Decrapify Work or Die (you say you want a revolution)
Word up!
I was blown away by Capital One’s message to its staff that it’s future is as a ‘Hybrid Work Company’. There were so many reasons why it impressed me
they had consulted widely and at length with staff
they acknowledged the challenges of the past 15 months
they identified what they had all learnt from the experience
they recognised the opportunity of these learnings to improve the quality of work for everyone
the policy they were announcing was simple, clear and grounded in common sense
they specifically called it their ‘initial’ policy, acknowledging that the future was somewhat unknown
The CEO finishes by saying how he is excited that the company is going this way and makes it absolutely clear that he will be embracing hybrid working personally, cementing this behaviour as the norm.
I posted it on LinkedIn, making similar points, but then I reflected more on what it was that made this communication so special. And then it hit me.
This is an adult-to-adult communication. The tone is grown-up, inclusive and realistic.
There’s none of the empty boosterism, the nanny-ish tone, the not-in-front-of-the-children obfuscation that is all too typical of corporate messages.
This is how a company should talk to its employees. It almost made we want to go and see if they had any jobs going …
Do you really want to hurt me?
I’ve seen a few surveys in the last week of employee opinions about the return to the office and they are quite startling. It’s not just that the majority of employees aren’t that keen - that much has been clear for a while. It’s not even that many of them want to keep flexible or remote working. It’s that a lot of employees see a return to the office as a punishment!
It seems they feel they have gone above and beyond to continue working from home, not only keeping organisations going but often without any appreciable drop in operations or profits, and they were expecting a reward. They see this as the opposite, taking away their autonomy, their flexibility, their savings in time and cost. Oh, and it seems they’re not trusted anymore either.
We’ve read about the ‘Great Resignation’, with around 40% of employees globally looking to change their jobs, and often careers, in the next 12 months. But that’s people’s intentions, I thought, the reality will be less dramatic.
I also follow Chris Herd, CEO of Firstbase, who states that offices will go the way of retail outlets, losing out hard to online and that this is an unstoppable wave. I thought he was being a bit hyperbolic at times, as his company helps businesses go remote he’s not exactly an impartial observer!
But now I wonder if this change is going to really dramatic after all. Feeling that you are being punished is very, very strong emotionally. It’s a rejection, it’s says you are not valued, respected or trusted, it touches upon your sense of safety and belonging. And the emotion it often stirs is anger.
These aren’t feelings that quickly subside or can be easily assuaged. You’re poking a hornet’s nest if you enflame these passions.
Any organisations that have or are announcing a return to the office for all or most of the week have already done damage and are going to reap the whirlwind. It could be fatal, and quickly.
Any that are still thinking of it - well, do you really want to be known for punishing your people?
Revolution #1
The best time to make change happen is when change is happening. The current turmoil and uncertainty has opened the door a little and we need to put our shoulders to it and push through.
We should see the move to flexible working as just the start of the process to Decrapify Work. It’s got rid of a lot of irritations and problems around being AT work, it’s changed some attitudes and redressed the power imbalance a little. However, there are many more areas that we need to see change and we need to seize the moment to create a sea-change in the world of work.
In the more enlightened organisations, they are leaving it to employees to figure out the where, when and how (and even what) of work. Typically, this seems to be mostly happening at the team level.
So here’s the opportunity to broaden the conversation. Whilst you’re reconfiguring work to deal with flexible working and hybrid arrangements, why not reconfigure the rest of it? You’ve ditched the commute, the needless travel, the performative nonsense of office life, so what else can go?
We know organisations are hide-bound with bureaucracy, so why don’t teams start to hack away at that? There must be reports that no-one looks at, circulars that no-one reads, meetings that no-one gets any value from. What if you stopped doing everything - yes, everything - and then just put back the bits that are necessary? (I call this the ‘Minimum Viable Organisation’ approach. My mate Nick Heap suggest using the Liberating Structure ‘Min Specs’ )
Let’s take advantage of the chaos to move things forward. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
Fight the power
The other day I got involved in a debate about whether politics has a place in business. My reply was that everything you do is political and so it’s already there and deciding NOT to talk about it is a political act.
Businesses, and indeed people, operate within a context that is formed by the social, economic and political circumstances of the time and place. For too long this has been ignored, just seen as part of the background.
It’s come to the fore now for a couple of reasons. The irregular award of contracts to friends by government ministers in the UK, links between shady organisations and dubiously-funded think tanks and right-wing politicians and, of course, Brexit on one side and the campaigning on social issues and the climate crisis by corporations on the other.
We have to understand the context in which organisations operate because that is what drives the crapification of work. The erosion of workers rights, the access to cheap capital, the singular focus on profit and efficiency, the state subsidisation of low pay and suppression of the minimum wage - these are all contributory factors driven by political and economic forces. Wrongly, in my view, but undeniably so.
Business doesn’t operate in a bubble. The status quo didn't come about by accident. Some of the changes I want to see in the workplace need changes to happen in our politics, our economy and our society. We need to activate for those as well as for better ways of working. We can't achieve one without the other.
Employees and customers increasingly want to know where businesses stand on social, environmental, political and ethical issues. I see this as a throughly good thing.