Work-place, Family-place... Not the Same-place

It has been more than two months since we have been pushed into a real “dystopia”. Even the most creative Hollywood screenwriter would have not imagined it so deep, unsettling, impactful. While we start to see a pale light at the end of the tunnel, it is time to pause, reflect, and try to look at the incredible teachings of this gigantic, enforced, sociological experiment. 

The HONEY MOON:

First, we have been surprised by technology and the amazing reaction of our people. Remote working has been aided dramatically in companies that have, in the past years, invested in accessibility, cyber security, and technology in general. In Santander we transitioned ~120.000 colleagues from “going to an office” to “working from home” in just a few weeks. Thought, planned…done. Almost unbelievable. We began using Zoom, Teams, and other platforms many times a day with colleagues of all levels. We conducted regular meetings, RemCo, BOD and AGMs. All worked perfectly. Kudos to the Tech colleagues across the world that made this possible.

The “honey moon” of this new way of working has been good, intense, and positively surprising. We have lived caged at home for the past two months with different levels of rigour, depending on the strategy of the country we live in. Good, very good… all good?

The ANXIETY

Well, after a few days, a living space that was once exclusively personal quickly turned into a space where the personal was mixed with the professional. The colleagues with small children at home (yes, schools are closed), children with special needs, elderly parents, and those living alone, all felt this transition and must now experience the burdens of personal and professional life simultaneously. These colleagues started to suffer first. Many others followed. A big chunk of us moved from a “honeymoon” mood, to one of “anxiety” in the space of a few weeks. What happened? Were we not all dreaming about the possibility of having this flexibility? We were. However, now we can´t distinguish a Wednesday from a Saturday...

An important element to consider is that moving into this dystopia was not a choice, it was a necessity we were forced to undertake. This was good at the beginning but, another element to consider is that we had no time to organise the new way of working, to create some norms, rules of engagement, and expected leadership behaviours. What technology has allowed us to do is incredibly good. The manner in which we have utilized people and our technology resources needs to be normalised.

The need of new LEADERSHIP

The secure manner in which technology and leaders have become accessible to people is outstanding. Nonetheless, creating a framework that insures a sustainable utilization of this accessibility is critical. To achieve a sustainable new way of working, we need at least two things:

i) a new way of leading,

ii) some explicit rules.

Leaders are continuously called to manage completely new situations where their people are accessible from remote. This doesn’t mean that we can access them 24/7… This would make the new way of working unsustainable. Leaders are requested, now even more, to show that they are capable of supporting their people, have the right level of empathy, communicate effectively, listen, and trust them. I think that overall, the behavioural change that this situation will bring can be very positive. The level of resistance we have experienced to a structural way of remote working so far should decrease, technology will flourish even more making remote working even simpler, and efficiency will go up. This being said, there is a second imperative to consider: we need to define some explicit “norms” on how to “use” the 24/7 access to our people. In this experiment we have been pushed for the first time in history, millions of people have been forced into a situation where there are no more physical boundaries between the work-place and the family-place. They are the same-place. Strict norms (and good common sense leadership) about time commitment, expected accessibility, right to disconnect, would make the new way of working sustainably for the percentage of people that will decide to use it more extensively. Some polls indicate that ~70% of the workforce in headquarters may decide from now on to use to work from remote at the least one or two days a week (look for example at the one done on LinkedIn by #Dan Strode). This will be huge, effective and impactful. This will also deserve a new way of leading and a specific set of norms and rules that leaders first will have to follow to make it sustainable. The pandemic has, so far, been a catastrophe on a planetary scale. Let us hope that it can leave behind a new way of leading and working that can be beneficial to most.

#covid19 #worklifebalance #humanresources #leadership