We continue to facilitate fortnightly zoom calls with people in HR, learning and talent development to discuss challenges and share ideas to help others managing the current change to working life!

Firm’s continue to capture the “rays of sunshine” and new practices they want to keep in place. Below is a summary of the discussions on the latest call:

Key issues / challenges

• For parents – managing home schooling and work
• When to stop – a feeling of constantly being “on”. Heightened because everyone is working different shift patterns, but still feel they need to respond straight away
• People generally feeling bad that the time saved from not travelling they should be working
• Managing workload / getting on top of it – for HR teams it’s a very busy time
• General feeling that the younger generation are finding it harder to adjust to wfh, recurring theme re: workspace, a lot are working from sofas / dining rooms
• Health & Safety at home – focus has been on having the technology and equipment, the H&S element hasn’t been attended to as well yet
• Human interaction is missed
• Main concerns for people in the business: trainees | workload in some teams | managing furlough returns

 Communication

• A lot is coming from the top, consideration about the channels “bottom-up” as it’s so important and needed
• Induction – one firm has implemented a “slow” induction, over ~2months, it’s working very well and they are getting to meet more people virtually and over a continuous period than the usual one off! Something they’ll be continuing with in the future

Plans for returning to work / the office

• Majority are not expecting people to return to the office until at least August / September, but will push back if the “R” level increases
• Public transport is a big concern and a barrier to people returning to the office even if they would like to
• People looking forward to returning to the office, however conscious it won’t look and feel the same

The future

• Teams are continuing to capture and share the rays of sunshine
• The last few months has proved working from home can work very well for some, and be successful
• Concern raised about “what our business will look like in the future” … what’s the identity/culture when people are not closely attached to the physical environment and colleagues – see our culture worksheet for a free resource, this focuses on 6 key forces that shape culture, underpinned by a required leadership focus and can be used to to shape thoughts and actions

The informal weekly calls for HR and learning and development professionals take place at 11am on Fridays. If you would like to join please drop an email to hello@thegrogroup.com and we’ll send you a link!

Previous call summaries can be found here.