Hybrid working: Are you at risk of implementing a one-size-fits-none approach?

Is your approach to hybrid working really working for all?

In the 1800s, the Industrial Revolution moved workers from fields to factories. In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic was the catalyst for a similar shift, with most suddenly forced to swap their offices for their kitchen tables. This once in a generation opportunity to reimagine how we work has been welcomed, with 85% of those questioned for a recent Office for National Statistics survey admitting they wanted to use a hybrid approach of both home and office working in the future.

In the Treehouse, we’ve been talking to existing and new clients about the demands that hybrid working is placing on professionals in all industries and at all levels: leaders, managers and team leaders. There certainly seems to be an appetite to embrace change, but we sense there are still some barriers to actually designing and implementing your hybrid policies.

So, how can you ensure you implement an approach to hybrid working that works for all?

The first step is to acknowledge that you don’t already have all the answers. You may think that you know what your team wants, simply greater flexibility and more opportunities to work from home, but you will find that their needs are far more complicated than just physical location.

We’ve learnt that each level of a team has distinct learning needs and it’s essential that you tailor hybrid working programmes for each group. If you fail to assess and respond to the individual needs of each level of the team and make everyone, no matter their position, feel supported, appreciated, and empowered during the transition, you may find your approach becomes one-size-fits-none.  

The key to success is to take a hybrid approach to hybrid working.

We suggest breaking down an organisation into three levels: leaders, managers, and teams. Starting by addressing the needs of these three groups individually will be the best way to create a hybrid working model that will fulfil the needs of the majority, not the few.

Leaders:

As a leader, you are probably the person your team looks to for answers, but this is unchartered territory and you now need to adapt and learn the necessary new skills to help navigate others through the transition to successful hybrid working.

Although this opportunity to reimagine the world of work is good news, as a leader you now have to take a step back from an environment you know and have succeeded in, and find the growth mindset to identify new processes and solutions.

As well as finding the solutions, you also have to develop your communication skills to clearly explain any new policies to your team. Effectively communicating the thinking behind any hybrid solution and encouraging every member of staff to buy into it is an essential change management skill that every effective leader now needs to hone.

Hybrid working brings with it many benefits, but it also has negative health and well-being implications. As a leader you now have an important pastoral role to play, nurturing relationships and communicating to staff that the organisation understands the new challenges and that you are there to offer support. Similarly, you must regulate your own work-life balance to help you cope with change.

Find out more: What skills do leaders need for the Hybrid Working era?

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Managers:

Keeping the wheels on the bus turning has just become even more difficult, with remote and hybrid working adding many challenges to the role of manager.

As a manager, you may not have been involved in building the strategy behind any new hybrid working approach, but you will be required to implement any changes and keep all members of your team, no matter their location, on time and on task.

You’ll be expected to develop new communication channels and encourage your team to use them. Seamless collaboration and communication in a hybrid world will be the glue preventing your team from segregating and stagnating.

Hybrid working means presenteeism is now outdated and as a manager, you must adapt your thinking and performance measurements to take a more outcome-focused rather than output-focused approach to managing your team.

Pastoral care will become a far more important part of your role but remote working brings some challenges to that task. Where team members were previously there in person, you now have to effectively communicate with them both face-to-face and remotely and learn the skills to gauge a team members well-being and morale no matter where they are working.

Developing these soft skills will be key to making all employees feel appreciated and empowered.

Find out more: What skills do managers need for the Hybrid Working era?

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Team Members:

Hybrid working means that being part of a team now looks very different. Formal and informal discussions whether in the boardroom or by the water cooler have now been almost entirely replaced by video calls or emails.

You will already have had to learn how to work much more independently but in a hybrid working model, you will have to develop the skills to work both alone and face-to-face.

Time can be wasted without knowing and understanding the systems and processes you should be using in a new hybrid working world and it is up to you, and every colleague in your team, to play your part by taking the time to understand the resources and tools at your disposal.

Relationship building remotely is one of the hardest skills of hybrid working but forming and nurturing bonds with customers, suppliers, team members and managers is essential if your projects are to be kept on track.

You must not allow more home working to lead you or your projects to stagnate. It’s up to you, and the colleagues on your team, to continue to collaborate, innovate and drive success.

Being open and trusting of your managers and your co-workers will help you draw support from others. Being alert to your own and others' emotional reactions will also help you to respond and adapt to the changing situations and challenges that the hybrid working world brings.

Find out more: What skills do team members need for the Hybrid Working era?

The future of work is hybrid

While surveys are clearly showing that the great shift to more work-from-home has been welcomed and surprisingly effective, there is no doubt that it has brought some negatives in terms of diluting office culture and belonging.  But the future of work is most certainly hybrid and implementing a new normal that combines the best of office and remote working will require you, and every member of your organisation, whether a leader, manager or team member, to adapt, develop and play your own part in driving the future.

The great resignation: Why leaders need to listen, not just hear.

Workers are leaving their jobs

Around the world, workers are leaving their jobs in record numbers, in America the problem is so acute that it has its own trending hashtag, #thegreatresignation. In April this year, the US recorded more than four million people quitting their jobs, according to a summary from the Department of Labor. This represents the biggest spike on record.

A Microsoft survey of more than 30,000 global workers showed that 41% of workers were considering quitting or changing professions in 2021, and a study of workers in the UK and Ireland showed 38% of those surveyed planned to quit in the next six months to a year.

Readdressing work-life balance

Is this trend a response to the pandemic or a symptom of something deeper? Let’s face it, full-time work occupies a significant number of our waking hours. Add to this commuting time, which for many can be around an hour at the start and end of each day, we spend a great deal of our life in and commuting to, work.

Working from home stress-tested us all; families were suddenly plunged into living, working and home-schooling together for months on end. Many city dwellers noticed that things were greener on the other side of the fence and voted with their feet, heading for the coast or countryside and this was reflected in price spikes in these locations.

Wherever we lay our hat may be home but when you are couped up together 24x7 that home can suddenly feel quite small and confining. That could be one reason for the rise in shed sales, where space is a premium, even a run of the mill shed looks attractive.

Worker rebellion for the modern workforce

The data shows that for many employees, lockdown prompted a life re-think. A recent study conducted to determine why job changers left their previous roles, showed that 40% of employees cited burnout as their top reason for leaving their job.  

In many respects, the pandemic poured petrol on an already lit fire. Workers are rebelling against woeful leadership that focuses on presenteeism over productivity, dictatorial managers, and tone-deaf companies that refuse to pay well and take advantage of their staff. No longer can companies wheel in a table tennis table into the staff room and hope that’s enough.

Workers have taken a step back and reassessed; Covid provided an opportunity for employees to reflect on their role, whether their skills are being put to good use, and explore a sense of their own value.

Pre-pandemic, companies focused on offering the ultimate office experience, with nice coffee machines and breakout rooms with sofas and gaming consoles. But this didn’t count for much when we all suddenly had to work from home. The capability of managers to manage and communicate effectively was exposed.

The way forward

The veneer has been stripped and it’s a good thing. Companies can stop focusing on office fripperies and address gaps that the pandemic has harshly exposed. The benefit is that these are areas of substance that will make a positive difference to company culture and productivity. Companies need to trigger a sea change and that starts with asking some tough questions about current company culture.

• Leadership: Employees want to be part of something bigger and that starts with leaders who set a clear vision for the business which is linked to meaningful goals for each employee. Leaders need to know how to lead well, have organisational insight and make timely, bold decisions. They need to be able to simplify organisational treacle and set the right environment in which their people can flourish.

• Management: People are promoted into management roles because they have the right technical skills for the department they manage. What is forgotten too often is soft skills. Does the manager have the capability to manage their team well? Do they realise that being promoted into a managerial position is a cross-functional move? Has their capability kept pace with their role? Is there learning & development support in place?

• Team members’ engagement and motivation: Have they been developed well? Do they fit in their role or are they a square peg in a round hole? Have they had the right long term career planning support and personal capability development along the way?

The UK has a labour shortage and a skills gap; the pendulum has swung in the employee’s favour. How a company treated its people over the last year and a half will determine the course of the future. Investing in the learning, development and overall wellbeing of your workforce is not only good for staff retention, but it also makes good business sense. It creates a culture of engaged and motivated employees who feel part of the bigger picture and are resilient to weather whatever storm may lay ahead.

Hybrid Working Programmes

We’ve had plenty of enquiries in the Treehouse about our tailored Hybrid Working training programmes. New and existing clients are looking for programmes to help their business adapt; some are looking for short programmes to focus on leaders, whilst others are looking for longer programmes to support managers or team members.

Take a look at some examples of our tailored hybrid working programmes.

It’s about team success, not team location

our working future has changed

The pandemic turned the world of work on its head and overnight companies had to enable everyone to work from home. It wasn’t an option; it was a business imperative that had to happen, and IT departments pulled out all the stops and made it happen.  

The pandemic may have started as a destructive force, but it showed us what could be achieved. Future digital and business transformation plans became reality almost overnight. Businesses had to reframe the concept of work and ask themselves, is the value of what staff achieve based on what they do or where they do it?

Pre-Covid resistance to flexible working

Prior to Covid, many businesses were hesitant to implement a flexible working policy over concerns that productivity would decline. The pandemic forced a global work from home experiment and the outcome was that productivity didn’t fall off a cliff as many companies had feared. It proved the age-old adage that work is something we do, not somewhere we go. Irrespective of location, teams performed, and work got done.

Hybrid working will likely be the default mode for many companies in the post-Covid environment. The transition from everyone working remotely to a hybrid arrangement may take some getting used to for leaders, managers and team members. At Treehouse we have seen an uptick in requests from organisations trying to find their way in the new normal and it’s a subject we have been discussing with new and existing clients.

Vision into action

Hybrid working is more than just working anywhere, it’s about embracing a vision for what the future of work can truly be. It requires action to happen at three levels: organisation; manager and teams coming together to build a hybrid working model that delivers business results and meets customer, supplier and staff needs.  At Treehouse we have developed programmes to help your business to adapt. We have short programmes that focus on leaders, and longer ones to support managers or team members.

The great thing about working with Treehouse is that you can choose from standard elements like our Onboarding in the Hybrid Working Era module and then customise your learning journey with modules such as Executive Coaching, Action Learning Sets, or a specially tailored module. We will work with you to design and deliver a programme that enables your workforce to thrive in the hybrid work environment.

Example Hybrid Working Programmes

Training programmes to help organisations adapt and increase their capability for Hybrid Work.

Seize the opportunity

Whether your company labels it hybrid work or remote work, the important fact is it’s just work. When teams perform cohesively, they deliver results and meet expectations, a poorly functioning team doesn’t, irrespective of location. The pendulum is unlikely to swing back to how things were pre-pandemic. Hybrid working is a positive leap forward that empowers people to do their job in a way that works for everyone. It puts the focus on team achievement and business success not on presenteeism.

According to a study by the Centre for Economic and Business Research, flexible work would allow almost 4 million parents, carers and disabled people currently locked out from work to re-enter the workforce. It would enable part-time workers to do more hours and could add £48.3bn to the UK economy each year.

Companies have endured disruption and survived, now is the time to develop hybrid work models and thrive. By building on existing business resilience, you can ensure your organisation is always ready for whatever comes next.

How to get the best out of team Workshops

Workshop Facilitation – the way to reset your strategy and set your team up for success

Your team has been dispersed and mostly working from home for almost 18 months. Some people may have popped into the office, but you’ve not managed to get your team together for some high-quality thinking for ages. Zoom and MS Teams are better than nothing but being able to get everyone in a room together and chew through some meaty (or vegan!) strategic questions and think richly about the future opportunities or challenges together has been missing, right?

We have recently seen an uptick in requests to facilitate strategic planning workshops, campaign development workshops and senior leadership team meetings in person. Some at (almost deserted) offices, others at very pleasant but equally quiet hotels and conferences venues.

These facilitated workshops have acted as strategic resets, new business development launches and team bonding experiences.

What can a professional facilitator bring to your workshop or meeting?

• Independence: good facilitators are agnostic – they don’t get involved in the content but manage the people and the process to get to the desired outcome. No waffling. No bias. Just high-quality conversations.
• Leveraging all the brains in the room: the workshop facilitator has permission from the group to facilitate. Sounds obvious but we use that permission in ways someone on the inside cannot. We do not defer to the HIPPO (highest paid person’s opinion), we are able to cut off unhelpful conversations, steer people away from rabbit holes and bring in quieter members of the group in ways that they find suitable. We also ensure people work during brief backs – no zoning out!
• Managing the emotions: Skilfully and gently helping people reconnect after a difficult and lengthy period apart, where we’ve all had to deal with some big stuff and that needs to be recognised and managed carefully.
• Managing the energy in the room: keeping people engaged by taking breaks (sometimes unorthodox ones) when people need them and enabling them to work hard during the sessions.
• Sticking to time: we start and end when we say we will. No overrunning.
• Delivering the outcome: before the workshop we work with the problem owner to clearly define the questions to be answered and the desired outcome from the workshop or meeting. Then we deliver it.
• Flexing and adapting: as the military say ‘no plan survives first contact with the enemy’. The same holds true for a workshop’s agenda. Expert workshop facilitators know what’s essential to achieve and flexes the methods to suit. We have probably encountered the situation before and know what to do about it. We check in with the problem owner so that changes in direction are conscious, deliberate and for good reason. No flip flopping. No aimless meandering.

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Workshop facilitation is a capability that every organisation needs. If you don’t have it, then ask us – we can help either to facilitate your workshops and meetings or to train key internal people to become facilitators.

Hybrid Working – the business case for reducing business miles

An opportunity to reduce your carbon footprint?

In the pre-Covid world, most defence organisations clocked up thousands of business road and air miles to liaise with customers, suppliers, other sites / facilities / teams. The bottom-line benefits of the lockdown loss of this expenditure have not gone unnoticed and most defence organisations are rethinking what constitutes essential business travel.

Well before Covid-19, reducing your carbon footprint was a growing priority for consumers and businesses alike. Some defence companies had established green travel plans to encourage staff to travel in a more environmentally sustainable way to reduce costs, improve the health and morale and boost environmental credentials.

To add further focus to the environmental agenda, the Ministry of Defence published a Climate Change and Sustainability Strategic Approach report in March 2021 with a commitment to ‘recognise both the necessity and opportunity to build on our existing successes in cutting carbon and mitigating Defence’s impact on the environment.’[1]

Your Hybrid Working Capability

Is your defence organisation is putting more thought into managing essential business travel in the new normal? Do you need wider help building your hybrid working capability? We’re here to help, no one has all the answers, there isn’t going to be one size fits all.

• The Hybrid Working Capability Diagnostic: Identify, in just 5 minutes, where the gaps are in your organisation’s hybrid working plans and what to do about them.
• Upskill your leaders, managers and teams to equip them for effective hybrid working with our hybrid working tailored training modules
• What are the implications of Hybrid Working for the defence sector? Treehouse has written a research whitepaper involving new and existing clients and have concluded there are 7 complications around Hybrid Working that organisations need to explore.

If you’re not sure where to start, our Capability Diagnostic will help you identify what your organisation’s current capability is and then provide recommendations for improvement.

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Sources

LawDonut, Environmental business travel

[1] Corporate report Ministry of Defence, (March 2021), Climate Change and Sustainability Strategic Approach

“I’m not returning to the previous life”

The Push and Pull of the new working normal

In the Treehouse our clients are starting to come together as work teams for the first time, for team away days and to be in the office for one or more days a week. We’re beginning a slow and cautious creep out of lockdown and the reality of hybrid working is beginning to take shape with many noticing the push and pull of different perspectives about what good looks like in the new normal working world.

For those who have benefitted from a better quality of life during lockdown slipping back into old habits is something they are resisting. This is particularly true for staff who have valued:

• less time on the road and the benefits of less road / air miles, many noticing improved physical and mental health and stronger relationships with friends and family

• getting back chunks of time previously spent commuting to and from work in heavy traffic and on overcrowded public transport

• protected time and space in a quieter home office for purposeful, clear thinking

• the flexibility to work when and where they are most effective, sitting in the garden or going for a walk being some of the most frequently mentioned productive workspaces  

For others there’s a strong pull back to the office:

• to have a clearer boundary between home and work life

• to end the isolation of living and working alone or with a limited number of friends and family during lockdown

• for a better connection to the internet and online work tools

• to access office facilities from photocopiers to whiteboards, meeting rooms, the watercooler and the coffee machine.

If you’re noticing a push and pull dialogue in your organisation as you build your hybrid working capability we can help:

Need help building your hybrid working capability?

• Where are you on hybrid working? No one has all the answers, there isn’t going to be one size fits all. Identify, in just 5 minutes, where the gaps are and what to do about them.
• Upskill your leaders, managers and teams to equip them for effective hybrid working with our hybrid working tailored training modules
• What are the implications of Hybrid Working for the defence sector? Treehouse has written a research whitepaper involving new and existing clients and have concluded there are 7 complications around Hybrid Working that organisations need to explore.

If you’re not sure where to start, our Capability Diagnostic will help you identify what your organisation’s current capability is and then provide recommendations for improvement.

The Implications of Hybrid Working

Traditional Office Culture is becoming a thing of the Past

PWC have told their 22,000 staff that they can now start and finish work when they want and spend 40 to 60% of their time remote working. Nationwide and BP have taken it one step further, embracing a full-time home working model.

As we slowly move out of lockdown, it’s obvious that for many of the 32million UK workforce, the 9 to 5 pre Covid office culture will be a thing of the past.

Not all work can be carried out remotely

Is a remote or hybrid working model feasible for all industries across all sectors?

McKinsey have studied the time spent on different activities within various occupations. Unsurprisingly, their analysis found that remote work is best suited to those whose roles require cognitive thinking and problem solving, managing and developing people, and data processing. Finance, Management, Professional Services and Information Sectors are amongst those with the highest potential for remote work. The findings also suggested that highly skilled, highly educated workers are those most likely to succeed in their roles while working remotely.

What about the UK defence and supply chain sectors ?

Unlike many of the professional services roles identified by McKinsey as being suited to remote work, there are many jobs in the defence and defence supply chain sector that are not so clearly defined. While some activities during a typical day lend themselves to remote work, there are other tasks that require a physical presence and a more hands on approach.

The importance of technology for hybrid working

The transition to remote working has been seamless for many thanks to advances in communication and collaboration technology. The businesses that have moved from an office to remote model successfully have heavily invested in the required communication technology and software. Beyond having a work-issued laptop and smartphone, collaboration software (eg Miro, SoCreative, Kahoot and Jira7), meeting software (eg MS Teams, WebEx, Skype and Zoom), communication software (eg Lync and Jabber) are used widely in many industries to support hybrid working.

It is clear that the ability to remote work depends on these technologies, and whilst financial and professional services organisations have prioritised this spending, the public admin and defence sectors have not.  If the UK defence and supply chain sectors are to be able to offer any form of hybrid working to their workforce, they may need to consider greater investment and a balanced risk approach to communication technology, software, and hybrid office infrastructure.

Hybrid Working has implications for power, influence and competence

Hybrid working is inextricably tied to power; it creates power differentials within teams that can damage relationships, impede effective collaboration and could ultimately reduce performance. It reinforces divisions between the ‘head office/ major sites’ crowd and the ‘remote working’ crowd. It’s easier to have a team of 20 all being remote rather than 15 people in a room and five remotes.  To lead effectively in a hybrid environment, leaders and managers must recognise and actively manage sources of power that can impede or facilitate hybrid work.

Managers may not have the skills to manage Hybrid Working Teams and Projects

The burden of delivering change, including the transition from total lockdown remote working to post June 2021 Hybrid Working will fall most heavily on those with management responsibilities. A successful hybrid working model will depend on managers having the people, process, communication and collaboration skills to leverage the contribution of the wider team.  Existing core management skills will need to be sharpened, as one Treehouse client said “I need to work out how to package bundles of work for staff to do when they’re working from home.” Different ways of working will be appropriate at different stages in a product life-cycle so hybridity working factors will need to become a normal part of project planning and design reviews. 

Staff may need to develop the skills, confidence and mindset for hybrid working

It is not only senior leaders that will need to learn new skills to actively manage hybrid working. Team members will also be required to gain a range of soft skills to increase their contribution and thrive in a hybrid environment. Adaptability, willingness to learn new ways of working and to develop trust and proficiency in new technology are all keys to a successful transition from on site to off site working.

The transition to a hybrid workforce also requires a ‘people-first’ strategy, one that establishes the skills, agility and learning culture an organisation and its workforce will need to be successful. 

Most importantly, we need to identify the wants, needs and drivers of staff as they embark on their own personal journeys to becoming part of a hybrid workforce.

Onboarding and talent management can be more challenging

Most of the learning in organisations is informal or on-the-job. CIPD’s report identified how managers were conscious of how remote working during Covid 19 had reduced opportunities for ‘shadowing, and the things that you just instinctively pick up by being sat with a group of people with a similar responsibility to you’. 

Informal learning is important throughout a career but there are several points when learning needs are particularly intense. These include:

• new starters at junior (apprentice, graduate) and senior levels,

• following a promotion,

• when taking on a new task or area of responsibility and

• when switching teams.  

To address this managers need to be alert to recognising the points when more support is needed and to organise more structured development opportunities. This could include organising a wider support network instead of a single mentor together with better documentation. In project based work, managers could deliberately mix people up on consecutive projects to create greater opportunities for development.

Seize the opportunity

If there is one positive to come out of the Covid pandemic, it’s that the ingrained working norms of the past have been reviewed and re-evaluated. Whether a remote or hybrid working model is a practical and realistic choice for every industry and every role is doubtful, but the pandemic has made managers and team members think and consider alternatives. Organisations that take this opportunity to review their working models and take into consideration the opinions and requirements of all team members from the top down have the greatest chance of making any new style of working a success. 

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References

• Susan Lund, Anu Madgavkar, James Manyika, and Sven Smit (2020), What’s next for remote work: An analysis of 2000 tasks, 800 jobs and nine countries (McKinsey & Company)

• The Office for National Statistics 2019 report

• The Office of Communications (OFCOM)’s 2019 Connected Nations report

• Ismail Amla (2019), Empowering people in a hybrid workforce (Capita)

• Emma Jacobs (2020), How to make the hybrid workforce model work (FT.com)

• Mark Mortensen and Martine Haas (2021) Making the Hybrid Workplace Fair (Harvard Business Review)

•  (CIPD's) 2021 report, Flexible Working: Lessons from the Pandemic

Hybrid Working - is it the new norm?

What is Hybrid Working?

At its simplest, hybrid working means some staff working from a central office and others working remotely from home or at another location. This can be contrasted to distributed working which enables companies to hire, train and support an entirely remote, full-time team across the country, or even multiple countries.

Is the Hybrid Working Model new?

Ahead of the curve, big tech, Silicon Valley companies such as Google, Apple and Twitter were well practiced in distributed working. In the UK remote working has been a gradually rising long-term trend, the Office for National Statistics reported that 6% of the workforce were working remotely full time and 30% working remotely for at least some of the time by the start of 2020.

As we all know, COVID-19 suddenly accelerated this trend. In March 2020 we were told to “work from home if you can”. Employers responded quickly and during the period 23 March to 5 April 2020, the average proportion of the workforce that was working remotely from their normal place was 48%.  

Will the Hybrid Working Culture stay?

Individuals and many organisations have been pushed to the limit over the last 12 months. Feedback from Treehouse clients suggests that most have successfully made the transition to remote working. Programmes are continuing to deliver and special arrangements are in place for occasional access to facilities for those that need them.

So, will remote working stay? There seems to be demand from employees. In a study carried out for BBC News and King's College London, conducted by Ipsos MORI, a third of workers 32% say they anticipate working from home more post lockdown. Many employers have been conducting regular pulse surveys to capture employees thoughts on wellbeing and working arrangements. Some employers are responding quickly. This week the UK’s biggest building society, Nationwide announced that 13,000 office staff could choose where they work under a new flexibility scheme.

Most businesses are considering Hybrid Working

63% of participants who responded to the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development's (CIPD) employer survey said that they planned to introduce or expand the use of hybrid working to some degree, combining time in the workplace with time at home, depending on the needs of the job, the individual and the team.

Hybrid Model for the future

It remains to be seen how significant the move from office working will be in 12 months time. For many employees, some activities during a typical day lend themselves to remote work, while others require access to office or other on-site facilities. This suggests many sectors operating a hybrid model of some sort, with employees working remotely and from office/ on-site facilities during the working week. Treehouse sees an opportunity, or perhaps a necessity, to treat hybrid working not as something to simply get through but as the start of lasting change to the way organisation’s work.

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References

• Distributed Workforce Model: Why it could be the future of work (People Matters)

• Coronavirus and homeworking in the UK labour marketing (ONS)

• Business Impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) Survey, expectation responses over time, UK 1 June to 23 August 2020 (Waves 6 to 11) (ONS)

• Covid: More walking and family chats post-lockdown - poll suggests (BBC)

• Aerospace and defence organisations must use their experience from COVID-19 to change how they work forever (PA Consulting)

• Flexible working: Lessons from the pandemic (CIPD)

The 23 Skills of an Integrator

The 23 Skills needed by the modern Integrator

As discussed in our “Integrating the Integrators” blog, the integrator role is increasingly becoming a necessity in every business.

The integrator has the immense challenge of bringing together a variety of non-connected elements of a business, or indeed a supply chain, to deliver a successful solution for the end-customer. To achieve this, the integrator must be equipped with a variety of skills.

Download our free guide: “The 23 skills of an Integrator”

At Treehouse, we have identified that there are 23 skills needed by the modern integrator split across four stages of development (learning and experience):

• Foundation: the who, what, why and how of integration

• Advanced: the facilitation of integration

• Mentoring: drawing upon experience to help other integrators

• Leading: leading integration across the organisation

Complete your details to download the full guide below:

Why is Integration so painful?

Why is integration so painful?

Our experience from working with many organisations over the years has highlighted that integration can be a painful experience.

We’ve identified four reasons why integration can be painful

Helen explains what these are and why in our video below:

Integration Scorecard

How do you rate your organisation or team in its Integration prowess?

Learn More

Integration Self-Assessment

How do you rate your Integration skills? Take the test and find out.

Learn More

Giving and receiving feedback

Pens in A Box Feedback Exercise

The pens in a box feedback exercise illustrates what it feels like to work blind vs being given high quality feedback.

Learn more

The Importance of Giving and Receiving Feedback

We’ve all been there. Those times when you’ve slogged your guts out on a project or piece of work, you press save and send feeling pretty pleased with your efforts, only to receive a cursory ‘thank you’ email from your manager in response.

In the short term, some us with high emotional intelligence could possibly shrug it off temporarily and move on, but for most of us, this lack of feedback could open a huge can of worms.

People naturally want to succeed at work so receiving no feedback could lead to them doubting their own abilities, believing that others are more qualified than them, feelings of anxiety about job security or promotion possibilities. In a nutshell, not giving your team members constructive feedback, can leave them feeling rudderless!  

4 reasons to give and receive feedback

• Feedback is a gift; it provides valuable information that gives us an opportunity to look at ourselves in a different light.

• It helps us to understand how others perceive us and the impact that our behavioural style or ways of working has on others.

• Feedback can enable anyone to improve their focus and results - to grow. 

• Feedback is key to engaging people; we generally think about feedback between a manager and a team member. However, feedback can and should be given up, down and sideways.  

How to effectively give and receive feedback

• Feedback needs to be heard, understood and accepted. Those are the areas in our control, we have no control over whether the person that we’re giving feedback to chooses to act upon our feedback, that’s for them to decide.  

• There are a number of key principles for giving and receiving effective feedback:
  be timely, do it regularly, be specific, be structured and use “I” statements ‘I was surprised when you criticised the team at today’s review’. 

• It’s also important to think about the skills that we need to receive feedback, especially when it is something that we may not want to hear or when it’s given clumsily. Active listening, using questions to clarify the situation and focusing on managing our emotions can help us to open the gift of feedback more readily.

According to the Harvard Business Review, 72% of people feel their performance would improve if their managers provided corrective feedback. The same survey found that 57% of people prefer corrective feedback to purely praise and recognition.  

Remembering to provide considered, constructive feedback for every task, to every employee and fostering a culture where team members provide feedback more freely is a powerful tool that could reap long term rewards across your organisation.

References:

Your Employees Want the Negative Feedback You Hate to Give (HBR, 2014)

What is the difference between Integration and Project Management?

Same or different?

The management of integration and project management are often confused, particularly when it comes to the skills, the roles and responsibilities and the complexity required to fulfil the objective, but in reality they are quite different challenges altogether.

In a nutshell, here is the difference:

Integration: is the act of bringing together smaller components into a single system or entity that functions as one. 

Project Management: is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements and end goals.

Well, that makes integration sound like a project doesn’t it? Correct! Integration can be a project with the goal to bring operational unity between people, engineering, systems, tools and a multitude of other components to achieve a permanent effect.

And, as pointed out by some of our colleagues in system engineering, integration can also be an element of a project to merge a project deliverable into the wider environment.

Here are three scenarios we have come across in pictures:

Here are the two compared further:

Integration

Integration is the achievement of permanent operational unity and harmonisation among:

• functional specialists

• teams

• departments

• systems

• tools

• technology

• projects.

The scope of integration can apply across a team, department, business or a business supply chain ecosystem.  

Project Management

Project management is the ability to deliver a project which typically has the following characteristics:

• clearly defined client objectives

• scope

• budget

• stakeholders

• the management of risk

• a project team

• project resources

• an end point

• milestones and timescales

• success criteria.

---

So, If integration is a project, why this article?

The table above makes it look like integration is primarily the goal of a project manager handling an integration project, so why this article?

Integration doesn’t just happen - it requires special focus from an organisation to get right:

• integration requires a different skillset, of which project management is one

• an integrator needs to be an influencer (without necessary having authority) at all levels and be equipped to have ‘difficult conversations’

• integrators act along the value chain from raw materials to end-product - cutting across the silos or functional boundaries of an organisation. Organisations are generally not structured by value chains (more likely by function), therefore the integrator can be working against the grain of an organisation which takes resilience, courage and well-honed soft skills

• the challenges of the integrator are more complex and require a different way of thinking and an adaptability beyond the boundaries of a project

• integration is very much about the ‘bigger picture’, particularly the way that ‘change’ affects the lives of employees, organisational culture and ability to deliver for and delight customers.

Why is Integration Different?

By understanding the difference between project management and integration, companies can select the most appropriately skilled people to undertake the task.

Though integration and project management have many similarities and overlap, an integrator is much more than a project manager.

Integration is fundamentally about achieving change and permanent operational unity. Consequently, the integrator needs to be up to the task of bringing people, businesses, systems, technology, processes and projects together - they are like the glue that sticks the disparate pieces of the system together into a cohesive whole to deliver solutions that not only meet customer requirements but surprise and delight them too.

References

Business Integration and what it really means, IT Chronicles (2019)

The New Management Job: The Integrator, HBR (1967)

Relationships between Systems Engineering and Project Management, SEBoK

What is Project Management, PMI

With thanks to the many integrators within BAE Systems’ Mission Support team who helped in creating this article.

Integration SElF-ASSESSMENT

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InTegration ScoreCard

How do you rate your organisation or team in its Integration prowess?

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Treehouse, helping to deliver transformation in Royal Navy training

Treehouse is part of Team iMAST (Intelligent Maritime Adaptive Synthetics and Training) - the innovation ecosystem which will collectively modernise and transform Royal Navy training over the next 12 years.

About iMAST

iMAST was formed in 2019 by an industry and academic alliance including Babcock, QinetiQ, Thales, Centerprise International, Learning Technologies Group, University of Portsmouth and University of Strathclyde with the simple vision: working in true partnership with the customer to transform and modernise Royal Navy training in innovative ways that will deliver more, better trained Royal Navy people to the front line quicker.

The innovation ecosystem to support and deliver iMAST includes more than 50 experienced, specialist SMEs of which Treehouse is one, and a dedicated programme website announced the consortium in June 2020.  

“iMAST is committed to playing its part in realising the vision of a modern Royal Navy; its people better trained and more capable than ever before and meeting today’s and the future’s operational needs.”

— John Howie: CEO Babcock Marine and Technology – lead contractor in the iMAST Alliance

The Treehouse Role - delivering innovation in training

We were selected to be involved as a result of our experience and expertise in unlocking opportunity and catalysing change through people.  Our specific role, though changing and evolving as the programme develops, will be to:

• Quickly and effectively gain powerful insights into what the trainers and trainees need.

• Leveraging that insight to co-create with trainers and trainees a vision of what new solutions might look like.

• Testing and refining the vision iteratively until the right solution is established.

How will we deliver this?

• Crowdsourcing

• Workshops

• Interviews and Listening Groups

• Analytics

• Structured testing processes

The trick for a good programme is the blending together of insight at the individual level and then amalgamating into good principles for the programme as a whole.  Agility at the individual level is key as it more accurately adds up to a training solution with outcomes contributing to an ever evolving yet ‘FutureFit’ Royal Navy service as a whole.

Why Treehouse?

We’re experts in empowering people and teams to unlock potential, growth and opportunity using proven tools to encourage different thinking, identifying fresh approaches and improve organisational effectiveness, innovation and collaboration.

We use insight as a springboard for everything we do.  Within iMAST we’ll be using insight to co-create solutions that fit perfectly, hand in glove with focus on the individual to develop solutions that deliver results for the whole. The whole ends up being more than the sum of its parts. 

We catalyse change, one person at a time.

Innovation EcoSYSTEM

A Treehouse solution to bring together your support network of both large and small organisations to work as a collaborative, innovative force

Find out more

More Reading:

• iMAST - intelligent Maritime Adaptive Synthetics & Training website

• ADS Advance (15/06/2020): Industry and academic alliance aims at transforming Royal Navy training

• Babcock press release (10/09/2019): Team iMAST sets out to provide a step-change for UK Royal Navy and Royal Marines Training

Integrating the Integrators

The Essential role of the integrator

In 1967, the Harvard Business Review published an article entitled ‘New management job: the integrator’. The authors suggested that within the next decade, “one of the critical organisation innovators would be the establishment of management positions, even formal departments, charged with the task of achieving integration.”

More than four decades on, it’s still rare that you’ll find a colleague with the job title of ‘integrator’ on their business card, let alone whole departments tasked with integration.  Of course, every company and project has ‘integrators’-  people with integration as part of their job description, but they are more likely to be engineers, data architects, project managers, systems engineers, change consultants, account managers to name just a few.

In reality, the title doesn’t actually matter, but the role is essential! The increasingly complex and dynamic nature of organisations and projects accompanied with the rapid rate of technological change means clearly defined, customer-centric, integrator roles are increasingly becoming a necessity in every business.

What is an integrator?  

Put simply, integrators are the glue that brings things together! Where visionaries are those that create the future, integrators are the ones that make it happen.

An integrator is a person who has the ability and skills to bring together various non-connected elements of a business, service or project, to deliver a final, coherent and successful solution for the customer.

Taking on any problems or needs that arise, through coordinating, collaborating and communicating, they find the solutions, keep projects on track and facilitate positive change.

The challenges facing integrators

Like the job title, the keys to success of an integrator are not clearly defined.  Positive results are as much about a way of thinking as they are about defined skills, but what is consistent is that an integrator must be adaptable and have a desire to bring together non-connected elements of a solution or service to deliver success for their customer and consequently for their own business as well.

Integrators have to be resilient and know when to push forward and also when to pause and question. Transforming anything has its challenges and so understanding the ‘big picture’ is paramount. We are by nature sceptical of change in all areas of our lives, with business organisational culture and resistant employee attitudes often compounding the turmoil associated with any change.  Integrators must be sensitive to this whilst retaining focus on the customers’ requirements and the internal teams’ needs to deliver it.

Integrators need to be excellent communicators, and most are, but that is just one part of the story. They also need to build a rapport with every stakeholder in a project. Only by developing this skill can they build trust and loyalty to harness the commitment that will ensure they receive the right communications, data and assistance required to achieve their objectives.

In today’s modern workplace there are many barriers to building these crucial communication channels:

• Lack of access is a common challenge; getting face-to-face time with all stakeholders who will be affected by, and involved in, a project is difficult when many employees now work remotely.

• Integrators are often joining as a team member on a project and do not have direct authority over the individuals and team concerned.  

• Asking employees to give time to assist in integration projects is not made a priority by managers.

• Integrators are deemed to be an internal resource with some reluctance to put them in front of customers. 

• The integration function is not included at the right time.  Integration is perceived to be what happens at the end when crucially it needs to be involved at the start through the whole chain thus removing much of the friction later on.

• Scepticism and resistance to change amongst teams and individuals regularly needs to be overcome.

The under-valuing and misuse of the integrator’s role can result in a lack of trust, understanding and tensions. So what is the solution? 

• Managers need to realise the importance of integrators in any situation, champion their role and help pave the way to their success.

• Keeping the customer at the heart of everything.

• All team members must be encouraged to accept change and be brought into the objective so they can provide information, feedback and data - all essential to facilitate positive outcomes.

• The integrators themselves need to be able to influence without authority, lead change, prioritise improving communication channels to foster collaboration, build long term trust and clear out obstacles to achieve solutions.

The workplace is evolving at a much greater pace than ever before and organisations are becoming increasingly complex. At the heart of this rapid change is technology. All sectors are facing some sort of digital transformation and only by preparing for, accepting and facilitating change will businesses be able to keep up.

In today’s rapidly changing work environment, the role of the integrator in any organisation is now crucial, not only to facilitate positive change, but also to help staff engage with and adjust to new ways of working, rather than seeing them as a threat.

Integration ScoreCard

How do you rate your organisation or team on its Integration prowess?

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Integration Self-Assessment

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The most in demand skill? Being human

The demand for ‘soft skills’ is on the up

The world is overflowing with technology and automation has replaced many manual or repetitive roles across all industries.  With the modern workplace becoming more digitalised and with artificial Intelligence promising so much, it raises the question of what skills and knowledge will be needed and valued in the future. It turns out what employers’ value most is our social and emotional skills.

Uniquely human skills

A recent survey[i] revealed soft skills, such as listening skills, are most in demand by employers (74 percent), while quantitative skills and computer and technical skills were less so (47 percent and 50 percent, respectively).

According to the survey the top skills today’s employers are looking for in candidates include:

Listening Skills

74%

Attention to Detail

70%

Effective Communication

69%

Critical Thinking

67%

Interpersonal Skills

65%

Active Learning

65%

As the survey results show, employers aren't looking for the same level of deep knowledge and technical skill as they did in the past. The nature of work is evolving, which is partly why we have a skills gap. Manufacturing and factory jobs that once powered the economy have largely been automated. However, soft skills such as networking, building relationships and collaborating with others are the skills that automation or artificial intelligence just can’t replicate.

The power to relate

In the future emotional intelligence will take on new significance. As our use of technology expands, our human skills of compassion, empathy and the ability to relate to our colleagues will be the competitive edge in the workplace, not only for individuals but for entire organisations.

Unlock the PotentIal in your Workforce

Helping people, teams, organisations with soft skills is what we do.

Get in touch to discuss further

It turns out that the most in demand skill needed in the future is the one thing humans are uniquely suited to master. Forward thinking employers should seize the opportunity to unlock the potential within their workforce and benefit from improved organisational effectiveness and collaboration.

[i] Cengage upskilling survey  

8 top tips on managing and motivating a remote team

A challenge for teams now working remotely

Developing strong team dynamics

Webinar on May 20th 2020 11:00 -12:00 & June 4th 2020 14:00 - 15:00.

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The current pandemic has brought about change to many workplaces at an unprecedented rate. Teams that once worked physically together are now working remotely and learning how to collaborate virtually. Fortunately, there are many tools and systems that can encourage remote collaboration.

However, remaining focused and productive can be a challenge for teams who are unaccustomed to working remotely and miss the social aspect of office life. Equally, for managers used to sharing an office with their team and seeing them face-to-face on a regular basis, providing effective management remotely can be difficult.  Managing and motivating a remote team requires the development of strong team dynamics. Here are our top eight tips on how your team cannot only survive but thrive in the current environment.

Work towards a shared purpose. Think creatively.

1. Revisit and communicate your team’s purpose

A common purpose unites a team, regardless of how geographically dispersed the members may be. The pandemic has created change and uncertainty not only in the way we are currently working but across all aspects of everyday life. If your team’s purpose has changed, now is the time to communicate this and update employees on what the new normal will look like. Everyone needs to understand the new focus and be working towards a shared purpose, behaviour and objective.

• Work with your team to identify and understand short- or long-term project constraints.

• Create a team charter as a "roadmap" to help paint a compelling picture of the future that will inspire team members to persevere. Not only will this motivate the team to look forward beyond the now, it will also provide clear decision-making guidelines for all members of the team.

• Think broadly and creatively to spot new opportunities to pivot your team for future success.

Now more than ever it’s important to be transparent about the current situation, share what you know and if things are still unclear share this information too. Honesty and transparency will continue to engender trust between you and your team in these challenging times.

Learn about everyone. Understand they all have different needs.

2. Learn about every member of the team

Many of us leave our troubles at home when we head into work, however when having to work from home this option disappears. Remote working will prove challenging for all team members in one way or another. Some will have additional responsibilities such as childcare, home-schooling or caring and shopping for a vulnerable family member. Other team members may live alone and be battling loneliness. This is unprecedented times and being socially distant from our support networks is a struggle for all of us.

• Lead the way by providing both practical and emotional support, but also encourage team members to be considerate to one another. This is an opportunity to reset or improve relationships.

• Ensure team members have the support and equipment they need to work effectively. This includes any training they may need to use online systems and applications.

• Has your company used psychometric tools such as INSIGHTS or MBTI to understand preferred ways of working? If so, encourage the team to revisit these in the context of the new environment so they can consider and share what helps them to work effectively.

• Look for warning signs that employees may be struggling such as reduced output; short and abrupt emails; reluctance to engage in telephone calls or video conference calls; shortage of new ideas.

• One of the most upsetting aspects of lockdown is an increase in domestic abuse, staying at home isn’t safe for everyone. If you are worried, check-in regularly with the team member so they know they are supported and provide details of appropriate professional help in their area.

Make sure you are available. Keep lines of communication open.

3. Be available for your team

Now more than ever, clear, honest and open communication is absolutely vital.

• Send emails or post videos about your reasoning, intentions and expectations.

• Encourage collaboration by making it easy for your team to know your thoughts and contribute their own.

• Have a daily virtual huddle to keep connected as a team, to check-in on each other’s well-being and keep workflow on track. It needn’t be long, but regularity is key.

• Keep the rhythm of regular one-to-ones going as these are the best place to help support your team and identify if they are struggling and need more support.

• Role model the approach you want the team to take. As a leader, you control the weather.  How you behave will influence how your team operates. 

Manage team relationships. Keep them on task.

4. Manage team relationships

Managing relationships between team members can be challenging enough within a shared office space. With the team now working remotely, it creates a whole new dynamic and previous ways of working may no longer be applicable. The team may go through a new 'forming, storming, norming, performing' cycle as they learn how to work together remotely. Now is the time to consider which stage your team is in and develop practical steps to move them towards the performing stage. Productivity is not only good for business, it’s important for morale, we all want to feel like we are achieving something. 

Encourage informal meetings, information sharing, and huddles between team members. This is not only a great way to brainstorm ideas but it also prevents feelings of isolation and any negativity from creeping in.

Continue to build a learning team. Get everyone to sign up to a webinar and share their learning or invite someone from another team or a supplier or customer to share their expertise. This pandemic has driven an unprecedented change but in the long-term it can result in stronger relationships - across teams, supply chains and with our customers.

Aim for speed over perfection.

Trust your teams to make decisions and act on them.

5. Find a balance between speed and perfection

Most organisations do not have the systems and analytics necessary to deliver perfect information on how their business operations will be impacted by a global pandemic. There will be many unknowns and plenty of ambiguity. Learning to accept and adapt with imperfect information will be key to your team's success.

• Counter balance the ambiguity by using creative thinking tools such as brainstorming, mind mapping or six-thinking-hats to generate possibilities. Then move swiftly into action by executing on your top three ideas.

• Devolve decision making by encouraging your team members to take the initiative and trust them to develop creative approaches to problems or opportunities.

• Focus on clarifying the objectives that matter and the lines that cannot be crossed to give your teams space to respond to the new normal and to innovate.

Give feedback and reward performance.

6. Give feedback and reward performance

Providing feedback is always important however in the current climate people are likely to be more sensitive if they’re feeling isolated or anxious.

• Tailor your feedback, whether its praise or criticism, to take this into account when talking or writing.

• Ensure you communicate regularly, not just when things go wrong.

• Check your biases: Are you giving fair and honest feedback? Is your feedback too ‘soft’ because you want to be liked, or too ‘hard’ because you haven’t given clear instructions or provided the right resources?

• Be specific, it’s rarely helpful to give vague or ambiguous feedback to remote workers, whether it’s positive or negative.

• Let your team members know exactly what performance traits you want them to continue. “That report was really well researched and organised. It will help us understand which customers we need to contact immediately".

• Ensure you are inviting two-way communication, this will help you understand if your feedback has been understood and accepted. A new perspective may help you to see things in a different light.

Here’s a fun exercise for teams to illustrate what it feels like when you are working blind and not getting any indication of how well you are doing: Pens in a Box.

Focus on goals not activity. Manage expectations.

7. Focus on goals not activity

It’s important to manage expectations and remain focused on goals when managing a remote team. Concentrate on what is being accomplished, rather than how working hours are being used. Trust your employees to work independently and hold themselves accountable for their work. If a situation arises where an employee isn’t performing, then you can consider increasing supervision.

Rather than expect your team to work 8 to 5, understand their constraints and allow them the flexibility of structuring their day as this will enable them to be more productive. One of the advantages of working from home is having the flexibility to work around commitments that are in conflict with an eight-to-five routine, such as childcare and home-schooling. Agree some overlapping time for meetings and accept any video calls may include the occasional child or pet!

Research suggests the stereotype of the laid-back remote worker lounging on the sofa, watching TV, gaming or surfing the internet are not only unfair but inaccurate. In most cases, remote workers are diligently performing and, in some cases, taking fewer breaks and switching off far later from work. So, focus on what your team is accomplishing in their new way of working and not any negative stereotypes.

Take care of yourself. Don't work day and night and keep to core hours.

8. Take care of yourself

You are the vital linchpin holding all this together, so take care of yourself! Your leadership, skills, knowledge and talent are vital to your team now more than ever, so ensure you prioritise your own health and wellbeing.

• Be aware of working longer hours, decide on your core hours and stick to them.

• Remember to ask for support when you need it. Maintaining the welfare and performance of your team is a huge responsibility so ensure you have a support network.

• Look for people to learn from both within your organisation and outside of it. Talk to them, ask for advice, and listen carefully. Consider looking for a mentor or a coach.

Sorry … Blatant sales pitch from Treehouse 😊. We run tailored Executive Coaching courses – get in touch if you are in need of a boost!!

Look to the future

Many organisations have achieved the impossible by remotely enabling a workforce in just days. Managers and employees have stepped up and are performing in challenging times. Take a moment to congratulate yourself on getting this far, on adapting to a truly unique situation so quickly. Consider what has worked well for your team and what could be improved upon. Most importantly, keep in mind that the unique situation caused by the global pandemic will one day end. The result of all your efforts will be stronger more emphatic relationships based on mutual respect and trust.

Further Reading:

If you want tips on how to prioritise your time, set goals and work productively, why not read the Treehouse guide on How to stay focused working from home.

Developing Strong Team Dynamics

Webinar on May 20th 2020 11:00 -12:00 & June 4th 2020 14:00 - 15:00.

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Top tips to help you work from home productively

Top tips to help you work from home productivelY without impacting your personal life

10 Top tips for staying focused working from home

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The world has suddenly changed overnight and completely without warning.

Many people have unexpectedly found themselves working from home, some for the first time in their professional lives. Whether you are a seasoned pro or a newbie to working remotely, these are challenging times. Here are some top tips to help you stay efficient and avoid going stir-crazy.

1.     Develop a healthy work/life balance

One of the challenges with working from home is work and home life merge. Before you know it, you are starting work early, finishing late and not taking many breaks during the day. Not only is this not healthy, it becomes really unproductive.

• Use the time you would have spent commuting to fit in some exercise. A morning workout is perfect for getting mind and body energised and ready to be productive.

• If during the course of the day you find yourself losing focus, check that you're not pushing yourself too hard.

• Don’t overcompensate for not being in the office by working longer and missing breaks, everyone needs a bit of downtime.

• Agree an end time for your working day and stick to it.

• Make plans for your after-work hours with friends and family, or dedicate time to your hobby or exercise. If you have something planned for the end of your workday, you'll be more likely to log off and stop working.

2.     Switch into business mode

The thought of staying in your pyjamas all day might be appealing but it doesn’t mentally prepare you for the day ahead. Also, it’s not a great look on web conferencing calls! Set yourself a start time for the day and aim to be showered and dressed by this time every working day. Not only will this provide a structure to your day but it will help you get into the right frame of mind to crack on with your job.

3.     Create a work space

Creating a space where you can set yourself up for the day is absolutely vital to your productivity. Ideally, your workspace would be in a separate area to where you and other members of the household relax, prepare food or sleep. This would limit the number of interruptions and help everyone’s productivity! A room like a spare bedroom or dining room where you can close the door and transition into work mode would be perfect. However, if this isn’t possible, identify an area in your home where you can easily set up and pack away your work items at the start and end of each day.

Comfort is important, so check you can sit comfortably, that your screen/keyboard is at the right height. If working at a laptop, it might be worth investing in a screen, keyboard and mouse if the remote working scenario is to become more permanent. It is also worth considering investing in a high-quality office chair to minimise back and neck strain.

4.     Get organised

Start each day as you mean to go on by dedicating the first 15 minutes of your working day to focus on what you need to get done. Review your tasks and set priorities of what needs to be completed by the end of the day. Use whatever system feels right for you; whether that be pen and paper or an app.

Once a task is completed, tick it off your list, the act of doing this will keep you motivated.

At the end of each day, spend a few minutes clearing down your physical and virtual desktop. File away or delete any emails that are resolved, make notes for activities you might be in the middle of, file away documents and clear away empty coffee cups.

With a clear mind and clean work station you can walk away from your desk and switch off for the day.

5.     Set goals

Setting yourself targets and goals is always good practice however it’s even more important when working from home.

Having a clear goal will enable you to build a shared understanding with your line manager and team on what the priorities are and where effort should be focused. Additionally, the key to productivity and achieving goals is ensuring you have access to all the applications, tools, systems and documents that will enable you to work effectively and productively from home.

We are in unprecedented times; some companies are better prepared to remotely enable the workforce than others. So one of your goals could be adapting to home working and collaborating with your colleagues to ensure everyone is set up in the best way to work together.

6.     Manage your time

Working from home is an adjustment so it’s important to come up with a new schedule of how you will work alone and remotely with others. Identify the hours you are at your most productive, for example early mornings or late afternoon, these are your golden hours. Match your most significant – or most challenging – work to the time of day when you're at your best and avoid interruptions during this time.

Team collaboration is important in many roles however this doesn’t mean you are available to be interrupted at all times. Use whatever tools or applications available to publicise the hours you are busy and when you are free so that team members can be mindful and respectful of your time.

7.     Minimise distractions

Pinpoint your major distractions and eliminate them before you settle down to work. If an untidy kitchen is an irritation preventing you from concentrating and prioritising work, then clean the kitchen! This will leave you with a clean mind (and kitchen!) allowing you to settle down and focus on work.

Many home workers find that playing music or an audiobook during the work day helps to increase their focus. For others, only total silence will do. If your home environment has lots of distracting background noise, consider wearing headphones to dampen the sound.

Social media can be a huge distraction, so think carefully about how often you are dipping in to various apps. Consider allocating time slots, for example morning, lunch time and at the end of the day rather than dipping in and out throughout the day. Additionally, decide which notifications to keep on, and which to mute until later.

8.     Take charge of communications

It’s easy to feel disenfranchised from the team when working alone from home but there are so many ways to stay in touch. In the early days you will probably need to experiment with communication tools and find appropriate times to "check in" with your peers and team members. Aim to avoid unnecessary distractions, but equally don’t "disappear."

Make time for online team meetings to manage communication, prepare an agenda but also allow space and time for questions. Over time, you'll discover the right levels of interaction and this will build collaboration and trust within the team. It will also combat any micromanagement from managers who previously may have relied solely on presenteeism to manage the team.

9.     Stay motivated

Not everyone works in the same way, so take note of what works for you and build on it. Suddenly shifting to working from home is a big change, so make whatever adjustments needed to help you relax into your new working arrangement.  Working from home is very different to working in an office, it’s easy to underestimate the importance of daily contact with colleagues that you regularly work with. Use online tools to keep in touch and make time to speak to colleagues over the phone or using WhatsApp, FaceTime or Skype. This not only helps with productivity it also boosts morale.

10.     Reward yourself

Find ways to make each task more enjoyable and rewarding in itself. Use mind maps, creative thinking tools such as related world and brainstorming with colleagues to avoid staring at a computer screen for long periods of time. Ask for feedback from colleagues about what's working well, what isn’t working so well and how things can be changed going forwards.

Lastly, give yourself 'treats' when you've completed a task successfully; enjoy a cup of your favourite coffee, dance to a top tune, plant seeds in a window box or have a slice of cake!

Disclaimer: If you do reward yourself with a slice of cake, don’t forget our advice in point 1 about exercise….

Pens in a box Feedback Exercise

Pens in a Box

Ever felt you aren’t getting any feedback on the work you do?

Do you know if the work you’ve done is right or wrong?

What happens if the only feedback you give is good feedback? Is it the same?

The pens in a box exercise aims to illustrate what it feels like when you are working blind or not getting any indication of how well you are doing?

Who is this exercise for?

Pens in a box is great for people in management roles e.g. team managers, project managers, scrum masters and other similar positions. The main aim is to convince that in-the-moment feedback is essential on both 1-2-1 or group levels, and best not saved up for review meetings. And also what the implications are when no feedback is given.

The Object

The objective of the exercise is for a thrower to get as many pens in the box as they can. The thrower stands on a spot and throws the pens in the box whilst blindfolded.

Ask for three volunteers to be the throwers.

1. They leave the room while you brief the rest that no-one may say anything to the blindfolded person. The first blindfolded person then comes back in and stands on the spot and tries to throw the pens in the box. 

2. Now brief the rest that they are only allowed to give positive encouragement. The second blindfolded person comes back in and stands on the spot and tries to throw the pens in the box.

3. Now brief the rest that they are allowed to answer any of the blindfolded person’s questions fully. The third blindfolded person comes back in and stands on the spot and tries to throw the pens in the box.

What did you observe? Did they get any pens in the box?

How did each of the blindfolded people feel?

How does everyone else feel when they see no feedback is given?

What parallels can you draw with how you give feedback?

The Implications

What are the implications of not giving feedback, here’s an extensive list. Individuals can feel:

• no one is caring about the work they are doing nor the quality

• de-motivated

• isolated

• not valued

• there is no means of asking for help

• left in the lurch

• they are being dumped on

• vulnerable, is their position at risk?

• frustrated

• they are flying blind

• stressed, particularly if they don’t know how to do the work given

• upset and angry, when the manager does the work for them

• and more!

Feedback is gift, if you truly value your people then they deserve it.

Helen Westendorp, Treehouse

More Reading

• Scrum masters - is there a skills gap?

Related worlds

Finding Solutions to Problems

Have you ever struggled to find a solution to a problem? You’ve gone round and round the houses, but end up back at the same place. Well now consider this, who or what else has already solved the issue?

A great example of this type of thinking is the connection between fighter jet pilots and giraffes. 

Fighter jet pilots can pull up to 9G vertically, which as thrilling as it may be, makes them vulnerable as the force pushes all the blood from their brain to their feet causing them to pass out - ultimately effecting their chances of survival in a dog fight. So, how can we stop blood pooling at the feet? This is where we look to giraffes! 

Have you ever wondered how a giraffe stops itself from passing out? 

Giraffe’s are about 5 metres tall and the pressure differences between the top of the giraffe’s head and the bottom of it’s feet can reach over 1,000 pounds a square foot - so how an earth do they avoid passing out? Well, the secret is the extremely tight skin on their legs - this forces the blood to stay up towards the heart and the brain, avoiding any pooling at their feet! 

So why might this information be useful to a fighter pilot?!

Using the physiology of a giraffe, a G-combatting suit was created, worn by both combat pilots and also astronauts. When you pull a G-force manoeuvre the suit pressurises, squeezing your legs, pushing the blood back up to the brain so that the heart can’t pump it downwards, and that’s how we retain the blood in our brain and remain conscious. 

This is a great example of our related world tool – where you ask a clear question and then look for who or what else has solved that issue or similar, in this case the giraffe.

It’s amazing to think that giraffes have helped fighter pilots - who would ever have imagined?!

Giving your brain time to think

Finding the time to focus

Being in an open plan office is distracting - I’ve seen the brain scans to prove it! Your brain simply doesn’t work as well as it could.

Have you ever found it hard to focus?  Or struggled to find the space to give your brain time to think? If so, have you ever thought about sitting with a cardboard box on your head?! Believe it or not, one of my clients swears by this technique! Whenever he needs time to think, he pops a box on his head to help channel his thoughts.

Now I’ll admit, this is a somewhat unorthodox way of helping you re-gain focus but by giving your brain time to think you can release the power of your unconscious mind, making spontaneous connections and thus increasing your productivity.

Create yourself some space

Taking space is something we do automatically in our downtime and sleep, but frequently in the world of work and in our busy lives, we don’t have enough space, so the power of our unconscious is underused. We often feel it is irresponsible or lazy to give ourselves space, but that space is in fact, exceptionally productive.

Space gives your unconscious brain time to think. Instead of constantly pulling information into your conscious brain, you take some space to ensure your brain can properly process and distil matters, enabling you to make new connections between seemingly unrelated thoughts — and allowing a bubble of insight to surface. Without space we’re simply not as smart!

Take some downtime

Taking some time out or downtime is an incredibly powerful aspect of the creative process. That space harnesses your brain’s power to come up with that lightning bolt of inspiration!

Whilst putting a cardboard box on your head may not be your thing, try building space into your daily routine. Get into healthy habits that work well for you whatever you’re doing and wherever you are. As a simple example, you might spend 20 minutes going for a walk after every 90 minutes of concentrated deskwork: this is taking space. Acquire good sleeping habits and good posture. Eat healthily and do regular exercise. Learn stress control and mindfulness practices. Enjoy life and be playful. Hug your partner. Appreciate humour, wit and laughter. Keep your brain active by doing puzzles and stretching your memory. Keep learning.  And even on the busiest days you can always go and make a cup of tea!