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Deloitte - Foreword
Baillie Gifford – Spirit of Experimentation
Boston Consulting Group – Re-Shaping the Future of Work
Business in the Community – To Achieve the Office of the Future, Leaders must Listen and Respond
Byrne Dean – Re-Imagining the Future Workplace for Inclusion
CIPD – The Future of Work is Human
City Mental Health Alliance – Businesses Must Act Now on Mental Health and Wellbeing at Work
Professor Sir Cary Cooper – The World of Work 2025
EY – Five Key Trends Shaping the Future of Reward
Federated Hermes – Recruitment Interview in the Remote Working World
Fidelity International – Dynamic Working
GAM – The Power of Enabling Innovation at GAM
Investment20/20 – New Career Starters
Investors in People – Making Work Better - Small Steps or a Giant Leap?
Oliver Wyman – Future of Work: How Hybrid Should Your Workplace Be?
Schroders – How Working Flexibly Can Give Investors an Edge
Andrew Duma, Senior Manager Human Capital Consulting
Hima Vaghani, Senior Manager, Human Capital Consulting
Carolyn Lorian, Senior Manager, Human Capital Consulting
Payal Vasudeva, Partner, Human Capital Consulting
Tony Gaughan, Partner, Investment Management & Wealth Sector Consulting
Gordon Lavery, Manager, Business Operations Consulting
Dimitri Tsopanakos, Partner, Risk Advisory
The pandemic has seen investment firms, and in fact most firms, operate in ways that it never before thought entirely possible, the most obvious being the changed ways of working, and this is now an opportunity to further leverage this mindset shift. There have been so many learnings through this period of remote working, that we need to actively mine the data and insights gleaned to inform the new normal. It has created an opportunity for firms to respond, adapt and transform differently. Investment firms can embrace a set of attributes anchored in purpose to create lasting value for themselves, their workforce, and society at large.
With home working, the visibility of the workforce has diminished and pressure to appear ‘’always online’’ has increased, blurring
the lines between home and work. Experience during the pandemic has shown that the needs of individuals in the workforce are differentiated and complex. While we may be more digitally connected than ever before, interactions at work have become more transactional and physical human interaction has diminished. People are less visible, and it is more difficult to have incidental conversations, moments of spontaneous collaboration and informal networking.
It will take a purposeful effort to understand the needs of a workforce with differentiated working patterns in diverse teams and to foster healthy, balanced and productive work environments for people to be at their best. A one-size-fits-all model will not work.
Remote working has highlighted the need to embrace a new approach to how we work. It has had an impact on how we engage with each other and has led to greater reliance on technology to connect, share and collaborate with each other. The virtual office setting has changed how individuals interact with work and manage their time.
New circumstances have arisen affecting how the workforce ’turns up to work’ including changes in working hours, availability and work-life balance. Where firms embrace a growth mind-set it has allowed teams greater flexibility, freedom and empowerment, based on clarity and simplification, and centred around physical, mental and financial wellbeing.
Collaboration, knowledge sharing, and creative space require a different approach to what was once an assumed norm of work in a
physical office setting. Careful planning is required to communicate and agree how teams should work, defining working agreements and team norms, inclusive of caring responsibilities. Clarity of purpose and outcomes in defining how we work is crucial in order to maximise effectiveness when there is greater choice in ways of working.
At Deloitte we have spent time unpacking new definitions of productivity in increased virtual environments, where presentism is no longer the proxy for productivity. We like to think of this in terms of Efficiency, Effectiveness and Empowerment, and requires leaders at all levels to adapt their styles and behaviours to lead by example.
Doing away with legacy organisational, function, and team practices that do not help achieve desired outcomes so teams can work efficiently. For example, simplify decision-making, stop completing low value tasks, provide access to needed resources, streamline processes and policies, leverage modern technologies to optimise the workplace.
Giving teams clarity, capacity, and commitment to work effectively. For example, re-affirm desired work outcomes, create the space to think creatively and drive value, establish clear team norms, listen for workforce confidence.
Prioritising wellbeing and engagement that can help drive sustainable productivity over time so teams can feel empowered. For example, clarity on roles; invest in physical, mental, financial well-being, establish wellness norms, build skills and capabilities, adopt a learning mindset, provide opportunities for people to pursue their passions.
It is important to embrace options for remote working and allow greater autonomy and freedom, trusting in people and teams by setting them up for success with a clear direction, balanced with flexibility. Along with clarity and purpose, it is also to understand that the ’always available’ nature of the virtual office requires a sustainable approach to expectations about productivity. It is important
to create a healthy and sustainable pace of working that builds in time for connecting and allows for innovation. Inspiring innovation and creativity is a challenge that leaders must address when there is an absence of working together in a physical spaces.
Virtual working has many benefits and there has been a shift to a ’work from anywhere, anytime’ approach. As systems of working and work policies change, it will be important to address concerns such as isolation, distraction, lack of focus, and work life balance.
Technology will be important in a hybrid working environment to reduce waste and extend collaboration, but there will also be concerns about cybersecurity, compliance and availability when there is mobility and flexibility in the way that individuals work.
There is a ticking time bomb of workforce
wellbeing and mental health issues to deal with as the pandemic is eventually overcome. The impact of remote working has been varied; some individuals have thrived in a less chaotic and disruptive setting and enjoyed quiet personal space, while others have sorely missed the human connection and the energy from being in the physically presence of others.
During the lockdowns, wellbeing issues have often festered under the surface, and employers have not been able to spot them and take swift action to deal with them. Without physical interaction we do not have the non-verbal clues to rely on to identify and tackle wellbeing issues that might be arising through prolonged periods of isolation.
The impact of isolation is exacerbated by the continuous nature of virtual working, in which individuals are charged with increasing contacts and touch points, and there is an ever-growing demand for time and availability. With prolonged continuous working throughout the day (and night), without natural
breaks for commuting, networking, or conversations, it can feel that there is no escape and no ability to switch off. In addition, working parents and those with caring responsibilities have seen increasing complexity in their working arrangements, often juggling work demands and home demands at the same time.
The consequence for most employees has been that they have taken charge of their working day, flexing their hours in order to carry out their responsibilities while managing other demands on their time. This is likely to increase the demand for adjusted work patterns when they return to the workplace.
While the pandemic may have brought wellbeing into sharper focus, with employees seeing a more human face of the organisation, it has been a growing expectation among employees for some time. Now more than ever workers expect employers to support them with their mental and physical health.
Having a healthy and resilient workforce is not only a duty of care for firms, but also a key strategic advantage. Integrating wellbeing through thoughtful work design, rather than just supporting wellbeing through programmes adjacent to work, will be critical for success both during and after the pandemic. A purposeful and inclusive approach to integrating physical and mental wellbeing outcomes into workplace design will be needed in the transition back to office-based working.
There have been mixed fortunes among the workforce as a result of remote working. Some individuals have had greater access to opportunities because geographical location has been less of a barrier. However other groups of workers have been caught in the headwinds of lockdown closures and retrenchment. Minority groups have been among the hardest hit by job losses or by
having to attend their physical workplace. According to analysis by the TUC, Black and minority ethnic (BME) workers have been impacted during the pandemic more than white workers. And female employees have carried the major burden of managing additional responsibilities at home alongside their work commitments. This research has also surfaced the pandemic’s impact on working women. The analysis by TUC found nearly 82% of women said their lives have been negatively disrupted by the pandemic, and nearly 70% of those who have experienced disruption are worried about their ability to progress in their careers. Inevitably the balance has started to shift, with more employees demanding a workplace that allows them to manage caring and parenting responsibilities as well as lifestyle interests whilst being in physical attendance in the office.
The business and social imperative to focus on diversity and inclusion is widely understood, with compelling reasons for firms not only to accommodate and support under-represented groups, but also ultimately
to unleash the potential of the workforce as a whole.Harvard Business Review research has highlighted the value of both diversity and inclusion for firms; for example, bringing diverse perspectives to the table has been shown to enhance innovation by approximately 20% while decreasing risk by up to 30%, while inclusive cultures are twice as likely to meet or exceed financial targets, three times as likely to be high performing, six times more likely to be innovative and agile, and eight times more likely to achieve better business outcomes. The likely consequence of doing nothing will be to fall behind. Given the push to leverage diversity and inclusion to drive business outcomes, and the growing expectation that firms should serve as stewards of social responsibility, many business leaders are making pledges to address inequities and foster more inclusive work environments.
Hybrid working across physical and virtual office environments must continue to provide equality of treatment and allow inclusion to persist though changes in how we work.
Those responsible for shaping a work environment that drives engagement and performance will need to ensure that their workplace strategy is centred around creating an inclusive way of working, one that embraces diversity, removes disadvantage and sees past the limitations that were previously imposed in a physical working environment.
Achieving this will need a holistic approach to HR practices and policies that adapts to new working arrangements and does not disadvantage remote and flexible workers. Leaders must build new capabilities and understand what inclusion means and learn how to be effective as an inclusive leader. It is important that line managers and team leaders establish norms and set expectations that foster equal opportunity in a hybrid working environment, with mental, physical and financial wellness taken into consideration.
There will be regulatory considerations as firms reshape their business models and work plans to adapt to the new ways of working.
In a remote work setting there are new issues when it comes to monitoring for misconduct and market abuse. Increased difficulty in monitoring the use of personal or unmonitored devised creates additional risks of insider information being inappropriately disclosed. Reduced physical surveillance may encourage unethical or illicit behaviours easier. It will therefore be important to maintain a good cultural discipline in a distributed working environment. The rules that we adhered to in the traditional office space are expected to be maintained in a remote setting. In fact, in October 2020, the FCA stated that stated that “office and working from home arrangements should be equivalent” which means that firms will need to adopt new methods and technologies to mitigate these risks and ensure compliance under this new scenario.
A strong monitoring function will need to be built around the twin pillars of surveillance and communications monitoring.
Firms should consider whether to monitor what is not being monitored. As a preventative measure, for instance, firms compare traders’ level of business with the volume of their monitored calls. When the level of business has increased but the volume of monitored calls has fallen sharply, this may indicate that conversations have occurred via non-recorded channels.
Firms should also adapt their policies and procedures to mitigate and detect risk, for example by requiring all orders to be captured and confirmed via email. Firms should also consider taking a proactive approach, such as scheduling regular calls with the compliance function to check in with traders.
Firms must renew and sustain their focus on good culture and prevention. Good culture is a firm’s strongest defence against market manipulation and insider dealing. Culture is driven by incentives, and if staff are rewarded solely on the basis of sales and profits, they will be more likely to take on excessive risks to achieve them. These risks are often key drivers of poor conduct and so addressing the issue of remuneration is a core requirement for creating a good culture. Remuneration policy should recognise good conduct and client outcomes, and not just profits - and should penalise poor conduct regardless of the outcome. Firms need a culture in place which discourages traders from engaging in reckless behaviour, to recover losses when trades have gone badly or by taking on excessive risk due to irrational exuberance.
Firms could further use analytics to detect employees who show indicators of poor conduct behaviours. Some firms have looked to further their use of analytics by employing new technologies, for example network analytics and monitoring behavioural indicators to identify personnel who consistently exhibit characteristics related to poor conduct. Consolidating data points can be used to take corrective action to prevent misconduct rather than waiting for it to happen and resorting to detection after the event.
As we return to a more consistent set of working conditions in the coming months with offices opening and the roll-out of vaccinations progresses, it is important to continue to learn, experiment and adapt how we work. There are many benefits to be obtained, in productivity, innovation and inclusion, by maintaining a healthy balance between physical and virtual workspaces. Acting on experiences during the pandemic, it is important to ensure that we harness the opportunities that a virtual working environment provides and to bring to an end legacy working patterns that should no longer apply in the new hybrid environment.
Curiosity has been important to Baillie Gifford for many years. Our investors are encouraged to think widely and deeply, undertake thorough, detailed investigation into potential investment opportunities, and develop strong relationships with science, academia, and a range of thinkers with interesting ideas. Investors may start small, piloting ideas and testing outcomes before making larger commitments, mirroring a scientific approach of developing a hypothesis, setting up a trial and testing it.
This experimental approach may be less common outside of investment teams and in some of the people practices across our sector. We introduced an industry-leading, progressive shared parental leave policy in 2018, in other areas the tried and tested prevailed.
Recent circumstances provided a good opportunity to step back and think deeply about how we work, piloting more experimental approaches across the firm.
We mirrored the approach of investment colleagues and gathered detailed insight, not only from published research but also by speaking to some of the most innovative companies in the world that we are fortunate to know, having invested in them or built connections over the years.
HR and the firm-wide Staff Committee are taking the concept of experimentation into our thinking on working practices for the future. We have set out some principles and criteria for evaluation when we are able to test them in practice. We know we will need to try things, be honest and transparent with staff, telling them that we are experimenting, allowing us to be bold and remove some of the reticence that might normally be expected when implementing new approaches.
We want to build on what has worked well over the last year for our clients and staff, whilst recognising that we cannot anchor all our future thinking on an unprecedented situation. Our approach to future ways of working can be summarised into three broad themes:
We have given a lot of thought to our future ways of working. We’re continuing to review published research, talk to our clients and companies we invest in as well as taking an interest in what other companies are doing,
whilst being clear that we want to find our own path.
We’ve been getting ideas and input from staff, via pulse surveys, networks and conversations at live webinars and focus groups.
We recognise that we don’t have all the answers, nor should we try to solve all issues now. It will be important to experiment, adapt, and learn. Some things will work well, others may not, we will need to see how the principles are working in practice and change things if we need to, basing decisions on data and insight.
We intend to undertake a formal evaluation once we are able to have some form of return to the office, which will review data on recruitment, diversity, reasons for leaving, employee satisfaction and ensuring that client satisfaction and investment performance remains paramount regardless of our ways of working.
This is an opportunity to build on our positive culture, to become a more attractive employer and better as an investment firm.
The firm’s culture has really come into its own and the strong fundamentals have stood us in very good stead. The last year has shown that our focus on the long term, on clients and collaboration works.
We know that we can all be trusted, and departments and teams are best placed to decide how they can operate most effectively whilst maintaining the organisational glue that will help us to sustain and evolve our culture in the long term.
We’ve seen less need for detailed policy. We relaxed many staff policies and set aside others during the pandemic, so we see our future ways of working based on principles, recognising that a single approach won’t be appropriate. Different types of work will need different environments whilst working to maintain firm-wide connectivity.
Many of us have worked flexibly, we have all had to adapt to working remotely and pulled together to get things done.
That said, there are many things we have missed about being able to connect. We believe that having time together face to face is important for our culture, facilitates informal meeting, sharing ideas and learning, which is key to what makes us special as a firm.
We published a set of high-level principles to bring to life how we envisage work to be done in future and are seeking input and ideas from across the firm to continue to develop these. Our thoughts so far, outlined in greater detail and shared with all staff, are:
We know that developing and communicating a set of high-level principles is just the start. We will need to continue to engage staff, review, and adapt to the outcomes we find. The following considerations are likely to be important as we embark on the next phase and in the years to come:
Experimentation requires a degree of risk taking. This is not easy, but we have found that our long-term focus and ownership structure help.
Psychological safety is key, openness, honesty and humility help build this.
New staff are gradually given increasing levels of responsibility, time, and space to develop and build confidence. Senior staff talk about the need to tolerate some discomfort and that it’s OK to be wrong, or you wouldn’t take any risks. The nature of the investment business is to take conscious and well-judged risks.
Long term performance has been very strong but short-term performance will necessarily fluctuate, and we need to be able to deal with difficult patches and remain confident.
This less structured approach may be challenging for some managers. We anticipate
that moving from a world of certainty and clarity to one of flexibility, but more ambiguity may be difficult and uncomfortable for some.
Staff earlier in their careers may find it hard to know what is acceptable and what the “unwritten rules” are. Some may need more structure and guidance from their manager as they develop their careers.
We will need to support this transition, including doing more to develop managers, set expectations and provide guidance whilst resisting the temptation to return to detailed rules.
We have had to adapt how we think about managing performance during the pandemic and we need to take this thinking into our future approach to providing feedback and coaching when people may not be as visible.
How do we ensure we mitigate potential new biases, presenteeism and ensure coaching and development is available to all staff?
Clarity of goals, effective feedback and quality development conversations will be more important than ever and may lead us to continue to evolve our approach to more continuous, future-focused conversations and even more aligned, long term reward.
We will need to consider how to reconfigure offices to make them effective in the new world of work. We are moving to new offices in Edinburgh in 2023 so can design for different ways of working, however we will need to consider the interim period and how staff will adapt to a hybrid world of work.
Research is already suggesting that hybrid working is likely to be more complex to manage than everyone working from home or everyone working in the office. This will include ensuring that all staff feel included and that issues and logistics are worked through.
Anxiety and stress may be experienced by some staff whether related to public transport or being around more people.
Health and safety and wellbeing considerations will be very important to encourage individuals to feel safe returning to the office.
Whilst we will not forget the human cost of the pandemic on health, lives and livelihoods, the changing circumstances have provided a positive opportunity to broaden and deepen a spirit of experimentation across the firm and try new ways of working.
We know it will not be easy to follow a more principles-based approach and we will need to deal openly with challenges, supporting staff and managers in making the transition.
We are seeking to make the complex simple and enable people to work in a way that works best for them, whilst prioritising investment performance and client service above all else.
We anticipate that for most of us, whilst we will be in the office more than we are now, it is likely to be less than before. In striking a new balance, we will strive to ensure that we take the positives from this forced experiment and seek to combine the best of both approaches. We see advantages in enabling more remote working, however we also anticipate that coming together in person will be important for relationship building, developing those new to the firm and the potential for greater creativity.
We need to remember that this will still be an experiment for several months post any form of returning to the office. We will want to evaluate the impact of our new ways of working over a period of time, measuring
several key dimensions and gathering both qualitative and quantitative feedback, including performance outcomes, client satisfaction, employee engagement, productivity, talent attraction and development. We will ensure we stay mindful of the diversity and inclusion implications of hybrid working and seek to ensure that we work in a way which ensures all our staff can be at their most engaged and effective. We will ensure that we continue to learn, adapt, and embrace the opportunity afforded by adopting a spirit of experimentation and continuous improvement to make us a better investment firm.
The way we work has not changed since the Industrial Revolution when we started working in close proximity with our colleagues. This allowed for better coordination, collaboration, and co-creation. Sprawling factories and office complexes have been able to mass-produce products of ever-increasing quality for ever-growing numbers of customers. Customer needs were met. Companies led and customers followed.
The Industrial Revolution’s ‘co-locate’ work-model has been a huge success. Today modern offices are designed to maximise spontaneous interactions between workers. The social dimension this work-model fuels has enabled individuals to thrive and creativity to blossom through hallway interactions and
water-cooler discussions. A collective workplace has also allowed managers to direct and oversee their employees more easily.
However, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated profound changes to the way we work.
The UK entered its first lock-down in March 2020. In doing so it unwittingly embarked on a mass experiment as a huge slice of the workforce moved to working remotely. A year has passed; and working-from-home remains prevalent.
We surveyed 2,000 UK employees about their experience with remote working and how they want to work in the future. Although our survey surfaced some challenges to working-from-home, 86% of respondents reported positive benefits from remote working (e.g. fewer distractions, better work-life balance). Equally importantly, ~75% of respondents felt just as, if not more, productive working from home. The future of work has arrived.
As customers’ needs become more differentiated, personalised, and virtualised, investment managers have needed to respond with new solutions and innovate even faster.
Today, it is customers that lead, and companies that must follow.
The COVID-19 pandemic has further added to the complexity investment managers face by breaking the constraints of time and place. Employees are mobile and expect flexibility. The Industrial Revolution’s ‘co-locate’ work-model has fragmented.
Investment managers need to define their future way of working now. This means building the right work environment, including appropriate regulatory controls, and leading with empathy to unleash a new wave of human ingenuity and productivity.
Sustaining and enhancing workforce engagement and productivity over time is critical. There is a range of work-models investment managers can explore to achieve this: from fully face-to-face to fully remote, and different hybrid models in between.
Over half of our survey respondents said they wanted some form of hybrid model. This brings many of the benefits of working-from-home plus the human connection, in-person relationship building, and apprenticeship from a collective workplace.
However, in our view, no single model will suit an entire workforce.
To define the right work-model going forward, investment managers should bear in mind that different cohorts of workers have experienced remote working differently.For many cohorts, such as Finance and HR, the challenges of working from home can be overcome as supervision and collaboration with colleagues can be done remotely.For others, such as investment managers, it is harder to replicate the sparks of creativity that come from discussing market moves and debating trade ideas in-person with groups of colleagues.
Understanding these dynamics is critical.
We have identified five overarching questions to help investment managers uncover the true nature of the work delivered and thereby inform the right work-model going forward:
We encourage investment managers to debate these questions and to listen to the responses of their workforce. This requires empathy, thoughtfulness, and proactive leadership. Listening and responding to employees across the spectrum of demographics and experiences will ensure employees feel valued and will provide a solid foundation for a new work-model to be successful.
Any new future work-model will also need to be adaptable to the dynamic external context. New strains of the virus are emerging, and it is conceivable that restrictions will be phased in and out over time.
In designing their future work-models, investment managers should also seek to maximise organisational flexibility and operational resilience.
There are five lessons we can take from the COVID-19 pandemic so far that may help investment managers shape how to build-in flexibility and operational resilience:
1. Embrace the new reality: Many customer and employee behaviours that took root during the pandemic will become desirable and even permanent.
2. Be holistic to create competitive advantage: Forward-thinking investment managers will be holistic in how they embrace business model changes that the pandemic drives. They will make the most of this time to expand their ambitions and create competitive advantage.
3. Start with the customer: When designing new work models, investment managers should think like their customers and anticipate how the work will change.
4. Elevate your employees: Purposely create culture and connection. Build all employees’ capabilities to thrive today and in future work models. Balance organisation, team, and employee needs.
5. Act now: Investment managers that delay will find that their competitors have not stood still. The key is to embrace experimentation and then scale what works.
We are optimistic about the potential for investment managers in the UK. The future of work presents both risks and opportunities often in the same dimensions. Investment managers must thoughtfully design models to balance both.
I believe that the future office provides employees with the autonomy for great business delivery and customer and client services from ‘anywhere’. Now more than ever, employers are left with no choice but to trust their employees to pick up the tasks set and deliver them effectively to the satisfaction of customers, clients, and wider stakeholders.
If ever employers needed to actively listen to their employees, it is now.
In fact, there are four employee communities which leaders need to accommodate.
The first employee community are key workers: the NHS and social care, retail and transport employees for whom we are very grateful. For them, nothing has changed by
way of working pattern and location throughout the pandemic, because of their key roles in delivering frontline services that have kept the nation going.
The second employee community are those who are desperate to get away from remote working and cannot wait to get back to the office and ‘normal’ as soon as possible. They miss their friends and colleagues, the energy of bouncing around ideas and having in-person conversations with others. Some may be working in cramped accommodation, without a garden or easy access to green space that makes self-isolation even harder. Others may be finding that enforced working from home has chipped away at their mental health.
The third community are those who want a blended model of working. They want to reduce their time in the office and spend part of the week working remotely. They need this flexibility to help them manage all the other aspects of their personal life, including possible caring responsibilities.
The fourth group is made of those who have fully adjusted to remote working and have no interest in returning to the old ways of a crushed and busy rush-hour commute. For them, what used to be normal now holds no attraction for the future. For some, these changes to routine have even saved time and money and reduced their personal carbon footprint as they have spent much more time living and working locally. The sacrifices no longer seem worthwhile when technology enables us to attend the office – be it virtually – from almost anywhere around the world, much less the UK.
So, what model is the right one? None of them – and all of them. It is about responding to human need and recognising that employees have lives outside of work, with multiple responsibilities.
Inclusive employers must listen and respond to all of their employees no matter their gender, ethnicity, social background or seniority level within the organisation.
Failure to do so could even put people’s health at risk. We know that there is a huge mental health impact from the last 12-months that is yet to be realised. Invoking another ‘shock’ to some by introducing another wholesale change may prove too much. The pandemic has impacted individuals very differently. This could be because of disproportionate experience of contagion or death and bereavement in families and extended networks in the UK and internationally, which then means differences in roles and responsibilities, priorities, personal support and resilience.Employers need to consider cases for how people need to work in the future with the expectation that this may vary from individual to individual. For example, mental health disparities were higher for ethnically diverse women pre-pandemic with 29% of Black women reporting a common mental health disorder in any one week in 2014 and 28.7% of women with a mixed ethnic background reporting the same.
Employers who value their talent and want to ensure that they retain them must listen and respond to what they hear by enabling their workforces to work flexibly, whether it’s a
blended or fully remote model, or allowing those who wish to return to the office.
Will we need some new ways of working to effectively run blended teams? Probably. Employers will need to have a strong focus on employee wellbeing and fostering an environment of belonging within office-based, remote and blended teams. Managers will also need to have a greater focus on delivery, quality of outputs and managing processes flexibly and be open to innovative new ways of working.
Will there need to be a change in mindset that no longer attributes being effective by the amount of time spent in the office? Absolutely! But let us pivot, yet again. Just as we did when COVID-19 plunged us into the urgency of increasing digital and remote working. If the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us anything, it’s that businesses can be flexible. Leaders need to hear and respond to their employees by accommodating the four communities of workers who have proven their commitment to a strong future for business. For this to succeed, it is not just new supportive policies that are needed, but a listening ear.
The pandemic shattered our shared understanding and experience of the ‘workplace’. In the unplanned and unprecedented experiment forced upon us by COVID-19, we reinvented and reimagined at speed. Innovation was non-negotiable. Myths were exploded.
The impact on wellbeing, diversity and inclusion was profound. In some ways, COVID-19 proved a great leveller; in others it exposed existing disparities and created new inequities.
As we now tentatively step forward into the future of work, we have a choice as to whether we leverage the lessons we have learnt or succumb to the inevitable pull of ‘the-way-we've-always-done-it-here’, tempted by its ease and familiarity. The traditional 9-5, suit and tie-wearing, office-based workplace was a system designed by and for the people who established it. It worked optimally for them, and the people like them in the generations which followed. It was self-replicating, but it limited the diversity of the people who wanted to join it, to stay in it, and who were able to thrive in it.
Spend a little time on any corporate website in 2021 and you will probably find bold commitments to wellbeing, diversity and inclusion. If you are to avoid a charge of virtue-signalling and hypocrisy, then living that commitment requires leaders to step up. That means putting focus, energy and resource behind a strategic re-design of a 21st century people-centric workplace. It needs to offer conditions for anyone who has potential to achieve, where each person feels they belong and can bring their best game.
In this redesign, you will need to find a balance between the needs of the business, the optimal conditions for each individual employee, and the shared needs of the team. Looking at three key areas:
Where: Arguably the biggest question is to what extent people should be asked to work in physical offices. On the one hand, commute-free working from home (WFH) builds inclusion by enabling more diverse people to access the workplace. Obstacles in the path of people with caring responsibilities, with disabilities, or from different regions, for instance, fall away. Your talent pool grows exponentially. Your focus can shift from rewarding presenteeism to recognising outputs and talent.
The risk? While huge advances in technology increase our ability to collaborate online, it’s not without a human cost. We are social mammals and we evolved to interact in 3-D. It impacts connection and wellbeing if we only meet on screen (particularly if we are staring at them for hours). It’s harder to read how someone is doing. How easy is it to belong, and build bonds with a team you have never
seen in person? While the loss of those exclusive networks formed on golf courses may not be mourned in all quarters, the team social, the lunch meeting, and the coffee catch up play an important role in building the social workplace and a collective culture.
When: WFH has brought a temporal revolution too. We can flex when we work, creating opportunities for greater inclusion – allowing people to dip in and out – do their work when it fits in with their life and circumstances, and work better with colleagues across time zones.
The risk? Work spreads, eating into evenings (possibly even nights), we experience a perverted sort of FOMO (‘fear of missing out’) in a newly super-charged ‘always-on’ work culture. Work may well be better able to accommodate the demands of personal life (e.g. appointments, school run, deliveries), but there’s less of that life which isn’t permeated by work in some way.
The paradox is that allowing ultimate flexibility around when we work, might improve inclusion, while negatively impacting wellbeing.
How: The great WFH experiment has allowed more workers to do their stuff, their own way. In another blow to an outdated command-and-control style of leadership, micro-managers have been forced to trust their people. Without a manager looking over a shoulder, there’s been an autonomy and empowerment revolution. It’s allowed for new and diverse approaches, personal styles, and innovative delivery.
The downside? We lose the benefit of informal support and mentorship, of know-how and casual wisdom passed on.New joiners don’t get the benefit of corridor conversations, tagging along to the impromptu client meeting, the overheard call, the connections over coffee, the after work social. And autonomy isn’t always good - in anxious isolation mistakes can go unseen and unconfessed.
The where, when, and how of the hybrid you construct in the next phase should harness the best of these and other lessons, creating the optimal conditions for individual and collective wellbeing. Communicate your intent, update your policies, and step into something different.
And here’s the thing – no-one knows what that looks like yet. To get it right you need to be asking questions and listening to the answers.
Work out what you truly need from each role and function in your business. There’s stuff that has to be done, and there’s people who have to do it. Then consider what’s essential in terms of the where, when and how of achieving that. Notice where you’re defaulting back into the old ways or making assumptions.Listen to the people in each role. Ask questions about their experiences, their needs, their wishes. Don’t over promise. Make sure your leaders have the human skills
to have these conversations well and, importantly, to listen. It’s about asking open questions, exploring, and agreeing. These types of conversations help create the psychological safety which underpins an inclusive culture. You can better navigate together through unsettling stages of change when people feel heard, safe, and valued. Where people are struggling, leaders who create this open dialogue will be able to talk and address concerns.
Listen collectively. Talk to focus groups, to employee representatives on your employee forum, and to your inclusion networks or affinity groups (race, gender, LGBTQ+, parents etc.). If you do not have any collective ways to talk to your people, think about establishing them. The fact that they exist (or do not) and the voice they are given, sends a strong message about how much you value inclusion.
Break down silos, ensure there’s organisational oversight, consistency, fairness, and perceived fairness across the business.
Listen in teams. There will be trade-offs and compromises. An open culture, and transparency around your decision-making, helps people better understand the tensions. It’ll also highlight differences in how people are being treated, and where this damages diversity and inclusion. Where Amber needs to work Wednesday and Thursday from home, Raj can never make in-person meetings on Fridays, and Sam in London needs to collaborate with Jan in Singapore and Rex in NY, you need to talk. People buy-in to compromise when they understand what’s driving it.
Ask. Listen. Evolve. Repeat. This isn’t a one-off exercise. The way we work will continue to evolve in the future. Over the last twelve months, leaders have hopefully grown more accustomed to checking-in with employees, talking about the human challenges as well as the operational ones. The quality of those conversations, and the actions that follow them, will ground the future of work.
Data. You’ll need qualitative and quantitative data to direct your course of action. Talking to people is a start – but it’s unscientific. Surveys and questionnaires give you some more information. Track the impact of your decisions. Are there fewer women in your offices now? Are people WFH being promoted less often? Who is joining your post-pandemic workplace? Who is leaving (and why)? Is your human resources team tied up with complaints and requests? And – of course – what does the productivity data tell you about how it’s going?
Agile, open-minded, quick thinking and adaptable employers will thrive. Put simply, the potential workplace just became much, much bigger; the talent accessible from a far wider pool than ever before; and the ways to deliver what we do are becoming wider and more varied than we have yet to experience.
“It should be borne in mind that there is nothing more difficult to arrange, more doubtful of success, and more dangerous to carry through than initiating change… the innovator makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old order, and only lukewarm support is forthcoming from those who would prosper under the new”. Machiavelli wrote this in The Prince, but the pandemic has forced profound change on all of us in our working lives, change that will last for decades, and at a speed we haven’t seen in modern times.
For many years, HR research has suggested that people have wanted to work more flexibly (Norgate & Cooper, 2020), given the advent of enabling technologies, but have felt inhibited from doing so because they felt their employer would perceive them as less committed and engaged, particularly during difficult times like the 2008-2015 recession.
The pandemic has forced a change that has proved very successful, as more and more people, who can substantially work from home, are now choosing to do this.
post-COVID (Cooper, 2020). The office environment as we have known it will disappear for many, as people work substantially from home with an occasional foray into some downsized central office for team building, developing new products and services and socialising
This will provide individuals with greater work-life integration, with greater control and autonomy over their work, time and relationships.
This change will bring about a more fundamental change in the role of the line manager. The new world of work will require a different breed of leader, someone who has better people skills, greater emotional intelligence.
Since the Industrial Revolution we have recruited and promoted people based on their technical skills, not their social and interpersonal skills. A flexible workforce will need EQ leaders who can manage people working in a variety of contexts: who can team
build, recognise when people aren’t coping, embrace autonomy and enable personal and professional development. The social reformer, John Ruskin, acknowledged this at the start of the Industrial Revolution, when he wrote in 1851:“in order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: they be fit for it, they must not do too much of it, and they must have a sense of success in it”.
The whole recent movement toward workplace wellbeing is now being embraced by business leaders, who learned a lot about themselves, the value of employee health wellbeing and about the often heard euphemism pre-COVID, but rarely actioned, “the most valuable resource we have is our human resource”. The millennials and Z-generation are voting with their feet for a more humane culture, one where they are managed by praise and reward rather than a command and control management style, with greater autonomy, with work-life integration and feeling valued and trusted by the organisation who looks after their personal and professional development.
As Mark Twain once wrote: "Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can somehow become great”. There will be those who call these generations the ‘snow flakes’, but research (Cooper, 2020) has indicated that what THEY value is what delivers to the bottom in the long run.
The future world of work will be different, and let’s hope for a more caring, supportive and value-driven workplace than we experienced in the pre-COVID decades.
As Studs Terkel wrote in his acclaimed book Working, after interviewing hundreds of working people, he summarised their hopes: “work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor,in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying”. This is our challenge for coming years and decades ahead.
Debates about the future of work have been growing steadily over the last decade. Much has been driven by the growing impact of technology, AI and automation, and what has been described as the fourth industrial revolution.
But the reality is that it is not just technology which is driving change in the world of work and the jobs we do, in our workforces and their expectations, or in our workplaces and how patterns of work are shifting. Social and demographic change are equally profound, as are wider geopolitical shifts and new phases of globalisation.
The younger generations coming in to work have become a louder voice. They have greater expectations of purpose and meaning in the work they do and the organisations they work for. They expect to be heard, and they want more flexibility in how and where they work and to be judged on
outputs and not just on old work routines from the industrial era. Now the pandemic is acting as a great catalyst, accelerating changes in working patterns and expectations, but also significant economic shifts that are playing out in very different ways across sectors. The environmental crisis also remains as a strong stimulus and need for change in how businesses operate but also how consumers consume.
Looking back over the past several decades, on the surface it appeared little was changing. Yes, there has been a significant shift from manufacturing and asset based economies to services and the knowledge economy in the developed nations of the world, but business practices for the most part remained very recognisable to prior generations.
Much of business was still being driven by the singular profit motive - what the US economist Milton Friedman declared in the 1970s was the sole purpose of business. The wider responsibilities of business beyond satisfying the financial stakeholder were secondary. We seemed to be caught in a paradigm of work with growing inequalities, greater stress, dominant command and control corporate cultures, and
people largely treated as costs and resources (reflected also in the language we were using).We have persisted in traditional measures of our economies and business success with financial metrics that have been capturing a smaller and smaller proportion of an organisations value, or indeed the value of our economies and societies, and are almost all backward looking.
These have all been significant factors in the short termism of thinking and investment so often questioned as a cycle that has to be broken, particularly now as we look ahead to a faster changing world and a more uncertain future.
The big contextual drivers of change however, are forcing a different kind of dialogue. A dialogue of responsible business and stakeholder capitalism, of ESG measures and greater corporate transparency. And of people more at the heart of business thinking, acknowledging and valuing their differences, how they best bring value to the work they do, and how that work in turn can be good for them and for their overall wellbeing.
These then should be core principles and drivers for the future of work and how we shape it, to be good for people, for organisations, for our economies and societies.
We can’t predict all the jobs and roles that people will do, but we can be sure that jobs and roles and the skills needed will change at a faster rate than ever before.
This requires us all to create agility and flexibility in our organisations, to plan further ahead and to invest in people and capabilities that will help ensure long term sustainability, not just short term reward.
Understanding the kinds of capabilities needed, and the many different ways in which we can access skills and capabilities must become a strategic competence for any business.
We have to be proactive in designing jobs that bring the best of technology together with the best of people, and to look at all options - buy, build, borrow, or bot.We must up our ability to upskill and reskill people - using digital learning and embedding learning more in the flow of work, and to adapt our educational systems to focus on core and transferable skills as well as lifelong learning. We will have to adapt our workplaces and workspaces to accommodate many different ways in which people might work, and to create truly inclusive organisations and cultures.
All of this says that no business strategy can be complete without a people and organisational strategy that underpins it.
These are all exciting but challenging shifts. In so many ways we are at a tipping point of change and it is in all our hands to influence and shape the future – as others have said, the best way to predict the future is to help to shape it. But it won’t be one singular future. There is not a one size fits all, or a standard model. Indeed as has also been said, the future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed.
It has taken a global pandemic to firmly challenge any mistaken beliefs that employee mental health is just an HR issue, and finally put mental health on the Boardroom agenda of almost every company. And for the good of people, business, wider society and our economy, it must stay there.
We are in the midst of a global mental health crisis. Even before the pandemic, the Lancet Commission reported that mental illness is on the rise in every country in the world and, will cost the global economy $16 trillion by 2030. It is estimated that 12 billion working days a year are lost to mental illness. In the UK, there were 80,226 more under-18s referred to NHS mental health services in England between April and December last year than in the same period in 2019.
The number of children and young people needing emergency care rose 20% to 18,269,while the number of adults needing emergency treatment reached a record high of 159,347. There is no question that the pandemic will have worsened this outlook.
At the CMHA, we believe that businesses, the pillar of every society, have the opportunity and the responsibility to be part of the solution through protecting, supporting and creating positive mental health for their people.
There is also clear evidence that people welcome support from their employer, with 9% of people saying that they accessed mental health and wellbeing support through work in the first UK lockdown.I find this hugely encouraging, as it indicates trust in employers and shines a clear light on the potential that employers have to help their people. If people do feel comfortable to access wellbeing
support through work,such as Mental Health First Aiders or the equivalent,EAP, counsellors or even colleagues, we are more likely to catch them at the early stages of being unwell. We can provide early intervention help, thereby reducing the chance of it progressing to a more serious illness and decreasing the burden on the NHS. Supporting the mental health of your people is the right thing to do.
It is also the business-critical thing to do. There is no shame in saying that what is good for your people is also good for the bottom line. Business leaders must apply their business acumen to this problem as they would any other threat to their business. If there was an IT problem costing businesses billions every month and impacting on productivity, you would fix it.Businesses also risk losing out on future talent – a CMHA survey of 500 early careers job seekers found 91% are more likely to apply to an employer that is committed to supporting employees’ mental health.
It’s no surprise then that workplace mental health is increasingly a question for investors. After being the least talked about element of ESG for years, “Social” is now at the forefront of minds.
Mental health and wellbeing at work, a key part of the “S”, is quickly becoming a priority for the investment community. Last year, the CMHA started a conversation with nearly 50 business leaders from the banking and investment management industry about how supporting the mental health of employees and society can add to ESG credibility.It quickly became clear that businesses should be ready to be assessed by how well they support the mental health and wellbeing of their people.
The reasons why are obvious - a business which offers its people a psychologically safe culture, where people can be themselves and feel able to ask for help when they need it, are more likely to thrive. This business is more
likely to build trust, increase morale and retention, and support a positive business reputation. It is more likely to recover well and be more resilient to future shocks. On the other hand, organisations that don’t do this are more likely to see diminished productivity, innovation, retention of top talent, and financial performance in the long term.
Businesses must act.
But what does action look like? CMHA members have been leading on workplace mental health for over a decade, and we capture what good practice looks like. The first important step is to challenge mental health stigma, which sadly, still exists. But this can change quickly if Board level executives lead the conversation. During the pandemic I saw leaders become more open about their own struggles and how they are looking after their own wellbeing. Leadership vulnerability matters. It gives permission and signals that this business cares, that message is internalised into the culture creating a safe space for all to share and seek support,
as well as be more likely to recognise it in their peers. Leaders role modelling behaviour is crucial for change.
Secondly, businesses committed to workplace mental health are ensuring their people are skilled with a general level of mental health literacy and, most importantly, feel confident to have a conversation.
Thirdly, businesses need to design and adequately resource a workplace mental health and wellbeing strategy and plan which covers everything from people management to working environment to support. And progress must be tracked, measured and reported on, in the same way organisations are increasingly holding themselves to account – or being held to account – on issues such as sustainability and equality.
A mentally healthy work culture is about creating an environment where employees look forward to doing their job because it has the right level of challenge and the right level of wellbeing support.
At the moment, the rules and borders of workplaces are being redrawn and businesses have an opportunity to put mental health and wellbeing at the heart of this redesign. I have no doubt that the workplaces which get this right are the ones that will succeed and stand out in this new world of work.
The future of work is here; so is the future of total reward and remuneration.
The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly changed the world of work, disrupting business operations in an unprecedented manner and accelerating several future of work trends overnight. HR and reward professionals have found themselves at the forefront of their organisations’ COVID-19 response, having to quickly incorporate emerging trends into their people strategies.
We see five key emerging themes, all of which impact the way employees will need to be rewarded in the future:
pushed to the fore, as have employee engagement and performance management. Reskilling and the opportunity of looking at potential cost reductions from new ways of working are also increased priorities. Finally, reward is the ‘sharp tool’ to change employee behaviours, improve employee performance, drive the strategic direction of a company and result in cost rationalisation.
These are the considerations for how to start rewarding people differently in the changing future of work.
Initial fears in some quarters that the job market would grind to a halt with the onset of home working have proven invalid, with recruitment continuing at robust levels in 2020 following an initial lull. Federated Hermes never shared such fears, as the international nature of the business has meant that video interviews have played a role in the recruitment process for several years – especially for HR professionals. The firm has recruited and on-boarded a significant number of candidates as part of continued growth plans in the year since the start of the pandemic – the vast majority of whom only had virtual contact with the firm during the selection process – and based on feedback, the process adopted has been a positive experience for new employees.
Indeed, like many aspects of remote working, the movement to virtual interviews has both advantages and disadvantages compared to more traditional, physical processes – both for firms and for candidates.
For firms, the key advantage was that virtual interviews allowed the recruitment process to continue whilst physical meetings were not possible. But the remote approach also produced some logistical advantages – including the greater availability of candidates who no longer had to find time and reason to be away from their physical workplace. This meant that the elapsed time taken to hire typically fell as a result of lockdown. The process also allowed firms to get a different view of a candidate’s characteristics e.g. how they chose to dress for the interview (which ranged from more casual attire to full suit and tie), and how they responded to set backs in interview circumstances such as technical glitches or interruptions by family members or
pets! For candidates, there was also advantages in terms of often getting access to more people (as firms took a more cautious view to selection) and also from being in the comfort of their own home and, potentially, having access to preparation notes to give them confidence.
There were also several areas where the remote selection process has not been as rich as traditional ‘physical’ interviews. Clearly the virtual world makes it harder to gauge the body language of both candidates and interviewers, and does not allow the same informal conversation to take place when candidates are walked to the interview room in the office. The candidate will not be able to get a ‘feel’ for the office when they do not walk through it – though we have tried to overcome this by sending a video of the office to those moving to offer.A visit to the office also enhances a candidate’s ability to get a feel for the culture of the organisation and the employee value proposition, which is increasingly important to prospective candidates;the ‘can I see myself working
here’ question. It is therefore, important that interviewers provide as clear a picture as possible to candidates in relation to the working environment, organisational values and culture.
In addition, where in the office two members of staff may have met a candidate together, in the virtual world, this has typically been split into two single interviews both because of the greater chance of technology issues the more people are on a call, and the stilted conversation that can happen in formal, group conversations on platforms. Technical issues in general can be a problem in some instances – and there is a risk that remote interviews could introduce some bias into selection if it disproportionately impacts those candidates who do not have access to the best equipment and WiFi signal.One of the more complex scenarios to navigate during the pandemic has been candidate testing and assessment. Traditionally, assessment centres are labour intensive and often built around interactive group exercises.Many companies have had to
rapidly transform their processes into virtual assessment centres, whilst striving to maintain the same engaging, interactive and realistic experience for candidates. Technology has enabled such adaptation, however, as well as the points already raised, there is also the additional factor of trust when it comes to remote testing. We, the hirer, have to trust that it is the prospective candidate who has completed the requested assessment, and that they have done so within the defined parameters.
The key going forward will be to harness the best of both physical and virtual processes.
The mix will vary by role and hiring manager preference (and to some extent the overall future model for office working), but it does seem likely that for roles with a potentially large candidate pool we may continue to have virtual meetings for the first round of interviews, followed by physical meetings for the final shortlist or when it is preferable for a candidate to meet more than one member of the team in one session.
2020 was an extraordinary year. So many things changed in our daily lives and for most firms, like Fidelity International, the move to working from home (WFH) full-time for 98% of employees was pretty immediate. Something that in ‘normal’ times would have taken months of planning was implemented within a small number of weeks, if not days. Our priorities in those first few days were:
We learned very early on as a firm that we have the ability to adapt brilliantly as individuals and as teams, enabling us to run our business in a way we never imagined possible. We also started to realise, as did much of the working world, that the future of work, and more specifically how we work, is likely to never look as it did in February 2020 again.
At Fidelity, we started to set out a vision around the future of work, a project we labelled ‘dynamic working’. We laid out our plans and timeline, and communicated this exciting new approach with our people across the globe, highlighting the personal benefits of choice and flexibility, as well as the continued importance of coming together face to face. We also outlined our plans to adapt our offices, offering personal workspace and a vibrant place for collaboration and creativity.
As well as conducting regular wellbeing surveys, asking how employees are feeling and whether they have the right support, we ensured employees had the ability to express
their preferences around working flexibly more specifically, collaborating with them to shape choices around working patterns and location.
Running focus groups with over 1000 participants across the globe was a valuable way in which we gathered as many ideas as possible for our ‘dynamic working’ plan.
We know, for example, how important connectivity and a sense of community are to our Fidelity family, which feeds into how we shape the office as a space for collaboration and networking. Our employees have told us they would welcome more choice and flexibility about where and when they work in the future too, which means we must ensure they have the right technology and workstations set up to work effectively from all locations. We also continue to regularly communicate back updates on these plans, returning to the office and how we can best support our employees.
To be a truly flexible employer, encouraging and trusting all employees globally to perform their role in the way that works best for them, our business, our colleagues and our clients.
To create a truly modern and progressive approach to work life (wherever that may be) and provide a vibrant workspace for employees in the office, meeting clients or collaborating with colleagues.
We knew we needed to support our vision and aim with a clear set of principles, in order to ensure we all work together to make ‘dynamic working’ a success. Our principles centre around:
In return, we asked employees to take into account a number of key considerations to make sure we can continue to run our business effectively and prioritise our clients. These included:
In line with our vision to be a truly flexible employer, we continue to review the benefits we offer our people and, in 2020, we enhanced our parental leave globally, enabling fathers and
secondary carers to take the same amount of paid leave as mothers and primary carers.
It’s early days as some of our global offices are just starting to return to the office. We will need to continue to evolve our ways of working, policies, technology and collaboration tools for what lies ahead.
A hybrid working model will present new challenges to organisations and we know we will need to continue to listen to our employees, be agile and adapt to what lies ahead.
We must also ensure that we recognise equal contributions regardless of whether employees work from home or from the office, and that we maintain or improve our productivity as an organisation.
The leadership model will continue to evolve as trust, empathy, understanding and listening will be key to empowering employees in the new way of working.
Employers that succeed at this will be highly sought after and employees will leave employers where flexibility and work-life balance is not an option, which will limit the talent pool available to them.
It’s also really important that we maintain our strong and wonderful culture, and support career development when our workforce is not coming together every day in our offices to connect and build relationships face to face.
We will experiment with new ideas, some may fail while others will be brilliantly successful, and we’ll learn through iterating our approach and through communication and feedback along the way.
Our goal is that we all have a better balance of working, from places that suit us and work for our colleagues and our clients, and that our offices will be a hive of creativity and collaboration. This is all with the continued aim of building better financial futures for our clients and creating a more rewarding and fulfilling work life balance for all our employees.
Our employees at GAM Investments have always been creative, proactive and innovative, but we formerly lacked the structure and tools to streamline their ideas. By introducing an idea management platform, we have been able to utilise technology to make our innovation goals a reality.
Since launching a specialist innovation platform at GAM in March 2020, we have quickly and effectively uncovered our employees’ ideas, put those ideas in front of the right people and developed our culture of innovation. In the first two weeks of operation, the platform crowdsourced more than 100 ideas from 300 users and saw almost 2000 interactions on the platform.
There’s no doubt that our most important asset at GAM is our people. We place great value on cognitive diversity and therefore had a strong existing foundation for innovation to thrive inside the organisation. Our employees have always been proactive and creative, but we lacked a network for sharing ideas and didn’t have the processes in place to unlock the full potential of our employees’ ideas.
Similar to many other organisations, ideas weren’t being captured centrally and innovation was occurring on an ad-hoc basis. As with traditional innovation processes, there was no transparent and timely feedback mechanism for showing employees what management was doing with the ideas they were presented and no structure in place to see ideas through from conception to implementation. As a company that values innovation and seeks to be transparent with its employees, this previous lack of feedback clarity was an issue we were determined to resolve.
As a truly innovative organisation, we realised that to create a successful innovation model, we needed a clear idea management process and the technology to facilitate that process at scale. We also wanted idea management software that could:
unify our employees across the globe;
engage the cognitive diversity of our full employee population;
enable real-time collaboration; and
act as a centralised place for ideas to be captured and followed through to implementation with full transparency
In early 2020 we began looking at many different third party platforms that could help enable us to reach our innovative goals, before deciding on our chosen partner. We knew what we wanted and that was a positive platform to share ideas and keep us connected during the pandemic.
We originally planned implementation for late Q3 2020, however due to the pandemic our initial concerns being staying connected and innovative whilst working remotely we made the decision to speed up implementation and roll out the platform in April 2020. Over the past 12 months the platform has helped us to ensure that our employees were well equipped to add as much value to the organisation remotely as they would during face-to-face meetings in the office environment. We did this by;
We drive change and innovation by launching focus led challenges that align with our core values, giving every employee the opportunity to be part of the growth of GAM.
We use bulletins to publicise the ideas that we are implementing around the business and to demonstrate that many ideas are taken on board and turned into a reality.
We use tailored groups to reach different audiences, be it social support groups for parents or a marketing group to share innovative ideas and challenges between departments/teams.
By giving employees the opportunity to cloak their ideas, they can feel confident enough to reveal themselves as the author at a future point if they so wish. This is something that we have seen happen a number of times over the past 12 months, indicating growing confidence amongst staff. In some cases, our employees
have uncloaked their ideas after receiving positive comments from our CEO, COO or other members of staff. We have been very mindful that not everybody is an extrovert but equally that everybody should have the opportunity to share ideas. Regular meetings with Idea Committee
Our Idea Committee meets weekly to discuss all new ideas, challenges and interactions on the platform. The Idea Committee is made up of GAMbassadors representing all of GAM’s jurisdictions and departments, ensuring the firm is more connected globally now than it has ever been before and aiding knowledge sharing firm-wide.
Aligning the innovation platform with our daily business governance is an important part of the innovation process. We have built a working model where we can take ideas and report them into the appropriate working groups and committees to ensure we have everything covered and are staying connected.
We have just passed the one-year anniversary of the implementation of the platform and as we reflect on its success, we are also looking ahead to how we can build on the positive momentum we have generated. In the 12 months since launch, we have seen more than 327 ideas submitted globally, of which 48 have been actioned so far. As well as giving everyone a voice, the platform has been instrumental in communicating some of the positive developments that are already happening throughout the business, with 27% of the ideas raised over the past 12 months projects that were already underway.
In addition, a significant proportion of ideas have benefited existing project work streams or helped to influence steering committees and management during a time of significant COVID-related change. The voice and transparency that the platform has given employees during lockdown has been welcomed throughout the firm.
So far, we have used the platform to listen to and understand employee ideas. We are now looking to understand how we can use the tool to engage with our clients directly in a user friendly manner, to ensure we are both listening and feeding back on how we can continue to improve the client experience.
By implementing an innovation platform we have given our employees a voice at a time when they might have otherwise stayed silent. This has had an extremely positive impact on our culture and we hope to keep building on that by encouraging every person at every level of seniority to speak up and to use their voice. Many of us have never felt so connected despite the remote working environment. In the long term as we enter the new normal, we hope to build on this, creating a connected innovative future, regardless of where in the world we are.
Starting a new job during the pandemic has been a novel experience for most professional hires familiar with the recruitment and onboarding routines. But for those starting their first job, they have become the first generation to experience an entirely virtual relationship with work – virtual recruitment, virtual onboarding and virtual induction – their first job experienced through a laptop screen. Without any physical experience of the workplace, it has been a seismic shift in entry recruitment - a first for the new entrants but also for the recruiters and line mangers.
As the role of the workplace changes we have the opportunity to reflect and draw from the positive experiences of both the virtual and physical workplace in how we welcome and develop new professionals.
During the first week in the office first time jobbers quickly lose the nervous butterflies when they get to meet their team, other colleagues and senior leaders and start to navigate their way around the office getting a feel for how things work. Soaking up the surroundings and the wider culture, onboarding helps acclimating to office processes and cultural norms, building familiarity, a sense of belonging and emotional connections. COVID has turned this onboarding template on its head no longer able to rely on the power of the physical workplace with all interactions moved online. Has this impacted the experience of new entrants? Our trainees tell us that they feel embedded within their firms but as most are new to the world of work, remote working is all they know. Problem solving unstable internet connections and hotdesking around the home, new starters have adapted quickly gaining skills in independent and autonomous working early in their careers. A hybrid workplace looks certain to be the future and new career starters are already being equipped with a broad range of skills to navigate their careers in a world of perpetual change.
The office can be an oasis of informal learning especially to young professionals listening into the ad hoc conversations around them and observing the behaviours of colleagues. This in situ workplace learning plays an important part in professional growth by helping to understand the office cultural dynamics, decode unwritten rules and form an understanding of what is acceptable professional behaviour. This is particularly helpful to young people who have no exposure to role models in financial and professional services. A lot of what new starters learn in their first year of work helps lay the foundation of their own professional reputation. Has the virtual office deprived young professionals of this informal learning?
While difficult to replicate ad hoc on the desk learning virtually, employers have put in place buddy systems with previous graduates and school leavers where they can share their experiences, have virtual informal coffees and create a collegiate community of new hires with different touch points.
Trainees tell us that one of the highlights of their trainee year are the relationships that they build with peers both at work and with other trainees across the Investment20/20 programme.
We know the power of formal and informal networks in advancing careers and one of the biggest challenges for new entrants is building these networks which occur more naturally in the physical workplace. The random bumping into people in the corridor cultivating informal interactions and the organic cross pollination of ideas.
New starters have missed out on these crucial social networking opportunities that build collegial relationships, professional confidence and enhance career progression. Organising fun virtual cross team building experiences through murder mysteries and quizzes have helped to create informal connections. While there are many creative virtual tools available to informally develop people, face to face interactions remain
important and there is no substitute to meeting in the office. As we reintegrate into the physical workplace, career starters only familiar with virtual work tell us that they are feeling nervous – it’s like the first day of work all over again. Time should be given for this cultural and physical acclimating, albeit at a later point in the usual life cycle of new professionals. For many young professionals the physical workplace offers more than just networks and informal learning, providing both physical and emotional benefits too. Unlike their older peers, younger generations are more likely to be living in shared accommodation not conducive to work. They are also more likely to experience physical discomfort from working on the side of their bed or in some cases the ironing board, and feel loneliness from the isolation of lockdown.
Homeworking does however have the advantage of widening pools of accessible talent, drawing from groups of young people who do not live easily within the daily commute.
New starters with disabilities or caring responsibilities who cannot easily travel to work every day are among those that are able to benefit from this shift in working. Effective line management during lockdown has required a more thoughtful approach adapting to personal styles, increased employee contact and active listening that includes the human and work challenges – it is this inclusive style of management that builds physiological safety.
To help young workers thrive who lack confidence and experience, they must feel supported by their line mangers.
Feedback from young professionals is that they sometimes feel invisible in online meetings not having the same voice and not sure how to make themselves be known. Those with skilled line mangers who have proactively include them in virtual meetings by allocating specific tasks have felt their confidence grow. Conscious thought needs to be given to supporting cultural capital in new starters as hybrid models have more
complexity requiring adept skills for both homeworking and office work. As COVID has fundamentally reshaped how we work and the hybrid future means equipping new starters with the skills to navigate a career that includes both remote and workplace working. Reflections from the young people who pioneered remote working helps us strike the right balance between employee flexibility, productivity and developing young professionals with no experience of the world of work. Shaping this new working experience will involve lots of experimentation.
We are living through an extraordinary time. Life as we knew it has been shaken like a snow globe, and we’re all in flux.
We’ve seen employers across all sectors of the economy facing not only unprecedented challenges, but also new opportunities to reset and rethink their work and accelerate planned changes. Scrutiny of business leaders is at an all-time high, with decisions being assessed not only for their financial results but also their human impact.
The big question is: will organisations embrace the opportunities for positive and sustainable change offered now? After the dust has settled, will our workplaces be a better place for people, or worse?
The health crisis we all witnessed has evolved for many of us into a crisis of conscience and confidence.
With so much of what we took for granted now uncertain, it’s more important than ever that the businesses and their leaders are able to respond quickly and pivot to harness opportunities and mitigate challenges.
Organisations also have a role within national and local recoveries to support the most impacted communities. Together, as we rebuild from this crisis, we can choose to go beyond a return to ‘normal’ and make work better.
At Investors in People, we’ve created seven commitments for organisations to consider as they plot their route to a better normal. They’re based on what we’ve heard from our community, research underpinning our frameworks and the UN sustainable development goals.
1. Make work agile and flexible
People are feeling trusted and empowered like never before, working from home has been normalised and from an organisational perspective, adaptability, creativity and resilience have emerged as critical capabilities. Within teams there has often been a simplification of focus, leading to faster results and bold decision making. Leaders can sustain this by ensuring:
2. Make work for people, not resources
We are not resources. We are people. The ‘old’
way of working, with policies that made people into homogenous groups of ‘resources’ is over. To build a better normal, we need to embrace people-first practices, which reflect our individual needs and motivations, treat people as adults and assume trust as a starting point. Make this happen by:
3. Make work diverse and inclusive
Increased globalisation and technological advances started this trend some time ago, but Covid-19 has accelerated it and proved that creating inclusive workplaces with agile, diverse teams, frequently in different countries
and time zones, results in higher quality problem-solving and solutions. Here are some ideas:
4. Make work that ensures business for good
People are looking to businesses and CEO's for support and resources alongside local and national governments as we enter economic and social recovery. Social responsibility and the role that a business plays in supporting its local community will be an important driver of attracting millennial talent and discerning consumers in the months and years to come.
This begins with:
5. Make work that enhances wellbeing
We’ve seen leaders using wellbeing as the centre point for engaging with their people during this time, in tandem with a people-first approach. People have embraced ‘being kind’ and are opening conversations about emotions, mental health and self-care in a way which destigmatises the terminology around mental health. We can keep the momentum by:
6. Make work that invests in young talent
As well as supporting the heavily impacted younger demographic, investing in young talent also has real business results. We’ve heard from our community that many of the innovative new ideas for adapting businesses have come from younger team members, and their passion and drive has lifted teams during some of the toughest moments. Making work that invests in young talent looks like:
7. Make work greener and sustainable
This crisis has accelerated many trends, but it’s unclear whether a real and sustained reduction in carbon emissions will be one of them. Leaders will need to work together to make supply chains ‘cleaner’ and partner with governments to make this recovery the start of a sustained fall in industrial damage to the environment. Where to start:
When people are engaged and supported at work, they go home happier and their wider lives are enriched. Over time, that adds up to a happier and healthier society. Doesn’t that sound good right now?
Small and sustained changes is all it takes to begin the journey, and these often add up to the biggest changes.
Plus, we’re not doing this alone- we’re in it together. So together, let’s start building our better normal today.
Most people get a lot out of their work. Quite apart from the obvious financial rewards, one’s professional life can be motivating, satisfying and fulfilling. However, the working environment may also be exacting, demanding, and competitive, and this can take a toll. Long working hours and ambitious expectations can cause personal priorities to slip, eroding dietary, exercise and sleep-related habits.
The inevitable drop in energy can drain enthusiasm for work, and erode the ability to engage meaningfully with it.
Having worked to support the wellbeing of thousands of business professionals over the last 25 years, I’ve seen a vast array of issues up close. And while everyone is different, stress, anxiety, ‘overwhelm’, and work-life balance issues are the most common themes by far. This is true at all levels of business, and right across industries and geographies, too.
Also, issues that stem from work will usually have a knock-on effect in people’s personal lives.
This commonly manifests as relationship issues or a general dissatisfaction with life. Together, work-related and personal stresses can ultimately lead to a state of crisis in the form of, say, a significant mental health issue, or burnout.
Obviously, the personal cost of these wellbeing issues can be considerable. But, the pain can be felt by the business, too. In January 2020, Deloitte published a report on the impact of mental wellbeing issues in the UK workplace.It was an update of the same report conducted in 2017. There were positive signs in the form of increased awareness and investment. Yet, despite this, mental health issues had risen, as had associated costs (up 16 per cent).
The report estimates that the cost to the UK economy is in the order of £45 billion per annum. Within the finance industry, costs work out at more than £3,000 per employee per annum (i.e. the expected cost to a firm with 1,000 employees is in excess of £3 million per annum). About a third of these costs come from absenteeism and staff turnover. The remaining two-thirds, however, are the result of ‘presenteeism’: employees ‘putting in the hours’, but failing to be productive as a result of one or more wellbeing issues.
These findings do not make for happy reading, and it’s also worth bearing in mind that this research was conducted before the emergence of COVID-19. For many, this novel and unforeseen situation added to life’s usual pressures through a forced change in how and where work was done. Another significant factor that entered the equation was increased fear and uncertainty about the future.
A move to remote working did bring some advantages, though, with many relishing the opportunity to spend more time at home, and less time spent commuting or on business travel. However, a common finding is that remote working has caused the barriers between ‘work’ and ‘home’ to corrode, somewhat.
The problem of work creeping inexorably into our personal lives is a particular issue for ‘knowledge workers’. For people who think for a living, every waking moment has the potential for work, and technology affords the opportunity to actually do work at any time,
too. Anyone who has ever found themselves in front of the TV or sitting in bed tapping away on their laptop, or checking email on their phone, will know all about this. There’s even a term for this now: ‘leavism’. For some people, these challenges are even more acute when working from home. This inability to ‘unplug’ from work outside normal working hours increases feelings of overwork and overwhelm, and inevitably ups the level of stress.
Another challenge is that many people find their home environment is not particularly conducive to work. A common cry I hear is that there can be too much distraction at home, particularly where (and no blame is being apportioned here) young children are involved. Some can buffer themselves from this to some degree by having a dedicated workspace. However, this is a luxury not afforded to everybody, and some have ended up having to hot-desk in their own homes, making getting into the rhythm of work more challenging.
Yet another stress that remote working can bring is feelings of isolation. Almost everyone I worked with in 2020 said they had missed face-to-face, personal interaction with colleagues or clients.
On the whole, people feel bereft of elements of their previous working lives that are not to do with projections, strategy and spreadsheets, but about teamwork, friendship, comradery and mutual support.
Where is this all leading, and what does the Future World of Work look like? None of us really knows, but there are signs that it will look quite different to how it did before the emergence of COVID-19. Many of my clients have plans to return to the office but, in the main, they are working towards allowing significant portions of their people to work much more flexibly than before. While some may return to the office full-time, many of my clients will continue to have the majority of
their people working remotely for much or all of the week.
However the future of work evolves on the individual and organisational level, it’s clear that employees benefit from support around their wellbeing and resilience. My overwhelming experience is that people recognise a need, here, and are highly receptive to insights and practical strategies that support their ability to live and work successfully and sustainably.
Interventions in this area can take many forms, but I’ve seen gratifyingly high levels of engagement with virtual learning and support in the form of webinars, workshops, coaching, and recorded sessions that are available on-demand. I expect in-person interventions will make their way back to some degree, but my anticipation is the virtual environment will be where most of the action is in the future.
Whatever form support in this area takes, it will ideally address the following four critical areas:
When people are supported in these ‘4 E’s’, the benefits are felt at both individual and organisational level. Employees get to be healthier, happier and more productive. A welcome additional benefit will be higher levels of performance and sustainability for the business. And the evidence shows that this does translate into significant bottom line benefits. Data in the Deloitte report shows that the average ROI of wellbeing interventions is 520 %. Whatever the future holds, there is a compelling case for ‘taking care of business’.
COVID-19 has accelerated the pre-existing trend towards greater awareness of and focus upon our mental health at work. As with inclusion, the immediate impact of the pandemic has been double edged.
Adapting so quickly and dramatically to the changed working practices, working from unprepared spaces at home, juggling often increased demands from work with home schooling and other non- work responsibilities, while also coping with the health and economic anxieties inevitably took its toll on many people. Isolation and lack of connectedness for many exacerbated the situation, and for most people the loss of day to day interaction enabled anxieties and fears that would ordinarily have been salved to rankle and fester.
At the same time, the autonomy of our changed circumstances, the ability to better control how and when we work, what we wear, how we fit other aspects of our lives around our work, more time spent with loved ones, and more time to get out in nature has, for many, been a positive for our mental health.
What has also emerged is the need to recognise that each of our experiences are unique.
Just as some have rejoiced in more time with their family, others have suffered with the inability to find any respite from an abusive partner, or the loneliness of an empty home. While some have marvelled at the joys of an early morning walk or run in the park, others have been forced to shield and have had their interaction with nature much reduced as a result and others still may have felt the weight of their disabilities increased.
Our mental health and wellbeing being important in the context of our work is fairly universally accepted now. Poor mental health can cause all sorts of problems at work. Good mental health contributes to greater productivity, creativeness, collaboration, retention and so much more. There is ample data to show the financial return businesses can generate on well directed mental health initiatives.
One factor holding back progress on mental health awareness has always been the stigma associated with it – we are wary of things we do not know or understand, so if we do not talk about something, we stigmatise and shy away from it. Pre-COVID there was an ever-growing number of businesses actively encouraging employees to tell their stories of mental health problems and this was having a positive impact on that stigma. COVID-19 has given us all a voice in that conversation – we will all have had our mental health impacted in some ways (whether positively or negatively)
by the pandemic and we have shown ourselves able to talk about it. That conversation, and with it the willingness to be vulnerable, needs to continue.
The focus on mental health and wellbeing is likely only to increase. In the short term there will the need to manage the legacy of the pandemic period as well as the anxieties a partial return to the workplace will involve – how easy is it really going to be reintegrating with people when we have spent more than a year avoiding anything approaching proximity with anyone but our nearest and dearest?
The emphasis here needs to be on having the conversations – creating the psychologically safe space for people to talk about how they are feeling generally and specifically about any such return.
Crucially, organisations (and their leaders) need to hear this, acknowledge it and accept it. Each person’s perspective needs to be heard and respected for what it is so that we can begin to move forward in a safe way which enables people to recover from all we have experience, and then to thrive going forward.
The increased focus on mental health and wellbeing means organisations can and should be thinking more strategically about it – how can we create a culture and environment in which people can thrive and what might be getting in the way of that? The starting point for this has got to be an honest and broad-minded assessment of how people are and how is work contributing to that (whether positively or negatively). This involves surveys, but it is also qualitative research – talking to people – and perhaps also thinking creatively about some of the other data which might be available (e.g. absence records, use of EAP, turnover etc.).
This will enable an organisation to get a clearer sense of how things are, which of course is a vital starting point for then thinking honestly and openly about what needs improving and how that might be done.
This is not a one size fits all exercise, and in any organisation of more than a few people there will be differences across the organisation. Enabling different solutions may therefore be important. Equally, we can be braver in terms of taking the discussion outside of our own organisations – much of the stress we feel in our work comes not from what happens within our organisations but rather what happens between them, for example the perceived need to always be at a client’s beck and call and to respond immediately for fear they might go elsewhere. The Mindful Business Charter is a movement of organisations looking to challenge that status quo and to collaborate with each to create healthier and more effective ways of working.
There is an opportunity here to build on COVID’s silver lining, the spotlight it has shone on mental health and wellbeing and the conversations it has enabled. Grasped mindfully, we can use it to make meaningful and sustainable change a reality and re-humanise the world of work. Organisations that get it right will thrive.
The COVID-19 pandemic is forcing financial services executives to reimagine the workplace of tomorrow whilst simultaneously scrambling to ensure they can operate safely today. The moves they make in the next few months in shaping how colleagues return to the office could have ramifications for years to come.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, firms have learned that some, but not all, of their business functions can be carried out remotely, whether they be customer interactions, back-office operational tasks or talent management.Firms have also learned that many of their employees have come to appreciate remote work because it allows them to avoid commuting, better serve as caregivers or carve out extra time in the day for themselves. But which tasks, and which people, should be remote, and which should be together?
One of the central challenges of the next 10 years in financial services will be to strike the right balance between organisational imperatives and employee wellbeing. The simple answer may be hybrid working arrangements. But finding the right mix isn’t easy.
It is important to begin with establishing what the overarching objective(s) should be.
Does the firm seek increased productivity via higher employee engagement and retention? Increased operational efficiency via more predictable work patterns? Reduced costs via optimisation of real estate and office expenses? Improved customer service via increased coverage?Or some combination of all of the above? This should act as the North Star to guide the design of the future of work.
Having established clear objectives for its hybrid model, the firm should then move to define how will this be operationalised.
Will it be primarily employer driven, meaning the employer defines how many days one will work from home, or employee driven, allowing employees to make their own choices? And how will the preferences of the two groups of stakeholders interplay? For example, if the employer defines the number of days to work from home, how does it cater for employee preferences such as whether to work from home on Monday or Friday?
Three parameters will determine whether the hybrid work model should be primarily employer- or employee-driven. The first is the nature of the work itself. Does the work require in-person interaction or are there regulatory requirements for on-premisepresence? The answers may vary between job families,with some parts of the organisation being more hybrid-ready than others.
Second, the corporate culture: Has the firm historically been an organisation that values face time? If so, moving to a hybrid work model will be particularly challenging, with a risk of slippage back to old habits - in which case an employer-driven model would work better and allow a reset of the culture.
Third, is the firm in a highly competitive market for talent? If so, offering more flexibility is important. If all the firm’s competitors are offering remote work options, then in the long run the firm might face challenges attracting top candidates. For these types of situations an employee-driven model works better.
What is clear is that a one-size-fits-all approach probably won’t work. Although good practice varies between the boundaries of the two models based on the specific circumstances of each organisation, we do have some sense of what bad practice looks like.For example, letting each manager independently decide how to approach this
for his or her own team doesn’t work well.It creates an inconsistent operating environment with different treatment of employees in different teams, fails to factor in the broader impact that individual manager choices have on the team and the firm, and leaves little to no room to cater to employee preferences.
So how can an employer-driven model work in practice? Simply put, the company defines who can work where and when. We see many companies now requiring employees to spend at least three days in the office. The question, of course, is which three days and who decides. Firms choosing this path generally designate the degree of remote working by using structured customisation. They typically start by segmenting job families (such as by the ability to execute remotely vs. level of human interaction required), then review key interfaces between internal teams and clients. Finally, they formalize their approach, requiring, for example, all jobs in an area of operations to be in person at least three days a week with specific guidelines about how to ensure smooth operational continuity so that everyone isn’t remote on Fridays or flocking to work on Wednesdays.
Firms should complement this kind of role analysis with an assessment of employee sentiment and analysis of various “personas,” or fictional characters that represent the different types of people who perform various functions. While someone might belong to the same job family, a new joiner living in a flat shared with three friends in London will have very different needs from an experienced professional with small children and significant caregiving responsibilities at home.
If a firm has a high level of persona variation, the employer-driven model may be more challenging to implement.
In the employee-driven model, the employees define where (and possibly when) they want to work. This can then be broken down further into manager approved (retaining some level of employer control) or
manager informed, where at the extreme an employee can wake up each morning and decide not to go to the office that day, or chose to work fully remotely 100% of the time.
Subcultures within the same organisation, such as in different business areas or geographies, might make a manager-informed, employee-driven approach entirely inappropriate in one place but perfectly feasible in another. Likewise, a strict employer driven model might not be desirable if a key goal is employee retention. The model doesn’t always have to be applied universally.
Through our work with clients across the financial services industry, we have identified the most important steps to take and considerations to make in determining the best model for a particular firm:
Ensure that the new work model considers and caters to your client needs – be they internal or external – for service, support and interaction. For example, a support function coming into the office to sit on virtual calls all
day providing services to a remotely located front-office would be frustrating, and vice versa.
Consider how to maintain a culture of collaboration (within and across teams) and apprentice learning. This is difficult to do fully remotely and is particularly important for growing the next generation of talent.
Always take different life stages and personas into account. Focusing only on the job to be done is a mistake and is likely to mean your model is not fit for purpose and might not work in practice.
Think carefully about how you will practically implement a model of hybrid working practices in a fair and effective way across teams.Consider how you will ensure equal opportunity for employees working under different arrangements.
Ensure you institutionalise the appropriate guidelines to run effective hybrid meetings.Use this opportunity to greatly enhance diversity and inclusion. This is a once-in-a-generation chance to level the playing field for all employees who in the past had to leave careers or slow down at work due to life circumstances that left them unable to work in the office, such as new parents.
Last but not least, build flexibility into any new working model to enable you to test, learn, pilot in different areas and course-correct over time. Couple this with staying open and honest with employees, letting them be part of the solution, and giving them as much certainty and advance notice as possible.
In the end, each firm needs to take its own circumstances and culture into account as it develops a hybrid working model. Those that do this thoughtfully, using the advice offered here, will create a new model that will serve them well for years to come.
I’ve always said that the question of how you create a high performing investment culture is inextricably linked with the individuals involved and how they interact with each other. This is a people business and this view has been at the heart of how we approach investment matters at Schroders.
As a leader of an investment team, I study charts and spreadsheets. But successful investment management is about much more. The real edge comes from understanding how to get the best out of each individual in my team ensuring that, through collaboration, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Seeking to achieve behavioural advantages through an emphasis on accountability, the
development of emerging talent and diversity of thought is an important part of how we improve our ability to achieve our clients’ investment objectives.
Like everybody else, COVID has had a major impact on our working arrangements and shown us that greater flexibility is possible thanks to technological innovation. As a result, we have reviewed our flexible working policy, extending it beyond prescriptive phrases, such as “you are entitled to work from home x days a week”.
We have taken a principles-based approach based on trust and pragmatism so that each investment desk may gauge what combination of working from home and in the office can maximise the productivity of the team.
In practice, our fund managers will be combining working from home with coming to the office. As with most things in life, extremes are rarely practical.
The benefits of working from home for a fund manager is that it may provide an environment which is more conducive to contemplation and original research.
Allowing that flexibility also allows us to attract a broader range of people, such as introverts or people who may have responsibilities at home, bolstering our ability to build diverse teams. Trust and flexibility also engender loyalty. The best investment teams are typically built by people who have worked together over a number of years.
Meeting in the office is also essential, however, as it enables us to get the best out of individuals’ collaboration with each other. Being a truly impactful investor requires interactions with other investors; we learn from and challenge each other.
The importance of developing our less-experienced team members must not be underestimated; a lot of their training is on the job, listening and eventually participating in ad hoc conversations on the desk.
The strength of our investment culture partly rests on our commitment to growing our own talent as well as hiring from outside the firm. We also know that the personal relationships we build in the good times help to build team resilience when we face difficult patches of investment performance. Finally, fulfilling our fiduciary responsibility does require oversight and this has to be conducted in person.
Our flexible working policy is a flexible answer to the question: “How do we make the best investment decisions on behalf of our clients?”
Our mission remains clear – to deliver superior investment performance. Understanding that there are many paths to delivering that performance is what has allowed our culture to stand the test of time.
