How tech can make human-centred workplaces a reality

Experts in organ­i­sa­tion­al design believe that a company’s suc­cess in the new world of hybrid work­ing will hinge on whether it can redesign its oper­a­tions accord­ing to how peo­ple pre­fer to work. This includes devis­ing an appro­pri­ate­ly sup­port­ive tech strat­e­gy.

Their key con­tention here is that, despite a strong ten­den­cy among employ­ers to man­age their knowl­edge work­ers with a one-size-fits-all approach, doing so is rarely the way to get the best from them. 

Alex­ia Cam­bon, a research direc­tor at Gart­ner, believes that the time is right for employ­ers to “stop and think about assump­tions that are pri­mar­i­ly inher­it­ed”. Many of these cen­tre on “archa­ic work design struc­tures” based on office life, such as the lin­ear 9am-to-5pm work­ing day and the “meet­ing cul­ture” of the 1950s, she explains. 

“We have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to move away from design­ing work around loca­tion and to design it around humans instead,” Cam­bon says. “Things weren’t work­ing that well even before the pan­dem­ic, so it’s time to stop mak­ing exist­ing process­es vir­tu­al. We need to think up new ones.”

She cites the exam­ple of employ­ers that have tracked their remote work­ers’ activ­i­ties dig­i­tal­ly by, for instance, count­ing their key­strokes, rather than trust­ing them and focus­ing on out­put rather than input. Con­se­quent­ly, those under sur­veil­lance felt oblig­ed to work longer hours, cre­at­ing a pre­sen­teeism prob­lem that’s been detri­men­tal to their well­be­ing.

Emma Par­ry, pro­fes­sor of HR man­age­ment at Cran­field School of Man­age­ment, agrees that it will be impor­tant for employ­ers to show their peo­ple more trust and grant them greater auton­o­my. But she also advis­es firms to weigh up their needs care­ful­ly against what their employ­ees want.

“For enter­pris­es to do this well, it’s about return­ing to organ­i­sa­tion­al design prin­ci­ples – for exam­ple, by ask­ing them­selves: ‘What tasks do we need to be in the office to per­form?’ and set­ting para­me­ters around those con­sid­er­a­tions,” Par­ry says. “This isn’t about pref­er­ences; it’s about need, although involv­ing employ­ees in deci­sions and giv­ing them flex­i­bil­i­ty in how they work is also impor­tant.” 

Enabling a big shift in mindset and culture

Because get­ting the bal­ance right will inevitably be “chal­leng­ing”, accord­ing to Par­ry, it will require a “big shift in mind­set”.

She explains: “Most knowl­edge work­ers were in the office before the pan­dem­ic, where­as most have been at home dur­ing the lock­downs – two very dif­fer­ent propo­si­tions. Now we’re talk­ing about a con­fla­tion of those ways of work­ing, which presents a new chal­lenge. It’s not sim­ply a con­tin­u­a­tion of what we’re accus­tomed to, so it requires a new response.”

This response includes re-eval­u­at­ing every­thing from organ­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture and cul­ture to HR poli­cies and the roles of busi­ness lead­ers. 

“There are many ques­tions to con­sid­er, such as: do we have the right envi­ron­ment, tech­nol­o­gy and cul­ture to do this inclu­sive­ly, so as not to dis­ad­van­tage peo­ple who aren’t as vis­i­ble as those work­ing in the office?” Par­ry says. “Some of it is about skills, but the rest of it is about chang­ing atti­tudes and cul­tures.” 

Katie Burke, chief peo­ple offi­cer at soft­ware com­pa­ny Hub­Spot, agrees. When review­ing how the com­pa­ny should oper­ate in a hybrid work­ing world, its lead­er­ship team added the “secret sauce” of ask­ing staff for their input, she says. To this end, it cre­at­ed five advi­so­ry pan­els includ­ing employ­ees at all lev­els, along with experts in diver­si­ty and inclu­sion; future, remote and hybrid work­ing; and com­pen­sa­tion and ben­e­fits.

“Our aim as a lead­er­ship team was to move away from view­ing every­thing through its own lens when think­ing about the future,” says Burke, who would advise any busi­ness leader in a sim­i­lar posi­tion to “stop read­ing every white paper out there and ask your audi­ence what they care about, so you can learn togeth­er”.

This activ­i­ty led Hub­Spot to intro­duce three work­ing options: @office, where employ­ees come to the company’s premis­es for three or more days a week and work from a ded­i­cat­ed desk; @flex, where staff are office-based for two or few­er days a week with access to a hot­desk, but are also helped to set up a home office; and @home, where a ded­i­cat­ed remote work­ing envi­ron­ment is the norm.

To sup­port this shift, employ­ees have been trained in how to use their soft­ware more effec­tive­ly. The next cou­ple of years will also see the roll-out of “loca­tion-agnos­tic ben­e­fits”, along with resources and cours­es for line man­agers, Burke says.

Using technology to improve the employee experience

On the tech­no­log­i­cal side of things, Par­ry advis­es employ­ers to take some time to reflect, hav­ing imple­ment­ed sys­tems at speed over the past 18 months.

“It’s now time to step back and review what you’ve done, per­haps by align­ing your dig­i­tal strat­e­gy with your broad­er HR and busi­ness strat­e­gy,” she says. “But it’s not just about review­ing the tech­nol­o­gy you’ve invest­ed in and how you use it. This is also about under­stand­ing how your process­es will need to change to accom­mo­date hybrid work­ing and what tech will be required to sup­port them.”

Josh Bersin, dean of the Josh Bersin Acad­e­my for HR prac­ti­tion­ers, rec­om­mends that com­pa­nies “stan­dard­ise their tools on to a few core plat­forms”, such as Microsoft Teams or Face­book Work­place, and inte­grate oth­er appli­ca­tions as required. The aim here is to pro­vide as seam­less a user expe­ri­ence as pos­si­ble. 

“Mak­ing the hybrid mod­el work for all par­ties requires both trust and a much more inte­grat­ed set of dig­i­tal tools,” Bersin says. “Organ­i­sa­tions are already build­ing and imple­ment­ing these – rapid­ly.” 

Anoth­er thing that mov­ing to a hybrid work­ing world will require is a healthy dose of dif­fi­dence, accord­ing to Burke.

“No one’s done this before, so you can’t say that you’re an expert and you’ve got it all fig­ured out,” she says. “But every­one ben­e­fits from that kind of humil­i­ty. If you’re hon­est, peo­ple are hap­pi­er to give their input and also more will­ing to make mis­takes, which means that we can all learn togeth­er.”