinking work needs to involve people ‘thinking with their new head on’. At every stage of engagement, and at every level of an organisation, there’s a need to encourage genuinely new thinking about work, in order to overcome the ‘innovation gap’. Figure 9.4 sets out a range of activities and interventions that comprise a systematic way to do this within a Smart Working transformation programme. There are essentially four broad areas of activity, which may overlap to some extent in terms of timing. These are: 1. Exploring the assumptions in how people work now, and identifying where the fault-lines are. Ideally there will already be some feedback via an initial employee survey, as set out in Chapter 4 2. Feeding into the discussion an analysis of data derived from the various metrics, again set out in Chapter 4. How people respond to these is often a turning point in how they perceive the assumptions around their ways of working, though a minority can sometimes act with disbelief and are reluctant to accept the evidence 3. The ‘rethinking process’ at the top of Figure 9.4 is a crucial step. It can include the time/place grid exercise in Chapter 5 and the ‘rethinking meetings’ exercise earlier in this chapter. These discussions should take place at every level in an organisation 4. The skills, techniques and messages around the new ways of working will be reinforced and embedded as the change programme progresses. The formal side is through communications, training, strategy, guidelines (etc.) and embedding in people processes, and the informal side through the stories derived from case studies and experience and the new rituals that people adopt for working.

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ENGAGEMENT – HOW CAN THINGS BE BETTER? Existing culture

Rethinking processes

Rethinking work/place

Analysing activities

Rethinking collaboration

Behaviours & values

Concept of role Presence Habits & routines 264

Expectations

How we work now

Smart Working

INNOVATION GAP

Communications

Mobility Flexibility Use of technology Use of resources

Figure 9.4: Freeing our minds to overcome the innovation gap.

Manager training Team training Analysis Team agreements Stories ‘Rituals’

Strategy & Policy People processes

EMBEDDING

Emotions

MEASUREMENT

Use of space

Reassess against Maturity Model

Embedding a Smart Working culture

The Innovaon Gap

Embedding a Smart Working culture

When things have settled down after several months, the effects of the changes should be evaluated. Reassessing progress against the Smart Working Maturity Model (Chapter 16) and the evaluation process set out in Chapter 4 will enable an organisation to measure the impacts and see what has been done well and what needs to improve. Leadership by example If managers don’t change, little else will. They need to commit to and role-model the new ways of working and the new behaviours. A manager who works effectively from afar, actively uses the variety of ABW settings, who cuts down meetings and makes a point of recruiting staff on a flexible basis will start to make a difference. If he or she constructively discusses work–life balance during appraisals, and makes a point of associating Smart Working practices with productivity, the new working culture will be reinforced. ‘Management by results’ is a key element of Smart Working. But it is not only about management techniques, it’s also about a change in values. The focus of management shifts – to the results. All the values and imperatives associated with presence and place take a back seat, and results move centre stage. The importance of this shift cannot be emphasised enough in terms of cultural shift. It should prompt many discussions and much reflection about goals, output and outcomes, about quantity and quality, and the whole rationale for being ‘at work’. Bearing in mind the way people are more likely to be influenced by people they like or admire, it’s a good idea to choose popular and open-minded team leaders to head up any pilots and to be change leaders in new ways of working. It’s also strategically sound to choose team leaders who are ambitious and careeroriented: they are more likely to want to be seen to succeed than someone who has dug into a comfort zone and wants to see things out with minimum demands. The practice of ‘servant leadership’, or ‘leadership as a service’ dovetails with Smart Working, with its focus on supporting the needs and growing the capabilities of the people they lead. We will look further at this in the next chapter. The success of teams headed by such leaders working in smarter ways should stimulate a ripple effect, and exert positive pressure for change around them.

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Smart-proofing – embedding change in systems and structures The new ways of working need to become the new normality. This will not happen if systems and structures do not adapt to incorporate the new working culture. For Smarter Working to be supported, there is often a need to review and ‘smart-proof’ all policies, principles and guidelines associated with: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

People strategy Flexible Working policies and guidance Health and safety support for home and ‘remote’ working Confidentiality and security policies for home/mobile users Additional working hours policies Shift working arrangements and policies Recruitment procedures, including awareness-raising for hiring managers and recruiters All collateral associated with recruitment, including graduate and apprentice recruitment Standard employee contracts (e.g. in stipulating place and times of work) Contractor contracts Job design Performance management policies Onboarding processes Diversity and inclusion documentation Competency frameworks.

It may be a case of updating good policies and procedures to reference Smart Working. Often, though, there is a need for more root-and-branch changes. A typical traditional Flexible Working policy tends to include processes to apply for permission to work flexibly, and a line manager having the power to agree or refuse. This might still be the case for someone looking for a change of work pattern, e.g. from full-time to part-time work. However, with a Smart Working framework, the need to apply formally for permission is much less needed. Some organisations can find this a challenge, where they have been through long processes of consultation and bargaining with unions or workers councils. But the clarity is important on a day-to-day basis.

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Training for managers Training for all managers, team leaders and supervisors is a necessary component of culture change programmes. Management training should include: • Understanding the organisation’s strategy for Smart Working and linkages to other policies • Understanding the organisation’s aspirations to develop a Smart Working culture • The benefits of Smart Working and how to measure them • Understanding the options for working flexibly available and how to deploy them • Understanding the linkages between new technologies and the possibilities for new working practices • Understanding how to involve and motivate staff to implement Smart Working • How to manage a smart and geographically distributed workforce • How to manage by results rather than presence • New approaches to empowerment and trust • Performance issues • Dealing with communication issues • Understanding the pitfalls and issues that may arise, and how to deal with these. Training for teams Employees need to be involved, trained and developed, with a view to ensuring the whole workforce is both positive about change and possess the necessary skills. The programme of staff training should include: • Understanding why things have been traditionally done in the way they have and the limitations of this • Pinpointing fault-lines and problems in current ways of working and the existing work culture • Being clear about the type of workplace culture that it is hoped to develop • Understanding roles and responsibilities

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• Taking ownership of the financial and environmental cost implications of choices around working practices • Developing skills and understanding in working more flexibly: • working with less direct supervision • communicating with colleagues and partners • time management • monitoring and reporting arrangements • health and safety in new working environments • Working in an activity-based work environment – sharing space and resources • Effective use of the new technologies. Formal training, however, is only one part of what is needed to change the culture. It is as much about the other practical day-to-day measures mentioned earlier, as these will turn what is learnt in training sessions into continuing attitudes and behaviours. Team Agreements, sometimes called Team Charters or Team Protocols, are a valuable way to consolidate practical culture change, and are dealt with in more detail in the next chapter. Incentives for change How can changes to new ways of working be incentivised? For many people, being able to have more control over their working lives, reducing the hassles of the commute and saving money are sufficient incentives. Smart Working in many respects is its own incentive. Having said that, recognition for achievement can be very motivational. Feting teams and individuals for achieving or over-achieving targets set at the time of transition or for innovative practices that deliver positive results is certainly worth doing. Developing a culture of praise rather than blame has wider benefits beyond new working practices too. Success in delivering change and working in new ways ought to be a feather in the cap in terms of career progression too. Conversely, failing to adapt should be seen as blotting one’s copybook. And this should be made clear in terms of key performance indicators and in appraisals. The stories that arise from this kind of recognition, and indeed from sticky moments in appraisals, become part of the culture that influences behavioural change. And the most illuminating and interesting stories should be written up as

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case studies, and become part of the supporting material available for those implementing Smart Working throughout the organisation. Rewards are a trickier area, though from what I have just said, the recognition could in time translate into reward in terms of career progression. Offering financial incentives to change can be divisive. But it may be worth thinking about some kind of reward for the individual or team that comes up with the best innovation that boosts performance. Or, if a team saves a bucketload of money in travel costs, why not reward the team collectively in some way? The annual Civil Service Smarter Working Awards in the UK has proved an effective way to celebrate achievement and also to spread awareness of best practice, and create a ripple effect across the public sector. Including celebration and an element of friendly competition into the process of culture change can pay dividends and stimulate further creative thinking and innovation. Notes 1 Jennifer Korn (3 January 2023), This tech company is clearing out recurring meetings from employee calendars, CNN Business, https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/03/tech/ shopify-meetings/index.html. Fortune likewise reported the memo, https:// fortune.com/2023/01/03/shopify-cutting-meetings-worker-productivity/ 2 A candid summary can be found on the GDS Blog, by Steve Messer and Zander Harrison (7 October 2020), What happened when we stopped having meetings and sending emails, GDS Blog, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2020/10/07/ what-happened-when-we-stopped-having-meetings-and-sending-emails/ 3 Brian Elliott, Sheela Subramanian and Helen Kupp (2022), How the Future Works: Leading Flexible Teams to do the Best Work of their Lives. Wiley. 4 Darren Murph, in an interview available on YouTube, www.youtube.com/ watch?v=cy6WGuzArgY 5 The success of the changes Slack introduced inspired the company to become an evangelist for Flexible Working. This was embodied in Future Forum, a research consortium that operated from 2020–2023, backed and founded by Slack, Boston Consulting Group, MillerKnoll and Management Leadership for Tomorrow. It studied the emerging world of work, developed guidance and supported other organisations looking to change the ways they work. 6 John Bunyan (1678/1684), The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World, to That Which Is to Come.

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Chapter Ten Leading the Anywhere, Anytime Team

Something old, something new For many managers, one of the biggest concerns about flexibility is about managing people they no longer meet in the same place on a daily basis. Not being able to monitor by line of sight can be the biggest change for managers to adjust to. But the first thing to say is that this situation is hardly new. Hundreds of thousands of managers have long been managing geographically distributed teams. Managers also manage teams across different shifts, when they clearly cannot be physically present at all times. And managers are mobile themselves – the assumption can’t be that staff should be where managers are in these situations, or else they’d be followed by huge retinues of staff like a medieval monarch or modern dictator. So part of managing the ‘Anywhere, Anytime Team’ is about translating good practice from areas where out-of-sight management is already practised. This means having a clear understanding of workloads, targets and outcomes, and monitoring performance as you go. Just as the manager of a geographically dispersed sales team would do. The other part is about adapting management techniques to capitalise on the potential of the new Smart Working culture that is being developed, making the most of using new technologies in support. Most of the core management competences are the same What kind of competences should all good managers have?

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Setting objectives, managing performance, managing costs, monitoring delivery, keeping the focus on customer value, managing quality, managing risk, making decisions, communicating, coaching, mentoring, teambuilding, choosing tools and resources, adjusting objectives in the light of new circumstances – these are the generic skills and abilities that all managers need in addition to any specialist competences for their line of work. To these we might add one of the most important skills of the current fast-moving and volatile age we live in: being able to manage change successfully. These competences are the same wherever and whenever employees and their managers are working. What will change most with Smart Working is the context in which the manager exhibits these competences, and some of the tools that are used. People skills at a distance We’re looking at developing a trust-based culture where employees are liberated and empowered to make their own decisions to a much greater extent than before. This means that the communication and people skills of the manager need to be sharper and well-adapted to the new situation. It will no longer always be the case that the manager can get an update on progress by going up to team members or calling them into their private office for a quick conversation. Since the pandemic, many managers have grown accustomed to this change of context, to some degree. However, part of the drive to get people ‘back to their desks’ reflects an inability to manage people who are out of sight. The challenge of working in the Extended Workplace can be felt by underprepared managers who have a mix of more and less flexible workers. If their preference is to rely exclusively on face-to-face communication, then they are either already treating people who regularly work elsewhere as second-class citizens, or else requiring them to come into the office too often and compromising the effectiveness they can achieve through their mobility. As with many aspects of moving to Smart Working, the way forward is to get down to specific issues and resolve them at a granular level. Table 10.1 provides a way for managers to unpack the wider concept of ‘people skills’ and examine closely a) how developed these skills are, b) how these skills are exercised now and c) if or how the way of exercising the skill needs to change in the future with Smart Working.

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Table 10.1 Taking forward smart people skills People skill

How good am I?

Being understood

1 2 3 4 5 DK ∗

Listening skills

1 2 3 4 5 DK

Influencing/motivating

1 2 3 4 5 DK

Inspiring/getting the best out of people

1 2 3 4 5 DK

Trusting others

1 2 3 4 5 DK

Involving others

1 2 3 4 5 DK

Building team spirit

1 2 3 4 5 DK

Delegating

1 2 3 4 5 DK

Assertiveness

1 2 3 4 5 DK

Coaching/mentoring

1 2 3 4 5 DK

Setting appropriate objectives

1 2 3 4 5 DK

Giving feedback/appraisal

1 2 3 4 5 DK

Detecting performance problems

1 2 3 4 5 DK

Detecting personal problems

1 2 3 4 5 DK

Problem solving

1 2 3 4 5 DK

Resolving disputes

1 2 3 4 5 DK

Decision-making

1 2 3 4 5 DK

Persuading

1 2 3 4 5 DK

Negotiating

1 2 3 4 5 DK

Disciplining/having awkward conversations

1 2 3 4 5 DK

Technique(s) now

Future technique(s)

Note ∗ DK= ‘Don’t Know’.

As in any discussion of people skills, there tends to be a certain degree of overlapping of the categories. And when it comes to thinking about what techniques are used, one technique (like having a face-to-face team meeting) may cover several skills.

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In some ways, the ‘How good am I?’ column is the easiest for people to complete. It’s a reflective exercise with ratings on a 1–5 scale, where 5 is ‘excellent’ and 1 is ‘not good at all’. DK is ‘don’t know’, which can be an honest assessment of an issue that one maybe hasn’t thought about. The two columns on the right are quite challenging, and people often think, ‘How do I do that?’ But this is useful for a small group exercise, and people learn quite a bit from each other in the process. A lot of the skills will be exercised informally and in ad hoc situations, and some people may not find it easy to express just how it is they make sure they are being understood, or what they do in a negotiating situation. Others may be clearer and have specific techniques they use, whether it’s making a point of praising someone as a means of motivation, or ensuring they make eye contact when trying to make themselves understood, or using social occasions to build team spirit. This exercise may be complemented by (anonymous) 360 assessments using the same specified skill. In many ways the conversations are more important than ending up with a detailed methodology for using specific techniques to exhibit these interpersonal skills in new ways. This is because the conversations will in all probability, unless some managers are exceptionally skilled or self-assured, highlight the need to improve performance in many of these skills for all staff, wherever or whenever they are working. Let’s look at this more closely. The expectation is that the context for employing these skills will change. Whereas traditionally many, if not most, of the skills were deployed in real-time face-to-face interaction, under scenarios across the Extended Workplace there will be more occasions when they can’t be face-to-face, or the interaction needs to be asynchronous as all or some of the parties involved are working at different times. The changes in context mean that there are primarily two areas where the current techniques can’t be so readily used: informal/off-the-cuff exchanges and employing or interpreting body language. So in making a transition to exercising ‘people skills at a distance’ there are some key things to think about: • Can the informality I find valuable be replicated through using communication tools, whether conferencing, chat or just a plain old voice call? … or do I have to replace some of that informality with more formal communication or processes?

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• Can I pick up some of that body language intelligence through video interaction, e.g. when having virtual team meetings or in a video one-to-one call? … and can I develop the skills and etiquette needed to pick up the cues I need from tone of voice and levels of participation in audio calls? • Do I have to insist that some activities where interpersonal interaction is especially valuable take place when we are physically present together – and if so, which ones? • How do I ensure that I interact with my team in an inclusive way, i.e. ensuring that no one is left out who needs to be included, by reason of their working in a more flexible way? As, for the most part, both teams and managers will be sometimes in and sometimes out the office, it’s not a question of abandoning current techniques wholly in favour of new ones. It’s about building up the skills overall and adding to the repertoire of techniques for becoming a great people manager. Building or anchoring team and corporate identity One of the biggest concerns of people sceptical about Smart or Flexible Working is the potential loss of team cohesion, spirit and identity. These concerns tend to be based on both an exaggeration of the degrees of separation, and an unfamiliarity with the way distributed teams operate. They may sometimes also be based on a rose-tinted perception of pre-pandemic same-place levels of team and corporate cohesion. Team co-location and team cohesion are not the same thing. Expecting that it is easier to bond as a team if people are all in the same place is a fairly natural assumption. But does it necessarily happen? Experience would tend to suggest that it does not. Repeated initiatives to break down hierarchies, silos and subversive sub-cultures, to team-build and build a ‘one organisation’ ethos tend to imply that there have always been challenges on this front in traditional workplaces. Indeed, developing a culture of Smart Working involves activities that can help to improve on existing levels of cohesion and overcome continuing problems of silo working. Good teamworking needs managing, wherever it takes place. And this comes back to the leadership skills of managers. It’s partly down to the people skills, in

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terms of motivating, inspiring, delegating and coaching, and partly down to active measures taken to promote a specific kind of team ethic and ethos. The following are the kinds of measures used to build team and corporate identity in the context of greater flexibility: • Having a Team Agreement, with strong input from the team, covering collective goals and the principles of working together • Regular flagging up of achievements of the team and of the organisations, e.g. how the team has contributed to corporate goals and delivered value to customers. And regular flagging up of the achievements of team members, to promote a sense of pride in each other’s successes • Encouraging innovation within the team, and seeing that the ideas are shared • Use of social networking technologies to promote interaction, not only about work • Joint non-work actions, e.g. supporting a charity, or the charitable activities of individual members; sporting or social activities, etc. • Team, service and/or corporate identity expressed in the new Smart Working environment, e.g. by photos encapsulating what the service is all about. It’s essentially about incorporating a sense of identity into good design. ‘Communicate, communicate, communicate’ – but don’t do it all yourself It’s often said that when managing Hybrid Working and virtual teams, you can’t communicate enough. At one level this is true. But there are dangers too. Employees may come to dread an obligatory stilted call with a manager who is struggling through the motions of engaged bonhomie, or who really wants to bond but hasn’t got the social skills to do it. The way I’d put it is like this. The manager needs to encourage a two-way and multi-way flow of interaction, by whatever media are appropriate. And it should be primarily work focused. Social interaction should be part of the communication, and over time all communication should have a framework that is socially pleasant and fulfilling – because ideally all work is like that. Where there are good workplaces, we enjoy the experience of human interaction, whether it’s work or social. It’s too artificial to start to think, ‘I’ve talked about our objectives for the week now, let’s talk about last night’s TV or the Netflix dramas we’re bingeing’. Instead, all conversation should have a credible social envelope.

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It’s about staying on top of what the Anywhere, Anytime Team is doing. And this means not only whether they are meeting objectives and are on track to hitting deadlines, but also getting candid feedback about any difficulties they might be having. This could be directly to do with the tasks in hand, or it could be to do with the tools, or more widely with the experience of working across the Extended Workplace. It could also be about wider issues in life where they are encountering complications or problems. There are also issues around personal development that will be of concern to the team, especially in terms of training and career progression, or in the case of freelancers and contractors, opportunities for continuing work. These are all topics where there’s a need for interaction. While the manager needs to be on top of all this, a key principle is that it doesn’t have to be the manager who runs all the conversations. This would be an intolerable imposition. So delegation – one of the most important leadership skills – is essential for communication and team bonding. This doesn’t mean having a particular trusted lieutenant to do this. It’s more about getting other team members involved in promoting positive interaction, such as by: • Coaching and mentoring • Buddying new recruits • Having responsibility for seeing that projects or specific pieces of work are on track, and doing the chasing and getting the feedback on these • Getting other team members to initiate and run any social or extra-curricular activities • Getting people to liaise in sub-teams on work, either with shared responsibilities for delivery or to ensure that people are not left flying solo, and that another person can deputise or cover if they are ill or not around for any reason. The manager’s role is as a facilitator here, and in keeping on top of things enough to see that the right kinds and levels of conversations are taking place. Where is the manager? Against these kinds of possibilities, there is no hard and fast rule about where or when a manager should work – except to say that sitting in the ‘main office’ 9 to 5 can’t be expected to be the default position. If opting for these kinds of

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traditional work pattern, it’s fairly certain that he or she will not be working in the same place as most of the team members, nor necessarily at the same times as many team members. The argument for the manager having visibility in the main office comes down to the fact that in many of the types of team models, the majority of people do spend part of their time working in the office as a base from which they operate. Full-time homeworking or full-time on the road are not the norm for most people even in most distributed teams. And there will probably be times when all the team are together for face-to-face meetings, or the manager wants to have appraisals or review meetings in the flesh. So there remain some good reasons for the manager sometimes having a presence and good visibility at an agreed base. Unless the organisation has given up its office, of course. But there are also reasons why this is not such a good idea as well: • If there are team members who are never, or only rarely, in the same building as the manager, they may start to feel like second class citizens • The temptation to fall back on old line-of-sight management for those who are more readily in line of sight will be great • Managers are often highly mobile people to start with. This mobility is there to be built upon as an exemplar of Smart Working practice. Managers should not start to feel themselves chained to the office as a kind of symbolic anchor now that others are acquiring greater mobility • The office will probably be a less productive environment, and managers too will get more done using a range of other locations as appropriate. The touchstone should be going back to the first principle of Smart Working: ‘Work takes place at the most effective locations’ and ‘Work takes place at the most effective times’. So the manager should, in consultation with the team, make decisions about where these are – not least for him or herself. For the team, it is important that the manager is contactable and responsive, not that he or she is in a particular location. The end of command and control and presenteeism … or is it? Almost no one in the world of management studies or manager training would recommend traditional ‘command and control’ techniques for management. Yet

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it’s what tends to be the default practice in many organisations. Smart Working, though, is about creating a trust-based and empowering culture, with management by results. However, I think there is often too much wishful thinking about this, and some of it is based on a false, or at least outdated, premise. There is a pervasive myth that command and control management and presenteeism are not compatible with more flexibility in location. The false premise here is that when people work somewhere else or at different times it isn’t possible to know if they are working. This is increasingly no longer the case, and in a few years’ time will hardly be the case at all. This is down to the technologies described in Chapter 8 for registering presence and contactability status, and for making work-in-progress visible to colleagues. Arguably, these techniques for monitoring presence and inputs could actually make matters worse. They will yield a rich vein of data which can be analysed with reporting software to make it seem like managers have really got their fingers on the pulse of the work being done by the team. But just as watching people in their seats and gathering timesheets is a poor proxy for productivity, so are these kinds of more sophisticated techniques. These technologies may be helpful for other purposes, e.g. monitoring performance of technology tools and work settings, and knowing people’s availability to be contacted, but for the most part fall a long way short of measuring output or assessing the quality of output. What does this mean for the manager of the Anywhere, Anytime Team? The point is that developing a trust-based culture should not be based on an apparent lack of rigorous mechanisms of control. It must be based on a much more positive foundation – a commitment to trusting the team. Managing within a framework of trust Good teams will have a strong basis of trust wherever they are based. As we saw in the previous chapter, trust is based on personal and professional relationships within a shared history, on shared achievements and on expectations met. People in a relationship of trust don’t have to love each other, or even like each other. But there has to be a mutual respect for abilities. This may be qualified in some cases by reservations people have about each other’s abilities, but a good working relationship can nevertheless be based on awareness of what can and can’t be achieved.

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So it may be that people are turned loose from the office as a proven functioning unit, and carry on performing because they trust each other and know what to expect from each other, are mutually supportive and know how to deliver the goods. But distributed teams may include a diverse group of people who don’t necessarily have an existing relationship to build on. So what is needed is a good framework in which to operate, one that provides a practical basis in which people can be empowered and trusted to get on with whatever they should be getting on with. These are the ingredients of such a framework: • A clear and agreed idea of what success is, both for the team as a whole and for discrete tasks • Clear and understood objectives • Clear and agreed roles and responsibilities • Clear and agreed processes for reporting progress • An agreed process for feeding back difficulties in good time • Mechanisms for supporting and coaching when needed • Routines to have work-in-progress available in shared areas • Agreement to be contactable and to keep presence status updated • Encouragement for team members within this framework to do what they need to do without any attempt at micromanagement. The essence of the trust is basically that people can work wherever and whenever they want, as long as they get the work done. Making Team Agreements Involving colleagues is essential in making those decisions about where, when and how to work. We have referred to Team Agreements (also sometimes called Team Charters or Team Protocols), and now we look in more detail at best practice in how to create them. In keeping with the approach of ‘thinking with your new head on’, it’s important that work on a Team Agreement is preceded by at the very least a Smart Working 101, or refresher, so that people have already been thinking about how their work can be improved, what is in principle possible by embracing new ways of working and what benefits can be targeted.

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Then it’s about working through four key areas: • • • •

Where and when we work How we work together New ways to collaborate How we share space in the collective workplace/office.

The idea is: working in small groups, to get people to think first of all, ‘What does good look like for us?’ in response to a number of suggested questions as in Table 10.2. From that, they proceed to generating a number of statements setting what the agreed practice should be for the team. To capitalise on people’s ideas there needs to be flexibility in the approach. People readily come up with questions not in the suggested template, specific to their work environment. And for some of the suggested questions, after discussion there’s found to be no need for a specific statement to be made. It might be that it’s not so relevant for that team, or it’s covered sufficiently by whatever high-level principles have been set out for the organisation as a whole. Team Agreements should be seen as living documents that can change over time. They do not provide rules as such, but agreed ways of working that peers can remind each other about, giving a nudge as necessary. For example, if it’s been agreed that people shouldn’t join in long calls in focus areas but they keep doing so, it’s time to give them a nudge and remind them what was agreed. Or if someone – maybe the manager – tries to organise more in-person meetings than necessary, or in-person inspections when doing so primarily by video has been agreed, referring to a Team Agreement is a better way to approach this than citing a rule. Servant leadership There are certain similarities with the qualities required for leading Smart Working and the concept of ‘servant leadership’. The term was coined by Robert K Greenleaf more than half a century ago, and captures several trends in modern management thinking. The basic idea is that to be an effective leader does not revolve around hierarchy, control and giving orders, but instead requires listening, empathy, inspiring and enabling others to grow and perform at their best. This generates loyalty. Servant leaders serve their colleagues and the organisation, not their own interests.

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Table 10.2 Template for Team Agreements Developing Smarter Working Team Agreement 1 – Where and When We Work Area

Questions to consider

What does good look like?

Working away from the organisationowned or other collective workplace

How much choice do colleagues have over where they work? What procedures are there for agreeing where people work?

What should we agree?

What activities or other factors require people to be present in the office? What ergonomic and H&S considerations apply, and how are these addressed? How do we protect information in the Extended Workplace? Any limitations? Security principles? Are there any considerations regarding working in public or thirdparty settings? Are there any issues around lone working?

Working from home

Are team members encouraged to work from home? Are there limitations on frequency? What ergonomic and H&S considerations apply, and how are these addressed? Are there any suitability issues around working from home, e.g. around childcare? Are there issues around timekeeping or overworking?

Varying times of work

Are there any specific requirements around when people should work? (e.g. for responding to calls)

Onboarding

How will we deal with integrating new colleagues? (Continued)

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Table 10.2 (Continued) Developing Smarter Working Team Agreement 2 – How We Work Together Area

Questions to consider

What does good look like?

Contactability

How do we let each other know where we are and our availability? Protocols when in the office and when elsewhere

Where is our work?

How do we let others see our work including work-in-progress? Any specifics for updating workflow, project management or other systems?

Focus on results

How do we manage by results? How do we support others to achieve their goals?

Keeping in touch

What expectations do we have for contact with managers and other team members?

Method of communication

Any preferred communication channels for specific types of teamwork or customer-facing work?

Use of paper

Any requirements about going paperless? Or using paper for specific purposes?

Teambuilding and socialising

How is team cohesion and identity to be maintained? How is socialising to be encouraged or restricted using new ICT tools?

Spotting problems and looking out for each other

How will we ensure we are all happy and thriving in our work? How will we spot and deal with potential issues? Whose responsibility is this?

What should we agree?

(Continued)

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Table 10.2 (Continued) Developing Smarter Working Team Agreement 3 – New Ways to Collaborate Area

Questions to consider

What does good look like?

Necessity of meetings

How do we challenge a culture of formal room-based meetings? Any guidance on what meetings should be for? When meetings are needed, any guidance on when to request people to attend in person (not online)? Etiquette for meetings

Virtual meetings

When to use video, voice, screensharing Guidance on virtual participation and chairing/hosting meetings Use of messaging/chat Sharing of information beforehand Should attendees be there all the time?

Customer service

What are best practices for interacting with customers and ensuring quality service delivery?

Joint focus work

What activities are best done working together on a product?

Ad hoc collaboration

When is it better to just have a short interaction with one or two colleagues and what is the best way to do this? Where, if in the office, should such interaction take place?

Other collaborative activities

How much should activities such as training, appraisals, supervisions, mentoring and coaching be done through virtual interaction?

What should we agree?

(Continued)

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Table 10.2 (Continued) Developing Smarter Working Team Agreement 4 – How We Share Space in the Office Area

Questions to consider

What does good look like?

Space-sharing

What is the overall approach to space-sharing in the office? What principles should we follow to ensure fairness?

Collaboration spaces

What recommendations are there for using: • formal and informal meeting rooms • breakout spaces • project rooms/specialist areas How is space booking handled?

Etiquette for focus areas

Etiquette about video calls/long phone calls taking place at desks/ tables in open areas Should ad hoc meetings take place at desks? Attitude to non-team members in team areas (if any) What etiquette applies for quiet areas?

Ergonomics

Best practice guidance for working at desks Responsibility for seeing that we observe best practice

Health & Wellbeing

Any recommendations for how our use of space can support health and wellbeing in our shared work environment?

Filing and storage

Where and how should files (if any) and other professional items be stored? What are the arrangements for lockers and personal items?

Other areas

Can people work or have meetings in relaxation and refreshment areas?

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The best test of leadership, according to Greenleaf, is ‘Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?’1 Larry Spears, who succeeded Greenleaf in carrying the torch, identified ten characteristics of servant leadership: listening, empathy, healing (of broken spirits and relationships), awareness, persuasion, conceptualisation, foresight, stewardship (holding things in trust for others), commitment to the growth of people, and building community2. During the pandemic period, organisations and their managers became concerned, more than ever, for the welfare of their employees, faced with both threats to their health and wellbeing and at the same time dealing with new arrangements such as working at a distance from their colleagues, reduced hours or being on furlough. This brought to the fore a need for empathetic leadership with a premium on listening, and greater permission all round to discuss feelings and emotional states. People within more of a servant leadership mould were probably better placed to adapt to these requirements. The servant leadership model also fits well with our preference for having frameworks and team agreements rather than having rules and requiring permission to be flexible. It also aligns with the zeitgeist in the quest for human-centric workplaces, which focuses on the quality of the human experience of work and recognition of people’s individual needs and aspirations. My reservation about an overemphasis on servant leadership is that it can be conceived as supporting a nurturing stable-state organisation. The model seems to lack dynamism and decisiveness, and lacks the external focus that successful organisations need always to have in mind. While it may change the nature of leadership, how effective is it in dealing with transformational change, or in responding to existentially challenging situations, for example if a company is losing money, or a function is becoming redundant through automation, where tough and unpopular decisions may be needed? There are also contexts where, while taking on some of the values of servant leadership, leadership still requires attributes of hierarchy and rule-enforcement, e.g. in work that is safety-critical or in the emergency services or military. Influential HR thinker Perry Timms has a take on transformational leadership, which he says, ‘involves leading the team to an enhanced state of operations (systems, behaviours, tools, processes and adaptive capabilities) and helping teams

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flourish in that process with ever-increasing levels of inclusivity, flexibility, wellbeing and sense of accomplishment’3. Providing the sense of purpose and awareness of future change may be part of the characteristics of conceptualisation and foresight in Larry Spears’ formulation. But for a Smart Working leader I think there also needs to be stronger elements of purpose and drive in taking forward and embedding new ways of working, The challenge is to inspire people to share in the sense of accomplishment in both improving the work experience and improving the quality of work through transforming ways of working. This moves us on from consideration of the people skills to the essential area of leadership skills in management by results. Managing by results – how do we measure results if people are out of sight? Different kinds of work have different kinds of results based on various kinds of output – there is no one-size-fits-all prescription for measuring outputs that are to be managed. So this is very hard to encapsulate in a book aimed at a wide audience covering all kinds of work rather than a single discipline. But it is one of the most critical areas, and one of the things raised most by managers when we run conferences or deliver workshops. It’s further complicated by few managers being ready to admit that they don’t already manage by results. In which case, what’s the problem? It must be always other managers who are struggling! Often questioners want clarity about some of the higher level managerial, fluid and reactive areas of work where outputs and results may be harder to pin down. In setting out to take Smart Working from theory to practice, though, I think one has to go beyond the single-bullet-point generalities often found in guidance on Flexible Work. We need to know what is meant by ‘results’. How do we measure them? How do we keep track of the work-in-progress that leads to the results? As with all these complex issues, the key is to break it down into the component elements. Step One is to think about the kind of work that is involved, and the kinds of measurements that can apply. Note we are focusing on generic categories of work, rather than any kind of distinction between different sectors, or occupations, or types of end result, or the nature of the input, etc. A suggested typology which can be applied across sectors and occupations is as follows:

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Process work – What I mean by this is all kinds of work that form part of a regular well-defined process, and where the output at any stage is usually clearly countable. This includes most forms of production, data processing, volume telephony work, finance and many aspects of sales. Something comes in to you, you deal with it (by adding something to it, shaping it, analysing it, fulfilling it, etc.) and you pass it on. There should be workflow management systems in place already, and the main issue for us is around being able to track the progress, completion and quality of work wherever it is carried out. Project work – Project-type work encompasses anything that can be seen as a time-limited collection of work tasks characterised by a well-defined budget, purpose, scope, timescale and result. In contrast to other kinds of ongoing work, it has a clearly defined beginning, middle and end – a story in its own right. This kind of work can include projects to deliver a product or set of services to clients, bidding for work, building something, creating marketing materials or running a campaign, delivering change projects, etc. For this kind of work, outputs are not only the outputs at the end, but all the defined deliverables en route. This highlights an important principle for many of the kinds of work that people struggle to know how to measure: turn it into a number of well-defined projects. Case or Account work – This is where people work with clients (organisation or individual) to deliver a service, solve problems or monitor the delivery of a service. On the one hand, this could be a social worker working with vulnerable people or offenders, or on the other hand a commercial account manager. In either case they will be delivering or monitoring a service of value to the client. A characteristic of this kind of work is that it often contains a mix of more routine work and unpredictable work that may need a fast reaction. In some areas, it may need long periods of work with a client or prospective client before a desired result is achieved – and may even be unsuccessful. These are the kinds of uncertain results that some people may feel are intrinsically unmeasurable. But while the final outcome may be uncertain, the various activities that make up the output have to be monitored and managed to see if the right amount is being done and that it is of good quality. Innovation work (coming up with new things) – Innovation isn’t only about inventing the next smartphone. Innovation is an essential component of many roles. It’s about coming up with new ideas, insights, designs or tweaks to designs. It can be about creating new policy, writing an article or a speech, making a presentation or producing marketing material. On a day-to-day basis, much

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innovation is kind of routine. Behind an innovative end-product may be a fair amount of research, analysis or experimentation. This again holds the prospect of negative results – things that are produced but don’t quite cut the mustard in the end and are dropped. It doesn’t mean the work is unmeasurable, just that there are different kinds of results. For example, if people are coming up with a range of ideas for an advert, most must fall by the wayside but hopefully contribute to creating a strong final result. There is clear output to be achieved, but the outcome may be uncertain in terms of winning the bid. Support work – This is about supporting the work of other people. A lot of the work may be quite reactive, i.e. dealing with what other people request or expect to be done. Much of the work done by some people considered as support or admin workers may really be process work, e.g. booking travel and accommodation as part of a well-defined process. The final results (outcomes) of reactive support work may be hard to quantify in isolation, but the outputs are not. Are the tasks that they are required to complete being done in a timely and accurate way? Are diaries being kept up-to-date? Are phone calls handled well? Managerial and coordination work – Managers, team leaders and supervisors also have an obligation to achieve results that have to be monitored and measured. Some of these will be their individual performance (e.g. in producing reports for managers higher up, meeting financial targets, etc.) and some will revolve around the output and outcomes of the parts of the business they manage. And there may be metrics around staff satisfaction within their teams, ability to retain staff, absence levels that indicate comparative performance with other managers. Step Two is to apply measures of quantity and quality for the outputs (see Table 10.3), and on the basis of this apply appropriate standards or targets for the individuals and teams. While some people will be engaged almost entirely in one kind of work, many will be involved in a mix of types, e.g. a mix of case work and process work, or project work, innovation work and case work. Understanding the mix is the key to being able to set realistic and fair workloads and being able to monitor and measure the output by applying the right kinds of measures and quality standards. Step Three is to consider what, if any, additional issues arise in measuring the amount and quality of work when work is carried out at different places or times, and where the manager doesn’t have immediate line of sight access to it. This is why initially the focus should be on ‘outputs’ rather than ‘outcomes’. The manager has to

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Table 10.3 Segmentation of types of work for management by results Type of work

Characteristics

Examples

Measures of output (examples) Quantity

Quality

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Work that is part of a regular well-defined process, and where the output at any stage is usually clearly countable

• Most forms of production • Data processing • Volume telephony work • Many aspects of finance • Many aspects of sales • Customer fulfilment work

• Number of items produced • Amount of information processed • Number of calls handled • Number of transactions • Number of items delivered

• Meeting required standards • Accuracy • Customer satisfaction with process

Project

Project-type work encompasses anything that can be seen as a one-off collection of work tasks with a welldefined budget, purpose, scope, timescale and result

• Delivering a product or set of services to clients • Bidding for work • Building something • Creating marketing materials • Running a campaign • Implementing change projects

• Production of deliverables to time and budget • Number of component deliverables handled per person/ team

• Quality of deliverables • Quality of contributions of project team members • Degree to which project meets objectives • Value for money

Case

Work with individual clients to deliver a service, solve problems or monitor the delivery of a service

• Working on commercial client account • Social work case work • Legal case work • Resolving employee disputes

• Number of services or products delivered to client • Number of elements delivered by each

• Customer satisfaction with service in the case • Efficiency and effectiveness of case/account handling

(Continued)

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Process

Type of work

Characteristics

Examples

Measures of output (examples) Quantity

Quality

team member or case worker • Number of cases handled overall • Balance between straightforward and complex cases in workload

• Meeting objective standards (e.g. legal standard; government-set targets) • Success in meeting or exceeding billing targets • Success in resolving problems

Coming up with new ideas, strategies, insights, designs, modifications to designs

• Designing new product • Creating new policy • Writing an article or a speech • Preparing a presentation • Producing marketing strategy • Scoping smarter working

• Number of articles, speeches, presentations produced • Contribution by team members to producing new strategy, product, etc. • Amount of research, analysis, evidence gathering, reporting as contributions to innovation

• Speed of response to requests for new materials • Quality of materials delivered • Ability to take new idea or new product/prototype forward • Robustness and insightfulness of evidence and analysis

Support

Supporting the work of other people, more in a reactive and as-needed way rather than as part of a process or project

• P.A./secretarial work • Technical support • Reception work

• Number of people supported and with what services • Number of sites or equipment supported • Number of requests responded to

• Speed and efficiency of response • Accuracy • Being proactive in spotting issues • Ability to coordinate functioning of team • Organisational skill

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Table 10.3 (Continued)

Managerial

Managing, coordinating and supervising the work of others

• Managing or coordinating teams • Managing people (effectiveness, collaboration, skills development) • Managing resources and budgets • Managing results • Mentoring, coaching

• Output of individuals and teams managed • Personal output as individual, if applicable • Amount of people management work • Contributions to meeting corporate objectives

• Success in managing workloads and setting and meeting targets • Quality of output of teams • Quality of reporting to senior management • Success in resolving problems • Quality of people management • Feedback from 360o appraisals • Quality of resource management

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ensure that the output is managed well in order to achieve the desired outcomes. If one waits for the final outcome before assessing the result of a piece of work, it may already be too late. The manager, and often other colleagues, need to be able to step in to make sure everything is on course, and to set it back on course if it’s going off track. It’s important to remember the context here of Smart Working. After the discussion of technologies and techniques for managing the Anywhere, Anytime Team, hopefully the view of flexibility is no longer that people and their work are out of sight and out of mind. Instead, the manager should have confidence that people are contactable and their work is viewable, wherever they are. The inescapability of time Many commentators in this field, in the effort of breaking free from an excessive focus on time inputs and presence, emphasise very strongly that time should not be a factor in measuring work. When we are clear what results are, then people should be paid only by results, not by the time spent in work. While agreeing with the thrust of this approach, I have some reservations about it. The first is that if we do go down this route, all work in the end becomes piecework. And there has been 150 years or more of campaigning on the lines of ‘a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay’. Piecework is historically associated with exploitation of those who do not have much leverage in the labour market. An argument might be that if you have two people doing data processing, for example, and one is able to complete the work in half the time, they should be able to use the time they have freed up however they want, whether for leisure or doing something else where they can be paid for results. But that runs into my second reservation. In allocating work and coming up with reasonable work schedules, a manager must have a clear idea about what can be accomplished over a given time. If someone exceeds expectations, that is good but there are always more tasks to be done within a team. Usually people’s workloads will consist of a mix of tasks, and are shared out amongst colleagues to get the most efficient balance. The amount of time that a task should take ought to be an objective standard that the team as a whole can work with. It’s an indicator of performance, and also an indication that work may need to be reallocated, or that someone is struggling, or that in the light of new efficiencies we can rethink the notional time-budget for a task when scheduling workloads. Time is also embedded within the concept of productivity. Being more productive, at least in part, is about producing more per unit of time. And when it

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comes to weighing up the comparative efficiency of team A and team B, or last month’s work and this month’s work, knowing how many widgets per hour, how many calls per person per day or how many cases per team per month are essential time-related metrics for planning future workload and future output. There are some kinds of work where time is actually embedded in the output. Take the example of a lifeguard. The role involves constant vigilance to ensure people are not drowning in the pool. The output, really, is the vigilance itself. It’s not the number of saved lives, which could presumably be increased if one were to throw hapless children in the deep end for rescue. And there are many other monitoring roles of a less life-and-death nature that work on similar lines. It’s being there over a duration of time that is crucial to achieve the desired outcome. Management by outputs or outcomes? In Table 10.3 I’ve focused on managing outputs. However, when looking at ‘management by results’ overall, it’s always important to maintain focus on the outcomes of work activity. The reason for making the distinction is that the outputs have to be worthwhile putting out. Too often people working in large organisations fill their days with internal activity that is ultimately of little value. So an outcome is where the overall value of the contributing outputs is weighed and measured. It does seem that some commentators try too hard to distinguish between managing by output and by outcome. There often isn’t much difference between ‘quality of output’ and an assessment of ‘outcome’, and there is a danger of trying to be too precise in a way that might be interesting in the abstract but is of little practical value. And in some cases, there is not much to say about a piece of work activity in terms of its outcome, if it’s a small cog in the wheel of a larger process. It’s done, and it’s of the right quality to contribute to the whole. The output of the whole process or project after a series of micro-outputs is where the significant outcome is to be found. There are also types of work where the final outcome is uncertain, and may be so for some time as in many kinds of case work or innovation work. In the meantime all the individual bits of output still need to be managed well, as do the processes that support them. An example of this might be a complex child protection case. The outcome that is aspired to is that a vulnerable child is protected, or that an abusing adult is

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removed into custody. The activities involved in the case will cover many agencies and a wide variety of different kinds of actions, all of which have to be closely monitored as the case proceeds. For the manager, keeping track of all the activities of the people contributing to the case is the challenge. The job is to make sure that all the outputs are of the best possible quality to raise the probability of a successful outcome. And the outcomes may be multiple: a protected child, a convicted abuser, the effective working of the justice and child protection systems. Call handling, by contrast, is one kind of work where at one level the output is easy to measure. The number of calls handled, time taken to answer calls, speed of dealing with the call can all be measured automatically. Calls are typically recorded, so there is a base of data for assessing the quality of calls. Most of us, though, as consumers, experience enormous frustration in dealing with call centres. The parameters of the call handling service often fail to provide a satisfactory route to getting the real issue resolved. If managers simply focus on output measures to check that work is being done, they risk missing a significant point about the outcome: did the customer get a satisfactory resolution to their request or problem? So a real assessment of ‘results’ would have to encompass on the one hand the experience of the customer in solving the problem (outcome) and on the other the performance of the service responsible (quality of output). So the outcome is about the value of the activity to customers and to the organisation and its mission. An outcome may also be seen in terms of making money and contribution to other corporate objectives. As an example, the outcome of delivering an outsourced IT support service to a client is that the service is provided successfully and the client’s equipment and networks are kept running to an agreed level. At a more granular level, the service reacts through the process of a helpdesk which triages work into a series of cases each with its own outcome: ideally a happy and satisfied individual and the resumption of productive activity. And as a result of these individual outcomes, the overall outcome is that the client is happy and renews the contract. Smart Working is only part of the context of change for managers There is an interesting point here about context. When we think of the skills that managers will need we tend to think of the context from which new ways of working are developing – that of traditional office-based working. And we think of this rather than seeing the changes in working practices in relation to wider changes

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in business and society, the kinds of trends highlighted in Chapter 1 (plus several others, which I’ll return to in the final chapter). The problem with a narrow and backward-looking approach to the context of change is that we may still be thinking of the new flexible ways of working as somehow exceptional, and that a few additional skills have to be grafted on to existing styles of management. Instead we should be thinking of the type of management as a whole that we will need in the future. So do we want managers to have better people skills because they are working with ‘remote workers’ – or do we just want managers to have excellent people skills? Do we want our managers to be better able to deal with flexible and fluid situations because they are managing an ‘anywhere team’, or because the world as a whole will be throwing up more flexible and fluid situations that they will need to deal with? The way the world is changing, with more older workers, greater aspirations for work–life balance and for more choice and autonomy, more pervasive technology, more freelancers, and more connections in a globalised economy – all this means that the old methods of management will increasingly be the exception, not the smart and flexible styles described in this chapter. So, having the capability to manage the Anywhere, Anytime Team is not a bolton: it’s set to become the new normal. Notes 1 Robert K. Greenleaf (1970), The Servant as Leader. Robert K Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership. 2 Larry C. Spears (2010), Character and Servant Leadership: Ten Characteristics of Effective, Caring Leaders. Journal of Virtues & Leadership Issue 1, Volume 1. 3 Perry Timms (2021), Transformational HR: How Human Resources Can Create Value and Impact Business Strategy. Kogan Page.

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Chapter Eleven Smart, flexible and productive

Where’s the evidence for increased productivity? The main purpose of the chapter is to show how and why Smart Working supports greater productivity and how to make the most of this. I’m often asked questions at conferences and workshops about where the evidence is that working flexibly is more productive. In the following, I’ll refer to a range of studies that show evidence of this. But I’m not going to overdo the evangelist role here, because I don’t believe that working flexibly is necessarily more productive. What I think is true is that the greater choices of work times and locations enabled by a strategic and holistic approach to Smart Working create the conditions where people can be more productive. And as long as it’s well managed and the people are well motivated, it should be. Before the pandemic, most of the evidence came from organisations that had implemented new ways of working. Sometimes the evidence is in the form of hard measurement. More often it’s based on feedback from staff and managers, which will of course contain some subjective elements. Quite a lot of research and evaluation focuses on ‘telework’, which in practice has often been a limited and exceptional form of flexibility. That is, some people in an organisation have permission to work from home or a local centre, either full-time or part-time, but most people still have a default fixed time in a central place of work. Even so, such studies pretty much invariably evidence increased productivity. We’ll come to that shortly. Organisations’ own evaluations of their working practices when they moved to telework or to more comprehensive changes to Smart or Agile Working also generally show positive impacts on productivity as well as on other measures such

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as engagement, work–life balance, recruitment and retention. Some people can be more sceptical about these than about academic studies, but I know of many goodquality evaluations, conducted by both in-house teams and by external partners. I’ve done some myself, so their independence is guaranteed! At the same time, we need to remember that organisations don’t rush out and tell the world about their failed transformation initiatives. During the pandemic, there were numerous surveys showing significant improvements in productivity. Some of these draw on very large datasets of respondents, spread across many organisations and sometimes spread across countries and continents. Pre-2020 studies of the impacts of Smart/Flexible Working Studies have been finding positive impacts on productivity and performance from Flexible Working since the 1980s. Digging deeper into the studies, one of the key factors is the ability to have greater autonomy and choice over work schedules1. These kinds of studies focus primarily on implementations where the employee is making a positive choice to work differently, and usually could be expected to have good motivation for ensuring the new arrangements work. That tells a story in itself about part of the value of introducing flexibility – but it doesn’t necessarily reach all parts of the organisation. One of the most extensive surveys comparing self- and colleague-reported performance was carried out by researchers at Cranfield University, where 3,580 respondents from seven large companies (Centrica, Citi, KPMG, Lehman Brothers, Microsoft, Pfizer and the Defence Aerospace business in Rolls Royce) were asked about the impacts of Flexible Working on the quantity and quality of work. Of the individuals, 61% said flexible work had a positive impact on the quantity of work, with 33% saying it had a neutral effect. Of their managers, 45% said there was a positive effect, with 43% neutral and 12% saying the effect was negative. Coworkers who didn’t work flexibly were less willing to give credit perhaps, with 27% noting a positive effect, 63% a neutral effect and 10% saying there was a negative effect. The picture for quality of work is similar, with all the figures for positive or neutral impacts up a point or two, and negative impacts reported by only 4% of managers and 6% of coworkers2. These responses are from people in leading companies who presumably would put the resources into getting it right, and hopefully had systems in place for

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performance management. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to prevent Lehman Brothers going down the pan a short while later and taking the global economy with it, but the others are still here and have indeed been taking smart forms of flexibility further since the time of this study. These are examples of self-reported and manager- or coworker-reported impacts on productivity. These inevitably include some subjective elements. What about more objective measurements of productivity improvement? In 2006 the UK government Audit Commission published a batch of case studies of homeworking in local government. At East Riding of Yorkshire Council, homeworking was introduced in 2001 as a means of retaining staff and improving service levels. By 2004, time to assess new claims was reduced from 103 days to 26 days, with complaints reduced from 56 per month to 26 per month. At the same time, staff turnover was reduced from 35% to 10%, and sickness absence reduced from 8% to 3.4%3. At Salford City Council, homeworking in the revenue and benefits service led to a 15% increase in productivity and the benefits service improved from a zero star to four star rated service between 2002 and 2006. As a result of the scheme, the department made substantial efficiency savings, with the net cost of running the benefits service reduced by £250,000, according to the Audit Commission. In the private sector, BT reported in 2011 an average 20% productivity increase from home-based workers (it varies according to function)4 and Vodafone reported 24% productivity improvement amongst flexible sales and service staff5. Among the most well-known case studies is that of Chinese travel company CTrip, which introduced home-based working for its call centre staff in 2013. In the initial pilot, 250 staff worked from home four days per week and worked in the office on the fifth. Productivity amongst homeworkers increased by 13%, with 9% derived from working more minutes per day – fewer interruptions and sick days – and 4% from dealing with more calls every day. Attrition also fell by 50% in the homeworking group compared to a control group in the office. CTrip calculated that it saved $2,000 per year per employee who worked from home, and rolled out the option to work from home to all employees in the hotel and airfares department6. Although this case attracted a lot of international media attention, in many aspects it mirrors earlier implementations, such as that of the AA (Automobile Association) home-based call-centre staff from 2001 that we highlighted in Smart Flexibility7. If your car breaks down in the UK, it is more than likely that if you call the AA breakdown service your call will be answered by a home-based agent. The

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same is also substantially true of the travel industry as a whole. In many ways CTrip was following the trend for its industry. The technology for automatic call distribution within and beyond call centres has been around for three decades now, and gets more sophisticated with each passing year. The surprise is that people are ever surprised by this – it’s probably because it has been rarer in more corporate office settings. In 2018, I conducted an evaluation of the Flex programme at the charity Versus Arthritis (as referenced in our case study in Chapter 13). Of employees, 69% reported that they were more productive. It’s important to note, though, that this implementation included both extensive office redesign as well as new technologies and flexibility that enabled very high levels of autonomy around where and when to work. I could run through a long list of industry case studies showing productivity improvements to prove the case that Smart Working (or Agile Working, etc.) consistently reports significant productivity benefits compared with traditional office-bound ways of working. However, I would urge a degree of caution. First, these productivity improvements are striking when you compare old and new ways of working. Once these new ways have shown the benefit, one of two things should happen. Either everyone moves to the new ways of working, or the weak points of traditional working practices are shown in a sharp light, and other measures are then taken to close the gap. So the distinctive productivity impact of, e.g., working ‘remotely’ should diminish as it all becomes more normal. Everyone’s productivity should improve – and that should be the aim. Second, we need to be wary of how productivity is interpreted. People may be doing more, but how much of the extra is actually useful? Writing more emails, presentations or iterating more versions of a report may not actually lead to delivering more of anything that’s mission-critical. Third, productivity benefits, in terms of improved output or quality of output, are only one of the kinds of benefits achievable. There may well be cases where existing working practices are exceptionally well geared for productive work already, and working at different times and places may make productivity improvements marginal. Even so, the range of other benefits is such that modernising working practices is the right thing to do. And the range of cost savings contribute to overall productivity gains. We will tackle all of these issues in the following sections.

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Research findings on home-based productivity during Covid times During the period of enforced homeworking during the Covid pandemic, there was a unique opportunity to assess the impacts on productivity. As noted in Chapter 4, surveys overwhelmingly indicated that people working from home felt they were overall being more productive working from home than they were in their previous setting. The Leesman Index survey of homeworking, with over 274,000 respondents across 2,400 organisations in 103 countries, found that 86% of respondents agreed with the statement ‘My home environment enables me to work productively’. This compares with 65% agreeing to the same statement with regard to working in their office, a gap of some 21%. There is, however, a ‘Leesman+’ category of the top-performing workplaces, where 79% agree with the parallel statement for their workplace, where the gap is reduced to 7%. So some of the advantages of working from home clearly relate to the sub-optimal quality of the majority of workplaces for working at one’s most productive8. US experts Global Workplace Analytics produce an annual State of Remote Work report with Owl Labs. The 2022 report finds that 62% of the 2,300 respondents (all in the US) feel they are more productive working at home than in the office, with only 11% thinking the reverse. This is a different question from the Leesman survey, by asking individuals to make a direct before-and-after comparison. When it comes to which provides the better environment for which type of activity, people feel that home provides the better environment for creative thinking and focus work. For enabling collaborative activities, a collective environment is generally favoured. In the Global Workplace Analytics survey, however, employees are split on the most productive location for innovating and brainstorming, with 39% preferring the office and 37% preferring the home9. A KPMG survey of 1,400 US employees working for private sector companies with more than a thousand employees found that 69% of workers said their productivity increased over the four months April to July 2020. That compares to 54% who felt their productivity had improved at the start of the lockdown10. This more nuanced finding reflects how many organisations were at first completely unprepared for working remotely, but they and their employees adapted quickly. Even so, it’s interesting that even in this ‘remote forced’ situation, a majority feel their productivity has increased.

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In a study of surveys across the 27 countries of the EU, the EU-funded European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound) concluded that: Overall, surveys among employees carried out in the various EU Member States show that working remotely has improved performance and productivity. Employees report better concentration in work, fewer disturbances and interruptions from co-workers and the office environment in general, better discipline during formal meetings, less small talk than in face-to-face meetings, better work environments, simpler organisation of work and leisure time, more flexible working hours, empowerment and trust to make workrelated decisions and time savings due to a reduction in commuting … In addition, evidence from France shows that teleworkers were more productive between 2020 and 2021, even though individuals with little or no previous experience in telework were subject to a particularly complex and timeconsuming learning transition involving the creation of new routines, rearrangement of spaces or mastering of new tools – such as virtual meetings and video call software … Employers also report that telework had an overall positive effect on productivity and performance, as shown by surveys of employers carried out during the pandemic in Austria, Czechia, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Spain11. A study of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in 2021 has attempted to measure the productivity impact of a move between two different types of teleworking arrangement, from one where people were required to live a certain distance from a USPTO office (WFH) to one where they can work from anywhere (WFA). Using existing measures of productivity about the numbers of applications dealt with, the researchers calculated a 4.4% increase in productivity for those registered under the WFA scheme which gives people increased autonomy in organising their work12. While the majority of studies and internal assessments do support productivity benefits, there are a few that show the opposite. A 2021 study using personnel and analytics data from over 10,000 skilled professionals at a large (unnamed) Asian IT services company calculated a decline in productivity of between 8% and 19% since the move to enforced homeworking. This study is interesting in many ways, though I have some reservations about how accurately productivity can be assessed

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from the analytics used and relating that to activities that are deemed productive or not. Essentially, people were working longer hours (including ‘18% more outside of normal business hours’) and producing slightly less than before13. We’ll look at this issue later in the section Work intensification is not the same as productivity, which is a real, though complex, issue of concern. The authors of this report, in conclusion, acknowledge the possible impact of the specific circumstances of homeworking during the pandemic, and also more importantly the need in the future for employers to prepare better for any future work from home. The key question researchers need to ask: ‘What else has changed?’ A problem that for me bedevils research into telework and other forms of flexibility is that studies rarely clarify the context of the change. If people have applied for and been given permission to work from home, say, but everything else carries on along traditional lines, the impacts will assuredly be different compared to an organisation that has also implemented changes that affect all employees, such as modernising the workplace, digitising processes and/or implementing measures for extensive cultural change. So talking about ‘telework’ as if it were a single phenomenon (a regular failing of literature reviews) or attempting to make generalisable conclusions from a single study are problematic, or just plain misleading. The key question all researchers should ask is, ‘What else has changed?’ Only when that context is taken into account can one begin to draw conclusions about whether it’s the Flexible Work practice, something else, the combination of the two, or a lack of something else that is driving the results. What do we actually mean by ‘being more productive’? At this point, it would be useful to step back and reflect on what is meant by ‘increased productivity’. At a basic level, productivity is the ratio of outputs produced to the inputs used. Some studies indicate that people who work remotely do a kind of trade-off with their employee. They divide the time saved by not commuting between their family and their work, so both sides benefit. An extra hour per telework day in that way might be given to the company. But it is a mistake to see the extra hour

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worked as in itself an increase in productivity, as it is focusing on an input measure: the hours worked. If those extra hours result in increased output and more value being produced for the company, then that is no doubt to be welcomed – but is it being more productive? The answer is probably no, as there has been no change in the ratio of outputs to inputs. Both inputs and outputs have gone up according to the existing ratio. In fact, it could be worse than that. Home and work may be more comfortably balanced and the remote worker may be less stressed, but if they’re getting the same amount of work done as before, and it now takes 9 hours instead of 8, they’re (arguably?) being less productive. A manager might argue that their foot is off the gas and they’re coasting. If, however, remote workers are able to handle 20% more forms in the same amount of time, or answer 20% more calls in their regular hours, they are clearly being more productive. We will explore in the next section some of the reasons why this kind of increase in productivity for these kinds of functions is often reported. There are factors other than time that have an impact on productivity for the smart and flexible worker. When technology replaces travel, the resource input to work as well as the time input (from travel) decreases. So the same output is achieved with less input. An example of this would be a mobile worker who can gain access to work systems without returning to the office. This enables an increase in productivity by a) eliminating unnecessary return trips to the office, b) saving time from not re-keying information, which can now be done one time only while on site and c) creating the space in the day for more client interaction. Smart Working inputs, outputs and outcomes Let’s take a look at the ‘sausage machine’ of productivity. Figure 11.1 pulls together an approach to inputs, activity, outputs and outcomes in the context of Smart Working. We have broken down the kinds of inputs that are neeed, which broadly fall into three areas: people, the things they work with and time. As well as people’s time, which is the usual (and sometimes sole) focus of productivity calculations, the time taken by machinery and systems is also an important input factor in many work contexts.

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INPUTS

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Time Skills Effort Collabora!on Mo!va!on Resources Environment Processes

SMART WORKING DECISIONS

OUTPUTS

WORK ACTIVITIES

Choice of work styles & methods

Figure 11.1: Management by Results – the ‘Smart Flexibility’ approach.

OUTCOMES

Deliverables measured in Quan!ty & Quality against targets, value for money and contribu!on to outcomes

Outcomes in terms of value delivered to customer and value to organisa!on (e.g. revenue, fulfilment of mission)

Measured Smart Working outputs e.g.. reduc!ons in mee!ngs & travel, more engagement, staff reten!on, etc

Outcomes in terms of addi!onal benefits to Triple Bo#om Line

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You can basically increase productivity by doing: • Doing more (and/or better) with less input • Doing more (and/or better) with the same input • Doing the same but with less input. Most of the surveys and studies we’ve looked at focus on the output end of the sausage machine, whether self-reported or otherwise assessed. But Smart Working also plays an important part in streamlining or optimising the input end, e.g. by: • • • • • • •

Enhancing collaboration Motivating people by enabling more autonomy Developing new skills Streamlining processes Improving work environments (both physical and virtual) Refocusing how activities are aligned better to time and location Liberating time from wasteful/unnecessary activities.

So the Smart Working choices impact the inputs to work and the ways it is done, that should – if well-chosen and well-supported – deliver more or better output at reduced input. Still looking at the inputs, if an organisation reduces the costs of its real estate (the ‘total office costs’ as outlined in Chapter 6), and produces the same, that is a productivity improvement. Smart Working, however, requires more ambition, in producing more/better outputs that lead to improved outcomes overall. In addition, there are specific Smart Working benefits that a programme ought to be monitoring. These are in the lower half of Figure 11.1. So we ought to be able to see improvements in engagement, work–life balance (or work–life harmony), improved collaboration, reduced travel and a reduced carbon footprint of work. Some of these Smart Working outcomes take their place in a virtuous circle, modifying the inputs and improving the way work is done. But more than that, their benefits should be felt right across the whole Triple Bottom Line, having positive impacts beyond the organisation.

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In order to put this into practice, the manager’s role includes: • Managing the inputs – time, effort, resources (money, materials), skills, motivating people to do their best and work effectively together • Seeing that the work is being done – not by micromanaging but through effective delegation and empowerment and the right level of collaborative involvement • Making or supporting Smart Working workstyle decisions about the most efficient and effective times and locations of work for those involved • Seeing that there is measurement of the impact of the workstyle choices • Seeing that outputs are achieved, and assessed in terms of quantity and quality • Assessing the outcomes of the new ways of working in terms of their impacts on the business, employees and the environment • Ensuring that all this can be managed while people are working in a range of places and at a range of times, as appropriate. ‘Managing by Results’ is not only about looking at the results. It also involves having a good grasp of the inputs and seeing that they are used wisely in order that the results can be achieved. That doesn’t necessarily mean doing everything oneself as a manager. One of the key competences for managers is delegating effectively. In the context of Smart Working, this means getting others involved in coordination and keeping teamwork on track. Increasingly, many of the routine monitoring and measuring tasks will be automated. This delegation and automation should leave the manager with more time to focus on the people aspects of managing the Anywhere, Anytime Team. Peace and quiet: the Connection/Disconnection Paradox Again and again in interviews and staff surveys, I’ve come across the comment on homeworking that it ‘gives a chance to really get on with work by getting away from all the distractions of the office’. It clearly works. But at some point, we’ve got to unpack this statement and ask: 1. Is something else lost by this disconnection? 2. Is this really consistent with Smart Working?

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One of the reasons why working from home tends to be – at least in the early adoption phase – the chance to ‘get on with things’ is because the workplace is full of interruptions and distractions, both welcome and unwelcome. To understand what is actually happening here, we need to break down ‘distraction’ into its component parts. To do this it is useful to put distractions under three headings: 1. No value: Distractions that are just plain time-wasting (in terms of the work getting done) are basically of two kinds: • People: Social chit-chat, food preparation, eating (by self and others) • Environment: ‘Noises off’: bells and alarms, machinery; also factors such as poor lighting and temperature control can damage concentration 2. Potentially valuable: Distractions that relate to the informal sharing of office information – work-related chat or so-called ‘water-cooler’ conversations. This is of three kinds: • In the end, just office gossip • Valuable information, but of no value to you • Intelligence of either direct or indirect (potential) value to your work or to your career 3. Valuable to someone: Distractions that come from colleagues’ work, and this we can divide into two: • Their work causes a visual or noise distraction to you, but is unrelated to your work • They interrupt you/demand something from you because it is essential to their work being done. And you probably do likewise. To get work done that requires high concentration or is up against a deadline, it is indeed helpful get away from distractions. Traditionally this is done by either taking work somewhere else (usually home, probably after hours), or getting to the office early or staying late, when most of the noisy and demanding colleagues are not there. So, taking work home, away from all the distractions, has a role in increasing productivity. But, looking again at Figure 11.2, how valuable is it to oneself, and to the organisation as a whole, to isolate work activity? As an occasional practice, this kind of disconnection may be fine. But it can’t be a core feature of Smart Working.

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No value

Poten!ally valuable

Valuable to someone

Ambient / Time-was!ng

Ad hoc / ‘watercooler’ intelligence

Vital to someone else’s work

My work

Figure 11.2: Unpacking ‘distractions in the office’.

In fact, it goes to the heart of the fears expressed by sceptics and opponents of greater flexibility: • How can we run an effective team when no one’s here at the same time and people can’t be contacted? • Won’t we all be isolated and out of touch when we work ‘remotely’? People tend to have these fears, in fact, because they are based in part on their own experiences of ‘getting away from it all’ and doing disconnected homeworking. Some work-related ‘distractions’ do have value: the social interaction that leads to team bonding, or that leads to finding out vital intelligence that can help one’s work and career. The productivity value of ‘interruptions’ also needs to be looked at from both sides. I remember working many years ago in an organisation where they sent all the female managers and team leaders off on assertiveness training courses. Some of them thereafter would always assertively rebuff anyone who asked them a question, telling them firmly that they were too busy right now or to come back at a certain time. Fair enough, to some extent. But on the other hand, a 20-second interaction might give their colleague all they need to get on effectively with their job. Delaying all interaction to suit your own priorities can damage other people’s productivity, if you single-mindedly progress down your tick-list for the day. It’s a question of balance, and screening out all interruptions has wider impacts.

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Here we reach the ‘Connection/Disconnection Paradox’ in homeworking. Disconnecting yourself from the collective workplace and from colleagues can bring some productivity (and possibly some sanity) advantages. However, the whole direction of Smart Working is to stretch the workplace and its systems to wherever you are. Using the right kinds of collaboration technology, people working flexibly should be just as contactable as ever, wherever they are in the Extended Workplace. In a sense, this means there is no escape – you’ll get contacted somehow. But that kind of takes away the advantages of choosing a less distracting place to work, doesn’t it? Going back to Figure 11.2, what it’s all about is choosing or agreeing the types or range of interruption and distraction that you are open to. In the office, there’s pretty much no escape from the office bores, personal-space invaders, phone-call yellers and mouth-open munchers. But by working elsewhere, at your preferred location, there’s the capacity to slide a barrier across, so you can screen out the pure time-wasting distractions while leaving it open, to various degrees, to facilitate useful business and business–social interaction. Though, of course, the alternative location of work may have its own unique set of distractions, whether it’s in the home, on a train or in a café. We’ll look at how you manage that interface in a domestic setting in the next couple of chapters. We do need to recognise, however, that people are very different in how they react to noise and distractions. Some people are super-sensitive to sound, others psychologically intolerant of it. Others still draw their energy from it, and get cabin fever if away from other people for too long. I know writers who have written novels in their favourite cafés. And whether you can blank out the distractions can be very task dependent, or deadline dependent. The wider view of productivity We noted (in Chapter 9) that Smart Working enhances the possibilities for more effective collaboration, and leads to a change in how we view ‘focus work’. In particular, there are productivity gains to be made in shifting away from linear patterns of solo focus work to joint focus work.

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So in taking a wider view of productivity, we need also to think not only in terms of an individual’s productivity, or even the final output of a task. Also involved are: • One’s contribution to the work of others and their professional development • One’s own learning and personal development14. Some people’s work is pretty much autonomous. For most, however, they contribute to one or more larger units. This might be one team or several, or to a wider group where an individual is a source of expertise. It may be a case of mentoring others. So in liberating time by working more effectively, opportunities are created to contribute, directly or indirectly, to the productivity of the organisation and one’s future productivity. This will have a positive impact on team cohesion, and potentially help one’s career development. The impact of smart process changes on productivity In Chapter 6 on working environments and Chapter 8 on technologies, we explored issues around moving towards a paperless office: decluttering, rationalising storage and investing in the systems that can take you towards all-electronic processes. Effective Smart Working presupposes that one is working with primarily electronic processes, and ideally with seamless and frictionless end-to-end processes. These enable you to enter and access information wherever you are, and not have to duplicate or rekey information. This streamlining in itself should be a boost to productivity. The effects of this should be felt in all locations within the Extended Workplace. In this sense, I worry about people straining to prove or disprove the productivity effects of flexibility. Once flexibility becomes normal, where will we find the productivity bonanzas? We should be equally productive wherever and whenever we work. It’s just that at the moment we have a lowest common denominator benchmark, i.e. traditional ways of working. This is the baseline from which we measure improvement. But when improvement is ubiquitous, it will be harder to record year-on-year improvements in productivity stemming from changing workstyles. It will be more a case of identifying which specific smart practices, processes, environments or technologies are tipping the balance.

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We’re also now starting to get well into an era where the productivity of AIenhanced systems will make a major difference to the speed of work and to productivity. The challenge here is to align our working practices with the new requirements to work alongside such systems. Teach people to type – or throw away the keyboards! ‘Teach everyone to touch-type – this could prove to be the single most effective investment to improve productivity!’ This was the suggestion, said partly tongue-in-cheek, of a senior manager in a Children’s Services department during an interview I was conducting, as part of an evidence-gathering exercise in a local council. We were discussing the issues with social workers being able to work effectively from other locations and the technologies they might need. It’s an important point he raised. Since the demise of the typing pool and secretaries for every team, professionals and managers have been expected to be their own secretarial and admin assistants. And it’s very time-consuming. Requiring well-paid professionals and managers to do clerical tasks badly is not a great use of resources. So actually, if they could type at 100 words per minute, as my mother used to do, wouldn’t they be a lot more productive? The same for me too, as it happens! In fact, we bought my mother her first ever computer, a laptop, for her 80th birthday. And – here’s one in the eye for Generation Z, perhaps – trained as a secretary in the 1940s, she took to it like a duck to water, as many of her far-flung family and friends were doing too. Once she had got used to the flatness of the keyboard, she was rattling off emails and letters in a fraction of the time that I would take. However, this observation on typing has an onrushing sell-by date. It won’t be long before we see the demise of the keyboard. And its little pal the mouse, too. Keying in information is actually a barrier between the originator of information and its destination. We’ll soon be seeing genuinely intelligent artificial intelligence that will oversee speech recognition, and intelligent processes that will routinise many of the things we currently crank by hand through our electronic systems. So these advances on the ‘smart’ side of Smart Working offer the prospect of taking us to new levels of productivity. Our work practices will have to evolve again – probably our work environments too – as hopefully we preside over much of our work rather than slog through it as slaves to the machine.

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Work intensification is not the same as productivity – but there’s an overlap Some studies of flexible work, especially telework/home-based work, have noted that flexible workers experience intensification of work – they work harder or longer. This has led a few such as Timothy Golden to see teleworking as likely to lead to increased work–family conflict and to (some) teleworkers experiencing greater levels of exhaustion than they would have experienced working in an office15. Others, such as Clare Kelliher and Deirdre Anderson at Cranfield University, dig deeper into the nature and causes of work intensification which they divide into three types – imposed, enabled and reciprocal trade-off16. Imposed intensification may occur for example when someone moves onto a reduced hours schedule but finds that the work doesn’t reduce on a pro rata basis. Enabled intensification, which I think is a much more common phenomenon, happens because the new way of working allows the individual to be more engaged with the work. This is because the worker is away from the distractions, conventions and confines of the office and can work in the way that suits them best. Being less stressed and without the strains of the commute may also mean that workers have more energy and enthusiasm for the work. The reciprocal trade-off effect refers to the situation where the employee experiences the flexible hours as a significant benefit for which they are willing to go the extra mile for the employer (figuratively rather than literally). In the case of home-based working, this can mean sharing the notional commute time between the individual and employer17. One element of this reciprocity is that early adopters of Flexible Working, or those adopting in the face of scepticism from managers or other colleagues, feel an obligation to demonstrate that it works. Kelliher and Anderson did find evidence of the various kinds of work intensification. The ‘enabled intensification’ was mostly associated with remote workers, some of whom reported finding it difficult to tune out of work. In the next chapter we’ll deal with problems and troubleshooting in further discussion of this. What is interesting is that Kelliher and Anderson found little in the way of negative outcomes associated with this work intensification. This should come as no surprise when we look at the reasons why people seek flexibility, which is usually so that they can do their job better.

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One factor I’ve not seen taken into account in studies is that until the pandemic the majority of those working from home were people with more seniority in organisations or skilled autonomous professionals. As such, they tend to put in a certain amount of discretionary overtime anyway. They often did so from home, even when their working day was spent in the office. How these factors come together has not been explored. What does surprise me, though, is that ‘work intensification’ in the academic literature is almost always seen as a negative rather than being viewed objectively. Whether work intensification is experienced as good or bad depends on your starting point and your outlook. Might ‘work intensification’ sometimes be ‘work de-intensification’? The data we’ve highlighted so far overwhelming shows that when people work from home they are happier, more engaged, have improved work–life balance and want to keep doing it. Why would this be if they felt exploited? We’re looking at a potential scenario where work is stretched out further over a working day. This can result from: a. Non-linear workdays, that is breaking off between work tasks to do other things, i.e. exercising more control over work schedules b. Working at a less intense pace, one which the worker is more comfortable with c. Actually doing more work. The assumption in most studies (and in Microsoft analytics, as it happens), is that it is (c): people are actually doing more work. If it’s (a), is that a problem? One would think not. If it’s (b), is that a problem? Managers may be concerned that a person is coasting if they are working longer but producing the same as before. Unions and politicians who want strictly defined working hours in Flexible Working agreements might also see that as a problem. Software analytics may identify that as a problem. But is it really? If someone is exercising a choice to use part of their notional commuting time to work at the pace they prefer, or put a little extra care into the output, and they are happy to do so, does anyone need to worry about it? If there are expectations of putting in extra time, then we are looking at potential exploitation (which is what lies behind the negative presumptions). And equally,

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it’s a problem if it’s a sign of work spiralling out of control due to the way an individual interfaces with his or her new freedoms to work wherever and whenever. But overall, research studies don’t report this happening. Usually, any additional input is freely and willingly given. But this is the thing: focusing on the intensification of work is all about the inputs. More effort and more time input. It doesn’t tell you anything directly about the output. My issue with each of the scenarios (a), (b) and (c) would be in the cases where there is no increase in productivity. They may be working from home, and happy about it – but the work hasn’t got any smarter. There are also some time-use studies that show people working less, overall, when they work from home despite ‘giving back’ to their employer around a third of their time saved by not commuting. What they are doing is spending more time on household chores and maintenance, childcare, leisure and sleeping. I think the best conclusion after reviewing the evidence is that the effects are complex! Indeed you might expect them to be, given that people’s work, life situations and personalities all vary. But this complexity also indicates there are choices to be made. The potential to be more productive and have a better fit with the rest of life is there, by adopting best practices and having a high degree of awareness about what might go against one’s own interests18. The knock-on impacts of increased productivity and efficiency An important part of a manager’s role is cost control. This should include managing down the costs of working practices. If the resources required for doing work are reduced, then producing the same outputs at reduced cost represents a productivity increase. There may be a bullet to bite here, as elements of some people’s work becomes redundant. That leads to the familiar challenge brought about by productivity increases. Do you move forward with fewer people, or do you employ the surplus capacity to do more things? While this kind of choice has a sharp edge to it, it is one of immense significance during a period of major economic challenges and the changing nature of work. Here we see an overlap between Smart Working and the impacts of both automation and modern forms of outsourcing. Breaking down processes into their constituent elements enables more of it to be done by machines, or to be

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outsourced as discrete work packages to other companies or freelancers. This has happened with manufacturing in the developed world, and now it is impacting white collar professions19. At the same time, work – including more complex work – can be done by people with the appropriate skill levels working in cheaper labour markets. This is sometimes referred to as ‘remote intelligence’, RI complementing AI (and more traditional outsourcing) to create many new opportunities for reducing costs20. Employing such remote experts on a Smart Working basis, the challenge is to integrate them into the team and the organisation rather than seeing them as a disposable time-limited resource. So it’s important to note that Smart Working is only one of a combination of forces changing the nature of work and potentially impacting productivity. Managers and organisations need to have the skills to navigate through these and make the strategic decisions to maximise the benefits for the organisation and for its employees. What does this mean for an existing workforce, whose work is being hollowed out by intelligent systems or the contingent workforce? Smart Working should ideally have the impact of increasing effectiveness and output on the front line while reducing the costs of doing work. That reduction of internal costs may involve job losses, or people being reskilled and redeployed to where they can deliver more value. Reskilling requires taking a longer-term view about the changing balance of tasks people will undertake, rather than a static view of the roles involved. When clever AI analytics meet old hat assumptions Further evidence of people working longer hours is emerging from the use of software analytics. This is where software tracks our use of applications, when we use synchronous or asynchronous communications, when we log in, who we connect with and how. It feeds back to us information about our ‘focus time’ and ‘collaboration’ time and makes suggestions, e.g. about blocking out time for focus work, or noting that we’ve been working ‘out of office hours’. At an aggregate, anonymised level it potentially offers rich data for analysing trends in work behaviour. It’s one of the strands of investigation used in the study by Gibbs et al. cited in note 10. Another study by Microsoft that attracted a lot of attention in the business press in late 2021 generated many headlines on the lines of

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‘The pandemic made our workweek longer’. The focus of the study, actually, was how remote working was impacting people’s use of communication media and narrowing the range of people we communicate with21. Almost in passing, it noted that people’s workdays are longer. The metric used is defined as ‘the total amount of time between the first observed work activity and the last observed work activity on each working day in a given week’. The weakness in linking that to the amount of time people are working is self-evident. Other assumptions in such studies include that increased use of Teams is evidence of more meetings. Time working solo on other applications like Word is seen as more valuable focus time. But judicious use of Teams (or similar) can include highly focused and productive work engaging with a colleague or two. Naturally, reporting noted a big jump in the use of technologies like Teams during the pandemic. Previously people weren’t using them very much, if at all, when everyone was based in the collective workplace. So the comparisons with pre-pandemic office working need to be approached cautiously. There is potential in using these analytics to understand more about working practices, use of technology and use of different locations and settings. But it needs to be more nuanced than I’ve seen so far, and move away from outdated assumptions about standard hours, about the nature of how people work in the virtual workplace and simplistic distinctions between focus work and collaboration. What is the productivity case for (always) being in the same place? As various forms of Hybrid/Remote-First/Agile/Smart Working become almost ubiquitous for people who previously would have worked in offices, perhaps it’s time the onus of proof for productivity were reversed. That is, what’s the productivity case for gathering people together in a collective workplace? Or for mandating gathering together at specific times and places? Assumptions have usually been made that traditional ways of working provide the best model for evaluating productivity. This can no longer be taken for granted. One phrase that has emerged recently is that employers need to ‘earn the commute’, i.e. provide a strong justification for their employees to spend time and money going into a company-owned workplace. The productivity benefits of being together should not just be asserted: they need to be evidenced. In the mandates to attend a workplace that we’re seeing at the moment, that evidence is lacking. It’s more that there are assertions that it’s

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beneficial for collaboration or team cohesion, or senior managers think productivity is being compromised. In fact, there is far less evidence in the literature that being together in one place boosts productivity than evidence to the contrary. So maybe this is a challenge to researchers, to show how productivity was boosted when people returned to the office after lockdown, or when Hybrid or Smart Working schemes are rolled back by incoming executives. In the case that there are found to be productivity issues with people working more in their own choice of locations, there are no grounds for assuming that ‘bringing them back to the office’ is the most appropriate or effective solution. The challenge is to investigate how people can work more productively by working smarter, wherever they are. It may well be that the Procrustean mix of set days in one place and set days in another isn’t working, as it doesn’t align with the needs of the tasks they should be doing on those days. My view is that, over time, it shouldn’t matter where people are working, so long as the best choice has been made in relation to the tasks in hand, as advised in Chapter 5. How quality of workplace relates to performance and productivity The quality of the places and spaces in which we work have an impact on how we perform. The workplace industries (primarily corporate real estate, workplace design, facilities management) often refer to ‘workplace productivity’. It has been somewhat elusive both to define and evidence, but is something providers in these fields would like to find the magic formula for. It’s elusive, I feel, because a ‘productive workplace’ can’t really exist in itself. ‘Productive’ here is a transferred epithet. That is, the people, the machinery or some of the systems in a workplace can be more productive, but the environments in which they operate only have indirect effects. Air quality, lighting, temperature, acoustics, furniture, layout, ergonomics, suitability for different personalities, controllability – all these (as discussed in Chapters 6, 12 and 13) will have an impact on whether people perform well or perform less well in an environment. There’s a strong link between performance and productivity, but they are not the same thing. One may perform very well doing things that don’t contribute greatly to the productivity of the organisation.

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So there’s a danger of being led astray a little if people feel more comfortable working in an environment and therefore report that they are more productive. Creating high-quality workplaces where people feel more comfortable and engaged, and which are optimised for the range of tasks people do at that location, is a necessary ingredient. But it’s an improved input to creating the context for increasing potential productivity, as one component amongst many others in a Smart Working implementation. This doesn’t only apply to the organisation’s own premises. All the places where people work, including the Virtual Workplace, need to be optimised to support the potential for increased productivity. Conclusion: Does Smart Working increase productivity? In this chapter we’ve looked at productivity from various angles. One of the impacts of telework/remote work/Hybrid Working is that it has set the context for comparisons between working in an office (usually) and working from home. In many ways this takes us down a rabbit hole, and off down many dead ends in the warren. We need to emerge from these dark places, blinking into the light and look holistically at Smart Working, and have a wider perspective on productivity. But to answer the question directly, whether Smart Working increases productivity, we can say: • Yes, if the strategic and comprehensive approach advocated in this book is adopted, and everyone is prepared to challenge the nature and value of what is done, as well as the amount • If people just end up doing more of what they’ve always done, but in different environments and at different times, the value of that will be limited • Reactive/permission-based Flexible Working/Hybrid Working arrangements may increase productivity indirectly, e.g. through increased motivation and engagement, and reducing business travel. But they will fall short of what is possible with a more comprehensive approach. Our goal should be to improve productivity wherever and whenever we are working, rather than trying to prove that one location is better than another. We should take lessons from what works, and then project the learning across the Extended Workplace.

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Notes 1 Ellen Ernst Kossek, Brenda A. Lautsch and Susan C. Eaton (2006), Telecommuting, control, and boundary management: Correlates of policy use and practice, job control, and work–family effectiveness. Journal of Vocational Behavior 68, 347–367. 2 Clare Kelliher (2008), Flexible Working and Performance: Summary of Research. Report from Working Families and Cranfield University, available at https:// workingfamilies.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Flexible-WorkingPerformance-2008.pdf. See also Clare Kelliher and Deirdre Anderson (2009), Flexible Working in Organisations: The Perspective of Co-Workers. Paper at International Industrial Relations Association World Congress, Sydney 24–27 August 2009. 3 Audit Commission (2006), Efficiency Challenge Case Studies. (The Audit Commission was replaced in 2015 by the National Audit Office with some functions hived off to other bodies.) 4 BT (2011), Agile Working in BT South Tyneside & South Tyneside Council. Presentation at Flexibility conference, Smart Working: The Way Ahead for the Public Sector, Edinburgh. 5 Vodafone (2011), Flexible Working at Vodafone. Presentation at Flexibility conference, Flexible Working Environments, London. 6 Nicholas Bloom, James Liang, John Roberts and Zhichun Jenny Ying (2013), Does Working from Home Work? Evidence from a Chinese Experiment. National Bureau of Economic Research working paper 18871. www.nber.org/papers/ w18871 7 Andy Lake (2016), Smart Flexibility: Moving Smart and Flexible Working from Theory to Practice. Routledge. 8 The Leesman Index data is continuously updated, and available via the website at www.leesmanindex.com. 9 Iometrics and Global Workplace Analytics (2020), Global Work-from-Home Experience Survey. https://globalworkplaceanalytics.com/whitepapers 10 KPMG (2020), American Worker Survey: COVID-19: Reality of Work and the Virtual Workforce. https://advisory.kpmg.us/content/dam/advisory/en/pdfs/ 2020/american-worker-survey-summer-2020-exec-report.pdf 11 Eurofound (2022), The Rise in Telework: Impact on Working Conditions and Regulations. Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg. 12 Prithwiraj (Raj) Choudhury, Cirrus Foroughi and Barbara Larson (April 2021), Work-from-anywhere: the productivity effects of geographic flexibility. Strategic Management Journal 42, no. 4, 655–683.

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13 Michael Gibbs, Friederike Mengel and Christoph Siemroth (2021), Work from Home & Productivity: Evidence from Personnel & Analytics Data on IT Professionals. Becker Friedman Institute for Economics at the University of Chicago. 14 Similar points are strongly made by Tsedal Neeley in her 2021 book Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere, HarperCollins, referencing the work of J Richard Hackman on the productivity of teams. 15 Timothy Golden (2007), Co-workers who telework and the impact on those in the office: understanding the implications of virtual work for co-worker satisfaction and turnover intentions. Human Relations 60, 1641–1667. 16 Clare Kelliher and Deirdre Anderson (2010), Doing more with less? Flexible working practices and the intensification of work. Human Relations 63, no. 1. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0018726709349199 17 SUSTEL (2004), Is Teleworking Sustainable? An Analysis of its Economic, Environmental and Social Impacts. Final report of the SUSTEL (Sustainable Teleworking) project. European Commission. Similar findings are reported in Andrea F. Glogger, Thomas W. Zängler and Georg Karg (2008), The impact of telecommuting on households’ travel behaviour, expenditures and emissions. In Christopher Jensen-Butler et al. (Eds.), Road Pricing, the Economy and the Environment (pp. 411–425). Springer. 18 Studies highlighting changes of time use that apparently show lower levels of work overall include David Dam et al. (18 October 2022), What have workers done with the time freed up by commuting less? Federal Reserve Bank of New York Liberty Street Economics, https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/ 2022/10/what-have-workers-done-with-the-time-freed-up-by-commutingless/; and Nicholas Bloom, Ruobing Han and James Liang (2022), How Hybrid Working from Home Works Out. National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 30292. www.nber.org/papers/w30292 19 The impacts on white collar work are well set out in Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind (2015), The Future of the Professions: How Technology will Transform the Work of Human Experts. Oxford University Press. 20 The relationship of these is the focus of Richard Baldwin (2019), The Globotics Upheaval: Globalization, Robotics and the Future of Work. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 21 Longqi Yang et al. (2021), The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers. Nature Human Behaviour 6, 43–54.

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Chapter Twelve Smarter homeworking

Homeworking in the mainstream Homes took on new importance as a place of work during the pandemic. For millions across the world, home became their workplace – although we should always remember that for millions more, this was not the case. With that number of people involved, it’s risky generalising about the experience. The context of their work and the context of their home life and relationships means that people draw very different lessons from it. But there are five general conclusions I think it’s safe to draw from the experience: • There was a big uplift in awareness that working from home is possible, can be productive and many want to continue doing it • People and organisations tried things they never thought practicable, like teaching from home at all levels, or doctors holding online consultations, as well as more routine things that many had never tried: like virtual team meetings, appraisals, inductions and inspections • There was a huge amount of innovation on the part of both employers and technology suppliers to improve the experience of working from home • Many – perhaps the majority – of organisations that moved to homeworking during the pandemic have decided to continue enabling homeworking, at least to some extent • However, given the many social restrictions during the period of lockdown, homeworking during the pandemic was not a typical experience of working from home.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003288930-12

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The result is that homeworking has moved into the mainstream from being a somewhat fringe or minority activity. Now, despite the media noise about whether it’s a good thing or not, the question for most organisations is how to make it work well. Role of the home within the Extended Workplace The first thing to say is that for it to work well, the attitude that working from home is somehow exceptional needs to be consigned to history, as flexibility becomes the norm. The home is the main setting of one of the five domains of the Extended Workplace, the Personal domain. This includes settings within the home itself – more of which later – and also connected to the home, e.g. in a garden office or some other kind of facility within the grounds of the home. So in Figure 12.1, which adds some detail to Figure 6.1, I’ve included some headline categories for the types of activity settings that are part of the Personal domain, whether within the house or in an outbuilding. In some developments there can also be some shared workspace for residents. Examples include some of the new developments where residents of apartments

Holiday loca!on Personal Domain

Dedicated office

Shared space

Media Studio Maker Space

Garden Outbuilding

Customer area

Figure 12.1: Illustrating the variety of settings in the Personal domain.

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Vehicle Home

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have access to shared work facilities, alongside some shared leisure facilities. These tend to be at the upper end of the market along with chunky service charges, but there are some examples in social housing as well. We’ll be exploring all these settings and their relevance in more detail later in the chapter. But the main point is that, from the outset, we need to think beyond the ‘home office’ as being the be-all and end-all of homeworking. We need to do better than that. Also in the Personal domain is one’s own car, which is often used for work purposes. I also know a couple of people who either own or have rented a motor home to be able to explore different places while they work, long before it became fashionable to talk of digital nomads. I’ve also included ‘holiday location’ as a setting that overlaps a boundary. In most cases, it will be a place that is rented out to multiple customers, and isn’t part of the Personal domain. Owning a holiday home is not so common in the UK, but in some other countries it can be more common, whether a cabin in the woods or some other desirable place to get away from it all or enjoy a different pace of life. These can also provide a place to hunker down and ‘get some work done’ in a different setting, like writing a book as Colin Firth does in the film Love Actually. He also accidently falls in love with a Portuguese woman that he is unable to communicate with. However, that’s an outlier in terms of experience, I believe. So we have these different kinds of personal spaces we use, whether fixed or mobile, owned or rented. How do they fit into the Extended Workplace? In an obvious sense the Personal domain offers alternative settings to those in the other three physical domains (Organisation-owned, Third-party-owned, Public), while the Virtual domain should seamlessly connect us with our work, colleagues and customers as needed. We’re aiming, however, to explore some nuance here. People often talk about a more or less binary choice of ‘home or office’. However, it’s the range of settings an ‘office’ offers that make a difference. It may not even be an office, in fact, but some other kind of productive setting, or indeed out on site with customers. And ‘home’ isn’t simply, or only, the home. It’s about what are the best options and settings that suit the tasks involved, and that fit well with how you want to live your life and the other things you – and those close to you – want or need to do. So while the home should act as an effective workplace, its relationship with other aspects of life is what gives it a distinct character and function. This creates

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many advantages, hence its popularity in surveys. But it also presents some potential challenges that we’ll deal with as we work our way through. So in the sections that follow, we’re going to look at what makes for the best working practice and best working environments in the Personal domain. The different types of home-based working and what that means First, we need to recognise the different kinds of work that may be carried out in the Personal domain. And it’s much more varied than is often thought. Here’s a sample of the different kinds of work that might be done from home: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Time-sensitive work, as in home-based call centre work, or IT support High collaboration work, e.g. being part of an agile development team Teaching (preparation, online delivery or seeing students in the home) Highly structured work, e.g. data processing Research Producing media Using VR and AR Mix of knowledge work and hands-on work Health and therapy work Food production Artistic and craft work Light engineering and repair work Retail – for either virtual or physical products, using online platforms Music creation, rehearsal and production Inventing and creating prototypes Home used as base for travelling to customers/clients.

When we think of the range of types of work involved here, it’s clear that the home office is not a sufficient concept, and that working from the kitchen counter is inadequate for all but occasional use. So we need to think hard about how a home’s work environment can support people to be as effective as possible doing all these kinds of work. Or, indeed, whether it is better if some of them are best done elsewhere. We need also to be wary of making simplistic assumptions that certain kinds of work need always to be done in one particular place. We provided some tools in

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Chapters 5 and 9 to relate work tasks to time and place, and to think through where our selection of time and place adds most value. So, although it may be our past experience that we worked at home mainly to do solo focus work, we now know that we can also do highly collaborative work from home, and with colleagues or customers based all around the country or even all around the globe, time zones permitting. But we have to always come back to the question, what adds most value? We have to balance factors like saving time and expense from travelling, carbon savings, having access to people who otherwise would not be involved, the productivity interface with other work we need to do that day (etc.) with any potential added value from being together in the same room, e.g. in terms of immediacy of interaction, side conversations, getting-to-know-you benefits (etc.). And sometimes the benefit of just getting out of the house and working in a different environment. Many organisations have been operating home-based call centre operations for decades. An important part of the value-added here has been recruiting and retaining people in a type of work that has tended to have high turnover of staff. This is very interactive work, involving a lot of support and interaction with colleagues and managers. However, we need to drill down into the nature of the work to see where the most appropriate locations across the Extended Workplace are. So, as in our BT case study (Chapter 6), people handling emergency response need a high level of confidentiality and sometimes strong emotional support when they have been dealing with harrowing calls. The added value of being physically close to colleagues in these circumstances outweighs other factors. The experience in the pandemic catapulted very large numbers of white collar office workers into working from home. But it’s not all about office-type work. Evidence from before the pandemic showed that around two thirds of people working from home were self-employed or running small businesses. Often these were in more traditional kinds of working, which have now become more connected through technology to customers, partners and suppliers. So we need to keep our eyes open to the broad mix of needs of a very varied home-based workforce. Not only home offices: the variety of home-based work settings needed From the types of work and uses set out earlier in this chapter, we can see the need for a range of different kinds of spaces for different kinds of work and other

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activities. Drilling down further into the headline categories mentioned (Offices, Media studios, Maker spaces and Customer areas), these include: • Office – for primarily knowledge work, with good ergonomic set-up, adjustable-height desk and chair, multiple screens, capacity for large wallmounted screen for communication if needed, comfortable alternative place to sit away from screen (e.g. to read, watch, broadcast, participate in less formal online interaction, etc.) • Comms room – space for more immersive collaboration, potentially with space and surfaces for 3D holographic work and participation in project or innovation work with distant colleagues. Could also be used for home-based learning • Sound-proofed studio – for music rehearsal and teaching, and audio or video production or broadcast • Workshop – room with sufficient space for fabrication, whether high tech or in traditional crafts, or small-scale lab space, with space for storage as needed • Food and drink preparation area – this could be a larger kitchen, or a dedicated space for preparation and packaging/bottling for distribution • Treatment room – for those in health and beauty occupations, which may have specific requirements for patient privacy, safety, statutory compliance, etc., as well as room for treatment chairs or tables and other specialist equipment • Shop front – mainly for homes in town centres or in local centres, a space fronting on to, e.g., a workshop, studio or showroom in which customers can be met and products ordered or sold. These are just some of the kinds of spaces that would be appropriate. They could be within a house, or an adjoined or separate building in the garden or courtyard. People may need a combination of settings, e.g. a fabrication area (e.g. for textiles, ceramics, 3D printing) and an office area for processing orders, talking with customers and administration, or maybe even a good media production area for generating marketing materials for social media. And there can be overlaps between categories, for example, a studio optimised for music production might also be the place for giving lessons. For employees of large organisations, there will be a greater need for a dedicated office, and in some cases, especially as the new fields of work develop, for a comms room or media studio.

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But Smart Working is also relevant for smaller businesses and for start-ups and freelancers. In my role as a judge for an annual top employer awards, I’ve seen a major shift towards smaller companies in all kinds of work adopting a more distributed model of employment. They don’t want to take on a fixed-cost overhead of separate premises if they don’t have to, and find it useful to recruit people who are looking for more flexibility and work–life harmony. So it’s very important to think much wider than simply having a desk in a spare bedroom, or indeed needlessly limiting the kinds of work that can be done from home settings. It’s also really important for people in the workplace industries, residential developers and planners to think in these wider terms, in order to meet the emerging areas of market demand. Quality of home-based environments However, it’s not enough to say we need a greater variety of spaces. They also need to ensure the places we work are of the best quality, just as we want to ensure spaces in collective workplaces are of the best quality. To start with, not every person working from home has their own dedicated room for work. The Leesman homeworking survey found that 49% of homeworkers (primarily corporate employees) did have their own dedicated office. Of the remaining, 30% have a dedicated space in another room and 22% have no dedicated space at all, but work wherever they can1. A survey by Lichfields planning consultancy for residential housing developer Barratt found that only 28% of people had a dedicated room for working. While respondents were happy to work from home, 49% felt that they do not have sufficient amount or quality of space to work at home. This is more likely to be the case for younger workers (54% aged 35 or under) than for older workers (27% over 55s)2. These findings confirm what you might well suspect. Older workers are more likely to have larger homes, and once children having moved out they are more likely to have rooms they can convert to work spaces. Younger workers are less likely to own their home, and more likely to live in small or shared accommodation. However, the appetite for having the flexibility to choose their own workplace remains strong amongst younger workers. We can also learn by looking at what tasks and facilities work well and what doesn’t when working at home. The Leesman data identifies several factors that are

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reported as being a little worse at home and some that are significantly worse (the ‘satisfaction gap’): • A little worse: using technical/specialist equipment or materials; quality of table and chair • Significantly worse: learning from others; informal social interaction; hosting visitors, clients or customers; printing/copying/scanning equipment. We are faced with a choice here about how to respond. We can have a reflex ‘go to the office for that’, or we can take steps to improve the enabling behaviours and environments for home-based working. As you might expect, I’m inclined to the latter, while also acknowledging the value of good collective workplace environments when they add value. So we need to drill down into what creates quality settings for working from home. If we aim for the best settings and the best practice, a good working environment at home should ideally include: • A dedicated space: separate room with closable door, of adequate size for the layout required • Alternative work settings: to use for a change of scenery and for discrete tasks such as reading away from a screen • Great acoustic environment: to maximise protection from noise distraction and optimise environment for calls • Excellent ergonomic setup: e.g. height-adjustable work surface, fully adjustable chair, screen set to optimal height, appropriate accessories3 • Infrastructure: high bandwidth broadband, sufficient for calls and other high bandwidth activities, Wi-Fi reaching all areas used for work • Technology: most appropriate computing device, large and/or multiple screens, good noise-cancelling headset, HD camera for calls and recording, other technology according to nature of work • Connection: seamless connection to company systems and data, as appropriate to the nature of the work; connection from home office/admin setting to any equipment and systems run in maker spaces within the home or elsewhere • Setting for collaboration/joint working: either within regular working area or a separate space, possibly involving space to stand and move around to

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support quality of interaction, large screen. In some cases may involve some space for colleagues to be there in person too • Accessories: laptop/tablet riser and/or screen(s) to connect to, separate keyboard and mouse, a printer only if genuinely needed • Biophilia: access to daylight without glare, natural views if possible, planting, imagery, use of natural materials, easy access to outside as far as possible within constraints of location. Optimal habits and rituals when working from home We move now from environment to practice – how can we ensure working from home works well for us, and for our colleagues and customers too? From the work point of view, having shared expectations and arrangements with colleagues is essential, and it’s best if these are wrapped up in a Team Agreement as advised in Chapter 9. If that’s too formal, at the very minimum it’s important to have the conversations about how everyone will be working. Contactability is always important, without necessarily implying that you are always on call. It’s about having the shared understanding and reporting structures in place. It’s important to note that the reason why people like to work from home is not only about the location. It’s also about having more control over their time, about how the working day pans out for them in relation to their preferences and their other priorities in life. Brian Elliott and co-authors, in their book How the Future Works: Leading Flexible Teams to do the Best Work of Their Lives, advocate the use of ‘Personal Operating Manuals’. They describe these as ‘short, professional documents that aim to help teams learn to work better together by offering explicit descriptions of personal values and communication styles’4. This involves individuals setting out their preferred work style, what they value, what they don’t have patience for, their preferred communication style, what people might misunderstand about them and how others should help them when needed. A bit like the Team Agreement, this should be encapsulated in a few short sentences in each category. These documents are then available to be shared openly with colleagues. The idea is to help bring clarity to work relationships in a distributed team (not only homeworkers!) and create the context to work together with empathy and understanding. My friend and colleague in the European Smart Work Network, the former managing director of Plantronics Europe, Philip Vanhoutte, is a strong advocate of

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what he refers to as the EASI rituals as the way to bring focus and success for distributed knowledge work. This involves thinking through and developing an intentional approach to how you work, the environment of the work and the tools you use – and taking time to reenergise. The key rituals are broken down as following: • Energise - Re-charge the mind and body to restore and build vital energy, accessing stimulus beyond work – to read, relax, stretch, exercise, go for a walk (preferably involving contact with nature). Energising is now a prerequisite for work activity: if one is not energised before or during work, it will be harder for the other rituals to produce value • Author – Concentrated work, involving creation or individual learning, requiring an ergonomic set-up at a height-adjustable desk enabling you to alternate sitting and standing while working, and a comfortable degree of acoustic isolation, with or without background sounds as per preference (e.g. music, sounds of nature) • Share – presenting, pitching, delivering a podcast, teaching, selling, etc.: delivering impactful communication, with optimal environment including studio lighting, microphone, camera, clicker, stage background, delivered from a standing position • Interact – collaborating with others to deliver team value, to move ideas forward, co-create products, brainstorm, participate in stand-up. Can use a virtual whiteboard, or smartboard or physical whiteboard with pens with a studio setup that has a camera focusing on (or that turns to follow you to) the board5. The advantage of thinking of the various activities in this way is to maximise the effectiveness of the different kinds of work. And it will help break up the monotony of trying to do all activities from the same work position, all day long. Philip also makes a case for keeping the unbroken duration of any one of these sessions to a manageable level, for most people around 45 minutes maximum. Our brains become exhausted over time, and we benefit from varying the activity or taking a break. Home alone, burnt out, fighting the family and tripping over wires A lot of commentary and indeed guidance about home-based working still presents it as exceptional and potentially problematic. The main fears include being isolated, being disconnected from the team, working all the time, not being able to separate work from home life, and health and safety dangers.

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In my experience helping organisations to implement smarter ways of working over the years, problems are much more anticipated than realised. In fact, there’s something very rewarding about speaking to people after implementation when their caution and resistance has turned to enthusiasm, and they say, ‘This is working out great for us!’ Having said that, there are some things that can go wrong if the implementation is not planned well, which we’ll explore in the next few sections and suggest remedies if there’s an issue. Home alone and disconnected Discussions about homeworking often conjure up the lurking spectre of isolated, atomised workers who rarely or never meet. Isn’t there something intrinsically dehumanising about this? After all, we are social animals. We need the social contact. If work is only about getting the work done, then we risk becoming distributed cogs in a distributed machine. This conjures up the prospect of being worse than the old factory model, as the prospects of developing relationships and having fun with colleagues is diminished. I remember at one conference a few years back someone protested that homebased working would undermine society. Work was very important socially. In fact his parents, like many others, had met at work and subsequently married. Without the traditional workplace, he said, he would not be here today. I’m not sure how far one should extrapolate from the serendipitous context of one’s parents’ meeting. My parents met as part of the occupying military and civilian forces in Germany in 1946. So without Nazism and a World War, I guess I wouldn’t be here either. I’m sure many couples meet as a result of conflict or chaos, but it’s not something we ought to promote. It’s also true that many people meet their lovers at work – that is, the ones they don’t tell their wives, husbands or partners about. So it cuts both ways. The truth is that although work is a social setting for personal encounters, we’ve reached a sad place in life if it’s our only place. And the dominance of traveling every day to work in our lives can diminish the possibilities of a wider social life too. Here’s the thing: the fact is that in most cases flexibility is not an ‘all or nothing’ set-up. Someone who works at home 3 days a week is still around for the other 2. People who work a 4-day compressed working week are still potentially around at work for those 4 days. And so on. From the point of view of interaction, this is not a lot different in principle from the experience of mobile workers who spend relatively little time back at base. They do survive, and sometimes even marry.

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We have been through an unusual period, though, of lockdowns and mandates to work from home. So for the 40% or so of us who did that, it was an unusual period of confinement, where we were unable to meet at all ‘in the real world’ with colleagues, friends or wider family. We were, however, confined with other members of our household, if we have any, which is actually untypical of home-based working in a different way. So we have to be careful about extrapolating lessons about work and family relationships from these highly unusual circumstances. However, there are concerns and issues to address if we want to get things right and maximise the benefits from choosing to work from home. Dealing with disconnection Let’s deal first with the issue of being disconnected from colleagues. We’ve already noted that the ideal situation is for people to be seamlessly connected with their work and their colleagues, wherever they happen to be working. But is this enough? Working away from the collective workplace and away from daily contact with colleagues can feel isolating. But whether isolation becomes a problem depends on a number of factors: • How often are you working in a separate location to your colleagues? 1–2 days per week used to be typical for homeworking employees, and we’re now looking at 2–3 days as being an emerging norm • What kind of work you are doing? In particular, the amount of interaction involved with colleagues and clients virtually, going out to site meetings, etc., makes a big difference • What’s your domestic and community situation? Whether one has an active family and community life can make a substantial difference to one’s perception of isolation. To understand the phenomenon of isolation, we need to dig into it a bit. The key issue is: by working from home, what are you being disconnected from, and what are you connecting or reconnecting to? Tables 12.1 and 12.2 are a useful way to assess the pros and cons of an individual’s situation. The individual can look at each factor, then see whether he or she is disconnected from them or not, putting in a ‘Y’ for Yes, ‘S’ for somewhat, or ‘N’ for No.

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Table 12.1 Disconnection analysis grid Disconnected from?

Y/S/N

G/B/T

Remedy – if needed

G/B/T

Remedy – if needed

Good colleagues Unbearable colleagues ‘Office buzz’ Vital information/systems Team working Interruptions Opportunities to share problems Training opportunities New work opportunities Promotion opportunities Office gossip Office politics Recreational opportunities

Table 12.2 Reconnection analysis grid (Re-)Connected to?

Y/S/N

Spouse/Partner Children Neighbours/local community Work community Pets/natural environment Time for concentrated work Time to relax/reflect (Continued)

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Table 12.2 (Continued) (Re-)Connected to?

Y/S/N

G/B/T

Remedy – if needed

Local shops and services Opportunities for recreation Self-development opportunities Outside interests

Disconnection isn’t necessarily bad. You may actually value being less connected to some things or people. So individuals can assess whether the situation is on balance a good (G) or a bad (B) thing for them, or tolerable (T). After that, you can look at what the key issues are for you, and whether a remedy is desirable or possible. Many remedies will revolve around improving techniques of virtual interaction. Other issues may be more to do with management or communications – ensuring that everyone, everywhere is always included in briefings and team activities, for example. It may be necessary to formalise previously ad hoc communications. Ensuring that regular face-to-face interaction takes place is vital – often the allremote companies make a point of having periodic added-value gatherings in person, as well as a raft of techniques for virtual teambuilding and socialising. For balance, a similar grid can be worked through to find out the connectivityvalue of homeworking. Who or what are you reconnected to? Reflecting on the positives, or finding where the fault lines are, helps to overcome feelings of isolation. People can add additional lines for other things they feel disconnected or reconnected to. Some things can be hard to face up to. Being with the family more – essentially by eliminating the commute and being there at lunchtime and when others come home – is in principle a benefit. But, if it causes stress by making working difficult or exacerbating emotional conflict, this needs to be recognised as a negative impact. Remedies could include ensuring that there is a clearly separate workplace at home, or reassessing the occasions for homeworking, or working at a local coworking centre as needed. Changing the location of work necessarily changes our ‘activity spaces’ and our range of daily interactions. Understanding what has been lost and what has been

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gained in our daily activities helps to put any feelings of isolation in context, or to understand how enduring problems of isolation can be overcome. What makes one person feel isolated is not necessarily the same for the next person. So analysis like this is important to be able to tailor appropriate solutions. The positive approach is to take the view that there is the opportunity to be more in control of not only the time and place of work, but also of what and who you choose to be connected to. Are people overworking, more stressed and burnt out when working from home? In Chapter 11 on productivity we explored the mixed findings about whether people are working longer hours when they work from home. There are also mixed findings about whether people are more stressed and suffer more from burnout when working from home. Symptoms of stress include disengagement, more readily becoming angry, feeling unable to cope, feeling tired or exhausted, having difficulty switching off from work and having trouble sleeping. Top factors that increase workplace stress include lack of autonomy, excessive workload, toxic workplace relationships and feeling unsupported. When stress reaches chronic levels, it can be described as burnout. The World Health Organization definition of burnout sets out an agreed set of characteristics.

The WHO definition of burnout Burnout is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterised by three dimensions: 1) feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; 2) increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and 3) a sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment. Burnout refers specifically to phenomena in the occupational context and should not be applied to describe experiences in other areas of life 6.

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We’re living in an age where the language of self-reported feelings is becoming somewhat inflated, compared to earlier eras. Problems are described as traumas, everyday stresses or tiredness described as burnout7. Burnout is real, but as per the WHO definition, it’s important to recognise its chronic nature if we are to assess the scale and impacts of it correctly. A lot of the information coming out about stress and burnout from homeworking comes from sources with a vested interest in hyping up problems with working from home in order to supply solutions, for example: • Office furniture suppliers, saying how homeworkers are desperate to go back to the office • Coworking advocates, saying how isolated homeworkers are – and how they need the benefits of working in coworking spaces • Providers of psychometric software, saying how homeworking is leading to more stress and burnout, and how HR needs to get on top of this (with their software) • Suppliers of a cannabinoid supplement saying how stressed home-based workers are, and that they have the (snake-oil?) solution for it. (I haven’t made this up, by the way!) In my work tracking research and commentary on flexibility, I’ve seen far too many examples of these. I won’t provide references for such claims as I intend all the references here to provide credible information. The point is, increased stress and burnout when working from home is much more asserted than evidenced. And it all too often comes without definitions of what stress and burnout actually mean. Comparing data from before and during the lockdown is instructive. In 2022, researchers from University College Dublin, Maynooth University and the London School of Economics analysed ‘before and after’ surveys of 621 workers, covering the periods November 2019–February 2020 and May–June 2020. In summary, they found: • The rate of full-time homeworking increased from 2 to 74% between waves • Significant changes in 9 of the 15 measures assessed, with a general pattern of improvements in wellbeing during lockdown

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• Overall levels of stress, self-rated mental health, positive emotions and life and job satisfaction were not adversely affected by the restrictions • A reduction in the burnout symptoms of disengagement and exhaustion and in the frequency with which negative emotions are experienced • Workers felt more autonomous, closer to their coworkers and more attached to their organisations • Homelife satisfaction, however, declined. The researchers concluded that the findings ‘highlight the possibility that the COVID-19 pandemic and large-scale transition to homeworking was associated with unchanged or improved worker wellbeing. This study has important implications for governments and employers regarding a global shift to homeworking’8. There are numerous studies conducted after the onset of lockdown that also show reductions in stress and improvements in engagement. However, there are also some that show higher workloads that risk increasing stress and burnout. These mixed results are, I suspect, partly as a result of a certain lack of specificity in defining what burnout is, and partly in the self-selecting nature of most survey respondents. The enforced nature of working from home, the increased potential for conflicting demands (e.g. with home schooling), the disconnection from family and friends, anxieties over health, etc., ought to lead to increased levels of stress compared to times when working from home was voluntary – as it is likely to be going forwards. If we go back to pre-pandemic times, there was strong evidence for positive impacts on both mental and physical health from working flexibly. For example, a review of before-and-after medical studies covering 16,000 people found that Flexible Working led to statistically significant improvements in health. It concluded that Flexible Working led to statistically significant improvements in either primary outcomes (including systolic blood pressure and heart rate; tiredness; mental health, sleep duration, sleep quality and alertness; self-rated health status) or secondary health outcomes (coworkers social support and sense of community). And no ill health effects were reported9. A ‘rapid review’ of pre-pandemic studies in May 2020, however, found mixed results across a range of outcomes10. An important observation is that the impacts depend crucially on what else has changed apart from the location of work. Studies are cited in literature reviews that do not compare like with like, e.g. the degree of choice that people have in moving to homeworking/teleworking, or the

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frequency of it, or how much the methods of working have been changed and how well they are supported. So just as for working in any location, homeworking can be done well at an individual and organisational level, or it can be done badly. As a consequence, there will be different impacts on the psychological experience of work. But we do know from survey after survey that people a) want the choice and b) mostly report being happier to work – at least sometimes – from home, if the nature of the tasks they do allows it. Key factors for achieving positive outcomes are: • Having autonomy and choice around not only place of work, but also the daily work schedule • Having good organisational support, not least from a line manager • Having the best, or at least a suitable, environment to work in • Having the right tools • Continuing coworker interaction, within an agreed framework of distributed teamwork • Having control over when to switch off, and to reenergise. All these factors apply to work in general, not only to working from home. Some organisations, however, either find it hard to extend best practice across the Extended Workplace, or adopt new forms of controlling behaviour, such as installing surveillance software, which erode the key advantage of increased autonomy. There is some evidence that women have been more adversely impacted in terms of stress when they worked from home during the pandemic. Most studies attribute this to continued expectations on women to take the lion’s share of responsibility for childcare, home schooling and housework, while at the same time delivering on all their work commitments. In part this reflects the special circumstances when schools were closed during the lockdowns. But it is for sure a well-embedded cultural issue that will continue to need to be addressed. I might also speculate that women may face difficulties being able to exercise the same degree of autonomy as men, due to typical imbalances in seniority. Historically, there have been more men than women who worked from home, and they have tended to be in more senior positions or are autonomous professionals. Something of this effect endures.

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So, top recommendations for reducing any danger of burnout are: • In implementation, and in supporting people working anywhere across the Extended Workplace, ensure that the elements of choice and control are front and centre stage • Build in time to step away from work and reenergise, as set out earlier • For better handling of workloads, establish protocols in Team Agreements (Chapter 10) that set out arrangements for contactability and feeding back on work-related issues as they arise. Work–family conflict or work–family harmony? This brings us to the question of the work/rest-of-life interface. The blurring of traditional boundaries does raise some new issues for people. The issue is how to manage the interface in the ways that work best for us. The perfect work–life balance is what works for an individual, not some objective standard handed down from on high. So if at times in one’s life it makes one happy – or pleasingly wealthy – to put in some extra work, why not go for it? Home-based working and other kinds of flexible work helps work–life balance, as long as there truly is a balance. Working late hours becomes more reasonable if you’ve taken time out in the day to do other things: attending school sports day, carrying out a caring responsibility, going hang-gliding, volunteering and so forth. And it’s also more acceptable when you know that you can still deliver the necessary output. There’s also the phenomenon of ‘binge working’ – working flat out for a while, to be balanced by longer periods of chilling out. And why not, if it works for the individual? The key principle is to take ownership of the time, place and results, and not become a slave to the machine. Finally, there is the off button. Switching off the computer and the communications gadgets can be psychologically challenging – traumatic even. But mechanically, it remains simple. Click. Many of these remedies may sound simple, but they are often overlooked. Managers need to be aware of these issues and help their staff to deal with them. The employer’s role and responsibilities for homeworking So how does an employer exercise their duty of care?

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Many organisations improvised rapidly during the pandemic, and sometimes relied on employees providing some of their own equipment. We are past those times now, and it is important for employers to provide or support the optimal working environment for employees, wherever they are working. But it’s not only about providing the equipment. It’s also about providing the right levels of training and individual support. During the pandemic many employers or individual mangers stepped up their support for employees working at home, both for their work and their psychological wellbeing. Examples I’ve seen range from regular pulse surveys to increased conversations between managers and team members to explore wellbeing issues, to having psychological counselling support available to making mental health services available to all. The initiatives taken need to become permanent features, and improved where necessary. They also should apply to all people, wherever they are working, rather than appearing to single out homeworking as being particularly problematic. On the provision of equipment, my view is that employers should finance more than they typically do. Generally, people will save money by not commuting into work, and these savings are not substantially eroded by increased costs of home energy use. It can also be problematic from the tax point of view to provide facilities or services (like broadband) that will also have personal uses. However, in order to create optimal work environments, employers need to go beyond issuing laptops and smartphones. They need to be prepared to provide or financially support the necessary equipment to create the optimal environment, appropriate to the kinds of work tasks people do. This may include one-off payments for ergonomic furniture, (multiple) screens of a decent size, the ergonomic kit for working longer periods on laptops and noise-cancelling headsets. And support for these needs to extend out from IT and FM (or a combined service) to wherever people are working. We should also mention another blurred boundary we have seen develop. We talk of the work–life interface for individuals, but we should also talk about the employer/home interface, which has been evolving. Most people don’t want this to be too intrusive – but it works both ways if we are looking for the levels of support and positive interaction with the employing organisation. Some blurring becomes inevitable, and we need to take steps to keep this positive. A comment frequently made to me as people became used to extensive homeworking with multiple video calls, was that it’s had a humanising effect on

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perceptions of managers. Informality increased, as we had views into each other’s homes. We’d see not only the home environments, but also children and pets. Meetings became tolerant of small interruptions, e.g. to take in a delivery or an animal seeking attention. Is this unprofessional? We could all sit there with fake backgrounds and banish family and pets to the far corners of the house. But in the process, we’d perhaps lose something of the closer connections that many have developed across hierarchies. Health and Safety in the home environment The other most commonly expressed fear about home and remote working is to do with Health and Safety. Smart Working increases the prospect of using all kinds of workspaces outside of the traditional workplace, and so in theory raises the prospect of encountering different kinds of risk. There are no H&S regulations in the UK (and many other countries) specifically pertaining to working from home. All the regulations that normally apply still do so wherever the employee is working, and the employer has the same duty of care and of managing risk. While there are important issues around ergonomics and working in the correct posture, taking screen breaks and so forth, I don’t think many people think that working from home or in an airport lounge or café constitutes a significant increase in risk of injury compared to working in an office. In fact, when you think about, the most dangerous thing that most people do every day, unless they work for the military, in a mine or on a construction site, is to travel to and from work. In fact, every time you don’t commute or travel for work, you are making yourself safer at a statistically significant level. There’s a scene in the horror movie Final Destination where a character (Valerie Lewton) accidently lets vodka drip from a cracked cup into her computer monitor. It explodes, showering her in shards of glass, while the sparks ignite a trail of alcohol into the kitchen, causing a gas explosion and a sequence of events ending up with her meeting a gruesome end being stabbed by falling kitchen knives. Working with computers from home doesn’t usually carry this level of danger11. Actually, what most people are concerned about is not so much the health and safety of the individual flexible worker, who by all accounts should be healthier and safer at home, but about complying with any existing legislation in new contexts.

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And this isn’t rocket science. People tend to raise strong concerns either because they’re unfamiliar with the situation, or sometimes because they don’t like the idea of Smart Working and want to put some obstacles in the way. Many organisations have come up with perfectly acceptable H&S solutions based around organisational guidance, training and doing self-assessment risk assessments. And apart from checking out our advice earlier and in the next chapter on ergonomics, the thing to do is check out what other organisations are doing and take professional advice through your usual routes. I think, however, there is a wider problem of people having poor ergonomic practices when working with portable technologies and screens generally. It’s something people of all ages do for many purposes other than work. Work, however, provides the only context in which a third party – an employer – has a statutory duty of care. So the way I see it is that it’s possible to turn a concern into a positive outcome, if the training and good practice adopted in a work context ripples out beyond working time and to other family members and friends. People working from home, therefore, have the potential to become beacons of good practice, and should take that role and responsibility seriously. The legislation that organisations should comply with varies from country to country. In the UK and many other countries, there are no regulations specifically for homeworking. They are regulations that apply everywhere. There is guidance from the Health and Safety Executive, the government agency that regulates health and safety at work12. This guidance is quite brief, however, and I seem to remember it being longer 20 years ago. In the UK the legislation that is highlighted as being relevant relates to: • • • • • •

Working with Display Screen Equipment (DSE) Working hours and taking breaks Support for physical and mental health Making reasonable adjustments for workers with disabilities Safety of electrical equipment provided by the employer The need to carry out a risk assessment and appropriate training for the working environment.

And, of course, every other piece of work regulation applies, wherever people are working. Their employment rights also remain the same.

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We should also note that for all the kinds of hands-on work that takes place at home, all the regulations apply as they would elsewhere, e.g. relating to the use of machinery, food preparation and storage, handling and storage of chemicals, etc. Future trends for home environments Already during the pandemic we saw something of the demand for larger homes, enabled by the possibilities of homeworking. The motivations of people moving out of city centres to areas of lower house prices are mixed. Re-evaluation of their work and how it interfaces with the rest of life, seeking a better quality of life, living in more natural or scenic environments – all these may be stronger motivations than wanting to work from home. That’s an enabler that makes the broader aims possible. According to the Lichfields/Barratt report cited in note 2, Two thirds of those seeking homes will now demand an extra room – typically a bedroom – in their accommodation to act as a dedicated workspace. Many of those who might previously have had their needs met through a two- or three-bedroom home now seek a three- or four-bedroom property (with at least one room being used as a study). But as we have seen, for making the most of the Smart Working benefits it’s also about the quality of the spaces. In an article for Work & Place in 2021, I set out reasons ‘Why the workplace industry should think outside its ever-shrinking boxes’. The basic gist is that workplace developers, designers and facility managers need to transfer their expertise into the residential market, and innovate to take account of the growing demand for homebased work13. In turn, there will be further developments in the designs of residential properties that will reflect back into collective workplaces, plus technological innovations that will drive both sides of the equation. Part of this relates to ubiquitous connection, the Internet of Things, home and office automation, ambient computing, voice and gesture interfaces, and developments of metaverse-related applications, services and jobs (as discussed in Chapter 8). The critical question is, how do physical environments in the Personal domain support work-related digital experiences in the best and most practical ways?

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Spatial demands arising over the next 10 years range from needing wall space for ever larger and more immersive screens to spaces optimised for room-scale VR experiences that allow you to move through virtual environments, without colliding with objects in the physical world, or mixed reality experiences. There is likely to be a move towards infrastructure to enable the placing of sensors around the home, including home workplaces, that provide the data for home systems to learn your preferences, providing automated control of the environment tailored to you. We also need to consider the mixed digital/physical requirements of homebased workers who need maker space. We noted in Chapter 7 the gradual rise of maker space in the coworking realm. We can also see a rise in the number of people who are using technologies like 3D printing or other kinds of computercontrolled fabrication in the environs of their own home. This might be on the one hand for hobbies and crafting, but on the other for designing and making products to sell, or components or prototypes for clients. Apart from having bigger homes, I anticipate increased demand for outside workspace adjoined to the home, or customised/specialised garden buildings. That requires a plot of sufficient size to do that. It’s one of the under-recognised facts of home-based working before 2020 that in the UK there was higher incidence in rural areas compared to urban, despite the challenges of often poor telecommunications infrastructure. Often this is in, as we have noted, more traditional crafts and industries with strong hands-on elements. Sometimes it is combined with part-time or seasonal employed work, e.g. in agriculture or tourism-related work. Portfolio working has been alive and well in the countryside for generations! What has happened over the past 20 years or so is that these home-based enterprises have become more digitised and digitally connected with their markets. ‘Workhomes’ and live/work premises Part of the future we can anticipate is a growth in the number of homes that are specifically designed for both working and living. At present, these are often hedged around with restrictive planning regulations based on Industrial Age assumptions about the necessity of separating work and home, seeing this commercial/residential integration as of necessity exceptional. Planning restrictions sometimes specify the exact ratio of business space to residential, for example, or a minimum amount of business space.

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‘Live/work’ was a term that gained traction from the 1970s in the USA, and the 1990s and early 2000s in the UK. It has been particularly associated with the redevelopment or regeneration of former industrial land, for example creating ‘loft living’ apartments in former warehouses. In the UK, when approval has been given for live/work, it has tended to be on former industrial land, rather than land earmarked for residential use. Part of the restrictive planning approach is the result of planners’ nervousness about developers using live/work as a ‘back door’ to building larger executive homes on land zoned for employment uses14. This unhelpful tendency is in some ways parallel to the way organisations in the past have treated flexibility as an eccentric departure from normality. So planners have tended to treat combined working and living as an exceptional (and perhaps unfortunate) departure from the default norm of rigidly separating work premises from dwellings. While there’s been a trend towards mixed use developments in town planning, what that almost always means is a mix of nearby uses, rather than integrating residential with commercial uses in the same premises. If we look to the past, though, and more broadly around the world, we find that dwellings that also include workspace are far more common than planners would allow. In her book Beyond Live/Work: The Architecture of Home-Based Work, architect and academic Frances Holliss surveys the different architectural forms of what she prefers to call ‘workhomes’, and the rich variety of occupations carried out in them. Far from being exceptional, carrying out work within dwellings has a long history and is a global phenomenon. However, as Frances Holliss writes, Layers of ideology and policy, compacted over a century, have pushed this working practice into the shadows. As a result, this workforce generally operates invisibly and often covertly in the Global North, while the slums of the Global South are being swept away and replaced with medium-rise housing in the mistaken belief that the home-based work they teem with is a problematic symptom of a backward society. This makes change difficult; home-based work is notably absent from contemporary discourses about how a more sustainable world might work15. To a certain extent, the genie has begun creeping out of the bottle since the pandemic. But the discourse now seems to revolve almost exclusively around office-type white collar work. What is needed is a more wide-ranging debate about weaving work into the fabric of community life.

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The concept of ‘workhomes’ is a useful one. Planning should support and encourage all new developments to have a mix of dwellings with a significant proportion of them designed to be able to accommodate not only employed white collar work, but also small enterprises across sectors. Premises suitable for shared workspace should also be part of the mix. One of the issues is how prescriptive this should be. Should the workspace always be required to be used for work, as some local policies have tried to enforce? My view is that we should build enough to accommodate demand, and let their uses flex over time, reflecting the longer and more varied lives we will be living. The rigid separation of home and work stems from a time when many forms of work were noisy, smelly, toxic, dangerous or otherwise unneighbourly. That’s much less the case now. I’ve long advocated having a simple ‘nuisance test’ for home-based or local working, rather than broad-brush use classes or other bureaucratic hurdles to overcome. Change will come over time, with an accumulation of market pressure. However, I fear change will come too slowly to maximise the potential benefits. And in the meantime, planners and developers will probably carry on aiming for high densities of smaller and smaller dwellings that are unsuitable for the emerging world of work16. We have to do better than this. Future growth and development Having premises specifically designed to facilitate working at or from home will be part of the picture, but not for the majority in the immediate future. However, home-based working will continue to grow in the years ahead. In line with our view of the future being ‘plural and multispeed’, we will see different levels of uptake and occasional reversals, but the trend is clear. It will be enhanced by the steady transition of aspects of hands-on work into knowledge work. Despite levels of push-back, we’re probably going to see the majority of people who can work from home spending the majority of their working time doing so. At the moment, we have a more than doubling of the incidence of home-based working compared to 2019. More people are doing it, and people are doing it on average for more days per week than was the norm previously. This is going to create a demand for improvements, including more of the right kind of support from employers, and more autonomy about both where and when they work. The increased demand is also stimulating the market in products and services for home-based working. This can be seen in the uptick of sales in office-style

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furniture customised for the domestic market, and in new offerings for garden studios and home extensions. Faster broadband speeds and 5G connectivity are further enabling successful work away from the traditional workplace. In Chapter 8 on technology, we explored the future technologies that will make for more immersive virtual interaction. The tools for these will also become common in home environments. There’s also an interface here with the technology for home automation, and our acculturation to being more connected to everything, wherever we are. We shouldn’t see this in binary terms of ‘home versus office’. The collective workplace will evolve towards supporting a more mobile and autonomous workforce. Local coworking spaces will play a developing role in supporting people who regularly work from home, or who would but for some constraints they face in their domestic environment, or who seek the sense of community that such spaces offer. The Smart Working approach is to recognise the need for fluidity between all the spaces in the Extended Workplace, and having optimal working practices and environments, wherever we are working. However, for increasing numbers of people, the home will be the anchor point for their working life. Organisations need to embrace this, and ensure it works well for both the organisation and its people. Notes 1 Leesman Index (2022), The Home Working Impact Code. Data based on 320,337 respondents as at 30 September 2022. http://leesmanindex.com 2 Lichfields for Barratt Developments (2021), Working from Home: Planning for the New Normal? https://lichfields.uk/content/insights/working-from-home/ 3 There are many useful guides available online to use or on which organisations can build their own guidance on ergonomics, e.g. Chartered Institute for Ergonomics and Human Factors (2020), Working From Home: A Four-Stage Guide to Helping You Make the Best of Working from Home. Available at https:// ergonomics.org.uk/resource/working-from-home-infographic.html 4 Brian Elliott, Sheela Subramanian and Helen Kupp (2022), How the Future Works: Leading Flexible Teams to do the Best Work of Their Lives. Wiley, p. 190. 5 Further details about the EASI approach is available at www.easi.works/. This builds on the approach outlined in Guy Clapperton and Philip Vanhoutte (2014), The Smarter Working Manifesto – Where, When and How Do You Work Best? Sunmakers.

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6 World Health Organization (2019), Burnout, in International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD) 11th revision. https://icd.who.int/browse11/l-m/en#/http://id.who.int/icd/entity/129180281 7 An article in The Times by psychotherapist Julia Samuel highlighted the tension between increased knowledge of mental health issues and inappropriate/ inaccurate use of the terminology: Julia Samuel (16 January 2023), We shouldn’t be venting all our feelings to all people, The Times, www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ princess-diana-friend-julia-samuel-prince-harry-honesty-tpvp3pr52 8 Diane Pelly et al. (5 April 2022), Worker stress, burnout, and wellbeing before and during the COVID-19 restrictions in the United Kingdom. Frontiers in Psychology, www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.823080/full 9 K. Joyce et al. (2010), Flexible Working Conditions and Their Effects on Employee Health and Wellbeing. Cochrane Library, Issue 2. John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 10 Jodi Oakman et al. (2022), A rapid review of mental and physical health effects of working at home: how do we optimise health? BMC Public Health volume 20, Article number: 1825. https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/ 10.1186/s12889-020-09875-z#ref-CR29 11 A clip of this scene is available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=TphUQcj3szQ 12 The guidance in a series of web pages is available at www.hse.gov.uk/homeworking/index.htm 13 Andy Lake (2021), The emerging social infrastructure of work and why the workplace industry needs to think outside its ever-shrinking boxes, Work & Place, https:// workandplace.com/articles/why-the-workplace-industry-needs-to-thinkoutside-its-ever-shrinking-boxes/ 14 Tim Dwelly, Andy Lake and Lisa Thompson (2008), Tomorrow’s Property Today – Sustainable Live/Work Development in a Low Carbon Economy. Report for a consortium of regional development agencies and BT, with the Royal Town Planning Institute. As well as providing a range of case studies, this report highlighted many of the planning issues, that are still in need of being addressed. Available at https://flexibility.co.uk/resources/ 15 Frances Holliss (2015), Beyond Live/Work: The Architecture of Home-based Work. Routledge, p. 200. 16 For a discussion of the planning and other public policy issues involved, see Andy Lake (7 February 2021), Rethinking Public Policy to Embrace 21st Century Working, Flexibility.co.uk, https://flexibility.co.uk/rethinking-public-policyto-embrace-21st-century-working/

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Chapter Thirteen Smart Working, wellbeing and inclusion

What do we mean by wellbeing? ‘Wellbeing’ as a broad concept covers living conditions, economic status, health (both physical and mental) and feelings of satisfaction or happiness with life. So, assessments of wellbeing are typically made within a specific context, e.g. public health, the economy or (in our case) work. Specifically in relation to work, wellbeing covers issues such as financial and job security, health, protection from harm, work satisfaction, the work–life interface, social wellbeing (how we interact and connect with others at work and beyond), creating a sense of belonging, opportunities for growth and finding purpose, meaning or fulfilment through the work. Areas like financial and job security lie largely (but not entirely) outside of the scope of Smart Working. So in what follows, we’ll focus on those areas where working smarter and more flexibly brings distinctive wellbeing benefits to the table. In what ways can work contribute to our sense of wellbeing? Before we begin looking at specific measures to promote or support wellbeing, we should pause and consider whether, under normal and generally benign circumstances, work in itself is a contributor to human wellbeing. In a lot of the literature and commentary around wellbeing, work is presented as eroding our wellbeing in various ways, and the solution is to institute additional programmes or practices within organisations.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003288930-13

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However, working can also benefit our wellbeing by: • Providing a sound financial basis and security for our lives and those who depend on us • Rewarding us also in non-financial ways, e.g. by recognising our contribution to the collective enterprise, or for the quality of what we deliver, or working in pleasing environments, and thereby giving us psychological satisfaction, even happiness • Providing a purpose, a sense that what we do is valuable, meaningful and/or fulfilling – to ourselves, or others, or both • Providing a context in which we can be creative • Providing a sense of identity, individually and/or collectively • Enabling us to create positive and lasting relationships • Enabling us to learn new skills • Enabling us to build resilience and resourcefulness • Enabling us to develop as individuals. Not all work will do all of these, of course. But in an ideal world, work will provide enough to make a positive contribution overall to our wellbeing. Even where work may be characterised as soulless drudgery, if it pays the wages and we make some friends, that can sometimes be enough. At one time, we might not have expected more. There is a narrative about work that says it is broken, something that workplace experts Neil Usher, Kirsten Buck and Perry Timms explore in their delicately titled book, Unf*cking Work: How to Fix It for Good, which begins ‘Work is f*cked. Universally. The overriding illusion is that it’s not’1. Anthropologist and activist David Graeber’s much-cited book, Bullshit Jobs: The Rise of Pointless Jobs, and What We Can Do About It, revolves around the proposition that over half of modern jobs deliver no value and are even harmful to society. The self-worth they are said to confer is delusional2. There’s a lot to make us think in both these books, and in narratives where the nature of work is strongly critiqued. But just how broken is work, actually? At the risk of being Pollyannaish, I would err on the side of saying that work – even the un-Smart varieties – has on balance improved over the past hundred years. Longer holidays, improved in-work benefits, shorter working hours, better health and safety, improved job security and hundreds of millions of people lifted out of

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poverty characterise the general picture, even though these are not universal. And, of course, some developments may tend in the other direction in times of rapid change or periodic crises. Seeing an underlying positive narrative doesn’t mean things couldn’t be better. They surely can, and we should endeavour to make it so. But shouldn’t we acknowledge that we generally have a positive baseline to begin with when it comes to work and wellbeing? What has been happening over the last two or three decades or so is that our expectations about the role of work in promoting wellbeing have changed. In previous eras, work was expected to provide an income and, with luck, a source of satisfaction. But it was not expected to play a very active role in securing one’s overall health and happiness. That was up to each of us, as individuals, to secure outside of the realm of work. And if work, which was mainly arduous and physical, didn’t harm us, that was a bonus we should be grateful for. For most people now, there are fewer kinds of work that threaten life and limb or have cumulative life-shortening impacts. Yet with fewer existential dangers, people seem to be more rather than less anxious and discontented about work. This trend may not be uniquely about work, however, but reflect a wider trend of social anxiety, as many of the old certainties that used to govern us slip away. That we are exhorted from all sides to aspire to a better version of ourselves and to always achieve and possess more (and look wonderful while we’re doing it) add to a relentless pressure to achieve. Areas of stressful spillover between work and the rest of life To dig further into this, we need to explore what it is about work that spills over out of the workplace to impact our wider life. And what is it about the rest of life that can impact on our experience of work? Table 13.1 sets out some of the factors that impact our health and wellbeing and can spill over the boundary to affect our lives one way or the other. The way ‘happy and/or successful’ gets only a single line at the top reflects the famous opening line of Anna Karenina, that ‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’3. If we want to look at the detail of what makes for a happy work life, it will generally draw from the converse of the factors listed in the left-hand column, e.g. good relationships, a feeling of belonging, progression, a sense of meaning and no doubt good pay and financial

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Table 13.1 Factors affecting wellbeing in work and life Work

Factors from outside work Potential positive spillover

Feeling happy and/or successful at work

Feeling happy and/or successful in outside life

Potential sources of negative/stressful spillover Workplace injury/unhealthy practices Job insecurity/lack of work Insufficient pay Poor/toxic relationships Workload/work pressure Lack of control over work Lack of progression Progression beyond capabilities (Perceived) unfairness Bullying, harassment and discrimination Feeling of not belonging Inadequate tools to do the work well Poor physical work environment Travel to and for work Doubting values or direction of employer Lack of meaningful work Feeling trapped Major organisational change (e.g. new systems, restructuring, merger, etc.)

Health-related problems, injuries and changes Health problems of those close to us Money problems Relationship problems Conflict with others, e.g. neighbours or officials Buying/selling/moving home Getting married Marriage breakdown Pregnancy Children being born Children growing up + their education Children leaving home Caring for dependent adults Approaching retirement Bereavement and grieving Voluntary activities Identity/‘who am I?’ struggles Lack of time to do what we want or need to do Feeling trapped Anxiety over existential threats or world issues

security. Feeling positive about work spills over into the mood one brings to home/family life. Similarly, feeling positive about the rest of life enlivens work. Or at least it has the potential to make work tolerable, before finding something better. On the negative side for work, there are a whole set of issues that are seen as causing stress or unhappiness. These can spill over into non-work life and impact both mental health and potentially physical health. The factors opposite them in the ‘outside work’ column are not all necessarily negative in themselves. Far from it. Major life events can be the occasion of great celebration and continuing happiness and fulfilment. But at the same time, they are a) very demanding of our time, b) can also be very stressful to deal with and c) can be very demanding/intense in terms of maintaining good relationships. When we reflect on these, we can see that the boundary between work and the rest of life is actually very permeable. Traditionally, there may be a rigid divide in

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terms of the time and place of work. But in terms of wellbeing, the crossovers have always been numerous. Toxic work relationships follow us home. They occupy our thoughts, and can impact how we relate to people generally. Work pressures can lead to us being psychologically ‘always on’, whether we’re logged on at home or not. Similarly, few of us can tune out of our concerns for a sick child, desperation about money problems, divorce or intense grief the moment we swipe in at the workplace. What we need to do is identify where the boundary is permeable in a negative sense for us. Part of the wellbeing dividend of both traditional Flexible Working and the more dynamic flexibility of Smart Working revolves around managing this boundary better, and trying to create a more positive interface. We’ll explore this in various ways as we move through the chapter. And we’ll also address what is the employer’s responsibility and what lies beyond that. The value of traditional forms of Flexible Working for wellbeing Since the 1980s, the research literature has noted a positive link between psychological health and personal control over work. It makes sense that this is the case. We are more likely to feel stressed when things feel beyond our control. In the 1980s, however, there was relatively little flexibility on offer. Control of work and working life had to be exercised within more limited parameters. Access to flexible work increased significantly from the mid-1990s onwards. For employees, flexibility mostly involved applying for a fixed pattern of Flexible Working, one that suited their preferences. It was mainly employee-led flexibility, with a strong focus on wellbeing rather than targeting business benefits. Much of the research on the impacts of flexibility reflects this employee-led approach, as referenced in earlier chapters. We’ll see the significance of that as we move forward. In teleworking studies I reviewed for the UK Department for Transport in the early and mid-2000s, the employee-reported benefits for wellbeing were frequently highlighted, alongside the travel impacts. These studies were mostly of people who had opted to telework, who frequently had long or arduous commute journeys to contend with. Benefits to work–life balance were most frequently cited, which was, after all, one of the main reasons people chose to do this4. Part-time work is one form of ‘Flexible Work’ that is widely adopted as a way of navigating the conflicting demands of work and home. It’s an effective way of managing the boundaries, at least some of the time, and typically has the advantage

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of predictability – both employer and employee know the set working times. Term-time working works in a similar way, removing the demands of work at times of peak demand on the home front. In July 2020, part-time working was an option under the UK Covid furlough scheme, to support people who could do some, but not all, of their work during the crisis. People would work the hours they could and the government would pay 80% of the residual hours up to their normal level. The numbers taking part in this ‘flexible furlough’ scheme peaked at 1.5 million. Subsequent research looked at the impact of this for the future of part-time working. As with homeworking, the experience of part-time working has opened up some people’s minds to its viability. Surveying employers participating in the scheme, it found that: • More than forty percent (42.1%) of survey respondents reported that use of the flexible furlough scheme made line managers more open to part-time working in the future • Almost forty percent (39.7%) reported that using the flexible furlough scheme helped them to design and manage part-time working more effectively5. In the UK, the number of part-time workers has been steady for some time at just over a quarter of the employed workforce. It is more than three times more common for women than for men: 35% of women work part-time, compared to 11% of men – this is strongly associated with family caring responsibilities. Similarly, 8% of women do term-time working, compared to 2% of men6. While beneficial in managing the work–life interface, there is evidence that women working part-time suffer in terms of career progression, pay and access to higher-quality work. The need for more access to high-quality part-time work is emphasised in this report. And a decade ago, the government launched an investigation into how to create ‘quality part-time work’7. The quest has not been entirely successful, one could say. There are signs, however, that organisations, hiring managers and recruiters are becoming more open-minded. Since the mid-2000s there have been pioneer recruitment companies like WM People, Timewise and CJ Talent8 that have specialised in flexible recruitment, and have been able to offer senior roles on a part-time basis. In part, that has evolved from their advocacy work with employing

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organisations and their research that highlights the benefits. WM People’s Best Practice reports and awards, the Timewise Power Part-time List and the charity Working Families’ research9 and best practice awards have helped to raise the bar, particularly for highly skilled women who wish to return to the workforce on a flexible basis. What these organisations have pioneered, many others have followed with the new focus on flexibility since 2020. In the numerous employee surveys I’ve conducted within organisations in preparation for or evaluating Smart Working, I’ve found, as you would expect, the highest levels of part-time work amongst people with caring responsibilities and particularly mothers. However, the highest level of unmet demand for reduced hours working is amongst the over-50s. This is very relevant to the post-pandemic situation. Following the so-called ‘great resignation’ or ‘great reset’, large numbers of older people have left the workforce, and have not (yet) returned. This is down to a range of factors, including continued ill-health after Covid, early retirement, rethinking life priorities and looking for roles with better pay or more flexibility. According to the Office for National Statistics, 69% of older people looking for work want to work part-time, with only 9% wanting to work full-time10. At the same time there has been an increase in the number of workers over 65, with over 90% of the increase being in part-time roles; 62% of this age group overall work part-time. The demand is there from people who want to achieve a better match between their working life and the rest of their life. Access to work, in such cases, is a key component of personal wellbeing. Smart Working can add new dimensions to traditional forms of Flexible Working. The same investigations into the times and locations of tasks, as set out in Chapter 5, need to take place, whatever the working pattern. Parttimers need to work with the same technologies, systems, processes and protocols as their full-time colleagues. Team agreements may be even more important for teams with part-time employees, so that everyone is aware of everyone else’s availability. Where work can be location-agnostic, part-timers should have the same freedoms and autonomy as anyone else to decide where and how work is done, as long as the output is delivered and relationships are maintained. In terms of timing, when they work within the parameters of their part-time contract should be up to them, subject to the nature of the tasks involved. Nonlinear workdays – why not?

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This higher level of flexibility is likely to be particularly relevant to creating high-quality part-time opportunities. More senior roles always include some expectations of discretionary input, or flexibility to deal with peaks in required management input, troubleshooting and major programme development. So being able to flex those hours in times of higher and lower demand is an important way of managing work pressure. It also facilitates undertaking work that is more fulfilling, while still having space to switch off from work. Should we talk about work–life balance, integration or harmony? While ‘work–life balance’ is the most commonly used term to describe the work/ rest-of-life interface, is it the best one? It seems unbalanced to separate work out from all the activities we do as if it’s especially problematic for life, or potentially so. Work, after all, is part of life. So is it balance we should strive for, some kind of juggling act of the separate spheres, with plates spinning and precipitous falls on either side? Or should we be looking for work–life integration, where we weave work tasks into our lives in a better way? In our case study of Cimpress that follows, Paul McKinlay makes a strong case for thinking in terms of ‘work–life harmony’. We should aim for the most harmonious blend achievable. The way work is constructed should support our other aims in life. A great employer will do whatever they can to facilitate that and support the choices people make. Paul says the concept of ‘work–life balance’ is intrinsically connected to an office-first experience, where commuting takes up most of the day, and work and life are separate and stand in opposition to each other. ‘Work–life harmony is about how work can fit around life, and it’s different for everyone’. We could also add that it also changes over time for most people, just as most people’s aspirations and life circumstances do. So how we manage the interface is also likely to change over time. Within the work–life research literature, the concept is put forward of ‘idiosyncratic deals’, or ‘i-deals’. In the context of Flexible Working, these are tailored individual agreements between employees and their managers about what pattern of working works for them. That may be a step in the right direction, but with a Smart Working approach these should be unnecessary for most people, and could even act as a constraint on genuine autonomy.

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Case study: Cimpress A journey from Remote-Averse, through Remote-Forced to Remote First One organisation that has adopted a very proactive approach to the opportunities from remote working is Cimpress. Cimpress is the parent company of a dozen international companies, the best known of which is probably Vista (formerly known as Vistaprint). Before the pandemic struck, Cimpress and Vistaprint were, according to Head of Remote Paul McKinlay, very traditional and premises-focused in how work was organised. Homeworking had been a rare exception, as was the case with many companies. However, a speedy reaction was needed to the lockdowns in March 2020, with a wholesale shift of office-based staff to working from home. Unlike many organisations, however, Cimpress made an early decision to make the new arrangements permanent, and become a ‘Remote First’ organisation. As Paul puts it, ‘We went from remote-averse, to remote-forced, to Remote First. When we announced that, it was a gift to our team members of certainty at a time when there was zero certainty in the world.’ So at the outset, this helped people to organise and plan their work and childcare, and where they wanted to live. The learning from this has led to a complete rethink of both working practices and how work interfaces with the rest of life for employees. Remote First is not the same as being a completely virtual organisation. Cimpress and its component companies manufacture products, and in-person interaction remains important. What Remote First does mean is rethinking every policy, process and procedure and way of working to work first for people working at home, and then ensure that it also works for people working in an office or based in a plant. So it involves a complete reversal of thinking about how work is organised throughout the business. ‘Remote First flips the paradigm,’ says Paul McKinlay, ‘but things still have to work for people who come into the office.’

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For Remote First team members, there is no requirement to spend a specified amount of time on site. It’s down to the nature of the work and requirements of the task. For hands-on workers who have to be on site, the aim is to achieve an equivalence in flexibility and company support for wellbeing. This includes wellness days with times that work within shift patterns to ensure everyone is included. Employees are encouraged to come up with ideas for improvement of working practices and wellbeing initiatives. It is similar for the customer care teams. They have proved that they can work remotely, but owing to the nature of the work and the need for team support, there is a different degree of remote working possible. That has led to a mix of onsite, hybrid and remote work. Cimpress promotes ‘work–life harmony’, which it prefers as a term to ‘work–life balance’. It is felt ‘balance’ might imply there is some kind of tension and trade-off, whereas work–life harmony means incorporating work within your personal life in a way that promotes happiness and a better team member experience. A range of wellbeing resources are provided via their benefits website called, appropriately, ‘Harmony’. These include partnership with an ergonomics expert to provide personalised workspace assessments, Peloton subscription and discount, membership of a mental health support service and a Remote-First learning and development platform with access to thousands of courses for professional development and work-from-home wellness. All this is having an impact, and Cimpress has kept monitoring this through employee feedback in a combination of twice-yearly surveys and more regular pulse surveys. 62% of employees believe that their mental health is as good as, if not better than, if they were working in an office environment; 72% say they feel empowered to prioritize their wellbeing over their work when they feel they need to, and 74% that it has improved their work–life harmony; 63% feel they have been able to maintain relationships with their team members in a remote environment (with 18% disagreeing). Remote First is also having a major effect on recruitment and has led to a complete reinventing of the onboarding process. It has significantly expanded the geographical reach of recruitment now that there is no requirement to

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attend an office. 75% of new joiners cite remote working as being a key attractor factor in applying for a post. And in the latest employee survey, 82% of employees said they are more likely to want to stay with Cimpress/Vista as a result of Remote-First working. The aim has been to create a world-class onboarding experience over the first 100 days of any new recruit. Over this time there are activities every week including talking to the CEO, buddying everyone up, holding remote socials, delivering some content, introducing the learning and development programme as well as team-specific interaction. For existing employees who move from non-remote to remote working, there is self-service onboarding focusing on how to be successful when working remotely. It’s also a spur to greater productivity. There’s been a focus on reducing the number of meetings and making those that happen more effective, and an increase in the amount of asynchronous communication. This clears time for important focus work. Cimpress has also acted rapidly on the real estate impacts. The amount of office space has reduced, and offices have been refurbished as collaboration centres. These have some areas of shared desking, but when people come in it is primarily for project work, teambuilding, socialising and other forms of in-person collaboration. The usage of office space continues to be monitored. The company also provides passes for coworking space as an alternative option for employees. While the amount of real estate has reduced, most of the savings have been reinvested in allowances and benefits, and in the redesign of the collaboration centres. This reinvestment in people has been crucial to the success of Remote First. Cimpress say they are learning all the time, and don’t claim to have all the answers. Areas identified for improvement from employee feedback include meeting new people in the company, feeling a sense of belonging and physical fitness. These are areas where more substantial minorities feel things could be better, and the feedback is informing the range of benefits on offer and the search for new initiatives going forward. However, the changes get a clear seal of approval from Remote-First employees, with 91% agreeing to the statement, ‘Our decision to transition to Remote-First working was the right decision’.

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Commuting and wellbeing One of the key benefits of having choice over time and place of work is the ability to eliminate or reduce the amount of time spent travelling to and from work. There are occasional attempts to set out the value of commuting in terms of creating a transition or ‘liminal’ space between work and home, such as a conceptual study that gained a lot of press after being reported in Scientific American in February 202311. The authors of the study argue that ‘perceived liminality during the commute frees cognitive resources for psychological role transition and recovery’. Longer commutes work even better, allowing more time to listen to podcasts, music, etc.12 It’s a brave attempt, but one would have thought that such activities are also quite possible without the commute journey, and may indeed be more comfortable, less stressful and less costly. Other than anecdotes from journalists seeking to upend the zeitgeist, one doesn’t find a lot of support for this viewpoint. Almost every study I’ve seen of remote working/teleworking finds the opposite. Some do, though, recommend good habits to transition into and out of work mode if that’s something you need to do. A study by the UK Office for National Statistics that focuses on commuting and wellbeing that is more in line with the broad range of studies on working from home, or working locally, found that: • Holding all else equal, commuters have lower life satisfaction, a lower sense that their daily activities are worthwhile, lower levels of happiness and higher anxiety on average than non-commuters • The worst effects of commuting on personal well-being were associated with journey times lasting between 61 and 90 minutes. On average, all four aspects of personal well-being were negatively affected by commutes of this duration when compared to those travelling only 15 minutes or less to work • When commuting time reaches three hours or more, the negative effects on personal well-being disappear, suggesting that the small minority of people with this commuting pattern have quite different experiences to most other commuters • Combining both travel method and the length of time spent commuting showed that taking the bus or coach to work on a journey lasting more than 30 minutes was the most negative commuting option in personal well-being terms

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• The effects of more active forms of commuting such as cycling and walking on personal well-being varied with the amount of time spent travelling in these ways13. Apart from avoiding the self-evident disadvantages of twice-daily journeys to work, the two main advantages in not commuting are: • Liberating time to do other important things in life • Being able to choose how to manage the transition between work and nonwork, whereas commute journeys give you little room for choice. The importance for wellbeing of taking time to reenergise Having greater control over the time and place of work activities creates more opportunities to take breaks, shift focus, and reenergise. Everyone will find their optimal ways to do this, though it may take some time and experimentation to work out what exactly works for any individual. There may be times when we can focus intensively for long periods, whether through voluntary motivation or external pressure, or just plain panic as deadlines loom. But for most humans, most of the time, performance peaks and then deteriorates. Typically 45 minutes will see most people’s work performance deteriorating. Attention drifts. Boredom sets in. Mistakes are made. Brains get tired, basically. If we try to soldier on, our mood also deteriorates. We may feel negative about the work and about ourselves. So for the sake of both work performance and our wellbeing, it’s helpful to break up our work in positive ways. This might include: • • • • •

Taking a simple refreshment break, a bit of time to relax and refuel Doing stretching exercises Shifting to a different kind of work task Having a walking meeting (see Chapter 7) Walking, relaxing or taking a call in a natural environment, breathing in the fresh air • Meditating or doing mindfulness exercises

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• Sleeping • Going for a recreational walk or a bike ride – or other more intense physical activity • Reading something offline • For longer breaks, doing a hobby or leisure activity • Taking a break in the company of other people – whether in the same place or virtually. All of these things should ideally be done in a different setting to the one where you’ve been running out of steam. We need to note also the local environmental factors that can drag down our wellbeing: being too hot or too cold, poor lighting and poor air quality in particular. Reenergising the environment can be as important as reenergising oneself. Many of the traditional workplaces we work in are physically very constraining. They are designed with a shared set of assumptions about the nature of the work. In traditional offices, you sit in one place, and work on most of your tasks there. Breaks may be defined by rules and can be tightly time-limited, to punctuate the day and satisfy statutory requirements. In a Smart Working environment (at the collective workplace), there are options to work in different activity-based settings. Having the option to work elsewhere in a workplace, however, is not sufficient. I’ve seen too many examples where all the different settings are too samey, sharing the approved corporate look-and-feel. The different settings should be designed to create a sense of moving into different kinds of spaces, in terms of design and mood. This enhances the desire of people to vary their place of work and be mobile. And these changes of location should not be artificially constrained by set rules about the timing of breaks. So if people wish to take a break and then to continue working in a social/refreshment area, there shouldn’t be pressure to return to a designated work position, unless the work task is necessarily associated with using specialised equipment or resources. The choice and control people have over their mobility is psychologically at least as important as the mobility itself. And, after all, Smart Working is about focusing on the results much more than time or presence in a particular place.

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Beyond basics: best practice ergonomics for Smart Working This emphasis on keeping moving needs to be incorporated in approaches to ergonomics for the modern world of work. Organisations tend to focus on compliance with regulations, especially for Display Screen Equipment (DSE) regulations. This can turn into a bit of a tick-box exercise, ensuring that we have the screen at the right height, can adjust a chair, have the mouse and keyboard within reach and are adopting a neutral position with our feet planted on the floor with our legs at 90 degrees or using a footrest. This represents a minimum for what organisations should be doing. Compliance is necessary, but far from sufficient to ensure healthy working practices. Ergonomics as a discipline encompasses not only physical ergonomics, but also cognitive and organisational ergonomics. So it shouldn’t be seen only as an issue related to furniture and posture or a reaction to health and safety issues, but a way of looking at how people interface with the work as a whole. That involves looking at behaviours, mental load, human–computer interactions, work design, teamwork and different considerations for the various environments that people work in. So the impacts of moving to Smart Working, with its emphasis on streamlining processes, working with new technologies and creating new choices for the time and place of work, all have potential ergonomic impacts – and an opportunity to improve substantially the human experience of work across a broad front. There is a need to avoid a simple relocation of (some of the) work to home or other locations, and redesigning workplaces on general principles without any significant redesign of the work. This can put extra stresses on people in terms of how they carry out their tasks and meet expectations while working with archaic practices (e.g. around teamwork) in sub-optimal environments. So we need to think more about the people and the systems, as well as the furniture. What this means in effect is: first design the work and then design the workplace – in all the domains including the Virtual Workplace. The workplace also has to be designed to facilitate breaking up the working day, and the behaviours encouraged and supported that will make a difference to people’s wellbeing. Let’s think this through. Learning how to sit well for 7–8 hours per day, with breaks as required by law, is better than sitting badly for 7–8 hours per day. But overall it cannot be considered a good way of working. Sitting around a meeting table with the screen at a 90-degree angle, or sitting for back-to-back online

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meetings at home create both physical strain and mental exhaustion. So we need to rethink both how and why we do what we do, and how to do it better. We explored methods for doing this in Chapter 9 on creating a Smart Working culture – and wellbeing through improved ergonomics is embedded in our approach. So, for example, varying the methods and durations of how we meet and interact is essential, such as developing behaviours to ensure that every interaction with a colleague isn’t turned into a diarised meeting. Height-adjustable (sit/stand) desks (or other surfaces) are appreciated by people who wish to avoid having a sedentary working day. But many ergonomists will say that moving during the day is much better than just altering one’s static posture. So sit/stand desks should not be a replacement for mobility. According to Andy Hawkes, CEO of Cardinus, the specialist company providing ergonomic software and training, Movement is the key ingredient. It’s becoming more and more necessary to educate people about using their bodies. The context is really changing. We have generations coming through now who habitually use their devices slouching on a bed or sofa. Many people don’t have a proper workstation at home, but work from the kitchen table. So we have to think as well about teaching people how to work well if they use these non-standard settings. We have to be pragmatic. There is no one-size-fits all solution, so we need to take an individualised approach14. Their Healthy Working Analytics software drills down to a level of individual detail to determine the profile of how and where people work. It makes a difference whether people work in an office, a lab, a production facility, a ship, and so forth. It also makes a difference about where people work outside a formal workplace. About 40% of regular homeworkers have a dedicated office to work in. Others are improvising. Age makes a difference, as do other factors such as height, whether one is pregnant or the nature of any disability. Guy Osmond of Osmond Ergonomics also stresses the need for an individualised approach: Everyone is an individual, in all aspects. Psychology is becoming more and more important in how we see the workplace. Greater understanding of neurodiversity

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and personality is leading to more interesting approaches to what works for different people. There are so many factors to be thinking about, so we need to explore down to granular detail. It cuts across many disciplines: estates, architecture, wellbeing, acoustics, occupational health, health and safety, procurement and more. So ergonomic thinking has to be part of the strategy at the outset15. Measuring healthy working and wellbeing Cardinus’ Healthy Working Analytics software drills down into the various factors that impact on people’s ability to perform well at work, which they call the ‘Distraction index’. High on the list are factors like: • • • • • • • • •

Interruptions from other people Excessive email Lack of personal control over work Lack of sleep Carrying out tasks you think should be done differently Low level of energy Relationship with line manager Lacking a sense of purpose Working while feeling unwell.

We see here a mix of professional and personal factors, similar to our breakdown near the start of this chapter. Altering the place of work, we have seen, does have an impact on some of the factors, like being able to manage illness better and in creating the possibility of having more sleep. Without a more transformational approach to flexibility, however, some aspects of work risk becoming worse, such as increased email or in the case of management style becoming more, rather than less, controlling. So it’s an important principle that changing the nature of the work is a key element of promoting employee wellbeing. Without this, the negative impacts of work can remain, wherever people are working. However, it is one thing to identify the problems. It’s another to take action and change things. So if an organisation takes steps to consult people on their wellbeing and gathers the data, taking action is an imperative. Failure to do so will only disillusion people further.

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Smart Working and musculoskeletal health According to the World Health Organization, around 1.71 billion people suffer from musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions worldwide16. MSK covers more than 150 conditions affecting bones, joints, muscles, the spinal discs and certain associated inflammatory diseases. In the UK, one in ten people of working age have a long-term MSK condition. Over the past decade, it has been the second most common reason for working days lost, after ‘minor illnesses’ such as colds and stomach upsets. Of people with MSK conditions, 62% are in work, compared to 82% who have no long-term health condition. They are also considerably more likely to retire early17. There are major issues to address here, and working smarter and more flexibly can offer: • Better access to work opportunities for people suffering from long-term MSK conditions • A better work environment for managing existing conditions • Good practices for reducing the risk of acquiring certain kinds of MSK disorders. For people who have retired in their 50s and 60s and are thinking of returning to work, a survey by the UK Office for National Statistics found the top three aspects they are looking for in choosing a new job are: • A job that offers flexible working hours (36%) • A job where they can work at home (18%) • A job they can fit around their caring responsibilities (16%). The same survey found that the majority of those who are currently looking to return to paid work, or considering it, would prefer to do so on a part-time basis (69%), while 21% said either part-time or full-time, and just 9% said they would like to return full-time18. The following case study of Versus Arthritis and its Flex programme highlights how designing working practices and workplace to be inclusive can have a big impact for both people in work and people seeking work. There is much that organisations across sectors can learn from both their experience and their expertise.

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Case study: Supporting wellbeing, inclusion and productivity at Versus Arthritis Through its Flex programme, the charity Versus Arthritis sought to transform its working environments, spaces and practices to promote flexibility, collaboration, inclusion, health and wellbeing, particularly musculoskeletal health for its 300+ employees. An impending office move was the catalyst for rethinking their ways of working. The new approach focused on trust, enabling employees to have flexibility about when, where and how they work. This included flexibility around working hours, providing training so that all employees have the skills to effectively support health and wellbeing, and investing in complementary health coaching and lifestyle support offers. The new London office was designed to be accessible to all, to promote movement and to provide dedicated, non-work spaces that support physical and mental health. Furniture and office equipment were selected to provide choice according to different needs, while plants and natural materials were introduced to bring nature into the workplace. The choice and variety of spaces has been key to meeting diverse individual and work needs. As well as height-adjustable desks, there are informal meeting areas and collaborative working spaces, alongside a quiet area and booths for focused or more confidential work. A range of furniture and equipment has been included to promote flexibility and meet individual need with a recognition that no one size fits all. New technology was introduced to support greater flexibility, collaboration and communication across sites and to include people working more flexibly from other locations, e.g. working from home or for those working out in the community. All the changes were developed in consultation with employees from the start, to ensure ownership, engagement and that the changes meet existing and future employees’ needs. This included involvement in the development of new protocols, policies and supporting guidance, as well as involvement in the delivery of training in the new ways of working and how to use the new workspaces.

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A review of the impact of the new London office and new ways of working 1 year later showed a high take-up of more flexible ways of working, with a resulting 86% indicating an improved work–life balance and 87% feeling that their manager focuses on results rather than presenteeism. The charity has also benefited, with employees feeling more productive (69%), that the organisation is more inclusive (79%) and that they are more likely to recommend Versus Arthritis as an employer as a result of Flex (84%). There was also a positive impact on recruitment, with specific cases cited, whilst 98% of survey respondents also indicated they were proud of the new London office as a working environment, whereas no one had been of the previous office! For those with arthritis or another long-term condition, the flexibility provided has helped them to deliver their best whilst managing their condition. More than a third of employees at Versus Arthritis have an MSK or other longterm illness or disability. The value of being trusted to make decisions about where and when to work is outlined by Sophie, who is Trusts Manager at the charity. Sophie has had inflammatory arthritis since she was 3 years old. ‘The main things that my condition results in are pain and fatigue,’ says Sophie. Sometimes the fatigue can be harder to deal with than the pain. If I wait until the fatigue is really bad, it can take weeks to recover. But if I manage it better, I can stop it getting to that point. The pain is mostly in my knees and ankles so getting on the train can be difficult sometimes and can make it worse. If I can be at home with my laptop, it’s so much better. With Flex, I now do two days a week from home most weeks. Having that time means I can manage my pain and fatigue much more easily. I can flex my hours if my fatigue is playing up, so I might not start until 10.30 or 11am and work until 6.30 pm, to get a bit more sleep and have a lie-in. It also suits me to do some things from home – it’s not just a health benefit, I often find I’m more productive at home. It’s quiet and I’m focused. Before Flex, if I hadn’t been able to work from home, I know I would have had to have had time off sick. Having flexibility has definitely helped me to stay in work consistently. It’s so easy now – we have our headsets, our laptops, so you can do everything at home you can do in the office. That’s been a lot of work – without that it would have been more difficult.

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The Flex programme was rolled out to all employees across the UK. Just over a year later, the pandemic struck. The flexibility that had been introduced for quite different reasons put the charity in a strong position to adapt quickly and continue its essential work raising funds for arthritis research, raising awareness and supporting people with arthritis in hospitals and the community.

Managing illness – one’s own and other people’s ‘My favourite of all human states is when you’re past the pain of illness and don’t yet possess the energy to assume responsibilities’, observes the lead character in Steve Toltz’s novel Here Goes Nothing19. Whether it’s our favourite state or not, it’s one that we are all familiar with. That is, the liminal spaces between health and illness. There’s an unacknowledged state of underperformance as illness creeps up on us, and residual fatigue as we recover. With the widespread phenomenon of long Covid, many people either cross this illness/health no-man’s land more regularly or find themselves perpetually stuck there. However, the time-honoured way for both organisations and individuals to deal with things is to say, ‘you’re either ill or you’re not’. Taking the approach of ‘flexibility as normal’ and trusting people to make the right decisions about working, we empower them to take control of their health and wellbeing. We’ve talked about managing blurred boundaries – here’s another one, the boundary between health and ill-health. In many if not most cases, it’s not a cut and dried division between the two, even if it’s administratively more straightforward to assume so. There are days when we feel we can work, but not the whole day, or not continuously. We feel unable to survive, and certainly not thrive, if we have to tackle commute journeys on a crowded train, and spend 7–8 hours in an environment not conducive to flopping down and tuning out for an hour or two. Yet we still feel well enough to get some things done. Sophie’s story in our case study of Versus Arthritis highlights the value of this, and in having the ability to adjust one’s work schedule in line with health needs. Similar considerations also apply to carers, when they have the freedom to adjust their work schedule and location to deal with events that may arise. This has the

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effect of reducing the stress brought on by conflicting demands from work and home. The aim is to create a positive attendance culture. The emphasis shifts to what people can do, if they feel they are up to doing something without compromising their health. Once attendance at a set place and time is taken out of the equation, people can be trusted to make grown-up decisions about their health. This does not replace good absence reporting and management, nor more traditional initiatives to promote good health, e.g. around stress management. Taking this approach requires that managers and teams become more aware of each other’s health issues, whether temporary or long term, and also have shared permissions to watch out for each other. It remains important to ensure that no pressure is put on people, whether intentionally or unintentionally, to work when they really cannot. What we’re talking about here is a different approach around the margins of ill-health, and we need to avoid generating a new kind of presenteeism. If someone calls in sick, you can’t respond by saying, ‘OK, so what are you going to do today?’ That has to be the decision of the individual making an informed decision about their state of health. Taking this approach also protects the health of colleagues and anyone else we might meet through work or on the way to a work setting. People can deal with that. If a whiteboard session is planned, either the scheduled meeting can move to a different time, or be conducted online. It’s not a good enough reason to put colleagues at risk. We need to keep in mind that some colleagues may be quite vulnerable. Though your virus might at that stage be relatively mild, for a vulnerable person to catch it could turn out to be much more serious. So it’s another practical way of looking out for each other’s health and wellbeing. Maintaining mental health across the Extended Workplace The Roman poet Juvenal’s well-known phrase ‘mens sana in corpore sano’ (a healthy mind in a healthy body) has long been cited as a worthwhile goal. It seems apt in this exploration of wellbeing at work. In context, it originally encouraged the reader not to seek wealth, power or a long life, but instead virtue, to which healthy mind and body contribute20. How that goes down with today’s corporate leaders and entrepreneurs chasing cash, unicorns and world domination (and, in some cases, immortality21), I’m not so sure.

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There’s an earlier Greek version of this, attributed to the philosopher, mathematician and engineer Thales of Miletus, the same Thales after whom the company in our case study (in Chapter 3) is named: ‘Who is blessed? He who has a healthy body, a resourceful mind and a teachable nature’22. Ancient sayings don’t carry intrinsic authority by virtue of being ancient. But the wisdom of this outlook is something that has resonated with people down the ages, and I think is very applicable to modern life. As well as physical and mental health, there’s something within this outlook about openness and balance, to have strong foundations for life. We have already looked at the rising incidence of mental health issues in sickness absence rates. It’s also a significant factor in economic inactivity rates, particularly for people under 40, but also rising in older age groups. Creating the right working conditions for people struggling with mental health is necessary both for those currently employed, and those who are not. However, it’s important to see mental health issues on a continuum, and not only look for measures to help those for whom it has reached a critical stage where they are unable to work, whether short term or long term. This involves a) looking at the work itself, b) looking at the way work is organised and c) addressing the culture of work. Workload is a key issue. It’s the relentlessness of the need to complete work that can cause a build-up of minor stresses and feelings of not being able to cope. It’s often not only the amount of work, but also the culture that goes with it. We tend to have a culture of busyness, that it’s a virtue to work long hours, and to put in extra effort. In response to being asked ‘how are you’, people reply ‘exhausted’, almost as a badge of merit. In addressing the work, the Smart Working way is to a) cut out the worthless work and non-productive activities, by streamlining processes and practices, b) give individuals and teams greater ownership of their ways of working and c) enable open and honest conversations with colleagues and managers about how work and workloads can be improved. Making a stronger connection between the work people do and the results and value of it at the end of the line helps people to find purpose in the things they do, rather than just getting through their allotted tasks. Creating a climate for positive mental health is not only about the work, however. It’s also about how the individual relates to their work community. It involves trust, perceptions of fairness, belonging and, very importantly, relationships with line managers. We explore these further in the following sections.

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It also involves having a culture in which people feel free to open up about the problems they are experiencing in both their work life and their personal life. One positive effect of the pandemic lockdowns was that many organisations, or managers on their own initiative, took steps to communicate much more at the interpersonal level about people’s physical and psychological welfare. Some organisations employed psychologists to support people through this period. The contexts of how people experienced lockdown are very varied. There was obviously a concern for people’s health given the nature of the virus, and the toll that anxiety about this could take on a person’s mental wellbeing. Some people had the experience of being very isolated, and much more so than working from home would in normal circumstances. Others had almost the reverse of that: a piling in of all life’s responsibilities simultaneously into the same place: dealing with home schooling, work, sickness and possibly grief at losing family and friends. As we move on from this period, organisations should keep in play many of the initiatives taken during this time that, despite separating people from their workplace, often drew people closer together in shared anxiety and support. While large organisations like the Bank of England have offered onsite therapy, many others now do so as well. Large law and financial services companies now do so, even those like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Stanley that have doubled-down on traditional ways of working23. Having mental health first-aiders is also increasingly common, creating a hierarchy of support that also can include coaching alongside counselling. There is some criticism of employers taking on this role of dealing with problems that perhaps should be addressed by wider society. However, I think there is merit in this approach. We’ve noted both work itself and the interactions of work with the rest of life as being potential sources of stress, so to me it makes sense to deal with as many issues as possible at source to try to prevent issues and problems developing into crises. Many organisations offer both onsite and online support, either themselves or through third-party specialists. Making that support available to people wherever they are working is central to a Smart Working approach, which also focuses on making the work experience better and encouraging ideas from employees to improve ways of working, rather than suffering in silence until things become unbearable. The complex interplay of factors continues post-pandemic for many people. Slow recoveries, long Covid and enduring grief are part of the background. Just as many children were fearful of going back to their classes, many adults were fearful

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about returning to their collective workplaces. Individuals will vary a lot in how they weigh the costs and benefits of working in a collective workplace or working elsewhere. A large number of younger workers have come into shared workplaces for the first time after starting their working lives in home environments. And then there are the more than 50% of people who never did work from home, but faced greater dangers to their health while experiencing either intense work pressures, e.g. in the health services, or faced intense financial insecurity in sectors hit hardest by having no customers for long periods. So organisations should not only keep the high levels of psychological support going. They should also ensure that they don’t see it as uniquely applying to a timelimited spell of homeworking, but extend that psychological support and climate of open and honest communication across the whole workforce, wherever they are working. Inclusion, diversity and wellbeing for all Greater choice and flexibility have wellbeing benefits for excluded groups as much as for everyone else. Perhaps more so, as it can provide opportunities for income and security that might be unobtainable without the flexibilities involved. It mustn’t stop there, however. Having removed barriers and opened up new opportunities for employment, the commitment has to be to ensure that everyone is included as equals in the day-to-day life and community of the organisation. One thing I’ve found is that there are kind of parallel universes when talking about inclusion in the workplace. In the world of HR, there’s naturally a focus on people and culture, and currently a lot of focus on identity and personality. I see no end of articles and studies that explore various aspects of this and make recommendations about what organisations should do. Yet what almost all of them fail to mention are the other two main pillars of the work experience: the physical workplace and the virtual workplace. A good example is a comprehensive review of more than a hundred research papers on ‘inclusive workplaces’ (published in Human Resource Management Review in 2018), which, though otherwise interesting and insightful, has not a single mention of the actual workplaces where people do their day-to-day work24. There seem to be two entirely different meanings at large of the word ‘workplace’, one focusing on the cultural and psychological, the other focusing on the physical and practical.

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While it’s vital to have policies and practices for inclusion, networking, affinity groups, mentoring, coaching and dealing with unfair and discriminatory behaviours, it’s also essential to address the vital issue of inclusion concerning the spaces and resources people use on a day-to-day basis for their work. Inclusive workplaces for wellbeing Happily, creating inclusive (physical) workplaces is one of the hot trends in the workplace industries at the moment. There’s a great deal of experimentation, pioneering research and also, inevitably, a fair amount of hype from suppliers and service providers by exaggerating the benefits of their existing solutions. One of the key principles for designing inclusive workspaces is, as Nigel Oseland puts it, to ‘design for the range, not the average’25. When we think of the traditional office, most people were working in very similar settings – a standard workstation, and, if promoted, an individual office. Very little thought was given to individual preferences or creating environments that are conducive to the best work any individual can do. People fit the environment, rather than the other way around. The same is true for environmental factors like temperature and lighting too. There’s an assumed efficiency in applying one-size-fits-all solutions. I’ve worked in many offices where you can’t open a window, the lighting is what you’re given and temperature is set for the whole section of the floor. However, we are far more aware now of the differences between individuals and how we respond differently to different environmental factors. Gender – men, generally, prefer temperatures on the cooler side compared to women – age, stage of life, disability, long-term or temporary health condition, personality, neurodiversity: these are all factors that make a significant difference to whether we feel comfortable and how we perform in different environmental conditions. It’s impossible to design bespoke environments for every individual in an existing workforce, though it’s necessary to consult them on their ideas and preferences. And it’s undesirable too. People leave, new recruits come in and people change over time. So three key principles for inclusive design of the Smart Workplace are choice, variety and control. That applies both in the organisation-owned workplace, and across the Extended Workplace:

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• Choice – being able to choose different settings within a building and/or in other locations • Variety – having the widest viable variety of settings, to create more opportunities to meet different preferences, as well as for different types of work • Control – being able to control the immediate environment one works in, in as personalised and localised a way as possible. This isn’t about designing a perfect and individualised setting to work in all day, and adding a name tag to it. It’s about getting the flexibility into a space to be able to adjust it (within the parameters of the setting) and be as comfortable and productive as possible while using that space. Acoustics, psychoacoustics and neurodiversity We explored the key considerations for acoustics in Chapter 6, the first of our three chapters covering the Smart Workplace. As well as being crucial for being productive, excellent acoustics are also important for wellbeing. Here we take a deeper dive into the experience of sound for individuals, and how that can be a crucial factor for wellbeing. We know from multiple surveys as well as personal experience just how disruptive noise can be when we’re working. Noise can be defined as an ‘unwanted sound’, something we don’t want or need to hear. Our brains have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to respond in certain ways to noises. At a primal level, sound is processed in our brains to indicate whether we are safe or in danger. Auditory signals directly trigger the fight, flight or freeze responses, resulting in hormonal releases that prepare us to respond accordingly. This puts pressure on the nervous system, which impacts our bodies and overall health. In this way, noise can intensify anxiety, by increasing stress levels. We no longer live on the savannah, surrounded by predators and other physical dangers, but our reactions to sound are still informed by our evolutionary background. Sound waves remain in the realm of physics until they reach the inner ear and are processed in the brain and interpreted as sound perception. Psychoacoustics covers how we experience sound psychologically. Whether or not we consider a sound as ‘noise’ can depend upon the context (time of day, source, etc.), activity and, most importantly, perceived control.

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Although the basic functioning for processing sound waves in the ear and brain is the same for everyone, there is a wide variance in how it is perceived. People have different levels of sensitivity to noise. Personal and human factors such as age, personality type, culture, illness and neurodiversity account for up to 75% of noise annoyance. The remainder is more specific to physical sound levels, such as how loud a sound is26. A good body of evidence supports the view that noisy environments adversely affect the performance, health and wellbeing of autistic individuals in particular. There are more than 700,000 people on the autistic spectrum in the UK: two thirds would like to be in full-time work, yet only one quarter are. An ongoing study conducted at AWE (the Atomic Weapons Establishment) combines the psychological, physical and physiological factors to ascertain the most suitable working environment for workers with autism27. Participants have been assessed on factors such as task time, control, performance and ability. Personality traits and auditory sensitivities profiles were also compiled and compared. This enabled understanding of both physical and psychological stimulation, i.e. from sensory organs and from perception. Significant results showed that most of this group of workers have high auditory sensitivities and, not surprisingly, this affected self-perceived performance by 10%, above the study’s benchmark of 6%. Suggestions from the group included better sound-absorbing materials, acoustic zoning and acoustic etiquette guidance to counteract louder, irrelevant speech disturbances. Although some favoured a dedicated private office, many preferred a combination of private offices and small collaboration areas to avoid feeling isolated and to benefit from the support afforded by being part of a team. The nature of the work is also an important factor in finding the optimal acoustic solutions. The employees with autism at AWE who took part in the study have highly specialised roles, often unique to the individual, requiring very high levels of concentration and which can only be carried out on site owing to the levels of secrecy required. The combination of the physical, psychological and physiological perceptions of sound contributes to the overall human experience. Careful attention to these factors is essential for creating environments which support people with different personality traits, hearing sensitivities and abilities as well as for people on various neurodiversity spectra. The study by Oseland and Hodsman referred to in note 25 covers a wider crosssection of people. With responses from 2,145 people across a range of organisations

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and countries, the survey consisted of eight sections of questions including The Big 5, or OCEAN, personality profile assessment along with ratings of noise and distraction. The conclusions include the following observation, summarised in Beyond the Workplace Zoo: A new key finding in this study is that the remote workers are less affected by noise than those in private offices and, furthermore, those at hot-desks in open plan cope better with noise than those at allocated desks. A similar pattern was found for ratings of perceived control and design effectiveness. It therefore appears that the only solution to noise is not enclosure and private offices, as often called for in press articles, but more about providing control through choice, good design and flexibility.28 British Standards PAS 6463:2022 Design for the mind – Neurodiversity and the built environment – Guide29 also includes guidance on acoustics for people who experience sensory/neurological processing differences. In the UK, up to 15% of people overall may be considered neurodiverse in various ways. An activity-based workplace provides the scope for having spaces of particular advantage to people on the neurodiversity spectrum, such as restorative spaces, designed with neurodiversity in mind in terms of acoustics, lighting and choice of décor and furnishings. The guide also recommends thinking in terms of ‘space to pace’ (i.e. walk back and forth), which could also be a consideration for the design of outside space. Choice and controllability are once again important factors. Trying to tailor a one-size-fits-all solution for neurodiversity is not appropriate. The term ‘neurodiversity’ ought to imply diverse solutions30. Getting the lighting right As well as the acoustics, lighting has a significant impact on how we experience space. Yet in many workplaces, we find a purely functional approach designed to meet minimum standards. In the Smart Workplace that maximises choice, productivity and wellbeing, we need to do much better than this. According to Gary Thornton, Associate Lighting Designer at lighting specialists Nulty, ‘Lighting is one of the unsung heroes of a space. It’s intangible, invisible until it bounces back and hits you in the eye’31. And we can be much more intelligent and purposeful about how lighting is used to create spaces fit for humans.

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‘In workplace design there are increasing crossovers with hospitality and residential,’ says Gary. It’s about getting layers of light, with accents from lighting vertical surfaces. Softer areas can be supported by different styles of lighting. We don’t need 500 lux on a vertical surface when we’re working with screens, which provide their own light source. So we shouldn’t default to a single standard for the whole space. It’s much better to have medium overhead lighting and local control, for example with tasks lights. Bad lighting doesn’t consider who is using the space and how. Good lighting does the opposite. Different kinds and levels of lighting can be used to indicate the different character and uses of different spaces, just as different styles of furniture, décor and the acoustic and biophilic properties do. So all these things need to be considered in an integrated and interdisciplinary process of design. A holistic approach to lighting also considers access to daylight and how lighting levels within a workplace relate to access to natural light throughout the day. This requires lighting schemes to be ‘dynamic, responsive and daylight-led’. Access to daylight is an important element of biophilia, as we have seen. This also relates to installing green planting within the workplace. Planting needs a good light source, so we need to consider its location in relation to natural light and artificial light – it has to be part of an overall joined-up approach. As well as appropriate levels of light being essential for the health of the planting, light can also be used to add to the aesthetic impact of biophilic installations. As we have seen, having a choice of workplace settings and having degrees of control over the environment are central to both wellbeing and inclusion. Making a great place to work involves creating a rich variety of environments that offer a different ambience and differing sensory impacts, evoking different moods. Changes to lighting over the course of the day can also offer cues for varying the ambience over the course of the day, in line with the uses of the space for different purposes. Identity, personality and Smart Working There have been findings in surveys about women and minority groups being relatively more favourable to continuing to work from home post-pandemic. It is

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speculated that this relates to being previously marginalised in the collective workplace, or more likely to experience various levels of discrimination. There has also been a lot written about introverts being more at home at home, so to speak, where they can avoid some of the more intense socialisation and social performance that may be more appealing to extroverts. It is early days as yet to draw such conclusions. However, there may be risks, if working from home is treated as ‘remote work’, rather than the Smart Working integrated approach to the Extended Workplace, that people working from home end up being perceived as second-class citizens, and thereby (further) marginalising already marginalised groups. The same risk also applies perhaps to people with disabilities who might work extensively from home, or have that expectation thrust upon them by noninclusive design of the collective workplace. So if a ‘proximity bias’ persists within a collective workplace, issues might well arise by excluding people not on site from progression within the organisation, taking part in the most interesting projects, or making connections that could further their development. This can equally apply to people recruited over a wide geographical area, regardless of any factors of identity, who rarely visit the primary workplace. The point is, inclusion needs to be actively fostered right across the Extended Workplace. Everyone must be able to be comfortable, productive and happy working in any of the domains. Individuals will have their preferences, but everywhere will be their workplace. What is at stake here is the feeling of belonging in the team and in the organisation. Identity-based networks/employee resource groups/affinity groups provide that sense of belonging within the identity group. They also have a positive role to play in ensuring that people feel connected to the organisation and can thrive in the organisation wherever and whenever they are working. This can be in part by keeping management on its toes about any exclusionary issues that arise or that appear to be embedded or institutionalised. It’s also about providing the resources for helping people develop and progress or overcome barriers, for example through having mentors, buddies and coaches – both online and offline – who understand the problems and aspirations of the individual and, where it helps, identify with the background of the individual concerned. In my experience, these groups and networks are often at the forefront of innovative thinking about inclusion, and are well placed to lead inclusive innovations across the Extended Workplace.

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This is one area where Smart Working can support the values an organisation has in promoting diversity, equality and inclusion. There is a natural overlap with other kinds of flexibility in the toolset, such as shared parental leave, returning to work after maternity leave on a part-time or flexible basis, dads altering their work pattern to take on an equal share of the caring role, adoption leave and so forth. In many ways it is the cross-cutting issues about stages of life that are more likely to define one’s relationship with the organisation and the need for flexibility than belonging to one identity group or another. These are life stages such as having children (naturally or by adoption), significant health changes, divorce, family loss and impending retirement. Who we are changes over time, and our needs do too. There are no simple prescriptions, and people’s navigation of life-changing or challenging times will vary according to circumstances that include perception of identity. This is also true of personality. There may well be personality traits that relate to how we respond to different workplace settings, and our preferences to be in one place rather than another. But life is also a journey. I worry about an over-emphasis on defining ‘who I am’, as if it’s immutable and we don’t change over time. The risk is of locking ourselves into rigid mindsets, of adopting stereotypical views of one’s own personality profile or identity group, as much as of other people’s. We need to understand ourselves, but if we state too emphatically ‘I’m this sort of person’ we risk closing off opportunities to develop and change. Life isn’t just about being, but becoming. And work plays a key role in how we can evolve to be the people we want to be. Identity is important, but we need to be careful not to define ourselves by external or off-the-peg formulations of what that is. In this regard, we need also to remind ourselves when seeing survey results to ‘beware the seduction of averages’. Underneath a statistical tendency in one direction or another for a category of people, there will be a very wide variety of individual practice or experience. We always need to drill down into the detail. What we usually find when we do this is a great deal of commonality between individuals across categories. So we shouldn’t rush to assume that because we find on average certain characteristics in a group of people either that a) everybody in that category has the same experiences or aspirations or b) that specific interventions will be appropriate for the whole category of people.

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The centrality of relationships At the top of most surveys of factors that cause stress at work are poor or toxic relationships. As social animals, having good relationships has historically been essential to survival. Though there are happy hermits (or determinedly virtuous hermits), most of us are happier and function better as part of a group, or indeed of several groups. We have explored a lot of the ground around having good relationships with colleagues and managers in Chapter 10 on Leading the Anywhere, Anytime Team. Understanding how the team needs to work together, being aware of the preferences of each person in terms of communication and workstyle and interacting effectively with a high sense of common purpose are written into Team Agreements and become embedded in ways of working. Having colleagues look out for each other, wherever they are working in the Extended Workplace, is also an important part of the story. Having people care about your wellbeing is, of course, valuable. But research also shows that caring for and about others is itself valuable for our own wellbeing and sense of self. It adds value to our lives, as well as to the lives of others. These are all aspects of social health, on which there is a considerable and growing literature. Doing things together builds the strength of connection that contributes to our knowledge, our opportunities and our wellbeing. It’s not unlike the way the brain builds synaptic connections, shaping the ways we interpret the world. Collectively, these build up the frameworks of understanding we need to live a capable life. In her book The Nowhere Office: Reinventing Work and the Workplace of the Future, journalist Julia Hobsbawm has an interesting take on what underpins social health in the workplace. The key elements, she says, are ‘knowledge + networks + time’32. The absence of any of these is a source of stress, of not being able to function properly. The knowledge (or information) needs to circulate between people in the organisation, and one needs the connections to act on it. One also needs to have control over one’s work schedule in order to be able to interact successfully with the knowledge and with the people. Social health and wellbeing are not possible without these. We also have to think about the power balances within relationships and the difference they make. Poor relationships with managers are a key source of work pressure and stress. Work pressure over deadlines, excessive workloads and

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expectations to do work beyond our capability are major sources of stress and burnout. Any associated bullying, belittling and harassment from people with more power add to a toxic mix. We can look at the other factors in the left-hand column of Table 13.1, but it’s mainly the nature of the work and the quality of work relationships that drive the kinds of stress that are the responsibility of the employer to address. There has been a focus on the location of work in relation to stress and burnout. But these factors apply wherever people are working, though they may apply in different forms in different contexts. The solutions fall broadly into two overlapping categories. One relates to the work, the other to the approach to wellbeing in terms of the nature of the relationship. So first a robust and well-informed approach to management by results makes all the difference (as set out in Chapters 10 and 11). Being clear about the outputs and taking a realistic approach to how those outputs will be achieved over time will make for balanced and achievable workloads, and shared expectations about when and how the outputs are delivered, including work-in-progress updates. When the manager facilitates greater autonomy for the individual and removes any feeling of coercion through a command-and-control approach, the door is open to establishing a more productive relationship. Secondly, this relationship will prosper better on a more open and human basis. That involves becoming more aware of each other’s life situation and (some of) the other sources of happiness, challenge and stress that may exist, as per the right-hand column of Table 13.1. On the manager’s side, this involves creating a psychologically safe environment where people can open up and share, if they wish to, their concerns, vulnerabilities and things they have gone through or are going through in life. The manager can take a lead in this, but may be understandably reticent about over-sharing. In passing, I have referenced the optional nature of this opening up. It is part of the zeitgeist to share, even trumpet, one’s feelings, vulnerabilities and failures on social media. Or in the case of people with celebrity, through every media channel possible. Quiet resilience is also an approach that should be respected, not least in a work environment. So while I am sure that greater openness about one’s life as a whole helps working relationships, work–life harmony and psychological wellbeing, we need also to be aware of people’s different boundaries when it comes to sharing.

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One of the main concerns about new entrants into the distributed workplace is access to the social connections, networks, knowledge and opportunities that are essential to develop skills and build a career. The issue here is, in effect, inequality of social capital between people who have grown their connections over the years and those who have just joined the organisation and particularly those who are just entering the workforce. How is this social capital built across the Extended Workplace and non-linear workdays? Their wellbeing will suffer if they lack access to the knowledge and networks they need to thrive. We looked at various techniques for induction in Chapters 9 and 10. Many of the techniques we advocate are intrinsically social in nature. Meeting people in person for ‘getting to know you’ sessions is obviously helpful. But we also looked at techniques for developing social cohesion in the team, bottom-up learning and communities of interest, where people within and beyond the team share their expertise and interests in various online and offline ways. We also looked at practices like virtual mentoring and buddying to help people integrate and learn the ropes. The mistake of exaggerating the contrast between physical and virtual face-to-face One thing I have come across repeatedly, both in critiques of Flexible Working and guides that are meant to be helpful, is a rather narrow approach to what is understood by ‘face-to-face’, with an exaggerated emphasis on the value of being in the same room as someone or everyone else. Without doubt there is value in social and professional interaction in real time, in the same place. It’s the way we’ve always done our high value socialising, where we can share a meal, a drink, a laugh. It has high value for bonding within a group. But we shouldn’t forget, it’s also the way people traditionally take an instant dislike to other people or indulge in unhealthy one-upmanship or bullying. So much depends on the quality of the relationships and the ways power is habitually exercised. So, despite the potential value, we need to be wary about viewing the same-time-same-place interactions through rose-tinted spectacles. As a linguistic aside, we should note that applying the phrase ‘face-to-face’ to same-place in-person interaction is a synecdoche. That is, a part is used to represent the whole. We say ‘face’ but really mean the whole body, along with body language, body heat, scents, friendly or over-friendly touching, etc.

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We need also to be aware that video gives us (literally) face-to-face, in a nonsynecdochic sense. It’s 2D (as yet, though maybe not for long) and without the pheromones and hugs. So there’s physical face-to-face and virtual face-to-face. When people assert that interactions take place better with physical face-to-face, I would say that while it may be true at times, people with that viewpoint probably need to get better at developing relationships via the virtual workplace. It can be done. In fact, for many people who are digital natives, there is no major contradiction in principle. Excessive focus on getting together risks pushing aside one aspect of their skillset where they may have a natural advantage – establishing relationships with people they don’t see often ‘in real life’. The rest of us can maybe learn from them. And of course, interaction doesn’t always have to be by video. Use of business social media and other non-video channels are becoming central to building up the connections and social capital needed to thrive in the Extended Workplace. In the future, in many organisations virtual interactions will be the primary way of building and maintaining relationships. Any same-time-same-place interactions will be a valued and distinctive supplement to that. The ‘right to disconnect’ In the last chapter we looked at the danger to wellbeing of being ‘always on’. This applies primarily to working from home. We should note as well that even in previous eras it was possible to bring work home with you. This could be physically, with documents in a briefcase, or it could be psychologically, whether through stress or the excitement of planning new ventures. Now we have the capability to be literally, or rather electronically, connected to our work systems 24 hours a day. Bill Gates in his 1995 book The Road Ahead spoke of the times when work is so exciting you bring your sleeping bag into the office and work through the night with colleagues to move a project forward33. I’m not sure how common an experience like this is, or how long one can last if it becomes a regular feature of work. For some, the financial reward can be an additional payoff beyond the excitement. Personally, I have worked through the night on numerous occasions, and even enjoyed it. That’s been for projects, in skunk tank rapid prototyping for clients, and when I’ve got carried away with writing. Or perhaps freaked out by a deadline. Even manic last-minute editing has its own kind of thrill. I’ve also worked long hours out

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of necessity, and haven’t enjoyed it. But being honest, that has sometimes been because of my own failure to complete in a sensible timescale – usually because I’ve been distracted by some other new, possibly tangential, information on the way. ‘Ooh, that’s interesting!’ is a significant distraction factor we ought to add to the list. Expecting people to work long hours can cause significant harm to their wellbeing. Often the expectation is perceived, rather than anything expressed outright, and is something that is wafting in the culture and witnessed in common behaviours. Either way, it can be harmful. So should we have a ‘right to disconnect’? Some countries have legislated for this (e.g. France, Spain, Germany, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Peru and more to come34), and it’s a campaigning issue for trade unions and some politicians elsewhere. An EU-wide measure is probably on its way. Some companies have made this policy. Some have gone so far as to switch off email ‘after working hours’. For health and wellbeing, for work–life harmony and to avoid being exploited, people should disconnect when they are satisfied with the work they have decided to do that day. The problems with the concept of a statutory right to disconnect are twofold: 1. It is invariably framed around an industrial age concept of ‘standard working hours’, and undermines a results-based rather than presence-based work culture 2. It risks infantilising the workforce, denying them the choice over how and when they do their work. Some work is quite time-bound. Other work has very variable workloads, e.g. in project work, case work or when bidding for work. How to manage the delivery of the outputs often has to be agreed at team level. Things go wrong, there are crises and it would be unhelpful, even disastrous at times, if an individual involved invoked a right to disconnect and derailed the whole thing. Peaks of activity are balanced by reducing work activity and taking time out at another time. Within a culture of Smart Working, people are treated as mature adults, able to make these decisions in the context of their work and the needs of their colleagues who depend on them. Meaningful work Feeling that the work you do is meaningful gives a big boost to personal wellbeing. But what makes for meaningful work? And can all work be meaningful?

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In the research literature about meaningful work a number of attributes are highlighted: • Association of the work with personal values or interests, including strong commitment to the product or service delivered • Positive impact on personal wellbeing, e.g. on health or growth as a person, or status it confers • Positive impact on personal wellbeing of colleagues, e.g. their success or mental health, solving problems for them • Work has an impact on the success of the organisation • Social value: developing relationships and sense of community • Work has a positive impact in the wider world. People can be committed to their work and find it meaningful in different ways. People in the creative industries can be very committed to their art or craft. They find meaning in creating artefacts that, for them, have intrinsic merit, or are valued by others. People working on a combat aircraft may find meaning in that work, creating a sophisticated product of engineering that will work well for its designed purpose. Someone designing a marketing campaign for a household product may find fulfilment in that work and argue a case for its value. In many ways, we bring meaning to the work from the context of our lives and the energy we put into it. Not all work is necessarily meaningful. For many people, work is just work. If it pays the bills, that provides sufficient justification for doing it. There is a risk of wishful thinking in assuming all jobs can be meaningful (in any meaningful sense of the word). However, often people with jobs that might be seen as pointless or just drudgery create meaning within their work-life by doing other activities connected to work. Examples might include being a worker representative, engaging with colleagues in sports activities, participating actively in a community of interest network (within or outside the organisation), doing voluntary work through the company or engaging with colleagues to do so, etc. These non-work activities associated with work-life add meaning in ways that broadly falls under the same six categories. But the work experience can be better, and through Smart Working it is possible to do more to introduce or accentuate some of the meaningful work attributes listed previously.

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Examples might include: • Developing more environmentally sustainable working practices (by reducing travel, etc.), aligning with people’s personal values, if they are motivated to save the planet • Enabling colleagues to achieve more work–life harmony by facilitating their flexibility, especially in the case of line managers • Extending the reach and impact of activities that provide social value through new channels, by drawing more beneficiaries in virtually • Innovating in ways of working that impact the success of the organisation, or more directly on the success and experience of the work one does • Extending the scope of hiring to more disadvantaged groups, and enabling them to achieve success in the organisation. We can also add to this the ways in which people are using time saved and more flexibility in their schedule to undertake other activities that have meaning for them. This could be a voluntary activity, learning something new, a hobby, a sidehustle. One of the findings of research into the so-called ‘great resignation’ (or ‘great re-alignment’) is of people rethinking what they are doing with their lives, and when they return to employment do it in ways that also allow for them to do other things that matter more to them than their work. So, in this way, greater flexibility is a facilitator of people not only doing more meaningful work, but also having the space to do more meaningful non-work, both of which have a powerful impact on the sense of wellbeing. The boundaries of employers’ responsibilities for everyone’s wellbeing It’s quite possible for employers to take a minimalist approach to employees’ wellbeing. They provide the work, the pay and comply with statutory basics, and the rest is up to the individual. But all the evidence is that, however good the financial incentives, turnover of employees will be higher, and there will be lower engagement with higher burnout. But employers can’t be expected to do everything. There are things which are in their control, things they can support and things best left to their employees or to others. There are measures that are within the employer’s gift, such as providing fitness facilities, free food and drink, employee assistance programmes, mental health support, opportunities for development and progression, providing onsite childcare

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and creating great environments for wellbeing. They can also create the opportunities for more meaningful work, and align their corporate values in directions that will inspire their people and deliver greater social value. They can also facilitate employees having the kinds of flexibility that will increase their autonomy so they can dovetail work better with the rest of life, allowing them to maximise their wellbeing in their own preferred ways. We are moving into a world where it’s possible that everything we do can be monitored and measured, as we saw in Chapter 8. There are apps to monitor how often we take breaks, to encourage us into physical activity, to help us meditate, to support mental health, measure our blood pressure, pulse rate and blood sugar. These might be provided by the employer or by third parties, and include wearables. We can expect a blizzard of new offerings and upgrades in the coming years. Some employers’ approach to work–life balance is to provide a whole range of facilities at their collective workplaces aimed at wellbeing: creches, breastfeeding rooms, gyms, recreational facilities, beer on tap, shops and services on site, beds in case you need to sleep over. Taking your whole life to the workplace is the way to achieve that balance, wrapped up in a kind of benevolent despotism. This approach can become overbearing, even more so when the employer is deploying apps – possibly with the best of intentions – that capture details of our personal health and wellbeing, our social connections and more, and seeks to exert ever greater influence on how we live our lives35. The facilities manager of one of the largest global tech companies joked at a conference I attended a few years back, ‘We’ve got an ageing workforce issue. Many of our people are now over thirty-five’. They now had children, busy lives outside work and no longer wanted to be on site all the time. People’s needs change over time – and maybe the god-like provision of everything on site (coming with expectations of long hours) wasn’t the best approach in the first place. It’s great that organisations want to support people’s wellbeing. But however wellintentioned, it shouldn’t morph into a quasi-totalitarian approach that, amongst other things, creates a culture of dependence while invading our personal space. Once again, the boundaries are blurred. But the best approach for employers is to support us in taking charge of our own wellbeing, without too much meddling or oversight. Table 13.2 outlines the key factors for wellbeing, looked out through the framework of the individual, their work, social relationships and organisational provision.

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Organisation Health & wellness facilities/ technologies Provision for psychological support Support for life (e.g. through EAP, family support, etc.) Values that align with one’s own Strong sense of purpose Inclusive and varied work environments Spaces that support human connectivity Ergonomic, acoustic, lighting, biophilic excellence Technology/virtual practices to support human connectivity Smart Working culture/ flexibility as normal

Social/Relationships Good relationships with manager(s) Good relationships with colleagues Good relationships with external parties Sense of belonging, social identity ‘Buzz’ of shared purpose Shared recreational activities/being active together Psychological support from colleagues Positive interface for non-work social priorities Caring for/helping others Participation in work-related networks

Own work Manageable workload Control over how/when/ where work is done Mobility when working Frictionless working across settings Achievement/overcoming challenges Recognition Doing meaningful work Developing skills Fair/appropriate pay Progression Empowerment to critique and innovate

Personal

Physical health Mental health Being authentic self Sense of being cared for/ valued Fulfilment in work Autonomy & choice Work–life balance/ harmony Financial security Financial benefits of Smart Working Time/space to refresh Nature quotient

Table 13.2 Wellbeing factors in a Smart Working organisation

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Employers can take a very direct role in implementing excellence in relation to many of the factors listed, especially in the fourth column. They play more of a supporting and facilitating role in relation to the others. In the latter cases, it’s also down to individuals and groups of colleagues to take initiatives and ensure excellence. Most of these factors are not unique to Smart Working. But Smart Working makes a major difference to the nature and scope of most of them, as highlighted throughout this and the preceding chapters. Notes 1 Neil Usher, with Kirsten Buck and Perry Timms (2022), Unf*cking Work: How to Fix It for Good. Zero Books. 2 David Graeber (2019), Bullshit Jobs: The Rise of Pointless Work, and What We Can Do About It. Penguin. 3 Leo Tolstoy (1878), Anna Karenina. 4 Andy Lake and Tom Cherrett (2002), The Impact of Information and Communications Technologies on Travel and Freight Distribution Patterns: Review and Assessment of Literature Final Report. Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions (DTLR). www.researchgate.net/publication/ 343485457_DTLR_DEPARTMENT_FOR_TRANSPORT_LOCAL_ GOVERNMENT_AND_THE_REGIONS_The_Impact_of_Information_ and_Communications_Technologies_on_Travel_and_Freight_Distribution_ Patterns_Review_and_Assessment_of_Literature 5 Charlotte Gascoigne, Clare Kelliher and Pierre Walthery (2023), Part-time working after the pandemic: The impact of the Flexible Furlough Scheme. Cranfield School of Management. www.cranfield.ac.uk/som/expertise/changingworld-of-work/the-future-of-part-time-working/esrc-report-part-timeworking-after-the-pandemic 6 Trades Union Congress (2022), Women are three times more likely to work part-time and nearly four times more likely to work term-time only than men. www.tuc.org.uk/news/ tuc-women-much-more-likely-men-have-flexible-work-arrangements-lead-losshours-and-pay 7 Clare Lyonette, Beate Baldauf and Heike Behle (2010), ‘Quality’ part-time work: A review of the evidence. (UK) Government Equalities Office. warwick.ac.uk/ fac/soc/ier/publications/2010/lyonette_2010_geo_review_of_evidence.pdf 8 www.wmpeople.co.uk/, https://timewise.co.uk/, https://cjtalent.com/ 9 https://workingfamilies.org.uk/research-publications/

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10 ONS (December 2022), Returning to the workplace – The motivations and barriers for people aged 50 years and over, Great Britain: August 2022. www.ons.gov.uk/ employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotinwork/economicinactivity/articles/ returningtotheworkplacethemotivationsandbarriersforpeopleaged50yearsandovergreatbritain/august2022 11 Matthew Piszczek and Kristie McAlpine (2023), The psychological benefits of commuting, Scientific American. www.scientificamerican.com/article/thepsychological-benefits-of-commuting/ 12 The original study is Kristie L. McAlpine and Matthew M. Piszczek (2022), Along for the ride through liminal space: A role transition and recovery perspective on the work-to-home commute. Organizational Psychology Review 13, no. 2. https:// journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20413866221131394 13 ONS (2014), Commuting and personal well-being. www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/ wellbeing/measuring-national-well-being/what-matters-most-to-personalwell-being-in-the-uk-/art-what-matters-most-to-personal-well-being-in-theuk-.html 14 In conversation with the author. 15 In conversation with the author. 16 World Health Organization (14 July 2022), Musculoskeletal health: Key facts. www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/musculoskeletal-conditions 17 Versus Arthritis (2023), The state of musculoskeletal health 2023 - Arthritis and other musculoskeletal conditions in numbers. www.versus-arthritis-state-msk-musculoskeletalhealth-2023.pdf 18 ONS (14 March 2022), Reasons for leaving work, in Reasons for workers aged over 50 years leaving employment since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. www. ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/reasonsforworkersagedover50yearsleavingemploymentsincethestartofthecoronaviruspandemic/2022-03-14#reasons-for-leaving-work 19 Steve Tolz (2022), Here Goes Nothing. Hodder & Stoughton, p. 305. 20 Juvenal (c100–127 CE), Satires X. 21 Jessica Hamzelou (30 September 2022), Can we find ways to live beyond 100? Millionaires are betting on it. MIT Technology Review, www.technologyreview. com/2022/09/30/1060523/live-beyond-100-millionaires-betting-on-it/; Hannah Kuchler (2 January 2023), The start-ups seeking a cure for old age, Financial Times, www.ft.com/content/649b0446-698c-4363-82ad-0be5b5faa68f

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22 Diogenes Laertius (early 3rd century CE), Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. Book 1.37.2. 23 Emma Jacobs (12 March 2023), Therapy at work: banks and law firms among those offering counselling as staff perk, Financial Times, www.ft.com/content/ adf2d395-b100-403a-8653-ae48fb278be1 24 Lynn M. Shore, Jeanette N. Cleveland and Diana Sanchez (2018), Inclusive workplaces: a review and model. Human Resource Management Review 28, 176–189. www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053482217300529 25 Nigel Oseland (2022), Beyond the Workplace Zoo: Humanising the Office. Routledge. 26 Nigel Oseland and Paige Hodsman (2020). The response to noise distraction by different personality types: an extended psychoacoustics study. Corporate Real Estate Journal 9, no. 3. 27 Paige Hodsman and Adrian Burton (2021), Managing auditory sensitivity in the workplace. RICS Property Journal. https://ww3.rics.org/uk/en/journals/ property-journal/managing-auditory-sensitivity-in-the-workplace.html 28 Nigel Oseland (2022), Beyond the Workplace Zoo: Humanising the Office. Routledge, p. 64. 29 PAS 6463:2022 Design for the mind. Neurodiversity and the built environment. Guide, British Standards Institution. https://standardsdevelopment.bsigroup. com/projects/2020-00234#/section 30 I am greatly indebted to Paige Hodsman, Workplace Concept Developer at Ecophon, for her input into this section, and also to Adrian Burton of AWE for his comments. 31 In conversation with the author. 32 Julia Hobsbawm (2022), The Nowhere Office: Reinventing Work and the Workplace of the Future. John Murray. 33 Bill Gates (1995), The Road Ahead. Penguin. 34 We look at this and other remote/home/teleworking regulations in more detail in Chapter 14 on Smart government, public services and public policy. 35 Dave Eggers’ novel The Circle (2013) is centred on a fictional (?) company that believes in its own good intentions, but exerts excessive control over both employees and customers. The conflation between the company’s own commercial interests and the wellbeing and happiness of others is a trap that many companies can fall into.

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Chapter Fourteen Smarter government, public services and public policy

How smart is your government? ‘How smart is your government?’ might seem quite a loaded question, especially in the light of recent history. However, the truth is that many government organisations across the world have taken significant strides in adopting Smart Working practices and smarter forms of service delivery. In some cases, they are in the leading pack of positive change. Governments and other public sector bodies can derive many benefits from working smarter. In fact, I would say to deliver value to us, the taxpayers, and increase the effectiveness of service delivery, it’s incumbent on them to do so. They also have a role in setting an example in creating good work and great work environments. While the main focus in this chapter will be on changing working practices and workplaces, we’ll also explore how changes in the nature of work impact two key areas of government activity: delivering services and creating public policy. The story so far In the UK there is now a near 30-year backstory to government bodies adopting first Flexible, then Smart Working practices. Local authorities such as Surrey County Council and Hertfordshire County Council had programmes of change involving Flexible Working, estate rationalisation, office redesign and, in the case of Surrey, a pilot local drop-in telecentre in the mid to late 1990s. I ran a study for a consortium of five local authorities in 1995–1996 on Teleworking: The Implications for Local Authorities. The five local authorities involved

DOI: 10.4324/9781003288930-14

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went on to develop their own variously branded first wave flexible/smart change programmes1. In the USA, the 1990s saw the uptake of telecommuting, with federal, state and local initiatives. Many of these were evaluated by academic researchers as well as internally, and demonstrated a range of benefits – not least reduced travel, increased productivity and improved work–life balance and retention. The European Commission had a pilot teleworking programme, for which I was involved in the evaluation in 2000. Some Dutch ministries adopted teleworking in the 1990s, and the Japanese government experimented with a range of initiatives including promoting teleworking as a way to decentralise work from the capital. In UK central government, the substantive moves towards what we’re calling Smart Working began some 20 years ago with a small team of people within the Cabinet Office and later the Government Property Agency (GPA) who understood the trends in the wider world of work and workplace, and produced a series of ground-breaking documents and initiatives. The most important of these were: • Working Without Walls (2004)2, produced in collaboration with workplace strategy and architectural consultancy DEGW, led by Frank Duffy • Working Beyond Walls (2008)3, also produced in collaboration with DEGW • The Way We Work (TW3), the initial 2012 programme for Civil Service Smart Working4 • British Standards PAS 3000 (2015): Smart Working Code of Practice5 • The Smarter Working programme (successor to TW3) • The Government Hubs programme for shared government workplaces built to Smart Working specifications. One of the most important aspects of this is that, at a time of huge pressure to reduce the size of the government estate, there was a very motivated group of people who had the vision to see that there was a chance not only to rethink the amount of real estate required for offices, but also – and more importantly – the opportunity to make workplaces better, and to modernise and transform the ways civil servants work. One of the authors of Working Beyond Walls, Bridget Workman (Bridget Workman at the time), outlined a vision for future government working, in an article for Flexibility.co.uk:

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I can see a time where the virtual place becomes the constant: ‘the office’. It will be the place we go to meet our colleagues and customers, where we know and are known by others, where we have our place, our work and identity. Meanwhile the physical places we choose to work in will become more diverse, more distributed and our occupation of them more transient. This combination of virtual and radically transformed physical workplaces makes up the government office of the future6. That was in 2010. Our case study of the government Smarter Working programme (later in this chapter) outlines the very substantive progress that has been made in the years since then. The vision for future government still looks very relevant, and chimes with the approach to Smart Working in this book. It envisages virtual working becoming normal in government. There remains an important role for place, too – but the government workplace needs to be radically transformed to play its role effectively in this new context. And it’s the changing role of place that government organisations, like many others, seem to struggle with most. One of the challenges now, as Bridget sees it, is how we decide where to work. ‘What’s often lacking in current conversations is thinking through why people get together in the same place,’ Bridget told me when I spoke to her recently. People are talking about mandates or incentives to bring people into the office, but we have to be much more intentional than that. It’s about the importance of being together purposefully, not just to do a task but also with a focus on the social aspects. For health, as well as the buzz of being together. So government workplaces need to support that7. People-centric government workplaces All the principles and design elements that we have explored in our earlier chapters on workplace and the Extended Workplace apply equally to government workplaces. I spoke with Richard Graham, who until recently was Head of Workplace Transformation at the Cabinet Office, and focusing on making government offices great places to work and who led the government’s initial TW3 smart working programme. He was also one of the authors of Working Beyond Walls.

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‘One of the things to emerge from Covid is putting people centre stage. At the end of the day, what we are about is people,’ said Richard. Making great places to work requires a fundamental change to how facilities are managed. It needs to shift its focus from supporting the physical building to supporting the people using it. We can learn from the coworking sector here, by providing a workplace experience team – that’s a step up from having a concierge service. As well as ensuring that everything works smoothly for users, their role is to promote interaction and foster that sense of belonging that provides the corporate glue holding us all together. We need to recognise the importance of social space as oases, highly fertile areas, of cultural development for the organisation8. The workplace experience team should also address all the comfort factors: The test is, you shouldn’t notice this stuff but there’s a lot going on behind the scenes: lighting, biophilia, air quality. The custodian of the workplace should have a commitment to make every user’s experience as good as it could be, supporting neurodiversity, collaboration and wellbeing9. The picture is one that other leading thinkers and practitioners in the workplace field are also developing, of providing space-as-a-service within organisations more on the lines of the hotel industry than the traditional property and facilities management industries. Public sector leaders need to stand firm in promoting this approach and defending it from traditionalists and naysayers who might think this all sounds a bit luxurious or ‘new age’, and who just want public servants ‘back at their desks’. British Standards PAS 3000 (2015): Smart Working Code of Practice One of the landmarks in the development of Smart Working in government was the commissioning by the Cabinet Office of a British Standards document specifying best practice. PAS 3000 (2015): Smart Working Code of Practice is a ‘Publicly Available Specification’, that is in effect a standard that operates one step below a full British Standard. It is written in normative language, that is, saying what organisations should or must do to implement best practice in Smart Working.

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The structure is to a large extent based on the Smart Working Handbook10 and the guide for the civil service TW3 programme, and also includes some figures and other material from Smart Flexibility11. There are sections covering principles, leadership, people, workstyles and culture change, workplace, technologies, wellbeing, sustainability and implementation. PAS 3000 became the template for the Smarter Working programme. A requirement for central government departments and agencies to meet its specifications by 2022 was included in the Government Estates Strategy 2018. It also provides the basis for an evaluation process led by the central Smarter Working programme team. As with all British Standards processes, there was a cross-sector steering group and a wide-ranging consultation. The end result is a document with applicability across all sectors. So the initiative came from central government with an eye both to its internal working practices, but also in consideration of the government’s wider remit to promote best practice in ways of working across the economy.

Case study: The UK government Smarter Working and Government Hubs programmes Building on earlier initiatives, the mission of the Smarter Working programme was to ‘transform the Civil Service into a great place to work and an employer of choice through a smarter working environment that empowers people to make the right decision about where and when to work; optimising the use of the workspace and technology and realising savings for the taxpayer. This will improve productivity with a focus on outputs and enable a better work-life balance for all.’ Originating in the Cabinet Office, the programme now sits within the Government Property Agency (GPA) where Smarter Working is a foundational element in transforming the government office estate. It is also interwoven with the Government Hubs Programme and the Whitehall Campus Programme, which are delivering shared workspaces for civil servants across the UK. One such example is the Government Hub at 23 Stephenson Street, Birmingham. The hub was refurbished from disused retail space to create

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modern, digitally connected and inclusive workspaces to support 1,700 people from across 20 government bodies. It was officially opened in July 2022 and is saving more than £2 million per year through estate rationalisation. The building recently achieved Leesman+ certification with a score that places it in the top spot in the UK’s public sector for workplace experience – and the second public sector building globally in history to achieve this out of around 7,300 buildings surveyed by Leesman 12. To help achieve its ambition of delivering great places to work for civil servants, the GPA has produced the Government Workplace Design Guide that sets out the inclusive, activity-based design approach and technical standards to apply to the central government office estate. As well as being informed by the latest British Council for Offices standards and industry standards, it also draws on the guidance in PAS 3000 for creating great places to work and ensuring they fully support Smarter Working. According to Smarter Working Programme Director Kate Guthrie: We undertook a number of surveys during the pandemic and have continued to do so since then to help us develop and continuously improve our workplace design strategies and plans. For hubs, we were originally working on the basis of around 65% of the space for task desks and 35% for collaboration spaces. We’ve since rethought this approach based on our survey data. We’re now planning our spaces based on workstyle types, with our most recent data showing on average this to be 31% individual, 35% collaborative and 34% to be a balance of the two. Exact breakdown does of course depend on who will be using the space and the outcomes they need to achieve. This is also based on Leesman workplace experience surveys, which captures how well different settings work for different kinds of tasks. We’re also starting to measure occupancy using sensors, so we have much better and consistent data. We’re designing the spaces with maximum flexibility and reconfigurability, so we can adapt over time. Something that’s really important now is the support we provide to people in helping them shift from ‘my space’ to ‘our space’ and how they can get the most from the variety of spaces available to them. And people have different starting points in terms of skills, experience,

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preferences and needs. We’re also doing a lot to help people to understand the types of activities that might be better supported by coming to an office – activities associated with the 4Cs for example: collaboration, community, creativity and caring – as well as looking at how our spaces enable the concentration activities that we may all need to deliver at some point during our working day. The way we work has changed and this is a reminder that there needs to be variety in the settings for different teams, according to the nature of the work they do. A menu of these and how they relate to different types of work activity is set out in the Design Guide. People’s ability to work away from the office is not the only factor impacting the location and design of government workspace. The government has set a requirement to move large numbers of civil servants out of London, as part of a rebalancing process across the regions. Some 22,000 posts will move in total by 2030. The approach, however, is different from the ‘lift and shift’ relocations that have had mixed results in the past. Instead, the Smarter Working and Government Hubs programmes are closely aligned with the Places for Growth programme that oversees the relocations. So as well as moving Civil Service roles, there is a strong emphasis on providing the focal point for wider recruitment and for career progression into senior positions, without the need to relocate to London or to attend an office on a daily basis. There is also an ambition to use the new facilities as the catalyst for place-making, involving economic and community development, as well as bases for working. For the taxpayer, there are significant savings from the reduction of the government estate – the sharing of facilities between departments not only reduces costs, but helps to break down barriers to interdepartmental working. The new ways of working are having a positive environmental impact. The high sustainability standards and intelligent building systems significantly reduce the energy requirements of government buildings. The number of people who can work from home for part of the time, or avoid a long commute by touching down at a more local office, is resulting in significant reductions in employee travel.

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The flexibility of design also means that creating and disbanding project teams, integrating new recruits, taking on new services, changes to headcount and departmental restructurings can all be managed without significant disruption and at much lower cost. To support the changes across the complex web of departments and agencies, the Smarter Working programme created a suite of tools and has worked with senior level programme sponsors in each department, and a Smarter Working Practitioner Group. This has provided a forum for the people running change programmes in each organisation and a network for sharing best practice and resources across government. Smarter Working in UK central government has evolved over the years to become a comprehensive, systematic, evidence-based and well-coordinated programme with clear objectives and endorsement from the top. As the programme draws to a close, 30 departments have reached ‘mature’ status, based on evidence provided against the Smarter Working Maturity principles as set out in PAS 3000, across the key areas of leadership, people and culture, workplaces and technologies. A new Community of Practice, launched by the GPA in May 2023, aims to keep Smarter Working practices at the forefront of Civil Service ways of working. There is still more to do, and there remains a need to be adaptable in the context of both new challenges and new capabilities for working smarter in the years to come.

Different contexts for government I’ve focused on the UK central government experience in part because to my knowledge it is one of the more comprehensive and strategic approaches, encompassing changes to technologies, workplaces and culture. But it’s also, no doubt, because it’s the one I have been most involved in. Governments in Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium and the Nordics are also quite advanced in smarter forms of flexibility and in introducing activity-based workplaces. We should note that many governments have quite a different culture to the UK, where, despite its traditional bowler-hat stereotype, today’s civil service

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culture is relatively informal compared to many of the more hierarchical and conservative cultures elsewhere. This can make a difference when speaking about developing a culture of trust and management by results rather than presence. Public bodies may also be required to negotiate every change with unions, workers councils or other employee representatives. In the UK it’s more about consultation, and to be fair for many years now public service unions have been very largely supportive of changes that bring greater flexibility. I’ve also found in training sessions with Asian and Middle-Eastern governments that there can be additional issues and constraints where what is thought of as the public sector also includes state-owned or military-owned industries, creating a wider remit of potential change and many more stakeholders with different kinds of interests. Lack of public infrastructure can also be a significant barrier to distributed working in emerging nations. So there are very different starting points to be aware of. Even so, the model of having an integrated programme with strong central support, a clear set of principles and standards plus a consistent process of evaluation (as set out in Chapters 3 and 4) is one that governments can learn from, whatever their starting points. What is also instructive is how a well-designed programme can adapt to support changed political priorities, in the UK case the extra demands to further decentralise the civil service from the capital. For governments and public bodies that are only at the foothills of change, I would recommend as first priorities a combination of awareness-raising and assessing where they are currently, in line with our recommendations in Chapter 3 for developing a strategic approach. Following the pandemic, it’s likely that some innovations will have been made, but perhaps on a tactical rather than strategic basis. So seeing how those tactical innovations can be incorporated or upgraded into a comprehensive programme will be important for establishing a strong basis for more transformative change. The experience of the European Commission provides a good example of a governmental organisation that, starting from quite traditional ways of working, has accelerated its change programme, and has an approach of consultation and learning as it moves forwards.

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Case study: Flexible Working at the European Commission The European Commission provides an example of a governmental institution that over the last 5 years has made significant progress in modernising ways of working, offices and technologies – and is still learning as it does so. Its Flexible Working programme grew out of the ‘Synergies and Efficiencies’ initiative adopted in 2016, which recognised the need for modernising administrative processes and the ways people worked, and made initial progress in developing guidance for smarter ways of working. Many Commission offices were very traditional, characterised by narrow corridors with private cellular offices on both sides as standard. Ways of working were similarly traditional, characterised by people working separately, sending documents to each other by email or on paper, then coming together for meetings. Laptops were rolled out to all staff in 2019 with the aim of supporting greater mobility and collaboration. There was already some teleworking, accounting for some 5% of time in 2019. These early steps made for a relatively smooth transition to home-based working to comply with Covid restrictions in 2020–2022. And since 2020, a more comprehensive and strategic programme of change has been moving forward. From 2021, new flexible offices with shared desks in team areas and a range of activity-based spaces were rolled out. The Flexible Working programme has been driven by a cross-departmental team of staff from the Directorate-General for HR, the Office for Infrastructure and Logistics and the departments responsible for the technology to support it. It’s characterised by a strong focus on wellbeing, and extensive consultation with employees to gain feedback and guide the way forward. As with most organisations, the experience opened eyes to the fact that extensive working from home is both possible and productive. Microsoft Teams and Office 365 were rolled out swiftly in 2020, and people have got into the habit of working without paper. Those who are returning to new offices have become almost completely paperless. Surveys showed that most people wanted to continue to be able to work from home, either full-time or in ‘hybrid’ arrangements. A minimum of 2 days in the office has been adopted as the rule in the Commission, and further pulse surveys have shown that more than 80% of staff are happy with

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their current working arrangements. Those who spend 40% of their time in the office have the highest satisfaction rates, while those who work all the time in the office have the lowest. Working partly from the office and partly from home is seen as having a strong positive impact on almost all aspects of work, especially on work–life balance, performance and focus. Ratings for relationships, collaboration and sense of belonging are lower, but still positive among staff, though managers think that there has been a negative impact on team cohesion. The satisfaction with digital tools and skills, whether at home or in the office, is high at above 80%. The programme of consolidating real estate and introducing dynamic offices has accelerated. Some outlying buildings in Brussels have been closed, and for some departments, employees have a base in the same building for the first time. In Brussels, the estate has been reduced by around 10% so far, some 65000 m2. In Luxembourg, Commission staff are expected to be brought into one or two buildings in the next few years. With many people coming from individual cellular offices and then working from home, there are considerable variations in satisfaction with the new office environments. Overall satisfaction with office space is around 60%, with 26% dissatisfied. Satisfaction with new flexible offices is lower (around 45%) but seems to be better for departments that moved later, so the trend is positive. There are big variations between Directorates-General, ranging from 17% approval to 73%. Stephen Collins, Acting Director, Organisational Design & Development, is leading the Flexible Working team. ‘The main issue identified in the new offices is noise,’ says Stephen. This is partly a question of etiquette and behaviour, and partly down to layout. We need more spaces to join on-line meetings, since this now dominates our daily work. The feedback we’re getting all adds to the learning process that will help to shape future changes. For future ways of working, we’re encouraging more use of co-creation tools. Compared with the discussions we were having a few years back, it seems as if flexible working is much less of an issue. We’re getting used to it, and can see it works 13.

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Towards a bureauless bureaucracy? So we’ve seen in many organisations a major acceleration of previous trends towards flexible and virtual working becoming embedded as normal. At the same time, we’ve highlighted a continuing role for collective government workplaces, albeit ones that are significantly transformed in their role and their physical design. But can we go further? The technology for more immersive virtual interactions will certainly continue to improve, and government will adopt in time many of the innovations we’ve explored (see Chapter 8). And what about the next crisis – pandemic, disaster, protest or conflict – to test the resilience of operations? Business continuity planning must take on board the possibilities for operating effective services on a location-agnostic basis. As well as governments may have coped in 2020, there was much hasty improvisation and we need to be better prepared for the next such shock to the system. Both offices and hands-on workplaces still have a role to play, as we have seen. But the next step is to embed the processes, working practices and culture of Smart Working so that effective government does not depend on working in offices. And there are types of government work where being completely locationagnostic offers particular advantages, for example in more remote areas and in transnational institutions. In such areas, it’s worth asking the question, do central or local government departments actually need premises of their own? Could they operate out of a local coworking centre, the village shop, a local library, church or even pub, as well as from employees’ homes? A useful exercise to stretch people’s thinking on this is the Sink Hole Fable. Imagine you’re working for a local council, or a government department, and overnight a huge sink hole opened up under the town hall or main administrative buildings. The building(s) collapsed into the hole, falling down 80 metres or more. No one is hurt, but everything inside is crushed, shattered or swept away through underground caves. When employees turn up in the morning, the Council is gone. But the work must go on. Where would you start the recovery process? It would have to start online, with the backups of all your data that is held off site, away in remote servers. Would you set in place a plan to rebuild your old buildings according to the old pattern (preferably on more stable ground)? With the same kinds of environments, the same kind of systems and storage? Almost certainly, you would not – and should not either.

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And what would happen in the meantime – how would staff deliver critical services? In the immediate aftermath they would have to improvise. They would use phones and whatever online technologies they could muster to rebuild the essential core of their services, and to carry on as soon as possible dealing with their customers and clients. They would meet wherever they could. In cafés, employees’ homes, coworking centres, in other government offices – but for collaboration rather than desk work. Some serviced office space might be rented as a central administrative point, but would probably be a fraction of the space previously occupied. Would there be a big reinvestment in filing cabinets and systems to rebuild paper processes? If people thought with their old assumptions, it might happen. But it would be a huge mistake and a lost opportunity. Instead it should provide the impetus for a huge migration to (almost) entirely cloud-based paperless systems. So what has happened here in this hypothetical situation? The disaster has concentrated minds on the essentials of running services and delivering value. The old platform for delivery has proved to be far less essential than previously thought. And a kind of Occam’s Razor has been applied to the ramshackle Babel of incompatible information systems that were a brake on efficiency, and were costing a fortune to reform. And in terms of workplace, the new model should be based on our model of an Extended Workplace, integrating all the physical locations with the Virtual Workplace. To a certain extent, the pandemic prompted thinking about how to do ‘business as unusual’. If we think from a blank slate of starting without buildings, this takes us a step further forward in rethinking optimal working practices. A primarily paperless bureaucracy, at least While a bureauless bureaucracy may seem a bit of a stretch, perhaps, how about a (primarily) paperless one? I think most of us have at the back if not at the front of our minds an image of civil servants as people whose raison d’être is to push lots of paper around, gathering information, shovelling it on to colleagues and eventually storing it in dusty files. We’re not sure why, but there will be many occasions in life where, baffled, we have to comply and fill in forms so that we can be efficiently regulated and taxed within some arcane and musty continuum. We have visions of this from Dickens through Kafka to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Bureaucrats need paper like fish need water.

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Or so it used to be. Paper-dependence has been, and often still is, a particular problem in the public sector. Most if not all public sector organisations in the UK have programmes in place to replace most paper processes with electronic ones, but the scale of the dependence is often so great that it seems initiatives barely make a dent in the problem. However, all the issues and solutions detailed in Chapters 6 and 8 apply equally to the public sector, and probably more urgently. Nothing tethers people to the office quite like the paper trail, and it is a major obstacle to effective Smart Working. Investment in digitising processes is essential to realise savings in storage and the real estate that hosts it. Often, however, programmes of digitisation are run in siloed programmes, and the link isn’t always made with changing working practices. When digitising existing processes or introducing new processes or digital services, there should always be consideration of what this could mean for changing working practices, in order to maximise the benefits and release greater value from the investment involved. Our next case study of HMRC highlights the benefits of this joined-up approach. For example, creating digital processes for citizens to apply online for driving licenses, for planning permission or to submit tax returns should get rid of paper almost entirely from the back office. So the workers who used to process the paper there can now, in effect, do it from anywhere. But it goes further than this. Having that information already in digital form eliminates a fair amount of routine clerical work. Further automation of the systems speeds up processing that was done before at human pace. Making the output and progress available to partners and citizens not only adds to transparency, but also will reduce the number of routine calls from people who wonder what is happening or who seek to find information. The concern may be that this will lead to job losses – and it might. But the argument for retaining wasteful practices in order to keep people employed is never a good one. Instead, it should be seen as an opportunity to move people towards higher value work in solving problems for citizens, analysing the data to extract more insights from it and to develop additional services. Priority also needs to be given to digitising processes that stand in the way of people adopting more mobile and effective ways of working. People working on the front line often have a good idea of where the fault lines are in terms of inefficient working practices, and can be engaged in the improvement process rather than having digitisation done to them.

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An imperative that affects many parts of the public sector is that to work effectively, there’s a need to work in partnership with other agencies and share information. This creates problems about data security and permissions, but it also highlights the need for greater flexibility in how information is handled and shared. Effective partnership working depends on sharing information and on creating common records, accessible by all parties. In cases of child abuse, for example, where doctors, police, social workers and educational welfare officers may all be involved, workers from each agency need to know about all the contacts that have been made with the family concerned. And they need to have that information at their fingertips, not wait for case meetings where they can hand paper to each other. There are security issues to address. But there are also opportunities for gains in efficiency and cooperation that must be taken. It’s about managing risk, not preventing effective activity. The goal has to be end-to-end online processes, enabling staff and customers to access all materials online, wherever and whenever they need to, in accordance with their needs and permissions to access them.

Case study: Smarter Working at HMRC His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has a vision to be a trusted, modern tax and customs department, and a digitally advanced organisation providing excellent customer service. The department has played a leading role in the digital revolution in UK government, and has become one of Europe’s leading digital tax authorities. This emphasis on digitisation has significant implications for where, when and how their employees work, and HMRC has taken major steps to modernise and transform ways of working in recent years. The journey into Smart Working began in 2015 with their Building the Future programme, which looked initially at modernising workplaces and technologies. It was soon realised that a more holistic approach was needed to bring everybody on board and to maximise the benefits and so there has been a strong emphasis on people and cultural change throughout the programme that developed.

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In 2018, HMRC piloted the new ways of working with 4,500 employees, fast-tracking the use of Microsoft Teams and Office 365. With some 58,000 staff in a wide range of roles, with two thirds working in customer service and compliance, it has been essential to ensure that the requirements of different areas of the business and the needs of service delivery are taken fully into account. The lessons learned from the pilots informed the Smarter Working programme that was launched in 2019. A Smarter Working Standard spells out what it means in practice. It’s summarised as: ‘A smarter HMRC is one where we work in the right place, at the right time, and in the right way for the task in hand.’ The key aims of the programme are to improve productivity and improve the employee experience. The Standard is supported by a Smarter Working Maturity Matrix that sets out expectations at four levels of progress: Emerging, Core, Advanced and Mature. This specifies what progress looks like, and provides a methodology for assessing achievement and identifying gaps. The evaluation covers the domains of People and Culture, Spaces and Places, and Tools and Technology. Assessment of maturity also takes into account the numbers of people who are successfully working smarter in each part of the business. This methodology reflects British Standards PAS 3000: Smart Working Code of Practice, which all government departments are mandated to comply with. It also provides the framework for a comprehensive and strategic programme bringing together the core functions to deliver the change. While the programme began before the pandemic, the experience gained during the lockdowns has made a difference to the development of the programme. ‘Over the pandemic, there was a big increase in digital capabilities,’ says Grant Smith, Smarter Working Lead. ‘It also opened people’s eyes to the value of the flexibility that’s available – both the workability of remote working and the benefits.’ The work undertaken before the pandemic certainly facilitated the move to remote working that was required. And, as with many organisations, it spurred an acceleration of interventions to support the new ways of working. Central to this has been a focus on leadership in the context of Hybrid Working and having a more distributed workforce. Through the pandemic, HMRC continued to build its suite of learning resources. This includes a

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Smarter Working toolkit and scenario-based learning modules, covering the skills needed, including key areas such as using the new digital technologies, having more effective meetings and focusing work on outcomes. Guidance on focusing on outcomes places a strong emphasis on setting clear goals and expectations, working collectively in a digital environment and ‘working out loud’ so everyone can see progress towards the specified outcomes. Encouraging teams and individuals to take responsibility for their ways of working is a central feature of the focus on outcomes and trusting colleagues to deliver them. The changes to workplaces are very substantial. In 2015, HMRC had some 58,000 employees working in 170 offices across the UK. These are being consolidated into 14 regional centres, dovetailing with the wider Government Hubs programme, so that HMRC workplaces can be used by other departments. The workplaces are designed to support Smart Working. There’s a range of activity-based settings for regular desk work, quiet spaces, informal and formal meetings. There’s a business event centre in each regional hub, with reconfigurable spaces and touchdown spaces and audio-visual capacity in all meeting spaces, with large screens. Many settings where people can gather round a screen also have cameras so people can join in remotely as well. There’s also an awareness that creating great places to work is about adapting culture and behaviours as much as physical changes to locations and layouts. Coming next is completion of the remaining regional centres, and more work on adapting spaces to tasks and digital upskilling as the new ways of working mature and new possibilities emerge.

Public services beyond offices There are, however, many types of government and public sector work that are not traditionally office based. People working in education, health services, the military, security services, justice and emergency services all have core activities that require the use of non-office premises, and where any offices have more of an ancillary function supporting the front-line activities.

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If we take the example of a police service, their non-office facilities will include custody facilities, evidence stores, firearms training and secure storage facilities, vehicle maintenance areas and so forth. Such areas for hands-on activity also require high security. Government, medical or military research establishments have a high need for security and containment. These require an approach to Smart Working that takes into account the different requirements for different kinds of work. Throughout the book we’ve emphasised how, although there are commonalities in the approach to many kinds of work activities, there really is no one-size-fits-all solution. In Chapters 5 and 6 we considered how Smart Working applies to people in hands-on and site-specific roles, when their locational flexibility is constrained by the nature of the tasks they do. Greater time-based flexibility can be part of the offer. This can help to support some of the work–life boundary issues that contribute to wellbeing. It can also help to attract a more diverse workforce. Modernisation of the way work is done is also part of the picture. Use of mobile IT helps to get access to information speedily, reducing time going to and from base buildings. Being able to touch down in different locations saves both business travel and possibly commuting travel. Use of CCTV and drone footage is also much more common, and this puts more of the work in office-type settings, with the potential to access data from other secure settings. One of the characteristics of modern defence agencies and research facilities is the need to work closely with a wide range of partners. These will include other agencies, industry partners and also, on the research side, universities. In the UK defence sector, projects will often be multinational partnerships. Projects may last many years, and long-term work relationships have to be built up across organisations. This may involve regular working at third-party sites as well as in one own’s own organisation’s premises. It may involve working out in the field together. Increasingly this involves working as virtual teams, at least for some of the time. An engineering company I worked with that worked on many defence contracts set up a base at one university that it collaborated closely with. This also had the advantage of bringing them closer to potential graduate recruits working in related fields. Virtual interaction also increases availability for rapid troubleshooting, wherever the issue is unfolding. Remote diagnostics is also increasingly important, and can be supported from multiple locations. And as cybersecurity becomes an increasingly

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important area for defence and policing, significant amounts of time and expertise are spent in high-level knowledge work that runs alongside the fieldwork and hands-on activities. As our case study of GCHQ (Chapter 8) shows, this means that the people involved can work from a variety of different locations, depending on the security level of the work they are doing at the time. Where hierarchy meets a trust-based culture We’ve emphasised the importance of developing a trust-based culture in Smart Working. It’s strongly linked with management by results, and facilitating much greater autonomy about how, where and when work is done. In uniformed and emergency services, there are strong hierarchical structures and essential lines of command. So how does a culture of trust apply in this kind of context? There are many time-critical incidents to deal with, the need to be available in case something urgent requires a response, and much of the work needs to be done in specific places. And people’s lives, both colleagues and citizens, may depend on doing what is required. More formal hierarchy, a strong disciplinary framework and the need for clear structures of accountability create a different context for the operation of Smart Working. However, it’s already fairly common in these sectors for more senior leaders to set the objectives and let designated teams and individuals take the lead on how to deliver those objectives, rather than have a rigid top-down command-andcontrol ethos. Smart Working builds out this ‘team of teams’ approach to enable greater decision-making, usually agreed at the team level, about the ways of working. Merseyside Police is currently implementing Smarter Working. Detective Inspector Tara Denn, the Digital Futures Project Lead who manages the programme, told me how trust really plays out in an operational context: Trust can vary throughout the day, according to what you are doing. You can’t leave an inexperienced officer in a complex situation to make their own decision without guidance. But it’s not all about seniority. The expert in an operational situation could well be a constable. Officers at a senior rank will often trust in their professional expertise to assist in decision making, for example of a firearms officer, or relying on information from a surveillance or covert team. It’s about role, not rank. Having empowered teams – it pretty much does already work like that14.

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So while there is hierarchy, trust is exercised appropriate to the context and the skills of the people and teams involved. On the same principles, it should be possible to empower officers to exercise more choice about where work takes place, within the operational constraints of the work. Where this doesn’t happen, it can often be down to traditional attitudes on the part of some leaders. Former Scotland Yard Detective Inspector Steve Keogh, author of Murder Investigation Team: How Killers Are Really Caught15, says that in his experience: It depends on the attitude of who’s running a team. It comes down to the leadership – at times it can be more informal, at other times it needs to be authoritarian. A lot of work now is computer-based, and could be done from different locations. And it’s easier to concentrate at home, away from the distractions and banter of the office. But the issue of trust remains, that everything that should be done will be done. Detective Sergeants will usually monitor that the work is done in a murder team. But there are limitations with the technology and various systems that don’t join up, which may make it harder to monitor when people are in different places16. So the issue of trust also interfaces with the maturity of the Virtual Workplace, and people’s experience in working with it. In some ways, police forces should have a head start in managing by results. The processes for recording every step of an investigation in order to build a robust case for a successful prosecution is wellestablished. And as we’ve seen in earlier chapters, the flip side of managing by results is having a culture of trust, and that trust has to fit into a framework of accountability, which may differ depending on the nature of the services involved. Government hubs and coworking We’ve seen how the UK central Government Hubs programme has become central to its property strategy. Other national governments around the world are doing similar, and so are government bodies at regional and local level too. The government of British Columbia in Canada has been active in modernising ways of working for more than a decade, and has also been setting up hubs for civil servants designed around coworking principles and activity-based work environments. Our next case study shows how its ShareSpace programme has delivered an impressive range of measured benefits.

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Case study: Government of British Columbia’s ‘ShareSpace’ One provincial government that has taken a proactive approach to shared government workspace is the Government of British Columbia in Canada. Its Real Property Division’s ShareSpace programme is developing a network of hubs designed on a coworking model, so that employees can work at a base nearer to home. The programme builds on its Leading Workplace Strategies corporate programme that started nearly a decade before the pandemic. This envisaged remodelling buildings to support greater flexibility and better collaboration in workplaces. The strategy included deploying new IT tools and infrastructure for mobility. This put the government in a strong position for the transition to homeworking in 2020–2022. The strategy always envisaged a hybrid approach that involved downsizing the property portfolio while significantly upgrading facilities and ensuring buildings had a better environmental performance. To date there has been a reduction of 62,000 m2 of office space, and has involved dropping 70 leases. The workplace strategy team has developed a playbook, called Blueprint: Transforming Office Space Design in British Columbia’s Public Service. This sets out the strategy, the building blocks of activity-based design, how these relate to choices of workstyle and how the various work settings are best used. The team has also developed a sophisticated online tool for scenario planning. This can factor in variations and choices of ways of working: for example, if remote working increases, how much the balance between ‘workpoints’ for individual work and collaboration space needs to change. Coming out of the pandemic, the appetite for working flexibly has remained strong, with 82% of employees wanting the ability to work remotely for at least part of the week. Workspace booking software allows users to search in advance for available workpoints and find best-fit meeting spaces to coordinate with team colleagues, or they can reserve a space by scanning a QR code on arrival. A digital pass card on their smartphone allows them to gain access to any building on arrival.

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According to Rob Macdonald, Director, Workplace Strategies and Planning, Our ShareSpace programme has already proven to be a viable strategy, an opportunity for government to utilise its office-based portfolio more efficiently and provide a new choice for employees to best support flexible and hybrid work styles. This initiative was driven by several innovation goals with overlapping triple-bottom-line outcomes. These include strengthening productivity by enabling flexibility and choice in how and where work happens, introducing activity-based office design that better utilises space and reduces real estate costs, reducing government’s environmental impact by enabling less commuting, increasing employee engagement and the attraction and retention of talent, advancing a regional hiring culture in the organisation and providing more equitable access to modern upgraded workspace. The programme has 12 years of data to work from in evaluating results. Engagement surveys show the new workplaces outperforming the old workplaces on every measure. The environmental impacts are also impressive. With the reduction of the office footprint and modernisation of buildings there has been an annual saving of 1 million tonnes of CO2, mainly derived from reduced heating and electricity use. Avoided travel has resulted in 3,100 fewer car trips, a reduction of an estimated 31.3 tonnes of CO2. The ShareSpace programme provides an example of space-as-a-service in the government sector. It has required the development of a new role, the community manager. Each location has a community manager run from a central team, providing concierge services and facility oversight, administration to ensure space is working well, and welcoming new members. The community manager also encourages adopting of the space etiquette and takes the lead in preventing any territoriality developing. A user satisfaction survey in 2022 found 95% of regular users agree that ShareSpace provides a desirable alternative to working from home or an administrative location.

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The Federal Buildings Agency in Belgium has also been developing coworking as part of an overall strategy to create better working environments, support flexibility and choice and decentralise civil service roles and opportunities. The growth of home-based working has provided a major opportunity to both reduce the amount of government office floorspace by around a million m2, saving the taxpayer money, and increasing occupancy rates in modernised environments17. In Finland the government has a substantial track record of having offices with activity-based work settings designed for more flexibility and mobility. Senaatti (Senate properties), the government’s specialist property partner, has been rolling out attractive government coworking hubs shared by civil servants across departments for some years now18. We could run through a long list now of other countries doing similar, at national, regional or local levels. Some are quite basic in their provision of facilities, others closer to the higher-quality coworking centres in the private sector. The main advantages are in providing a professional space with shorter journeys to a collective workplace for employees, saving costs overall, bringing people together from different agencies or public sector organisations, providing good facilities for collaborative activities and, in some cases, stimulating local economic activity. In the following sections, we’ll explore some other novel features of decentralising public sector work and sharing space in local areas. Sharing space with other local services As in some other countries with smaller communities spread across mainly rural areas, in Scotland the interest in developing local hubs has been strong. The potential benefits for creating work and extending public services in local communities are strong drivers. There, too, there is a growing emphasis on co-location of different public services. An interesting case is that of Police Scotland, which has involved both consolidation of regional police services across the nation into a single force while at the same time operating on a more distributed basis, sharing space with local partners19. Close working with other public services, for example police, social services, education, housing and health services, provides the basis for early intervention to support vulnerable people and address social problems that cut across the statutory responsibilities of different services. This is also one of the drivers for the One Public Estate programme in England and Wales.

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One might argue that with Smart Working there isn’t actually a need for colocation: the potential to work together without being in the same place should be greatly enhanced in any case. In principle that is true. Services that don’t work in the same place can also work much more effectively together. However, there are advantages for knowledge sharing, for understanding the demands and ways of working of partner services and for responding together in person when needed. It can also be a more efficient use of taxpayers’ money, by not multiplying premises unnecessarily. By working together in a more streamlined way as partners, it can also release more time for officers to work out in the field with the people they support. Why not share areas of government buildings with the public for working? There are plenty of examples around the world where local government buildings also have public uses, such as for libraries, recreational facilities and other community facilities. Income is often generated by having shops on the ground floor of public buildings. Having shared work areas within a government building for members of the public, however, is still comparatively rare. There are basically two ways this can work. Either by creating standalone coworking spaces to be used by both the public and government employees, or using space within larger government buildings where both public employees and members of the public can work. Let’s think through some of the potential uses and benefits: • Finding new uses for public buildings in smaller communities, which might otherwise become redundant • Retaining touchdown facilities for public employees and as a base for delivering public services … • … while creating opportunities for local employment creation • Providing settings for developing closer relationships, e.g. between local enterprises or start-ups and economic regeneration teams • Enabling local enterprises to develop without taking on fixed overheads from having dedicated premises • Creating coworking spaces with specific target groups in mind, e.g. women, other excluded groups or specific sectors (see Chapter 7)

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• Acting as a focus for stimulating local home-based businesses, especially useful in areas of deprivation or low self-employment • Providing flexible spaces for local social enterprises or charities, especially those that work closely with the public sector • Providing a base, or network of bases, for elected members to work from and meet both officials and the public, without having to travel to a civic headquarters building • Creating an income stream through coworking membership, or renting out the space to a commercial coworking/flexible officing provider. Bringing services closer to citizens Concerns are often raised by government officials dealing directly with citizens in need of support who do not have access to the Internet or use computers or smartphones. Sometimes this can be used as an argument by people who want to put the brakes on programmes of change. Rather than simply retaining the old ways of doing things on a limited basis as exceptions, it’s worth thinking how greater mobility can actually bring government services closer for those who need it. This can be by having officers visit people and helping them fill in the necessary forms online. Or it could be by having services within local hubs operated more on a modern retail basis, where front-line staff can help people who need to or prefer to speak to a human. This is part of the concept of the Extended Workplace: work is decentralised and takes place at the most appropriate place and time. It’s also a way to overcome the digital divide, without necessarily creating paper-based alternatives or requiring citizens to travel into physical buildings. Flexing hours of operation We know that many employees want to vary their times of working. We also know that there are campaigns, often supported by public sector unions, for shorter working weeks, and some governments are actively taking this forward. A 4-day week with 3-day weekends raises the prospect of property lying unused (or mostly unused) for 3 days per week. That’s not sustainable financially or as a real estate strategy.

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It’s also the case that the hours of operation for many government services create problems for people who work at the same hours, or for more hours, than government offices are open. So over time, is there a prospect for government employees working (say) 4-day weeks, to stagger their working hours over longer hours of operation throughout the whole week, based out of (much) smaller offices and other locations across the Extended Workplace? This is probably a contentious suggestion for many. But we are happy to expect workers in shops and leisure services to work into the evening and at weekends, and our utilities to run 24/7 with extended hours of support. In many ways, this would just be to adopt working practices that are common and uncontentious in other sectors. Of course the other way to access government services ‘out of hours’ is online. This largely relies on self-help processes. But there are always occasions when people do actually need to talk to a human. At the moment, hours of operation of government services are generally optimised for the unemployed and retired, and in effect discriminate against the time-poor working population in terms of access. I’m aware there may well be existing negotiated agreements about hours of working, extra pay for unsocial hours, etc., but hopefully there is food for thought here and a debate worth having. And it may actually dovetail well with many employees’ aspirations to be able to vary their working hours and locations too. Legislators need to get with the programme too Despite the progress being made by government employees in working smarter, elected politicians seem to live in a somewhat different world. This is despite the experience during the lockdown of working from home, and having some aspects of the political process carried out virtually. My own observation is that the closer one gets to the political or parliamentary processes, the more working practices go back in time. This is not just to the 20th century, but even earlier centuries too. This is not a party-political observation, but tends to apply across the board for politicians and their immediate staff. Part of this has to do with the association of certain places with status, power and influence. There’s also often a highly reactive culture. Sometimes this is one of barely suppressed panic, demanding instant face-to-face meetings and corridor conversations, even when calmer heads would deal with things more systematically – and probably by a phone call or ad hoc video meeting. It can be done.

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At the same time, there seems to be something of a consensus across much of the Western world that government is not working well. Many of the things the public find disagreeable, such as boorish behaviour in debates, are grounded in a potentially toxic culture of having to be physically present in a Place of Status and to behave in a way that is conventional for that Place. Most of all, voters feel an increasing disconnect between their representatives and themselves. There’s a backlash against people who are seen as a privileged ‘elite’, who are characterised as self-serving and out of touch. The view is widespread but, in my opinion, unfair. Most of the politicians I’ve met I’d actually describe as thoughtful and well-motivated. But I think the archaic ways of working tend towards dysfunctional outcomes. So what can be done about this? It’s time to turn things round. Elected representatives, from presidents and prime ministers down to humble backbenchers and local councillors, need to work smarter. It will lead to more effective government and a better return for the taxpayer. In the age of the Internet, governing processes and elected politicians can operate from anywhere, and work on a much more distributed basis. The changing nature of work means that: • Interaction with civil servants, aides and other officials need not be physically face-to-face – elected representatives should rethink their roles as being a part of various overlapping virtual teams, according to their responsibilities • Committee work and reviewing or preparing legislation and regulatory decisions should by default take part through modern conferencing and collaboration techniques, enabling virtual and hybrid virtual/physical meetings • Travel for meetings can be radically reduced, and the need for second homes close to the seat of power largely eliminated, leading to savings on expenses and improved work–life balance for legislators • Elected representatives should be able to take part in votes and debates from wherever they happen to be as a matter of course • Work can be carried out from home, constituency offices or in any of the myriad government and local government premises in the local area – and from wherever politicians happen to be working at the time • The culture and etiquette of meetings and debates should provide equality for remote participants

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• Briefings, policy development and communications with officials should become entirely paperless. Many politicians do already use the new technologies to work in different places, though usually not for core governing activities. They are often also very active in using social media for campaigning and PR. The challenge is to extend those smarter and more footloose working practices to the heart of how we are governed and how we are represented. And we may find, paradoxically, that by politicians working ‘remotely’, government becomes less remote. Smarter public policy for the new world of work We’ve looked at the potential benefits for government and other public sector organisations, with their employees and elected members working smarter. Now we’ll look at the other key area where government has a role to play as regards Smart Working: making public policy. Too much policy thinking across the political spectrum and the world of thinktanks and academia is still based on unquestioned assumptions from the Industrial Era about the place of work in society as a whole. In particular, there are some entrenched assumptions that cut across many areas of policy: • The necessary separation of homes and work into separate locations • A dominant employment model of continuous working after education through to a fixed point of retirement, i.e. work and non-work having a strict temporal separation within a lifetime • An expectation of being an employee as being the dominant form of economic activity over a lifetime (rather than a freelancer or one’s own boss). All these need to be challenged and deconstructed in the context of a fast-changing world. It’s not only the possibilities of Smart and Flexible Working that make the difference. It’s also the interplay of the new possibilities for working with all the other trends we mentioned in Chapter 2, such as the impact of artificial intelligence, robotics and new areas of work, an ageing demographic, a more inclusive workforce with its democratisation of aspiration and the increasingly blurred boundary between work, learning and the rest of life.

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So we need to get beyond gently tweaking yesterday’s policies and instead think strategically for the longer term. In the end, we either let the future happen to us, or we attempt to shape the future to what we think is desirable. The first question we need to ask is what would be good outcomes in this rapidly changing world of work? The following are aims for a future society that I believe would have wide support, and which can embrace current and emerging changes to the nature of work: • Realign economic activity in the context of increased automation, artificial intelligence and robotics, so people can keep earning a living • Enable work to be carried out with reduced environmental costs • Enable more work to be carried out locally, and rebuild local economies • Reduce the need to travel for work • Support greater flexibility in our careers over probably longer lifespans (e.g. flexing between periods of intensive and less intensive work; between employment and self-employment or starting a business; taking time to devote to caring or learning new skills) • Provide homes that support economic activity through all stages of life • Support opportunities for more meaningful work • Have the security to underpin greater choices in work and life • Embed greater resilience in the economy, so people can continue working at times of future disruption due to pandemics or other emergencies. Unfortunately, current policies and mindset-lags stand in the way of delivering on these aims. We have to change, and fast. What policies need to change? There’s a range of public policy areas where Industrial Age assumptions are baked in, and which shape the ways we work and live. These include policies for economic development, housing, planning, infrastructure, transport, taxation, financial services, benefits, education and skills20. Recognising the new potential to decentralise work, reduce the need to travel and carry out more work in the local community or at home, coupled with the changing nature of work and changing demographics, the following is a summary of policy that needs to be addressed:

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Economic development: large-scale inward investment bringing thousands of jobs will be increasingly rare. However, there is greater potential now to generate local and home-based economic activity. So policy needs to encourage the development of self-employment and small enterprises based at home or in local shared working centres. This is an important consideration for deindustrialised areas, or areas potentially facing a new wave of economic change as a result of Industry 4.0. Housing: policy needs to focus not just on the number of homes built and their affordability, but on the changing use of homes, especially for work. Greater variety in design needs to be promoted and supported in policy and standards, as per the outline presented in Chapter 12 on homeworking. This should be linked to support for ‘lifetime homes’, that can support changing use over longer lives as people move between, or blend, periods of employment, self-employment, learning, caring and leisure. This may require a greater proportion of homes to be larger, with space for specialised work uses. Planning: the default separation of home and work uses should be ended, with a flexible approach to having work uses in or alongside residential space. A significant proportion of homes in new settlements should be designed as workhomes, with a range of different designs and facilities to support different kinds of businesses. There’s a need to adopt smarter approaches to housing density, as current approaches to high density with ever smaller units and room sizes are at odds with the changing nature of work. Home-based work and local coworking should be at the heart of proposed walkable or ‘15 minute’ neighbourhoods. And policy should support a mix of home-based working and service provision as a key element of regeneration strategies, to provide a dynamic mix for local economic activity and growth. Infrastructure: the emerging world of work requires excellent communications infrastructure. That means rolling out ubiquitous, superfast broadband and mobile telecommunications. This may be expensive, but it is not as expensive as building physical transport infrastructure such as motorways and high-speed rail to support high volumes of commuting. This technology infrastructure carries economic activity and innovation in a very direct and efficient way. This requires universal fast fibre to every home and business, and involves recognising that home users are producers as well as consumers – so upload bandwidth needs to be much greater than is currently the norm, and at affordable rates.

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Transport: virtual mobility (i.e. carrying out activities that previously would have required travel but without travelling) significantly reduces travel. So the principles of virtual mobility (see Chapter 15) should move to centre stage in transport policy. Transport planning assumptions and policies about the infrastructure needed for commuting should be reviewed when development maximising home and local working reduce the need to commute. Costs saved can be, in part, used to support the communications infrastructure. Taxation, financial services and social security: the structures of taxation, benefits and financial services (e.g. having a mortgage, contributing to pension schemes) are all based around the expectations of being continuously in employment. This is no longer fit-for-purpose in the emerging world of work. One of the key issues here is the need to have financial security through periods of transition. Taxation policies and regulations need to be reviewed to make it easier to move between spells of employment and self-employment. Business rates should be replaced, with businesses taxed on profits rather than the rateable value of land occupied. Regulators should require providers of financial services (e.g. mortgages, pensions, insurance) to develop new products that enable variations in payment terms, without penalties, according to changes in income at different stages of life. Benefits and grants should be made available to individuals, to support periods of reskilling or developing new enterprises, so people can maintain household income during defined periods of change, without registering as unemployed and being required to seek employed work. Education and skills: Education during the Industrial Era has generally been conceived as something that mostly takes place as an initial stage preceding a career. As the world changes rapidly and people both live longer and work for longer, there needs to be more focus on educational opportunities being available throughout the whole of a multi-stage career. Discussions of the future often focus on the need for more opportunities to develop the technology skills and expertise to thrive in a world of AI and robotics. While this is true, the focus needs to be wider. The retraining for which there is demand encompasses the growth areas of health care and education, as well as more traditional industries which provide increasing amounts of employment and self-employment. And people need the business skills in all the areas in which they want to realise their dream of setting up an enterprise. This requires adequate funding for training across the life-course, and incentivising institutions to run courses appropriate for an increased number of more mature learners with appropriate credits for their existing skills and experience.

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There are many interlinkages between the different areas of proposed policy change. The changes proposed here to economic development, planning, transport and housing are strongly connected, as are the changes proposed for taxation and benefits on the one hand and education and skills on the other. So it’s important to take a holistic approach, and avoid addressing policy modernisation in separate department-based silos. These proposals don’t have all the answers, for sure – but I hope they can contribute to a meaningful conversation about what good looks like for 21st century working, and what needs to change so we can embrace the future of work to deliver positive benefits. Notes 1 The local authorities involved were Cambridgeshire, Wiltshire and Shropshire County Councils, Birmingham City Council and Fife Council. 2 Tim Allen et al. (2004), Working Without Walls – An Insight into the Transforming Government Workplace. Office of Government Commerce. 3 Bridget Workman et al. (2008), Working Beyond Walls: The Government Workplace as an Agent of Change. DEGW & Office of Government Commerce. 4 In 2012, a major UK Civil Service Reform initiative called for the ‘creation of modern workplaces, enabling flexible working’. The response was The Way We Work (TW3), the initial campaign to promote smarter working throughout the UK Civil Service. The subsequent 2013 guide, The Way We Work: Smart Working in Government has been superseded by PAS 3000, but for historic interest is available at www.flexibility.co.uk 5 PAS 3000 (2015): Smart Working Code of Practice. British Standards Institution. https://knowledge.bsigroup.com/products/smart-working-code-of-practice/ standard 6 Cited in Andy Lake (2016), Smart Flexibility: Moving Smart and Flexible Working from Theory to Practice. Routledge, p. 220. 7 In conversation with the author. 8 In conversation with the author. 9 In conversation with the author. 10 Andy Lake (2015), The Smart Working Handbook. 2nd edition. Flexibility.co.uk. https://flexibility.co.uk/publications/ 11 Andy Lake (2016), Smart Flexibility: Moving Smart and Flexible Working from Theory to Practice. Routledge.

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12 The Leesman Index is an independent benchmarking tool for measuring employee sentiment and assessing the performance of offices and homes for working. Leesman+ refers to the highest performing set of organisations in the index. www.leesmanindex.com/ 13 In conversation with the author. The information and views set out in this case study are those of the author, based on an interview, and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the European Commission. 14 In conversation with the author. 15 Steve Keogh (2022), Murder Investigation Team: How Killers Are Really Caught. John Blake Publishing. Further information at https://murderacademy.com/ 16 In conversation with the author. 17 From a presentation to the Scottish Futures Trust by Evi van der Smissen of the Belgian Federal Buildings Agency (March 2022) on its satellite offices and coworking spaces programmes. 18 Further information about Finnish government and Defence Administration coworking spaces and other activity-based premises can be found on Senaatti’s website at www.senaatti.fi/en/coworking-spaces/ 19 A Scottish Futures Trust video of the Police Scotland experience and its partnership work with Clackmannanshire Council is available at https:// vimeo.com/799755925. An outline of the STRIVE project can be found at www.clacks.gov.uk/council/press/?release=4475 20 A more detailed exploration of these areas of policy is available on the Flexibility website, Rethinking Public Policy to Embrace 21st Century Working (February 2021), at https://flexibility.co.uk/rethinking-public-policy-toembrace-21st-century-working/

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Chapter Fifteen Smart Working and sustainability

Overview In this chapter I will be taking you beyond wishful thinking about the environmental impacts and benefits of Smart Working. We have to acknowledge at the outset that the impacts are complex. They vary greatly according to individual circumstances and, crucially, according to the nature of the implementation. My aim here is to offer a practical approach where decisions can be taken that will integrate sustainability benefits into decisions about changing the way your organisation works. It’s not rocket science, really. It’s a question of taking decisions with a conscious awareness of the impacts, and encouraging maximal uptake of options that reduce the adverse energy, resource consumption and ecological impacts of our working practices. Beyond that, in the later part of the chapter, I will offer some thoughts on the wider impacts on work and society, and how the new ways of working can be leveraged to create a more sustainable world. Smart Working and sustainability – the theory The environmental benefits of Smart Working come in three main areas: • Reducing the amount of workspace needed by each worker, and therefore resources required to build and service the space. Aggregated, this means over time a reduced requirement for society to build more offices

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• Reducing the amount of travel of each worker – both commuting travel and business travel • Dematerialising processes and products – doing things electronically rather than physically. In Chapters 6 and 7 we looked in detail at the potential for reducing space, travel and paper. The question is, by how much? In the following sections I will attempt to put some numbers on what can be achieved, and examine the factors that make a difference. Adopting an environment-intentional approach The choices we make, as both organisations and individuals, about where, when and how to work have environmental impacts. Figure 15.1 sets out four areas where organisations and individuals have different levels of control: the organisation’s collective workplace(s), the individual’s home (and other personal spaces), transport choices and options for using other people’s spaces (both commercial and public spaces).

Third spaces

Transport

Organisaon’s workplaces

Home

Energy consumpon Embodied energy Energy source Ecological impact

Figure 15.1: Areas of environmental impacts.

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For a total assessment of impacts, we need to take into account energy consumption, embodied energy in buildings and other assets, the source of the energy (e.g. renewable or fossil-fuel) and the ecological impacts. Some of the potential impacts relate directly to changes brought about by Smart Working, while others will form part of a wider approach to sustainability. We also need to note that some elements are more under the control of the organisation or individual employees than others. For example, the embodied energy and energy consumption of third-party spaces is less under the control of the organisation than are their own workspaces. But these can be factors to take into account when making choices of where to work and which third-party space operators to use. The essential question to ask is, ‘Who has responsibility for targeting each area of environmental impact?’ Research into the environmental impacts of work often seeks to take a wideranging view of impacts that encompass a multitude of ‘what-ifs’. For example, in research into the transport impacts of homeworking/teleworking, there is a lot of speculation about ‘rebound effects’ that may erode possible benefits. These include other people driving more, taking advantage of less congested roads or people moving further from their place of work and ending up with longer commuting journeys. There really isn’t a lot of solid data around such rebound impacts – in the research it’s more a question of ‘snowball citation’ of past papers that speculate on these issues. For a practical approach, the key is to target what is within your reach. As an organisation, you can make a real difference by enabling people to commute less and by reducing business travel. One has to accept not having much control over where people live, but one does have a say in how often they are required to be in the office in person. You don’t have control over whether other members of an employee’s family use a car more instead – that’s the responsibility of the employee and their family. You don’t have control over whether an employee’s home is poorly insulated. You have no control at all over who else might use any vacated roadspace – that’s the responsibility of the appropriate transportation authority and how they approach travel demand management. An organisation can advise and raise awareness, but it is down to others to do their part as well. Environmental benefits from real estate reduction The carbon cost of office space is around 90 kg CO2e (CO2 equivalent) per square metre per year. If we take a fairly dense layout of 10 m2 per person, that comes to

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around 1 metric tonne per person per year1. In practice, traditional offices are more likely to have more in the region of 14 m2 per person. There will also of course be different levels of environmental performance in offices as well. Some researchers assess the carbon footprint per person as being across a wider range of 1–4 tonnes of CO2 per person. So as we’ve stressed throughout the preceding chapters, average figures are useful, but we need to pay attention to the range if we want to address the full scope of impacts in a practical way. We also need to take account of embodied carbon in construction and the facilities installed to make the building operational. This has been calculated as being equivalent to the environmental impact of between 5 and 10 years of annual operation2. Cleaning up the environmental performance of commercial buildings is very high on the agenda of leading developers, landlords, occupiers and the FM industry. It’s a dominant theme of publications, research and conference topics in the workplace industry. There’s a lot going on that doesn’t necessarily involve Smart Working, though a recent study still found that many companies have no strategies to make this happen3. So, on the real estate front, how does Smart Working make a difference? The ability to work in multiple locations across the Extended Workplace on an intentional basis (i.e. choosing the most appropriate place for the tasks involved) creates the opportunity to work with a smaller property footprint. Potentially a much smaller footprint, reducing to no owned footprint at all for virtual companies. A target of ‘50% of the real estate with double the quality’ is generally achievable for offices. For organisations with a lot of hands-on work, it will depend on the nature of what they do, and the balance of different kinds of spaces in their overall portfolio. Monitoring occupancy is important for understanding how space is used, and how it isn’t used as well. Unused and underused space (usually desk space in traditional workplaces) has an environmental cost as well as a financial cost. Monitoring occupancy is not enough, but should be the starting point for beginning or revisiting serious conversations about where people work and how processes can be improved to enable work to be done in optimal ways and optimal locations – getting people to think with their innovation hats on. Reshaping spaces for unchanged ways of working will not deliver great results – and will have an environmental cost too. The options are, of course, impacted by addressing the need to travel, which we will take a close look at later in this chapter.

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What about the environmental footprint of homeworking? Comparing the environmental impacts of homeworking with the environmental impacts of office working has a long history, and there has been an increase in focus on this binary choice since 2020. One of the questions underlying the comparison is the reasonable one of asking, ‘Aren’t we just displacing the environmental impacts from one place to another – and possibly at a cost to the employee rather than the employer?’ To some extent the impacts and costs are indeed transferred from organisationowned premises to the individual. The further question is about the benefits or disbenefits of doing so. For the environmental benefits or otherwise, we need to start by looking at how homes on average perform. Needless to say, there is a large variation, depending on the nature of the home’s work setting and the environmental performance of the home overall. Moving from a modern eco-office to a draughty cottage with poor insulation is almost certainly going to generate a negative comparison, unless you’re a hardy soul who’s happy to wear many layers with hat and scarf plus fingerless gloves for keyboard work in winter. On average, however, study after study has found a positive impact comparing the use of a home office to working in a traditional office. A typical study from pre-pandemic times by David Banister at the Transport Studies Unit of Oxford University analysed data to find a ‘full costings approach’. The study calculated that a room at home used for working with a computer and telephone has a carbon cost of 865 kg CO2 per year (based on 5 days per week working at home). In the study, that was around half the carbon cost of a space in the office, in the case of a better performing office. Of course, the saving is only realised if there are consequent reductions in office space. At 1 day per week, Banister found the CO2 reduction negligible – the benefit depends on how many people are doing it and how often4. Similarly, work by Professor Peter James of Bradford University over a number of years concluded that: Calculating the carbon impacts of homeworking is difficult, and is always likely to vary between individuals, and over time. It is almost certain that, at worst, homeworking is carbon neutral … It is highly likely that, in most circumstances, homeworking is positive in carbon terms, and often

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considerably so. This is particularly the case where home-based working is full-time or for the majority of the week, and where there is no permanent alternative office building.5 Essentially, we’ve had credible research about the relative impacts for two decades, but it hasn’t been a sufficient motivator for many organisations to implement change. More recent studies support this overall picture. A study by the Carbon Trust in 2014 found that ‘By working from home two days a week for a year, an average UK employee can save 390 kg C02e, 50 hours commuting time and £450 including travel costs (modelling based on DECC/Defra emission factors and travel survey data)’6. Scale up those 2 days to 5, and we have a very similar figure to the earlier studies. A further study by the Carbon Trust with Vodafone in 2021 found the overall carbon saving during the pandemic (with 5 days per week homeworking) to be 889 kg CO2 per homeworker in the UK – a figure again very close to the figure cited by Banister, Newson and Ledbury in the 2007 study cited in note 4. This study also notes the difference across several countries. In Italy, the figure is 1.8 tonnes CO2 per homeworker, with much of the comparative additional saving put down to poor environmental performance of Italian offices7. A 2021 study by the University of Exeter Centre for Energy and the Environment found that: with the assumptions made, homeworking will typically result in savings in greenhouse gases when compared to office working … The average savings (based on the base case) are in the region of 2 tonnes CO2e per year [per person homeworking]. The most significant variables at present are the commuting mode and distance, though as transport shifts to electric vehicles powered by a low carbon electricity network, these absolute emissions will decrease.8 This study examines a variety of scenarios, and provides upper and lower limits across a range of variables. Aside from travel, it found home emissions to be lower on average than office emissions, at 1.3 kg CO2 per day being just under a third of the per capita office emissions. Two thirds of the carbon footprint of office working derives from commuting, a finding broadly in line with other studies. With a daily carbon cost of 7.1 kg CO2

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(based on a 10-mile commute trip), the savings considerably outweigh any additional impacts from home energy use. A study with an interesting methodology by engineering consultancy WSP found a significant advantage for homeworking when only the home office was heated rather than heating the whole home. It’s an example where the assumptions that feed into calculations impact the results, with a footprint of 9 m2 in the corporate office, with a low carbon impact of 0.5 tonne per year to go with it, compared to a relatively palatial 20 m2 per home office. On the basis of this, their recommendation, which made a few headlines, was to work at home in the summer and in the office in winter. The snag to that (apart from the imbalance in the input figures) is that the space for everyone to work in the office in winter therefore has to be retained all year round, with all the associated financial and environmental costs9. But there are some valid points made about the varying circumstances including differences across seasons. We can also look at the impacts of whether offices and homes have air-conditioning or not, and this is a factor that varies across geographies. And we should note the case to be made for having a separate means of heating the home workplace rather than the whole house. A well-insulated garden office or annex looks to be a good option to achieve this, as well as from the perspective of privacy and acoustic separation. Reducing travel – commuting trips We should note at the outset that in the UK there has been a significant decline in the number of commuting journeys since the 1980s. This is despite a steady increase in both the total population and the employed workforce. An average 7.1 journeys per week in 1988/1992 has declined to 5.7 per week in 2013/2014. A further analysis of the National Travel Survey in 2019 found a decline of 9% in the number of commuting trips between 2002 and 201810. The Department for Transport associates this, in part, with the growth of Flexible Working, homeworking and working in several places but not having a fixed location of work11. And we have noted earlier the growth of home-based work and part-time work over these decades before the pandemic. A similar decline has been noted in the USA, with a 4% decline in the number of commuting journeys. Typically, between a half and three quarters of an individual’s environmental footprint of work relates to transport energy. The biggest part of this for most employees is commuting.

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The average roundtrip to work in England and Wales in 2019 was 17.4 miles (28 km), taking an average hour and 2 minutes. There are wide variations for individuals. People in the top 20% of earnings travel up to eight times further per year than those in the lowest 20%, as well as making many more trips (mainly because they are much less likely to work part-time). People travelling by rail generally travel further, and especially those who travel to London. We have seen that there are very significant savings to be made, depending on the length of the journey, frequency of avoiding the journey and the mode of travel. But we have to balance that with the needs of the work. Every day working from home eliminates 20% of weekly commuting travel. The 20% reduction also applies to working a compressed working week, or any other version of a 4-day week. Some people working a compressed week – which is more common in hands-on or site-specific work – may have to travel those 4 days, but not the 5th. However, these different forms of flexibility can be combined as well: 4-day weeks can also include days worked at home, as can parttime work. The principles are the same: to analyse the nature of the tasks involved, and make decisions in line with the guidance in Chapter 5. While the focus is typically on home-based working, we should also note that all time-based flexibilities also have spatial and mobility impacts. When you flex the times of work, you also affect how space is used and mobility between spaces. For example, someone makes a simple change to their pattern of work from a regular 9–5, instead starting at 10 in the morning, and leaving at 6. Their motivation is a) to miss the worst of the morning and evening commutes, b) to be available to take their child to school and c) from a work point of view, as a manager they want to have a clear time after most people have gone home to get on with work uninterrupted. What are the impacts of this? Spatially, it gives a chance to use the office more effectively after 4 o’clock when occupancy declines rapidly. The office is being used differently – this is the basic spatial impact. The environmental impact may be minimal in the case of one person making the change. But by shifting the times of work for more people, some spikes in occupation can be levelled out. Set against a background of reduced overall office provision, the cumulative impacts will be significant. Travel to work will also be different. By creating a clearer commute journey, it reduces the time and energy used, with less time spent in congested traffic. It also in this case creates an opportunity for different activity, accompanying a child to school, possibly on foot.

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From the mid-1990s for a decade and a half, I was involved in numerous projects looking at the impacts of new ways of working on transport. This included several projects for the UK Department for Transport (DfT) as well as European projects directed at future transport policy. Work for the DfT involved assessing more than 100 studies in teleworking, teleconferencing and ecommerce that looked at the impacts on transport, continuing to monitor new studies as they came on stream, as well as providing policy recommendations. The findings and recommendations were incorporated into the UK government’s Smarter Choices programme in 2005 and then in 2012 into the Alternatives to Transport initiative that was associated with the London Olympics. Teleworking was coming of age as a travel demand management measure. Studies that looked at the direct effect of teleworking (that is, when transport impacts of an actual implementation of teleworking were measured, or using national travel surveys that use travel diaries and interviews) invariably showed a net decrease in travel. And we’re finding similar impacts in more recent studies too. In sum, it is found that home-based working: • Reduces the number of commuting trips: people with longer or more difficult journeys are more likely to be early adopters • Reduces business travel – either through using technology for meetings, or being able to go straight to business meetings without first going to the office • More often than not, in the small number of studies that measured it, reduces overall household travel, including reduced trips by other members of the household • Can increase the number of shorter, local trips – but these are more likely to be by walking or cycling than previously12 • Can change travel behaviour between household members, e.g. changes in who does escort duties, taking children to and from school, changes in who does the shopping and where • Overall, reduces transport energy and emissions. As always, there are variations relating to circumstances – household composition, nature of the travel-to-work journey, local communications infrastructure, and availability of local services being identified factors. We should note also that amongst employees working from home there has been a gradual equalising process over the decades. The most frequent teleworkers have

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tended to be more senior in an organisation, with higher educational qualifications and more likely to be male. Seniority correlates with higher income, so a) they are more likely to have space at home to work and b) have greater choice about where they live, and tend to live further from their organisational place of work. With the experience of large-scale homeworking through the pandemic, many of the entry barriers have dissolved. What this means is that length of commuting journeys will tend towards the average distance travelled for people who have tasks they can do from home. I add this rider, as there have been studies of national transport data that include the generally lower distance travelled by people in manual work, and draw an incorrect inference that teleworking will increase travel. Macro-level studies looking at large datasets such as national transport statistics or energy use during the pandemic also face a struggle to condense fact from the vapour of inference. When like for like is compared (e.g. comparing the energy consumption of people who do and don’t work from home when doing similar work, or in before-and-after studies), the finding is of significant reductions. We’ve had the opportunity to look closer at this question of who works from home. Researchers from the Institute of Transport Studies in Leeds found significant reductions in travel and emissions in areas where there was high incidence of working from home during the first lockdown, thereby avoiding commuting. This involved combining national data sources with anonymised data from telecoms provider O2 that indicated patterns of non-commuting. They found a correlation between areas with higher levels of car ownership and higher levels of people working in occupations and sectors with higher levels of homeworking during the period March to June 2020. ONS labour statistics indicated that of the 30–45% employed in professional, and associate professional/ technical occupations, roughly 91.1% and 86.1% respectively worked from home during the lockdown. Sectors that followed this pattern also include information/ communication and scientific/technical activities (of whom 79% and 45% worked remotely). Dividing the UK districts into five quintiles, Table 15.1 shows the relationship between car ownership, propensity to work from home and reductions in CO2 during this period13. Naturally the researchers hedge these findings with some caution about the assumptions involved in the analysis and the conclusions that can be derived from it. But it does help to give a broad picture as a base for further investigation. It also sheds light on a question that often comes up in research and policy development, about what proportion of jobs are in principle ‘teleworkable’. As

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Table 15.1 Carbon reduction and homeworking during the first lockdown period 2020 Classification ∗

Percent CO2 reduction

Proportion of UK car fleet

Proportion of population in occupations and sectors with higher levels of working from home

Top Quintile

68 to 78%

38.4%

40.3%

Second Quintile

56 to 67%

21.8%

23.4%

Third Quintile

37 to 50%

16.9%

16.1%

Fourth Quintile

24 to 34%

13.8%

12.7%

Lower Quintile

1 to 24%

8.9%

7.4%

Note ∗ Classification of 375 UK districts into five quintiles based on the percentage of district-level commute carbon reductions, observed during the first lockdown period of March–June 2020.

stressed throughout this book, Smart Working is a much broader set of practices than teleworking, involving whole-organisation change. It’s also (see especially Chapter 5) about tasks rather than whole roles or whole persons – and there’s a whole set of further changes already coming over the horizon changing the nature of work due to automation and AI. But I think we see in this data, with its broad classifications, evidence that can help understanding of the environmental impacts and potential of Smart Working. We should also note that for many if not most organisations, the switch to homeworking in 2020 was sudden and improvised, not a result of strategic decisions. It is ‘remote forced, rather than remote first’. This means that generally, it hasn’t been a move to Smart Working, but a relocation of previous practices to the home location. The intentionality to work better and more sustainably will have been mostly missing, so any positive environmental impacts have been, in a way, accidental. For understanding the travel impacts, our question ‘what else has changed in the organisation’s ways of working?’ is crucial. If the management culture stays the same, if the technology is unreliable or if the employer is mandating specific days in the collective workplace, these will compromise the potential environmental benefits. And with regards to energy consumption and emissions, changes to the base building play a major part.

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Some questionable methodologies I’ve seen add energy costs and IT energy use at home to any homeworkers’ travel, but comparing this only to the transport energy of the commute on the office side of the comparison, without adding in those same factors in relation to working at the base building. A good implementation will also be making significant changes to real estate and how it is used. Personal IT use should be more or less the same, using the same kit at any location – we’ll look at this in more detail later in the chapter. So, I would urge any researchers reading this who are about to embark on a study of any of the travel impacts of home-based working, to factor in the nature of the implementation as a whole, in order to have comparable findings, and to be able to see in their literature reviews which studies are actually comparing like with like. Flexible offices and coworking spaces Third-party offices and coworking spaces are an increasingly important part of the Extended Workplace. In terms of the environmental impacts of using these, in principle: • They should have a lower carbon footprint per capita using the space than a traditional office • Using them involves more travel than working from home, but usually less than traveling to the organisation’s own workplace. Although coworking is often presented as a new phenomenon, the concept in various forms has a long history. Back in 1996, researchers carried out an evaluation of the impacts of centre-based telecommuting in the Puget Sound Demonstration Project, to evaluate the effectiveness of telecommuting centres14. An analysis of personal vehicle usage showed that the number of vehicle-miles travelled (VMT) was reduced significantly as a result of centre-based telecommuting (from 63.25 miles per person per day on non-telecommuting days to 29.31 miles on telecommuting days). The reductions in weekday VMT comprise significant reductions in commute-related VMT with insignificant changes in non-commuterelated VMT. A similar evaluation of telecentres in California found 51 miles saved per teleworking occasion for centre-based working and 34 miles per teleworking occasion for

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employees who worked from home. Both these studies evidenced higher use of the centres by people who had longer than average trips to their traditional workplace. How much have things changed since then? Two recent studies of a coworking centre in Stockholm, styled as a ‘living lab’, use data from travel diaries to assess the relative environmental impacts of working in a company office, in the coworking centre and working from home. Albeit with a small sample of 20 people, the results are interesting. Total travel time for all purposes was found to be highest when people worked from the employer’s office (133 minutes). This was reduced by 68 minutes on coworking centre days and 92 minutes on homeworking days. This is entirely as one might expect. Working from home has the highest scope for travel reduction, the employer’s office involving the most travel, and coworking centres providing an intermediate option. In this case, some rebound effects of both centre-based working and homeworking were found. Of the travel when working from home – which is for purposes other than work – 80% was by car. For coworking days, 27% of the travel was by car. In this study, the total time spent in multiple car trips was greater than use of the car for travelling to work, which was mostly undertaken by public transport. This highlights some important factors about location, availability of public transport, availability of local services and also facilities provided by coworking centres. In this case, 49% of travel on coworking centre days was by ebike – three of these are provided free by the centre – or by walking15. In the survey we did for the 2010 Workhubs report16, we found that 20% of users of the workhubs walked to the workhub. That’s almost double the national average (11%) for walking to work at the time. Most respondents also used a mix of working from home and working from a coworking centre. This combination is something we need to factor into assessments of the travel impacts of new patterns of work – not just combining home and coworking centre, but varying combinations of home, coworking spaces (and other third spaces) and employer’s workplaces. Environmental impact of technology use With the comparison between different venues for work, are there differences in the energy consumption demands from technology? By and large, workers who are able to move between locations will be using the same kit and have broadly similar demands on the Virtual Workplace and

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connections beyond. If the main reason to go into the employer’s office or a coworking centre is for in-person meetings, that would suggest a reduction in time spent online. But not necessarily so, as in-person same-space meetings will increasingly also include participants who work from elsewhere. The employer’s workplace will also be running more energy-hungry devices like photocopiers and printers. So leaving aside any specialist technologies that can only be available at the employer’s workplace, the environmental cost of technology use is roughly equal between locations. That is, unless there is duplication between locations. When assessing this, it’s important not to just load the cost of the duplication onto the out-of-main-office side of the equation. The question for the employer is, why are you supplying multiple devices? Then, unless there’s a cast iron business need, just supply the technology that can be used in every location. Location, location, location – and relocation The location of where people work – home, office or coworking centre – makes a major difference to their overall carbon footprint. One line of speculation has been around whether people will tend to relocate further away from their workplace once they can work from home. This will lead to fewer but much longer commutes. In recent years there have been a few studies that have started the process of settling this debate. David Ory and Patricia Mokhtarian analysed data collected from more than 200 State of California workers who telecommuted over a 10-year period. They found little evidence that the ability to telecommute is a significant factor in relocation. It is more often the case that telecommuting results from a move that happens for another reason. Comparison between telecommuters who had moved and nontelecommuters showed that overall they were not travelling further. And several telecommuters moved closer to their workplace during this time17. There have been similar findings in further studies of a large dataset in the Netherlands covering variables relating to residential location. Telecommuting was not found to be a key factor in relocating. With respect to relocation probability, the ‘model estimates for all commuters and for telecommuters only are remarkably similar, and telecommuting is not found to be a significant factor for relocation. This suggests that telecommuters are not more likely to relocate than regular commuters.’ The ability to work from home was not found to be key to relocation

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decisions: ‘… traditional factors like household type, number of children in the household, and especially the stages of life cycle still play a dominant role in residential locational preferences’18. One further interesting conclusion is that telecommuters cannot be treated as one uniform group, but instead show considerable heterogeneity. Perhaps this should have been obvious to us all at the outset, as much as that the ability to work from home could theoretically increase commuting distance. A further observation about this relocation debate is that it is a bright shining example of ‘thinking with your old head on’. Let’s deconstruct the assumptions in the hypothesis that ‘telecommuting’ will lead to longer commute journeys. The key assumption is that remote workers will still need an umbilical cord connecting them and nourishing them from one fixed and unchanging place. New forms of organisation and smart use of the Extended Workplace mean that this is not at all the case. Organisations that have gone to a homeworking or a location-independent/ work-anywhere basis effectively dissolve the ties with one particular office. Regular commute trips disappear, meetings happen online or at the nearest hub or thirdparty space, and a trip to the ‘main office’ (if there is one) is now occasional and possibly classed as business travel rather than commuting. A balanced and holistic approach We’ve seen that when actual implementations of smarter/flexible practices are evaluated, they generally show significant net environmental benefits. However, when large-scale data sources are used for modelling the impacts, the results tend to be more iffy. And there is an emerging school of researchers who propose that there is a net negative balance19. Figure 15.2 is an attempt to ensure that all relevant factors are taken into account. It’s based in part on some of the models proposed that I feel move in the right direction, but fall short of including all the relevant factors20. I also try to correct imbalances in comparing offices and homes (which is the usual comparison), and also include the relevance within this comparison of working at a third space. However, the main purpose of the model is to draw attention to areas on both sides of the equation where employers and individuals can do more to reduce the environmental impacts of working, whether it’s home or away. Figure 15.2 sets out the core work-related elements that have environmental impacts when comparing one location with another, with home location in the

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Availability of local services Any linked ORGANISATIONAL Modes of travel trips WORKPLACE IMPACTS Commung

Ecological impacts Other household trips

Culture of presence

Addn. Business trips travel Use of third spaces

Proximity to workplaces 441

Modes of travel

Figure 15.2: Factors for comparing environmental impacts.

Reducon in office space

Business travel

ICT

Numbers using home

Home energy

Part or whole house

Ecological impacts

Smart Working and sustainability

Other household trips

Availability of local services

Office energy

Nature of work

Addional trips

Energy savings by not commung HOME IMPACTS

ICT

Occupancy levels

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lower half of the figure. Factors that influence the amount of overall energy used or saved are included with dotted lines around them. Core elements

Office energy consumption and home energy consumption need to take into account all energy consumption. For offices and other collective workplaces this also includes lifts, heating, lighting, air conditioning, sensors, access and security systems, and any other building systems (e.g. for car parking, etc.). For homes it includes all the additional energy used beyond the normal usage without work being undertaken there – this may be for the whole house or for the part used for work if that’s the only area where additional energy is consumed. Embodied energy may be calculated as a factor for offices – most relevant for new build and renovation. For homes, it would apply to new structures used for work, but not for the existing house as a whole, which needs to be there for residential uses with or without work use. Information and communication technologies (ICT): the energy consumption of devices and infrastructure used for work. With Smart Working these might be expected to be similar, as outlined previously. Business travel is likely to be broadly similar, perhaps marginal differences either way depending on relative positions in relation to travel destinations. Travel is impacted by requirements to attend the employer’s workplace if this adds to the distance travelled. If business travel is reduced by use of virtual collaboration, one would expect that to have the same impact for all locations. Commuting is eliminated on days when an individual works from home. The amount of commuting is impacted in the case of use of third spaces. This would typically be less than a trip to the employer’s workplace, but not necessarily so if, for example, an office has been closed and one lives further from the place chosen as a flexible office/coworking option. Use of such a space may also relate to business travel, as a place to work from for a time when meeting clients. Additional trips by an employee (e.g. for shopping, errands, escorting children) are usually calculated as eroding savings from commuting travel avoided by working from home. But it should not be assumed that people commute to workplaces and never leave them, or only do so on foot for short distances. Lunchtime trips out for similar purposes, or time out for other personal purposes,

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should be factored in for balance. Additionally there are trips linked with the commuting journey which may or may not add to the mileage. Further elements influencing total energy use

Generated or avoided trips by other household members are often calculated in relation to commute miles saved. This is an area of considerable variation depending on circumstances and choice. Trips by household members are almost never calculated in relation to attending an office. But they should be, for balance. Distribution of tasks across a household affect the activity spaces of the parties involved and the trips they each make. For example, a person travelling to their employer’s office may not be able to take children to school (due to timing, direction, etc.), in which case the other parent has to make the trip. Mode of travel may be impacted by changing the location of work, as the available options for a range of trip purposes may change. Use of third-party spaces have a travel-to-work impact, generating some commuting or business travel. They also have a relationship to the possibilities for reducing the office real estate footprint and energy and resource requirements. They also have their own real estate footprint, but per capita this will typically be a lower requirement than most employer-owned workplaces. Availability of local services is one of the biggest factors affecting additional trip generation from home or from a separate workplace. The usual assumption is that there will be more services available in urban centres. But this is not always the case, as many workplaces are located on business parks and/or chosen for easy access to the road network. The availability of local services near homes also has a major impact on how additional trips are made, and probably reflects disparate findings in research. We will look at this later in the chapter in relation to policy to stimulate local economic activity within communities. Numbers of people working from home, or being at home, impact the energy calculation. For example, if the whole house is being heated anyway for residential purposes, it is not an additional environmental impact that is a consequence of working there. For per capita calculations, two people working from the same home effectively halves the impact. Occupancy levels in the employer’s workplace are relevant for two main reasons: 1) this also impacts the per capita calculation; 2) it allows for a calculation of the energy impacts of unused/under-used space. Some studies add this to the

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energy budget of the homeworker (i.e. they still have space in the office). However, such methodology is dubious, as it is not within an individual’s power to downsize the space – it’s in the gift of the employer to align the space with actual usage. Reductions in office space positively impact the environmental performance of the office. However, they may also impact the choices of where else to work, e.g. employees making trips to use alternative spaces, whether in a coworking setting or public setting. The closure of a building and replacing it with a more suitable alternative(s), or refurbishment on fewer floors, is likely to have an initial environmental impact that will take time to recoup. The nature of the work is one of the biggest enabling or constraining factors in relation to travelling to a place of work or not. So when looking at whether environmental performance can be improved, it’s essential to look at how work can become smarter and more location-agnostic. A continuing culture of presence is also a major constraining factor, requiring people to make journeys that are not strictly required from the nature of the tasks they are doing. It can increase both commuting and business travel. Ecological impacts of ways of working With the focus on climate change, reducing energy consumption is an extremely important priority, especially where reliance on fossil-fuels is involved. However, in determining the environmental impacts of different ways and locations of working, we also need to take ecological impacts into account. In a scale of adverse to neutral ecological impacts, there’s a continuum of new build to refurbishment to no workplace. At a simplistic level, the most environmentally sustainable office, perhaps, is the one you don’t have. There is scope for ecological harm from the point where raw materials are sourced, through places where they are manufactured, through to shipping, assembly, installation, use and waste disposal. Then there is the damage to local ecosystems at the site where workplaces are built, and the transport infrastructure required to service them. A case in point is Apple’s new HQ building in Cupertino, touted as ‘the greenest building on the planet’21. It is designed to generate more energy than it uses, and a lot of trees are being planted on site. However, this is a building that has had high cost in terms of sourcing the materials and in the construction process, and takes up a great deal of land. It has much more space than is needed for Apple’s own

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workforce, especially now that the concession has been made to staff demands and they only have to work 3 days on site rather than 5. The site has also been built with parking space for 16,000 cars (for a workforce of 12,000). The location of the site is such that for most employees and visitors a car is needed to get there. For all its sustainability credentials, it’s a design based on Industrial Age ways of working, with an assumption of the intrinsic value of proximity (despite the nature of the products they sell and how they are marketed), and it seems to be something of a command-and-control culture. Leading global organisations need to do better than this if they are to have credibility as pioneers of workplace sustainability. We also need to think through the resources used within buildings. Lisa Whited in her book Work Better, Save the Planet, highlights the fact that millions of tons of furniture in the US alone ends up in landfill22. Between 1980 and 2018, furniture waste more than doubled, from 5 million tons to 12.4 million tons. Only 3% was recycled. A strong advocate of developing a circular economy, amongst the solutions proposed, is being able to rent ‘furniture as a service’ to enable reuse, and having high levels of reconfigurability built in. Lisa also makes the link between an environment-centric approach and Smarter Working: When you commit to putting the planet at the centre of your purpose conversation regarding the workplace, you will uncover more ways to reduce your organisation’s impact on the climate. Inviting your staff to contribute their ideas will lead to innovations and new ways of working that will be unexpected and novel.

From evaluation to action When evaluating the environmental impacts of new ways of working, the aim should not be to prove that one location performs better than another, but rather to reduce the environmental footprint of work as a whole. Simply adopting a ‘hybrid’ approach to the location of work doesn’t automatically deliver environmental benefits, although the evidence indicates that in most cases it will deliver some. Looking again at Figure 15.2, organisations and individuals should adopt an intentional approach to every factor highlighted, and seek

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to reduce their environmental footprint by creating the conditions for maximising the benefits. At the start of this chapter, I mentioned organisations taking responsibility for things they can change. Changing the nature of how work is done is at the heart of this – all other possibilities flow from this. That involves challenging the assumptions of necessity around all work practices and processes. This is our CAN Test (see Chapter 9). One of the key questions in the reconstruction part of the exercise is to ask of any practice or process, ‘Are there ways of doing this that are … “Lighter”, i.e. less heavy on resources – time, energy, physical resources?’ This feeds into the team discussions about where, when and how to carry out work activities (as per Chapter 5) and into Team Agreements (see Chapter 10 and detail in Table 10.2). This can harness the enthusiasm and innovative thinking of colleagues as they explore the options and the impacts. Beyond this, the ideas for change and their potential impacts need to be taken forward by the leadership, and inform strategies and decisions for real estate (the location, size and layouts of workplaces, use of flex offices/coworking, etc.), and for technology (infrastructure and devices to support maximal mobility within workplaces and beyond, enable process modernisation, etc.). Minimising environmental impact from ways of working is an integral part of smart-proofing strategies, not least around choices for ‘hybrid’ work arrangements. An approach of ‘Smart Maturity’, as in Figure 1.2, is more likely to lead to practical improvements in environmental performance. Target-setting is an option, whether formally or informally. Targets can be set for reducing the amount of employee and business travel, at team level and corporate level. Sometimes this will need to involve new working arrangements with customers, suppliers and partners. It can have a technological dimension, e.g. around interoperability of collaboration systems that would need to be explored. Culture change is an important part of the solution. In Figure 15.2 we have ‘culture of presence’ as an influencing factor (and ‘proximity premium’ in Figure 15.3). This can be a major constraint on Smart Working and developing a culture of trust. Working through when in-person same-place presence adds significant value and when virtual in-person interaction is either sufficient or adds a different kind of value is a necessary part of conversations, especially for people who may – often for well-intended reasons – lean towards thinking that being in the same place has default advantages. Changes in working practices are often undervalued as an element of workplace sustainability practices. The dominant strands of thinking around workplace

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Full-me home-based

Draughty co!age

Always at collecve workplace

No commung

High use of flex office / coworking

Virtual meengs

Minimising resources

Virtual working

Minimal real estate footprint

Eco-office

Everyone flexible

Always commutes

No use of flex office/ coworking

Travel to meengs

High resource use

Proximity premium

Large real estate footprint

High carbon workplace

No one flexible

447

Eco-home

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Figure 15.3: The Environmental Equaliser.

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sustainability tend towards engineering solutions – technical solutions for reducing energy consumption, better systems for monitoring, new materials, recycling and renewables. Travel Plans focus on changing modes of travel, and practical measures may involve company buses, bicycle parking and showers, or car-sharing clubs. Environmental certifications are only the starting point. These are all valuable initiatives. They are also the kinds of actions that feed into Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting. Smart Working can add new dimensions to this, by redesigning the nature of work to be more environmentally responsible, rather than focusing on greening the context of traditional work practices. Getting to grips with the complexities In looking for an overall account balance of the environmental impacts of Smart Working, we encounter a complex set of interactions. To try to find a path through these, I put forward a model that I call the Environmental Equaliser. It’s conceived along the lines of the old graphic equalisers that we all used to have on our hi-fis, back in the days when people used to be a bit more obsessive about the audio quality of their music. Here we have a set of sliding controls, some of which interact with each other. Sliding the control towards the top of each scale has a positive environmental impact. But by sliding some towards the top of the scale, e.g. by using third-party offices or workhubs, could have the effect of sending the control downwards on the ‘no commuting’ line. In the end, the aim is to get the balance that is best for the work and for the individual while minimising negative environment impacts. The overall impacts would also be affected by the relative sustainability of the home and office work locations, shown in dotted lines. And the final control on the right has a multiplier effect to assess the overall sustainability of working practices in an organisation. Let’s look at an example. Starting at an individual level, if someone works at home for a couple of days per week, this will have an impact on their travel to work, which at a basic level will reduce in proportion to the number of full days they don’t go into the office. They may also use collaboration technologies to reduce travel. But if there are expectations of always meeting clients or having certain kinds of meeting (e.g. appraisals) in person, this will increase their workrelated travel and may also take the edge off their homeworking capacity.

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The multiplier line on the right links closely with the capacity to reduce the physical workplace footprint. There are potential tipping points as the number of people, or the number of departments in an organisation, adopt the new working practices and more radical approaches to office provision become more viable. This kind of model can be used to stimulate discussion about how far the organisation has progressed in Smart Working, and how far it aims to progress. How much does it want to shed real estate and embrace flexibility and virtuality? How far does it want to go in dematerialising its resources and in reducing travel on all fronts? The realities of many kinds of work are such that physical workplaces are needed. We also saw in Chapter 6 how advances in automation, AI and robotics shift some activities, and create new ones, that are knowledge-based and require access to office-type environments as much as, or more than, production environments, as well as opening up offsite work capabilities. So we are not on a quest here for ubiquitous virtual working. It’s about getting the right balance for the work involved, with the capability to evolve in the context of further change. For the real estate footprint, it’s more a case of the minimum viable (or minimum lovable) options as part of the Extended Workplace. It is possible to work this through and attach targets, in terms of numbers of people capable of working in different locations, how much they should do it, use of collaboration technologies to reduce meetings and business travel, environmental performance of the office(s), and so forth. Managing progress towards Smart Working and reducing the environmental costs of working practices can become a requirement for managers, on which performance is assessed. Organisations may wish to go a stage further, and work with employees to assess the environmental performance of homeworking environments to set a comparator with any residual and improved employer-owned workplace(s). A responsible organisation might even want to incentivise and support the upgrade of the home environment as an employee benefit. What should we do if/when environmental performance improves on all fronts? From an environmental perspective, the ideal scenario would be to move to a situation where both workplaces and homes are carbon neutral, cars and all other means of transport are carbon neutral and the national power grids are decarbonised. In this ideal world, where should we work?

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If, say, physical offices are swapped for drop-in centres serving a large number of people, we can probably expect them to out-perform homes as regards energy consumption per capita. What then? We can use this issue as a thought exercise to reflect on the options we have at the moment. If we reach a point where homes or coworking centres had no or little advantage in environmental performance over the traditional office, should we insist people travel to go there? The consequence of this would be to maintain levels of demand for building offices, and to continue the wasteful practice of moving people to their work when much work can go to them, wherever they are located. That would all inevitably be more energy and resource-intensive, as well as wasting time in travel and eroding the autonomy that people value so much. So, although there are variations and complexities according to circumstances, and sometimes the rebound effects may outweigh current savings, we need to continue down the path of reducing our reliance on centralised employer-owned workplaces. We have seen that traditionally, a lot of waste is built into them, primarily through being under-occupied. In addition, we have a range of other advantages in having more autonomy with greater control over both our work life and our capacity to do other things in our lives at home and locally. Impacts on communities – making them more sustainable? We’ve discussed at various points the potential of Smart Working to support increased work–life harmony, enabling better interface with the rest of life’s priorities. Can this greater harmony ripple through to the interface with the local community too? Many suburbs, market towns and villages across the Western world suffer from being dormitory communities, with thousands of their inhabitants commuting out of the area for work and being rarely seen in their neighbourhoods during daylight hours. Some communities have seen the collapse of all the local services – shops, post office, pub – and the only option is to jump in a car to get access to services. Smart Working offers the potential to put some economic clout into the localism agenda, and help revitalise local communities. Here I pick up on some of the themes set out in the latter parts of the last chapter on Smart Government, about economic development and changing the way we plan communities.

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In recent years there has been much discussion about sustainable communities and eco-settlements. Sadly, too many of these are fig leaves covering the nakedness of business as usual. There can be commendable moves towards making the fabric of buildings and infrastructure more sustainable, but most of the assumptions that feed into the design of communities is still rooted in Industrial Era assumptions, separating homes and work rather than recognising the impacts and benefits of new work possibilities. In towns, cities and new housing developments anywhere, government policies have long favoured high densities. This is meant to help support public transport and locate more people within walking distance of local facilities – if there are any, that is. This offers a goldmine to developers, who are encouraged to cram more homes into less space. Unfortunately, in many cases this designs out the option to run a business from home, or even have a garden large enough to grow your own fruit and vegetables. Despite this, and despite sometimes poor broadband infrastructure, there has been a growth in home-based working. And there is evidence that flexible workers – both home-based workers and part-time workers – are more likely to spend their money locally, if there is anywhere to spend it. Well-located coworking centres often attract local home-based businesses, with users much more inclined to arrive by foot or bike. Home-based workers tend to have ‘contracted activity spaces’. In other words, they do more things nearer home. Or at least, their natural inclination is to do so – if only the opportunities are there to do so. Where there are local facilities, people working at or near home tend to use them. So the social and environmental context of flexibility can make a big difference to how sustainable it can be in terms of second order effects. It can reduce commuting and business travel as a direct result. But to maximise the social and environmental benefits in the wider world requires a whole spectrum of new thinking from developers, infrastructure providers and government agencies. I look forward to a time when the Smart Working approach is embedded within how we design and develop the communities we live in. These will be designed as essentially ‘walkable’ communities, with a range of flexible housing types including a good supply of workhomes (i.e. designed both for living and business uses), the freedom to change uses during a lifetime, local coworking spaces, most homes with gardens big enough to grow much of your own food, inclusive design throughout to be an enabling environment for people with disabilities and age-related

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conditions, local markets, gazillion gigabit broadband infrastructure and all wrapped up in the highest standards for zero-carbon living. I see this as being part of the picture in a transition to a sustainable economy, one which enables good quality of life at lower environmental cost, and maybe even prosperity without growth23. In terms of taking this from theory to practice, I have to concede that achieving all this is beyond the scope of most organisations as they implement Smart Working! And it’s certainly the subject of another book. But there are factors embedded in this vision that may influence how far organisations wish to go in devising solutions to achieve social and environmental sustainability, by changing their ways of working and their use of space. Notes 1 Miimu Airaksinen and Pellervo Matilainen (2011), A carbon footprint of an office building. Energies 2011, 4, 1197–1210. www.researchgate.net/publication/ 267414572_A_Carbon_Footprint_of_an_Office_Building 2 Institute of Structural Engineers, Typical Operational Energy and Carbon Figures for Buildings. www.istructe.org/resources/guidance/typical-operational-energy-carbonfigures/, accessed April 2023. 3 Mike Phillips, Ciara Long and Jacob Wallace (2023), Real estate’s global emissions are getting worse. Many in industry have no plans to improve. Article in BisNow. www. bisnow.com/national/news/sustainability/investigation-real-estates-biggestinvestors-dont-have-a-target-to-reduce-their-carbon-emissions-118318 4 D. Banister, C. Newson and M. Ledbury (2007), The Costs of Transport on the Environment: The Role of Teleworking in Reducing Emissions. Transport Studies Unit (Ref. 1024), Oxford University. 5 Peter James (2008), Homeworking and carbon reduction: the evidence. In Tim Dwelly and Andy Lake (Eds.), Can Homeworking Save the Planet? How Homes Can Become Workspace in a Low Carbon Economy (Chapter 10, pp. 86–96). Smith Institute. 6 Carbon Trust (2014), Homeworking: Helping Businesses Cut Costs and Reduce Their Carbon Footprint. www.carbontrust.com/our-work-and-impact/guidesreports-and-tools/homeworking-helping-businesses-cut-costs-and-reducetheir-carbon-footprint 7 Carbon Trust (2021), Homeworking Report – An Assessment of the Impact of Teleworking on Carbon Savings and the Longer-Term Effects on Infrastructure Services.

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www.carbontrust.com/our-work-and-impact/guides-reports-and-tools/thecarbon-savings-potential-of-homeworking-in-europe University of Exeter, Centre for Energy and the Environment (2020), Assessing the Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Home Working versus Commuting to an Office. https://devonclimateemergency.org.uk/studies-and-data/greenhouse-gasemissions-of-home-working-vs-office-working/#Beyond2020 WSP (20 February 2020), Office vs Home Working: How We Can Save Our Carbon Footprint. Summary post and downloadable Excel report at www.wsp. com/en-gb/insights/office-vs-home-working-how-we-can-save-our-carbonfootprint Department for Transport (2019), National Travel Survey: England 2018. Statistical Release 31 July 2019. Department for Transport (2015), Commuting Trends in England 1988–2015. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/ attachment_data/file/877039/commuting-in-england-1988-2015.pdf Erik Elldér (2020), Telework and daily travel: New evidence from Sweden. Journal of Transport Geography 86. Lokesh Kadambari and Greg Marsden (2021), Estimates of the Carbon Impacts of Commute Travel Restrictions Due to COVID-19 in the UK. Findings, April 2021. https://findingspress.org/article/21574-estimates-of-the-carbon-impacts-ofcommute-travel-restrictions-due-to-covid-19-in-the-uk Dennis K. Henderson and Patricia L Mokhtarian (1996), Impacts of center-based telecommuting on travel and emissions: analysis of the Puget sound demonstration project. Transportation Research Part D Transport and Environment 1, no. 1, 29–45. Bhavana Vaddadi Jan Bieser, Johanna Pohl and Anna Kramers (2020), Towards a Conceptual Framework of Direct and Indirect Environmental Effects of Co-Working. ICT4S2020: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on ICT for Sustainability June 2020, pp. 27–35. Tim Dwelly, Andy Lake and Lisa Thompson (2010), Workhubs: Smart Workspace for the Low Carbon Economy. Report for the Department for Communities and Local Government. Available at https://flexibility.co.uk/ resources/ David T. Ory and Patricia L Mokhtarian (2006), Which came first, the telecommuting or the residential relocation? An empirical analysis of causality. Urban Geography 27, no. 7, 590–609.

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18 Dick Ettema (2010), The impact of telecommuting on residential relocation and residential preferences: a latent class modeling approach. Journal of Transport and Land Use 3, no. 1, 22. Also Saim Muhammad et al. (2007), Telecommuting and residential locational preferences: a case study of the Netherlands. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment 22, no. 4, 339–358. 19 For example, Yao Shi, Steve Sorrel and Timothy Foxon (15 May 2023), The impact of telework on domestic energy use and carbon emissions: an assessment for England. Energy and Buildings 287, 112996. 20 An example is a very useful and thought-provoking study by William O’Brien and Fereshteh Yazdani Aliabadi (2020), Does telecommuting save energy? A critical review of quantitative studies and their research methods. Energy & Buildings 225, 110298. 21 Carl Franzen (22 September 2014), Apple CEO Tim Cook says new spaceship campus will be ’greenest building on the planet’. The Verge. www.theverge.com/ 2014/9/22/6829127/tim-cook-says-apple-spaceship-campus-will-be-greeneston-planet 22 Lisa Whited (2022), Work Better, Save the Planet: The Earth-First Workplace is Good for People, Great for Business. www.workbettersavetheplanet.com/ 23 Cf. Tim Jackson (2009), Prosperity Without Growth – Economics for a Finite Planet. Earthscan.

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Chapter Sixteen Beyond Hybrid Smart Working now and in the future

The story so far Up to this point in the book, we’ve covered: • The trends that are the context for change • The importance of developing a strategic approach, and how to do that • How to move from principles to practice in an integrated way, covering: • developing an evidence-based business case and measuring impact • people issues and culture change • the platform for change: property, facilities and technologies across the five domains of the Extended Workplace • how to ensure Smart Working enhances productivity and wellbeing • how to integrate sustainability principles in a real and measured way • special considerations for the government sector. On the way we’ve looked at practical techniques to help leaders, managers and other employees understand what it’s all about and how to make the transformation. So now it’s time to ask: Where is your organisation on the path to Smart Working Maturity? Smart Working Maturity There are thousands of companies, public sector bodies and third sector organisations around the world that are at different stages of the journey, as are the

DOI: 10.4324/9781003288930-16

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organisations in our case studies. Probably all of them come at it from different angles and starting points. The Smart Working Maturity Model (Figure 16.1) will help you assess your organisation’s level of Smart Working Maturity, what progress you have made so far and what else might be needed to move to a position where flexibility is the new normality, so that all the attendant benefits can be maximised. Iterations of this model have been used in hundreds of interviews and workshops. It’s included in British Standards PAS 3000 – Code of Practice for Smart Working, and as such has been used across sectors by organisations to evaluate their progress. I’ve used it in interviews prior to starting Smart Working programmes, and for evaluations at the end of programmes or programme phases. I added the scale at the bottom as a conversation-starter. It really stimulates discussion and debate, and helps people drill down to the detail of what is done well and what needs to change. It’s quite common for people to say they are at (say) 6 on technology, but culture’s at 2. Often there are differences across directorates, departments or teams. In reporting, you can add in a vertical line where there appears to be a broad consensus, while adding in points for outlier views, and the issues arising. So let’s look at some of the detail of the Model. I’ve broken it into four stages, with the kinds of developments that tend to lead from one stage to another. 1. Isolated initiatives. The organisation has started to think about getting a bit more flexible, or allowing some limited flexible practices. The examples on the left in Figure 16.1 are of typical early initiatives or emerging practices. One would be a good set of work–life balance initiatives, with policies that include Flexible Working alongside other family-friendly measures (e.g. additional paid paternity leave), but which don’t go so far as to make Flexible Working a regular option for many people. Or it could be just a policy to comply with legislation. Perhaps there’s been some tightening up of space through desk-sharing, with the development of ‘non-territorial working’ to encourage the link to be broken between the individual and a personal desk. But the capacity for this has not been expanded by greater flexibility in working practices, nor a better range of activitybased work settings. It could be the kind of hotdesking in barn-like open spaces that make people want to run away and work somewhere else! Or possibly – and maybe combined with limited desk-sharing – the most mobile workers have had their technology upgraded so they have some remote access capability, and can spend more time out of the office.

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Flexible Working compliance

Desk-sharing

Homeworking / Teleworking

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EMERGING SMART WORKING

Supported by policy–but remains ‘flexibility Tac"cal approach as excep"on’ Property ra"onalisa"on

Promoted for business benefits, but sits alongside many tradi"onal prac"ces and processes

Reac"ve approach Ac"vity-based se$ngs dependent on New behaviours/e"que#e employee request Applies unevenly to and line-manager Virtual collabora"on different roles & decision workplaces Electronic migra"on

MATURE SMART WORKING

Based on strategic vision & clear Smart Working principles

Comprehensive strategy Smart Extended Workplace Choice & control of spaces Culture Change

High quality inclusive workplaces maximise choice & wellbeing Flexibility, mobility & virtual interac"on as normal

Flexible Smart interac"ons Virtual Workplace

Mandates & rules specify permi#ed flexibility

Reviewing processes

Default workstyle remains unchanged

Endorsed by leadership

Leaders role-modelling

Environmental Incidental travel reduc"on impact taken into account

Sustainability Sustainable work prac"ces embedded in working prac"ces

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Figure 16.1: The Smart Working Maturity Model.

Focus on office workers

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Con"nuous innova"on

Results-focused culture of trust and innova"on

Inclusive of all workers

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Beyond Hybrid: Smart Working now and in the future

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Technology for mobility

BASIC FLEXIBILITY

Beyond Hybrid: Smart Working now and in the future

These kinds of initiatives, along with tolerance of occasional ad hoc homeworking, can often sow the seeds of more integrated programmes by demonstrating some of the benefits. 2. Basic Flexibility is where there are now policies and procedures in place that enable staff to apply for Flexible Working. It meets the statutory minimum, and goes beyond that to make options available for all staff. But there are various tests to be eligible, and line managers effectively exercise a veto. The result is that Flexible Working is applied reactively and unevenly across different departments in the organisation. Now we have added to that return-to-office mandates or specifications about being in an organisation-owned building certain days of the week. This puts the handbrake on making flexibility smarter. 3. Emerging Smart Working is the stage that many progressive organisations are getting to now. It is a more strategic and business-focused approach, and is often referred to by those doing it as Smart Working or Agile Working. Sometimes this terminology is a deliberate attempt to avoid the preconceptions that some people have about ‘Flexible Working’ as being all about families and personal circumstances. In the current climate it’s often closely associated with property rationalisation and the higher levels of homeworking and mobile working needed to support that. It is also closely associated with a focus on improved customer service and improved productivity. New Smart or Flexible Working environments are introduced, with an emphasis more on the range of activity-based settings and fewer desks. At the same time, there is still sometimes a strong focus on desk work and an emphasis on achieving specific desk to people ratios. Technologies have been significantly upgraded, with an emphasis on portable devices and remote access, but probably limited progress has been made on upgrading legacy systems and paper processes, and this acts as a constraint on flexibility. The platform for Smart Working has made significant progress, but probably the cultural side is more wished-for than delivered. Many managers and employees continue to think in traditional terms about work, so Smart Working still seems a novelty and something that applies much more to some roles than to others. This is sometimes reinforced by categorising work as fixed, flexible or mobile. Connected with this categorisation, there’s probably a dominant focus on office-based workers and an assumption that people with hands-on roles and those managing them have no scope for flexibility.

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Typically at this level, while regular working from other locations grows fast, meetings culture and other working practices remain unchallenged, so full advantage is not taken of the new possibilities of working dynamically as teams in the Virtual Workplace. 4. Mature Smart Working takes the Emerging Smart Working stage to the next and more comprehensive level. The Smart Working principles will be fully implemented, and particular investment and care has been given to transforming the culture of work, weaving trust, wellbeing, inclusion and results-focus into the ways we work. Flexibility is seen as available for all – in one form or another – and is seen as applying to tasks rather than whole jobs or roles. Deskbased work is seen as something that can for the most part happen anywhere, and the other activity-based work settings are more numerous and acquire increased importance. The predominance of the Organisation-owned workplace decreases, and becomes more equal as a venue for work alongside other spaces where people can work, both physical spaces and online. Enabling all this is a strong drive to have seamless electronic processes, use of cloud-based services, and extensive use of unified communications, conferencing technologies and business social media. There’s also a strong focus on continuous innovation. There are strong targets for resource reduction and travel reduction, and meaningful targets are set for performance in all aspects across the Triple Bottom Line, at every level in the organisation. Contractors, freelancers, interims, agency and other temporary workers as well as partner organisations are included as far as possible within the Smart Working culture, and may be selected because of their own track record in being smart and flexible. The impacts of Smart Working spill over into wider social, environmental and economic benefits and have the potential to make a substantial contribution to ‘smart economic growth’ and to the quality of life. Connecting the latter three stages in Figure 16.1 are key enablers or principles that define the difference between the stages. As you look through to see where your organisation has got to so far, it’s possible that you’re straddling a couple of stages. The main thing is to see that you’re going in the right direction and not doing anything to entrench the half-measures of an earlier stage.

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Having said that, in terms of ambition, it’s best not to envisage going through each stage in turn. Setting your sights on Smart Maturity from the outset will help to construct programmes of change across disciplines that will deliver most return on investment. Future trends The arrows in the maturity model extend beyond the right of Figure 16.1. Work will continue to evolve, and the wider contexts of work and society will change also. The trends outlined in Chapter 2 will continue, but also take new forms. The way organisations respond will be plural. There will be time-lags and sometimes a wish to turn the clock back. But there will also be much innovation and experimentation – that’s one of the features of many of our case studies, that they try things out and learn from that. And there will be different responses to opportunities and challenges, not least in the challenges brought about by increased automation and use of AI. The choices we have are either resisting the future, playing catch-up with it or actively embracing it. The latter is the best way to achieve the potential benefits – and that requires being intentional about maximising the benefits. Benefits may flow from working more flexibly and in different places, but they are not automatic. So when we look back at the benefits listed in Chapter 3, the productivity benefits in Chapter 11, the areas of work that influence our wellbeing in Chapter 13, the environmental benefits in Chapter 15 and the list towards the end of Chapter 14 of what we might seek for a better society, we can see the key areas where we need to act intentionally to maximise the benefits. In this way, we start to see the future as the one we create, rather than one that happens to us. As I said at the beginning of the book, however, the future is always plural and multispeed. It may well contain countertrends. This may come from resistance to the future, with the kind of rose-tinted nostalgia one sees in commentary about ‘getting back to the office’. We’re also seeing some reaction from interests and lobby groups that are keen to preserve economic activity in major urban centres, fearing threats from decentralised working. These miss the point in various ways, and will probably fail Canute-like in reversing the tide. Yet they could still be obstructive to developing the kinds of public policy that would support the new ways of working1.

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Some of the attempts to regulate flexibility may also, though well-intended, act as an anchor to the past. Tying definitions and conditions down to a point in time through legislation or in binding negotiations may cut across the more fluid flexibility that many people aspire to, and limit choices of how they prefer to work. However, I think there are current trends with the strength to keep up the momentum of positive change. Organisations like those in our case studies will continue to take forward their change programmes and try to create better work along the principles we’ve outlined. And others will progress along similar paths, especially those whose leaders read this book! Each implementation can have the impact of ratcheting up ambition and expectations for other organisations. In the following short sections, we’ll explore what some of the key trends are likely to be that will provide the context for the continued evolution of Smart Working. Future ways of working As time moves on and with the natural flow of generations through the workplace, more and more people will have extensive experience of working outside of Organisation-owned workplaces. The current collective wisdom that favours proximity will become further diluted over time. So many of the issues that preoccupy us now will lose their force. We can expect there to be less of a focus on whether people should ‘go to the office’, and more of a focus on what adds value when people are together. Similarly, we’ll become much more accustomed to working together when we’re apart. Increasingly, the ways people work when they are not physically together will shape the ways they work when they are together, achieving organically the aims of concepts such as Remote First or Virtual First. This will further help to shape the settings where we work. The focus on wellbeing will surely continue, and take new directions as a result of the work currently being done to understand how people experience different work environments, both in sensory and psychological terms. Choice, variety and control are the key principles to translate into action. As routine hands-on and clerical tasks become more automated, and AI becomes more and more present in assisting, or even dominating, creative and analytical tasks, this will greatly impact the places where we choose to work. For some, even many, the transitions involved will be uncomfortable, and prompt not just reskilling, but also re-evaluation of what one wants to do in life.

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I would expect rises in self-employment, side-hustles and starting new ventures, with business overheads minimised by working from home and/or coworking spaces, and use of platforms, third-party services and project-based associates for work. One side of that will be in new forms of high-tech work. But for many this may well prompt ventures in more traditional crafts and industries that can be carried out from home or with shared maker space, and supported on the business front by cloud-based technologies. The drive towards legislating for Flexible Working rights is also likely to erode the dominance of the 5-day week. This means longer weekends for some, but probably also changes in what is conceived of as a working week, with a need for people to flex their work across 7 days. One trend I think we’ll see intensified is closer working between organisations, not least between organisations and their customers. This requires a shift of mindset from ‘We’re in here, our customers are out there’, to ‘We’re all out there’. Having permeable boundaries and transparency for working together and providing services while maintaining security is one of the challenges for this kind of smarter collaboration. Will organisations actually need offices in the future? As Woody Allen observed back in 1970, ‘Organised crime in America turns over $40 billion a year, [but] spends very little on office supplies’2. It’s possible to have a successful organisation that’s footloose and light on resources. We have seen throughout the book that there is a reduced need for traditional office-based roles to work in offices. And as we get into a world of artificial intelligence, there’s a reduced need for many of the tasks that have traditionally been undertaken there to be done at all, or at least done by humans. Previous levels of office under-utilisation have been exposed, and will be further exposed by continuous sensor-based monitoring of workplace usage. The only way is down for the total amount of office space needed in society. However, automation and AI are also driving work into more white collar knowledge-based tasks from hands-on settings. So there are both major centrifugal forces at work as so much work can be done elsewhere, but also weaker centripetal ones creating some extra demand for office-type environments – though these too will also have some capability to be done in a range of locations, not only a collective workplace.

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Beyond Hybrid: Smart Working now and in the future

So it’s not a case that new offices won’t be built. There will be a continuing need for better offices. And there will probably always be organisations that seek to demonstrate their status by being in landmark buildings in premium locations. But the news isn’t so good for older and lower-quality offices. And though it may be desirable to refurbish such buildings from an environmental point of view, in many cases this will probably be a commercially lost cause. Suitability is one issue, and land values that favour residential are likely to provide incentives to developers to demolish and rebuild as homes. Smaller but more perfectly formed workplaces, supplemented by many more coworking and other alternative spaces is the way forward. Technologies At the time of writing, there are almost daily warnings of the dangers of AI, from embedded biases, disinformation and fraud, through to human extinction. There’s a surfeit of ‘What monster have I created?’ syndrome. But for most organisations, use of AI will have little to do with these big-picture issues. Mostly it will be about working in smarter ways. AI will be deployed on a smaller scale, woven into many separate applications and having clear and targeted purposes. We’ve looked at the possible spatial impacts. Now we need to look more at the collaborative aspects as well. In industrial settings, there are many developments in the field of ‘cobots’ – that is, robots that can work alongside people, being aware of their movements and adapting while they carry out their tasks, or being used to augment human capabilities. For white collar work, we are also going to see more in the way of intelligent systems that we interact with as individuals and teams. And it’s human nature to seek to put a face on such systems, to give a semblance of relationship as we work together. So it will not just be about who you collaborate with, but what. Possibly, AI-enabled applications may become better at recognising our moods, sensitivities and our preferences than our human colleagues can, as they recognise sophisticated patterns of behaviour without being bound up in ego. We can also expect to see an increasing number of people spending more and more of their working time in virtual spaces. This involves ever more immersive versions of the Virtual Workplace we’ve become familiar with. There are various degrees of hype about the metaverse, but there surely will be virtual environments of that nature, used both for specific individual tasks and for

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multi-participant interaction within virtual spaces for the provision of entirely online services and experiences. As discussed in Chapter 8, these will bring new dimensions to where we think our work is, and where and when we do it. The Extended Workplace, and work woven closer into the fabric of life As Organisation-owned workplaces typically become smaller, the workplace as a whole becomes larger – extended to wherever people are working. Boundaries inevitably blur as work is woven closer into the fabric of everyday life. This will tend to provide more choices for blending work and other things we do in life. There will be various levels of intensity to blending or separation at different stages of life, as we flex between periods of work and other life objectives and responsibilities. This will likely suit some people more than others, and pose challenges about how we manage the boundaries, whether we prefer to separate or to integrate life and work. But the default position of separating work from the rest of life is likely to be in decline. Being in charge to create the work–life harmony we seek is the challenge. But as well as the personal experience, the Extended Workplace calls for different styles of workspace. It’s a challenge to the workplace, hospitality and residential industries to come up with new approaches to providing the mix of human-scale work settings that support better work experiences. That applies to all the domains of the Extended Workplace, and we can expect to see best practice in each domain influencing the others. We’re also seeing much of work bursting out of its silos into other spaces, and this will – if planning rules and developer mindsets allow – in time alter the fabric of our towns and cities. This is both in terms of creating places people can choose to work in the local high street, but also the possibility of regenerating areas where services have disappeared, with demand created by more people living and working in the same locale. For sure, there will be people and interests digging their heels in to resist change. And there may be major shocks with unforeseeable or precarious outcomes. However, we have to organise our actions on the basis of the balance of probabilities, and a clear view of what we want the future to be. This is the moment to go beyond Hybrid Working and transform work for the better, create better work environments and facilitate the greater autonomy people aspire to. We’ve seen how there are potential benefits across the Triple Bottom

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Line. These don’t just happen by shifting the location of work a few days per week, but require intentionality across a broad front of change. Taking the strategic approach to Smart Working will maximise the chances of making that happen. Cumulatively, the effects will reach far out beyond individual organisations to the whole of society. Are you on board for the ride? Notes 1 An example is a report by Paul Swinney et al. (2023), Office Politics – London and the Rise of Home Working. Centre for Cities, supported by EC BID ‘a business improvement district working to promote and enhance a unique part of the City of London known as the Eastern City’. Amongst other measures, it exhorts ‘both the national government and the Mayor of London working with businesses to create a positive campaign in order to encourage an increase in the minimum number of days expected in the office’, www.centreforcities. org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Office-Politics-May-2023.pdf 2 Woody Allen (15 August 1970), A look at organized crime, The New Yorker.

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Index

Note r.e. emphasis: references to tables are indicated by a number span in bold, figures are indicated by italics, and notes are indicated with an ‘n’ after the page reference, followed by the note number.

absence 72–3, 188, 298, 369–71 acoustics 46, 126–7, 140–3, 172, 179, 198–9, 206, 403; in home workspaces 328, 330; psychoacoustics 92, 143, 375–7 Activity-based Working (ABW) Glossary, 118, 158n1; ABW work settings 6, 31, 67, 118–20, 121, 125, 167, 268, 284, 362, 400, 415, 456, 458–9; and acoustics 142–3; in case studies 53, 138–9, 146, 157, 189, 222, 367, 398, 402, 409, 413–14; and density 129; for hands-on workers 135–6; and neurodiversity 377; settings for virtual interaction 197–9, 204 Agile Working Glossary, 1–3, 12, 42, 118, 296, 458 air quality 126, 137, 317, 362, 396; sensors for 215–16 Anderson, Deirdre 312 Apple 97, 444–5 artificial intelligence (AI) 17, 28–9, 177, 198, 208, 214, 311, 420–1, 449, 460–3;

blending physical and digital worlds 225; generative AI 210–12; impact on hands-on working 105, 132, 134; and hybrid meetings 198; impact on office work 169; misleading AI analytics 315–16 automation 27–9, 105, 132, 306, 314, 343, 347, 406, 449, 460, 462 autonomy and choice 39, 92, 102, 109–10, 233, 237, 281, 295, 377, 388, 411, 450, 464; centrality to Smart Working 2, 5, 6, 8–9, 53; and homeworking 337–8, 346; and inclusive design 374–5; and individualism 23–4; and office mandates 97–8; and older workers 107; and productivity 297, 299, 301, 305; and Smart Working culture 245, 254–5; and surveillance 214; trade-off with security 14–15; and wellbeing 72, 335, 355–6, 362, 382, 389 AWE (Atomic Weapons Establishment) 155–8, 376

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Index

back to office 5, 7, 130–1, 271; see also office mandates Barnes, Andrew 102 belonging 349, 352, 359, 371, 379–80, 389, 396, 403 biophilia Glossary, 137, 140, 190, 199, 367, 389, 396; biophilic design 31, 143–5, 147; and coworking 173; and homeworking 329; and lighting 378 blurred boundaries 164, 185, 225, 388, 462, 464; digital and physical 150, 188, 209; across Extended Workplace 186–7; hands-on and knowledge work 28, 176; health and ill-health 369; work and life 24–6, 184, 206, 214, 225, 339–40, 420; work and retirement 21 Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) 220–2 British Columbia, Government of 412–14 BT 138–40, 325 burnout 31, 102, 382, 387; and homeworking 335–9; WHO definition 335 Burton, Adrian 156–7 business case 48, 56–8, 66, 71, 73–4, 455 business continuity 39, 404–5, 421 Cabinet Office (UK) 394–7 CAN Test 230–4, 235, 262, 446 carbon footprint of work 154, 255, 305, 325; carbon cost of offices 428–9, 442; carbon cost of home offices 429–32, 442; carbon cost of work-related travel 430–2, 442; see also environment caring responsibilities 19, 39, 79, 100, 105–6, 109, 352, 354–5, 366, 369–70, 380 Cimpress 27, 99, 356–9 Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) 2, 32–3 collaboration 2, 10, 39, 39, 138, 190, 200, 218, 283, 315–16, 328, 359, 396, 399, 405, 419; asynchronous 83, 239, 244–5,

250, 273, 359; evaluation of 75; and metaverse 209; more effective 237–48, 264, 462; more immersive 17, 203–5, 214, 326, 344, 404, 463; physically in-person 130, 146, 154; and productivity 305, 309–10, 317; serendipitous 250, 307; virtual 26, 54, 179, 223, 367, 442; virtual versus physical 8, 324–5 collaboration spaces 66, 116, 124, 135, 197, 284, 376, 398, 413 see activity-based work settings Collins, Stephen 403 command and control 9, 236, 277–8, 382 community building 171, 173, 396, 414; see also team agreements; team cohesion compressed working hours Glossary, 3, 63, 104, 107, 331; and 4-day week 34, 101; spatial impacts 66, 433 connection/disconnection paradox 306–9 consultation see Smart Working employee surveys controllability of work environment 31, 46, 126, 142, 145, 317, 374–5, 377; of work arrangements 5, 21, 106 coworking 9, 150–1, 167, 168–78, 184–5, 336, 396, 462; in corporate settings 138, 143, 146–7, 167–8, 198; government sector 404–5, 412–17; and homeworking 347, 422, 451; in hospitality settings 180, 183; impacts on travel 437–8, 443, 447, 448; in workplace strategy 120, 130, 154, 162, 187–8, 251, 359; see also government hubs; maker space creativity 211–12, 225, 250 critical choice factors 95–7 culture 63–4, 223, 229–69, 302, 446, 458; defining 229; of Smart Working 234–5; of trust 253–4, 278–9, 411–12 demographic change 19–22; see also generations in the workplace; older workers

467

Index

democratisation of aspiration 23–4, 420 Denn, Tara 411 Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) 219–21 desk booking see space booking desk ratio 127–8 digitisation 16–18, 69, 104, 135, 151–2, 202–3, 219, 302, 310, 405–7, 427, 459; digital production 116; see also automation; Industry 4.0 Digital First see Virtual First digital nomads 15, 162, 185–6, 323 digital twin 105, 203, 207–9 disability, workers with 24, 39, 99–100, 102, 140, 173, 342, 364, 368, 374, 379, 451 diversity and inclusion 4, 24, 31, 39, 43, 173, 174, 367–9, 373–5, 378–80, 416, 420; and flexible recruitment 99–100, 232, 235, 237, 387 Dunbar, David 220–2 economic development 167–8, 188, 399, 415, 417, 421–2, 443, 450–1, 459 Elliott, Brian 181, 244, 249–50, 329 environmental impacts 4, 8, 39, 42–3, 57, 74, 96, 113, 114, 210, 260, 397, 399, 426–8, 438–52; carbon cost of offices 150, 413, 428–9, 442; carbon cost of home offices 429–32, 442; carbon cost of work-related travel 69, 414, 430–7, 442; ecological impacts 426–8, 444–5; embodied energy 427–8, 442; environmental awareness 29–30, 173, 237, 255; Environmental Equaliser 447, 448–9 equity (fairness) 63, 103–6, 217–18, 371 ergonomics 31, 46, 172, 180–1, 213, 281, 284, 328, 330, 340, 342, 358; and wellbeing 363–5 European Commission 209, 394, 402–3

evaluation 10, 54, 56, 74–6, 265, 296–7, 355, 368, 397, 400–1 Extended Workplace Glossary, 67, 112–13, 120–2, 139–40, 155, 161–8, 187–91, 202–3, 219, 347, 405, 449, 455, 464–5; blurring boundaries 186–7; challenge for managers 271–5; client sites 166–8; holiday locations 183–5; inclusive practices 379; principles for working in 165; public spaces 120–1, 179–81; role of the home 322–4; see also coworking; flexible officing; Virtual Workplace face-to-face interaction 85, 116, 231–2, 239–43, 249, 271–3, 325, 383–4, 418–19 flexible officing Glossary, 162, 168–9, 172, 177–8, 187; see also coworking Flexible Working Glossary, 1–4, 12, 24, 28, 58, 73, 91, 99–100, 261, 266, 286, 337, 353–6, 393, 402, 420, 432; becomes mainstream 31–4; difference with Smart Working 3, 48; impacts on productivity 296–9, 312–13; policies 44; right to request 3, 33, 100, 235; time-based flexibilities 3, 103–4, 107–9, 353–5, 433, 456–8; and wellbeing 337, 353–4; and women 18–19, 354–5 focus work 65, 118, 126, 189, 247–8, 306–9, 316, 325, 359; joint focus 247, 283, 309 4-day week Glossary, 34, 100–2, 417; see also compressed working hours future of work 7, 112, 136–7, 177, 191, 461–5 GCHQ 99, 213, 222–4, 411 generations in the workplace 13, 19–23, 157, 225, 311, 327 Glew, Sue 139 globalisation 26–7, 295 Gonnaud, Isabelle 54–5

468

Index

Google 7, 97, 171, 204, 210 government 7, 393–424; bureauless bureaucracy 404–5; government hubs programme 394, 397–9; government hubs internationally 412–15; public policy changes needed 420–4; police services 411–12, 415; politicians working smarter 418–20; public services 409–11, 415–16 Government Property Agency 394, 397–400 Graham, Richard 395–6 Guthrie, Kate 398–9 hands-on working 27–9, 81–3, 103–6, 112, 116, 132–6, 154, 210, 217–19, 373, 409–12, 458, 461–2; home-based 326–7, 434 Harvie-Clark, Jack 142–3 Hawkes, Andy 364 health see wellbeing His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) 406–9 history of working 12–15, 113–14 Hodsman, Paige 92, 141, 376 Holliss, Frances 345 homeworking Glossary, 19, 24–6, 31, 103, 107, 138–9, 170, 176, 223, 281, 321–47, 357, 360, 415, 422, 432; during pandemic 26, 31–3, 112, 156, 321, 332, 336–7, 373, 412, 418, 435–6; employers’ responsibilities 339–43; exploitative 9; Health & Safety for 341–3; home-based enterprises 9, 14, 422, 451, 462; home work settings 322, 325–7; policies 44; preferences for 32–3, 78–9; productivity of 298–303, 318; satisfaction with 33; potential issues with 330–9; varieties of home-based work 324–5; work environments 327–9, 343–4; see also teleworking hotdesking Glossary, 6, 66, 118, 122–4, 456

housing policy 421–2, 424 Hybrid Working Glossary, 1, 5–8, 33, 56, 124, 139, 200, 229, 261, 275, 316–17, 408, 414, 464; Controlled Hybrid 7, 95, 247, 253; Flexible Hybrid 7–8, 95; limitations of 33, 48, 318, 445 identity 373, 378–80; team identity 274–5; see also belonging inclusive workplace 46, 92, 140, 157, 167, 366–7, 374–5, 379, 398; see also diversity and inclusion Industry 4.0 Glossary, 27–9, 104–5, 210; impacts on workplace 132–6 innovation 83, 105, 138, 173, 187, 198, 203, 223, 233, 236, 269, 300, 321, 414, 429, 459; overcoming the innovation gap 263–4 intelligent building systems 140, 399; see also sensors Internet of Things (IoT) 17, 134, 206, 208, 224–5, 343; Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) 105, 224 isolation 31, 89–91, 131, 308, 330–5, 372 Jobshare 3, 79, 108 Kelliher, Prof. Clare 312 Keogh, Steve 411 leadership 39–40, 45–6, 47, 54, 58–60, 105, 223, 251, 270–95, 412, 461; resistant leaders 258; role-modelling 41, 45, 265; servant leadership 265, 280, 285–6 Leesman Index 32–3, 67, 300, 327–8, 398 legislation for flexibility 2, 4, 19, 31, 89, 100, 342, 456; see also right to disconnect; Flexible Working right to request lighting 137, 317, 377–8 linear versus non-linear working 233, 235, 245–7 live/work see workhomes

469

Index

Macdonald, Rob 414 McKinlay, Paul 356–7 maker space Glossary, 173, 175–7, 462; for home-based businesses 176, 322, 326, 328, 344 managers 41, 43, 50, 54, 94, 231, 254, 256, 306, 314–15, 340–1, 371–2, 381–2; competences for SW 270–1; location of 116, 276–7; people skills at a distance 271–6, 295; training for 267; see also leadership management by results 8, 89–90, 189–90, 224, 236, 252, 278, 282, 286–94, 306, 382, 401, 409, 411; versus management by presence 89 mandates see office mandates meaningful work 108–9, 371, 385–8, 421 meetings 66, 215, 284; meetings culture 231–2, 237–44; face-to-face; rethinking 66, 83–4, 237–44, 250, 283, 419; spaces 137–8, 145; virtual 150, 273–4, 283, 419; see also walking meetings mental health see psychological wellbeing metaverse 177, 208–9 metrics 46, 55, 56–76 mobile working 178–9, 202 multi-stage life 21–2; careers 423 musculoskeletal (MSK) health 366–9 NatWest bank 146–8 neurodiversity 157, 364–5, 374–7, 396 non-linear workdays 245, 313, 355, 383 Office for National Statistics (ONS) 32, 355, 360, 366, 435 office mandates 97–8, 130–1, 157, 247, 253–4, 316–17, 332, 395, 457, 458 office see workplace; death of 136–7; open plan 118, 125–7 older workers 19–22, 79, 102, 106–8, 173, 295, 327, 355, 371

onboarding new recruits 108, 276, 281, 358–9, 383 Osmond, Guy 364–5 One Public Estate programme 167, 415 Oseland, Nigel 92, 141, 374, 376–7 outdoor space 31, 120, 139, 157, 181–2; see also walking meetings paperless working 68–9, 151–2, 195, 282, 310, 402, 405–7, 420; see also digitisation part-time working 3, 18, 107–9, 353–6 PAS 3000 (2015) – Smart Working Code of Practice Glossary, 2, 74, 223, 394, 396–8, 456, 400, 408 perpetual beta 148–9 personality 109, 181, 373, 378–80; personal qualities for Flexible Working 87–92; testing 91–2; and work environment 92, 142–3, 317, 364–5, 374, 376–7 planning, land use 29, 344–6, 421–2, 424, 464 Poly 188–91 privacy 126, 195, 206, 214–15, 220, 225; see also right to disconnect productivity 12, 39, 43, 114, 141, 147, 218, 235, 292, 316, 318, 359, 377, 397, 414, 455; defining 302–5, 309–10; employee assessment of 60, 62, 67; evidence for improved 296–302, 368; across Extended Workplace 163, 181–2, 225–6, 379; and 4–day week 34, 100–2; freeing up time to be more productive 223, 225, 243, 250, 387; and homeworking 33, 321; metrics for 71–2, 74–5; monitoring 166, 214–15, 278, 306; outputs and outcomes 289–91, 293–4, 304; and process change 309–10, 314–15; workplace productivity 67, 92, 317–18; see also Connection/ Disconnection Paradox; management by results; work intensification profiling see role profiling

470

Index

proximity bias Glossary, 8, 205, 247, 271, 379, 441, 461 psychoacoustics see acoustics quiet spaces see activity-based working settings recruitment and retention 22, 72, 38, 57, 74, 75, 98–9, 147, 232, 237, 288, 325, 358–9, 368, 379, 399, 414; changing policies and procedures 266; costs of 72; flexible recruitment 354–5; over wider geographies 27, 44, 103, 114, 170, 187, 235; see also older workers; retirement regeneration 345, 416, 422, 464; coworking and 170–1, 173, 178 Remote First see Virtual First; at Cimpress 357–9 remote working 5, 8, 27, 43, 87, 112, 163–4, 223–4, 244, 251, 302, 318, 379, 408; evangelists 49, 136 resistance to change 256–9 retirement 20–2; flexibility and 106–8; phased 3; see also older workers right to disconnect 25, 384–5 robotics see Industry 4.0 role profiling 93–5, 147–8, 458 Roussell, Pauline 172, 178 security 84, 156, 171, 180, 195, 201, 219–24, 410–11 self-rostering 3, 103 sensors 64–5, 105, 145, 208, 215–16, 224, 344, 398, 462 sensory workplace 31, 46, 143–4, 378, 461; see also biophilia skills, policy for 423–4 Slack 27, 99, 248–51 small businesses 13, 102–3, 185, 188, 327, 422; and coworking 167, 169–70, 173, 176; see also home-based business

smart-proofing Glossary, 6, 54, 196, 203, 266, 446 Smart Working Glossary, 1–10; benefits 4, 8, 38–42, 56, 73–4, 75–6, 267, 301, 305, 460; branding 42, 255; business case for 48; champions 54; employee consultation 58–9, 62, 254, 367; employee surveys 58–9, 60–3, 73, 78, 263, 355; implications for facilities management 151; and new fields of work 210; preferences 63, 78–9, 95; Principles 42–3, 84, 152, 254, 459; and real estate strategy 152–5; strategic approach 38–55, 155, 188–9, 222, 296, 318, 401, 408, 455, 465; Vision 39–42 Smart Working Maturity 8–10, 54–5, 400, 408, 446, 455–6; Smart Working Maturity Model 8, 10, 74, 265, 456–60 Smart Work Network 49, 102, 142, 329 Smith, Grant 408 space booking 64, 138, 145, 178, 216–17, 284, 413; desk booking 131–2, 263 space-sharing 122–4, 127–8, 158, 196, 236, 284 start-ups 9, 171, 174, 188, 416, 462 storage 68–9, 151–210 stress 31, 72, 102, 351–3, 360, 382; see also burnout surveillance 214–15; see also monitoring productivity; privacy sustainability see environment task analysis exercise 79–87; tasks versus roles 5–6, 8–9, 109 team agreements 41, 51–2, 54, 249–50, 253, 264, 275, 279–80, 285, 355, 446; template for 282–4 team cohesion 130, 274–6, 282, 403 team space 124–5, 132, 138, 157 technology 4, 194–7, 463–4; ambient computing 206, 225, 343; auditing of 70–1; core workstream 45–7, 54;

471

Index

for homeworking 212–4, 328, 347; infrastructure 43–4; for meeting spaces 190, 197–9; screen 17, 135–6, 197–9, 203–4, 213–4; voice and gesture recognition 205–6, 311, 343; workplace management 215–17; see also Virtual Workplace telecommuting Glossary see also teleworking teleworking Glossary, 1, 32, 402, 427, 439–40; early implementations 163, 393–4, 437–8; in research 296, 301–2, 312, 337, 353, 434–7; see also homeworking term-time working 3, 18, 76, 67, 109 Thales case study 52–5, 76; historical figure 371 The Way We Work (TW3) 394–5, 397 third-party spaces 44, 120, 121, 154–5, 162, 427–8; see also Extended Workplace; coworking; flexible officing Thornton, Gary 377–8 total office costs 67–8, 305 traditional ways of working 3, 5–7 18, 25, 29, 85, 94, 113–14; historic value of 12–15 transport policy 422–4 travel reduction 69–70, 79, 114, 197, 269, 303, 305, 325, 387, 399, 414–15, 419, 427, 432–7, 459; impacts of relocation 428, 439–40; rebound effects 428, 441–3, 450 Triple Bottom Line 43, 149, 155, 305, 414, 459, 464–5 trust 47, 61, 101–3, 109–10, 189–90, 233, 236, 243, 367–8; centrality to Smart Working 2, 7, 8, 10, 53; culture of 40, 51, 218, 251, 253–4, 271, 446, 459; and health 368–71; hierarchy and 411–12; varieties of trust 251–2; trust-based management 277–9; zero-trust in IT security 201, 219–20 Urmston, Paul 146 Usher, Neil 148–9, 350

Vaan, Martine de 182–3 Vanhoutte, Philip 329–30 Versus Arthritis 24, 299, 366–9 Virtual First Glossary, 5, 8, 125, 164, 248, 251, 461 virtual mobility Glossary, 423 virtual organisations 9, 22 virtual reality 17, 105, 177, 204, 207, 324, 344 virtual team 26, 44, 84, 116, 232, 274–5, 321, 334, 410, 419 Virtual Workplace Glossary, 194, 225, 318, 322, 363, 395, 412, 457, 463; as 5th domain of Extended Workplace 120, 121, 162, 187, 203, 405; principles for working in 195–6; see also technology Vodafone UK 155, 298, 431 walking meetings 122, 181–3, 243, 361; see also outdoor working wellbeing 4, 8, 25, 47, 72, 79, 106, 109, 139, 282, 284, 285, 461; apps for 216, 226; biophilia and 143; commuting and 360–1; employers’ responsibilities for 387–390; factors impacting 351–3, 389; and homeworking 336–9; importance of relationships 381–3; managing illness 368–70; monitoring 223, 358, 365; physical 31, 372; positive impacts of work on 349–51; psychological 31, 340, 370–3; reenergising, importance of 330, 361–2; social health 381–2; trends 30–1; workplace wellbeing standards 31; see also meaningful work; musculoskeletal health; right to disconnect women 18–19, 72, 102, 173, 338, 355, 378–9, 416 workations 184–5, 323 workhomes 344–6, 421 work intensification 25, 302, 312–14 Workman, Bridget 394–5 work-life balance 18, 31, 40, 79, 237, 313,

472

Index

295, 305, 356, 388, 403, 419, 456; measuring 73–4, 76, 189, 368; trends 24–5, 31; work-family conflict 221, 339; work-life harmony 102, 305, 327, 339, 356, 358, 382, 385, 387, 450 workplace 39, 43–4, 112–58, 250–1, 404, 462–3; as derived demand 116–17; cost of 67–8; commuting and 360–1; core workstream for change programme 46–7; future of 462–3; human–centric 30–1, 130, 146, 285, 395–6; as minimum viable product 149–50, 449; occupancy 64–7,

95, 123, 132, 215–16, 398, 429, 443–4; purpose of 114–17, 127, 130–1; reconfigurability 145, 157, 199, 398, 40; reduction of footprint 44, 61–2, 114, 138, 147, 155, 169, 187, 190, 359, 399, 403, 406, 409, 413–15, 426–7, 444, 458; storage 68–9 workhub see coworking; government hubs programme younger workers 22, 157, 225, 327, 373, 383

473