Reviewing 2021: a tough year for business

Bolstering the company’s culture

Katarina Berg, chief HR officer, Spotify

My biggest chal­lenge in 2021 was to make the organ­i­sa­tion more resilient. In try­ing to devel­op a cul­ture in which peo­ple at Spo­ti­fy ‘have each other’s backs’, we remind­ed every­one that it’s some­times OK not to be OK.

The busi­ness has gone into hyper-growth mode over the past year, bring­ing in more than 2,200 peo­ple. How do you cre­ate a sense of com­mu­ni­ty when those join­ing the organ­i­sa­tion have nev­er seen their col­leagues face to face? 

We haven’t had to make the type of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion that many oth­er firms have under­gone, but we did need to rethink some of the in-per­son ele­ments of onboard­ing. The hard­est task here was to ensure that the replace­ment dig­i­tal process­es still reflect­ed Spotify’s cul­ture. 

In a well-run com­pa­ny, the prop­er work takes care of itself, but we’ve found it very dif­fi­cult to recre­ate the sense of com­mu­ni­ty and fun you get in an office. It’s vital not to lose that social con­nec­tiv­i­ty among col­leagues work­ing remote­ly. 

Sup­port­ing people’s well­be­ing, espe­cial­ly their men­tal health, has proved anoth­er chal­lenge, as employ­ees in many parts of the world have been iso­lat­ed for sev­er­al weeks at a time dur­ing var­i­ous Covid lock­downs. Such things aren’t usu­al­ly on an employer’s list of wor­ries, but we’ve had to devel­op our sup­port sys­tem over the past year to account for them. 

Shaking off the survival mindset

Ash Schofield, CEO, giffgaff

In busi­ness, the leadership’s mind­set deter­mines the mood of the whole com­pa­ny. Giv­en the uncer­tain­ty that the pan­dem­ic brought, adopt­ing a sur­vival mind­set was a neces­si­ty for us, but it’s not a place that any­one would want to stay in for too long. 

Mov­ing back to a growth mind­set as soon as pos­si­ble has been essen­tial in enabling us to plot a course for the company’s sus­tain­able expan­sion.

Getting to grips with remote working

Belinda Finch, CIO, Three UK

The biggest chal­lenge for us has been to embrace home­work­ing. No one has been back in the Three office full time over the past year. Most busi­ness­es that have been able to sup­port remote work­ing since the start of the pan­dem­ic are now oper­at­ing a hybrid mod­el.

But you need to ensure that every­one has the right tools and capa­bil­i­ties to work effec­tive­ly this way. Remote work­ing tools have gone from being a lux­u­ry to an essen­tial. Over the past year, we’ve exper­i­ment­ed with dif­fer­ent tech­nolo­gies and com­mu­ni­ca­tion meth­ods, so there’s been an ele­ment of tri­al and error. 

We’ve had to bat­tle with issues of capac­i­ty and sta­bil­i­ty since the pan­dem­ic start­ed. Two years ago, if Microsoft Teams went down for half a day, you could sim­ply walk across your office and talk to a col­league. If it goes down now, it’s an absolute dis­as­ter. Before this year, I’d nev­er had my CEO tex­ting me to ask why Teams is being unsta­ble. 

My oth­er big chal­lenge has con­cerned cost. The sup­ply chain cri­sis has forced some prices up and made it dif­fi­cult for us to pre­dict what will be avail­able. With the com­put­er chip short­age, it’s been hard to know whether items can actu­al­ly be deliv­ered. We’ve also had prob­lems get­ting servers to the UK.

Meeting a huge increase in demand

Nick Kirk, Managing Director, UK & North America, Michael Page 

This has been one of the most unusu­al peri­ods I’ve seen in my 27 years with Page­Group. When eco­nom­ic con­di­tions dete­ri­o­rate, it nor­mal­ly hap­pens quite grad­u­al­ly, but there was a pun­ish­ing­ly fast decline in per­for­mance across the pri­vate sec­tor, and there­fore in recruit­ment activ­i­ty, dur­ing the spring of 2020. 

In March this year, the recov­ery took off, as clients of ours that had reshaped their busi­ness­es to sur­vive the pan­dem­ic looked to recruit. For exam­ple, bricks-and-mor­tar retail­ers that had switched to ecom­merce need­ed peo­ple with a dif­fer­ent range of skills. There were also com­pa­nies that were rebuild­ing, hav­ing cut costs in the first year of the Covid cri­sis.

At the same time, a bunch of poten­tial job can­di­dates were sit­ting on their hands, unready to change employ­ers because they were wor­ried that the pan­dem­ic was far from over. These two fac­tors cre­at­ed a meet­ing of forces. There’s been an incred­i­ble spike in demand for can­di­dates from clients, but the sup­ply is by no means match­ing that to the extent they’re seek­ing. This has made the mar­ket very hot and led to salary infla­tion, which caus­es its own prob­lems in the broad­er econ­o­my.

Making remote work more engaging

Sam Fisher, head of dynamic work, Okta

For us, the key chal­lenge has been main­tain­ing com­pa­ny cul­ture and employ­ee engage­ment when work­ing asyn­chro­nous­ly. This involves ensur­ing all employ­ees, regard­less of lev­el or loca­tion, have equi­table access to infor­ma­tion, lead­er­ship, men­tor­ing, coach­ing and oppor­tu­ni­ties. 

Anoth­er key pil­lar of suc­cess is help­ing set up remote employ­ees to be as pro­duc­tive and sup­port­ed as those that are onsite. In order to achieve this, com­pa­nies should pro­vide every­one with a WFH office set­up  that mim­ics the actu­al office. If some­one work­ing at home can­not access some­thing, employ­ees in the office shouldn’t be able to either.

Remote or hybrid work­ing can also lead to the ero­sion of com­pa­ny cul­ture, which can seri­ous­ly impact a business’s abil­i­ty to oper­ate effec­tive­ly.  It’s up to busi­ness­es to think about how to tack­le this and imple­ment mean­ing­ful strate­gies to main­tain employ­ee sat­is­fac­tion and belong­ing – no mat­ter where they’re based. 

At Okta, we’re still work­ing out the best way to ensure cul­ture is not lost as we con­tin­ue to oper­ate under, what we call, a dynam­ic work mod­el. For exam­ple, we’ve intro­duced cul­ture cham­pi­ons and have organ­ised char­i­ty work to cre­ate a sense of com­mu­ni­ty spir­it and col­lec­tive pur­pose among employ­ees.

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