Don’t just drift into the same old working patterns as we go into the new ‘term’. Equally, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. This is your chance to create an even more effective working culture: here’s how to take advantage of this opportunity.

The pandemic and the disruption it has caused are a bit more under control, in the UK at least, and we seem to be collectively in the mood to get back to work. Just like going back to school when we were kids, we’re breaking out some (slightly) more formal clothes, having our hair cut and getting our kit together.

The break in working patterns has been more far-reaching than many of us expected at the outset, and many employers and employees are going ‘back to school’ with the intention of doing things a bit differently this year.

You may have enjoyed working from home and are hoping to be able to do more of this in future. Or you may have felt terribly isolated and can’t wait to get back to the office for some social and professional interaction. You may have thoroughly enjoyed working remotely, using Zoom and Teams to interact with your colleagues – or be so sick of screens that you never want to hold a remote meeting ever again. You may have taken the chance to remodel the office – or to save overheads by abandoning it entirely, and hire spaces for communal working instead.

Whatever your personal mix of choices, you can be sure that there will be somebody out there who feels exactly the opposite – so how do you negotiate this when you get back to working more closely together again? Well, there are some ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’!

Don’t

  • Tell everyone they can create their own work:life balance and stay at home or come in at will – you may end up with a situation where you never see your whole team together again.
  • Allow yourself and everybody else to ‘drift’ into a new working pattern.
  • Be persuaded by your advisers to remodel the office space and switch everyone to ‘hot-desking’ without first asking the team how they prefer to organise themselves and how this might work for them.

One further ‘don’t’: don’t sit down (if it’s your company, or your team, or your office) and slave away writing out a new set of guidelines for the ‘new era’ all by yourself. You have an unprecedented opportunity here to bring people together to design something that will work better than ever before. Don’t waste it. So…

Do

  • Get everyone together – maybe your first team meeting of the ‘new era’ – and discuss, not a set of guidelines, but what will and won’t work for everybody in the team, office or group. Have a free and open conversation.
  • Use the idea of the ‘OK box’ – draw a box on the whiteboard, and brainstorm behaviours and practices that for members of the team fit inside the box – i.e. they are broadly ok for everybody. Similarly, note behaviours and practices that are outside the box – i.e. broadly not ok for everybody. So ‘everybody comes into the office on Wednesday mornings so we can meet’ might be inside the box. ‘We all come in every day’ might sit outside the box.
  • Then discuss the grey areas – the ones that sit on the boundary of the box – and aim to achieve alignment among members of the team on what is and isn’t ok. Don’t vote, don’t compromise. Keep talking until you create solutions for each situation that broadly work for everybody. It’ll take longer than voting or compromising, but you’ll find that people will come together in the discussion and creative solutions will emerge.

The most dangerous thing you can do at this time of enormous change in the world is to miss this unprecedented  opportunity and let yourselves drift into new patterns and ways of working. You’ll need to apply a gentle touch on the tiller to ensure your new working culture doesn’t go off course.

Next month, we’ll discuss a range of ideas you can consider in designing your new working culture. If you can’t wait that long and need some help now, call us on 07801 259637 (Kate) or 07770 221166 (Amanda).

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