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“Frights, Delights & Insights of Flexible Working; Creating a Flexible Future.”

Tue, 12 May 2020
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What a fantastic session facilitated by Liz Nottingham discussing “Frights, Delights & Insights of Flexible Working; Creating a Flexible Future.”

Hearing from our group operating across comms, tech, beauty, and creative it was inspiring and great to connect to share insights and learnings.

Liz reminded us that we have been working from home in a pandemic; which is not the same as working from home.

We kicked off with an opening round to Name how we are ‘arriving’ into the session. The adjectives this morning ranged from yo-yo, calm and tired through to grateful and optimistic. How are you feeling right now?

The group shared their learnings so far with a focus on increased connection, helping their leaders think big, arranging virtual events and increasing learning and development opportunities.
We are noticing that people may be working longer hours and need to take their annual leave to look after their well being. What’s going on with your people right now and what do they need? And if you are an HR person it is important to ask the question “what do I need” as we very rarely get to ask that question.

As the country is beginning to talk about returning our people to the office, we revisited the change curve. It occurs to us that we are dealing with multiple realities; the virus, normal cyclical business activities whilst planning for an unknown future. As we enter into another wave of significant change, the curve is worth revisiting on a regular basis with ourselves and our people.
We also looked at our relationship with change and the different responses that we and others may have to change. Who is leaping in and embracing it, who needs data to understand the process and who wants to keep hold of the old and the known?

Many business myths have been broken over the last 8 weeks. As HR professionals how can we be the pioneers for change in our businesses and support our leaders? How many rules can now be broken?

We closed with a Nancy Kline thinking council and the collective wisdom of the group addressed a challenge “how do we keep our culture if everyone doesn’t return to the office”. Speaking in turn, without interruption, meant that everyone could listen to the collective knowledge and benefit from the process. An amazing process that shows just how much can be achieved in 10 minutes when everybody pays attention and stops talking!

A huge thank you to Liz for sharing with us your wisdom, key models and inspiration and for ensuring we all shared insights and heard from each other.