MANAGEMENT NOVEMBER /DECEMBER 2020
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printer so will be switching between documents
where normally they’d print them out. This will
inevitably affect productivity, and it’s something
managers have to bear in mind. If the person
has always been a good, diligent worker up until
lockdown, there’s probably an underlying reason
why that’s changed – it won’t just be that they’re
being lazy.
“At the other end of the scale, you need to
look out for people who are over-working –
those who lose track of time and work through
lunch or beyond the end of the day. In a normal
workplace environment, people would all get
up and go to get lunch together. At home, that
routine falls apart. People are nervous that
they’re not seen as taking the mickey while
they’re at home, so they overdo it and end up
over-working and not taking breaks. Returning
to the earlier point about distinct working
spaces, if you don’t have a separate space where
you can close the door, it’s very easy to pick up
your laptop and carry on working all evening.
Managers have a duty here to ensure the mental
health of their home-working staff.”
Kibble advises regularly reminding staff to be
careful not to overwork; in her team at Make UK,
anyone who does work longer than the standard
working day will be encouraged to take time off
the following day to make up for the extra time
worked in order to “break the habit of working
out-of-hours.”
HR’s role
With home-working now set to be the norm for
many, if not most, going forward, HR departments
working, is it now acceptable
for people to start work at
7am, take a three-hour lunch
and not clock off until 7pm.
It’s all about finding the new
dynamic. For every company,
it will be a bit different. Some
companies insist that everyone
logs onto a video register at
the start and end of the day to
check attendance. It’s badged
as a ‘wellbeing catch-up’, but
it’s clear that they just don’t
have the levels of trust that
are needed for home working.
Employees likely won’t stand
for that for too long.”
Mindset shifting already?
It could be, though, that most
of this article is already moot.
As the Prime Minister urged
everyone who could to work
from home to do so, many
employers were worried that it
would be met with a significant
downturn in productivity while
employees took advantage of
the additional freedom working
from home brings. In reality,
though, that hasn’t materialised,
and the longer the pandemic has
gone on, the more the opposite
has happened. “When COVID
first hit, HR professionals were
worried about being inundated
with home working requests
that wouldn’t be sustainable,”
says Kibble. “However, they
quickly realised that in many
cases, home working works well
for them as a business. They
save on facilities costs; they
don’t need as much office space,
and so on. Many companies did
a complete 180, from ‘no, we
don’t do home working’ to ‘how
can we encourage more people
to work from home?’. In fact,
what we’re starting to see is
the opposite happening – staff
are pushing back against home
working and want to come back
to the office.”
Whether this really is
the start of a home-working
revolution, as it appears, or
just a flash in the pan, it has
certainly caused a shift in the
way companies think about
flexible working. The challenge
now is for managers to ensure
their teams are adequately
supported, wherever they’re
spending their working days.
are also going to have to
adapt considerably. Typical
office-based rules will need to
be rewritten. While some of
these are minor for day-to-day
working, says Kibble, others
could have more long-lasting
effects on staff welfare and
productivity.
“Rules about things like
dress code will likely change,
for example. While people
might not need to wear a
company uniform any more,
there will have to be rules
about appropriate clothing
on video calls – no pyjamas,
for instance! Although the
workplace is also your home,
there are certain rules that
need to be adhered to. People
have become more informal
in their communication style
since they’ve been at home, so
there are expectations to be set
there. Most of these changes
are relatively trivial, though.
The difficulty will come where
you suspect people are taking
excessive amounts of time off
work – in an office you would
notice when people aren’t in,
but you can’t monitor things
like that when they’re at home.
With a more informal way of
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