Making a success of hybrid working

The Covid-19 pandemic has acted as a catalyst for massive change in the workplace. In many organisations flexible and hybrid ways of working have gone from being seen as unusual, with take up in low single digit percentage of workers, to being the new normal. Much is written on the theory of this topic.

I spoke with Tom Howie, COO for HR at Standard Chartered to get an expert practitioner’s perspective. Tom and I worked together in designing and implementing hybrid working at Standard Chartered, and I was keen to catch up on how this was progressing and the useful advice he had to share with others.

Tom, you are more than two years into the implementation of hybrid or flexi-working at Standard Chartered. Why did the Bank decide to move to hybrid working?

Tom: The development of our new approach, was part of our broader thinking about the ‘Future of Work’ that we had been engaged in for some time. The pandemic was, of course, a catalyst and made an immediate business case for rapid change. We were fortunate (or well prepared) to have already developed our thinking on this topic and that has guided our subsequent changes. This is hugely important to us – both in ensuring we could work through some of the complexities the pandemic brought to us, but also in positioning the organisation as an employer of choice.

Tom Howie, CV

Chief Operating Officer, HR, Standard Chartered
MD, Business Transformation, British Telecom
Programme Manager, Barclays
Programme Manager, Royal Mail
Business Information Systems degree with programme and management postgraduate qualifications from Oxford and Harvard

Standard Chartered Bank

Retail and commercial banking with more that 160 years legacy, operating in more than 60 markets around the world
85k employees and 15k non-employed workers
Return on tangible equity 10% (H1 2022)
Brand promise: ‘Here for good’

What is hybrid working?

Facilitating flexibility for workers and the organisations they support in both time and location
Historically time flexibility has been used in some geographies – but take up is often low. This has been significantly expanded and extended to include location flexibility
The flexibility concept may well be extended further to include flexibility in how workers contract with organisations in addition to the traditional employment model

How has it worked out?

Tom: Challenging and successful! Devising an overall plan and adapting it into more than 60 markets is a huge change. We took it in phases to ensure we made as big a difference as possible in the shortest period. And it really is making a difference: of joiners in the last few months, 86% said that our approach to flexi-working or hybrid working is one of the main reasons they were attracted to join the organisation.

86% of recent joiners said our approach to hybrid working was one of the main reasons to join
Standard Chartered

Is making this change risky?

Tom: Making substantial changes that impact so many people and implementing quickly always seems like a risk in the moment. We have learnt a lot about mitigating those risks and taking both leaders and workers with us through the change. A skilled and motivated multi-disciplinary team is important. We worked on an agile basis, using a series of sprints. There are some risks, of course, but with the right approach these can be managed and reduced. And of course, doing nothing is not risk-free. Even in the medium term, organisations without the flexibility of being able to work in a hybrid way will be at a significant disadvantage.

How would you advise other teams starting out on this journey towards hybrid working?

Tom: Much will depend on the specific context. But there are some common factors for success in my view. Be proactive, think holistically about the opportunities and risks, build on what your organisation is good at – for us we needed to retain a strong risk and control framework. But we also needed to ‘flex’ and be clear we trusted our teams. We thought about the business ethics of getting this balance right and found the right way to monitor activity, productivity and controls at a team level and avoiding the need to monitor individuals in an intrusive way.

Along with the operational and process detail to get right, it is important to give attention to the cultural and behavioural aspects of this change. There is no single lever to pull on this. That is why the multidisciplinary approach is so important.

Structuring the change

Define a clear client related purpose for the change to hybrid working and build stakeholder support

Review the relevance of flexibility to the work. Look at the flow of work for each job family and consider where time and or location flexibility can be achieved (and where not!). In Standard Chartered’s case, even in a highly regulated and high risk/compliance environment, more than 75% of work could include flexibility

Engage and support workers and decision makers. Standard Chartered used an employee experience council to inform the development of their plans and then used technology to get input from every employee on their preferences. More than 70% of the workforce expressed a preference for flexibility of some type and a rich data set of the detailed preferences was built to refine the approach. Business leaders were empowered to make decisions about the types of flexibility to implement within a wider organisational framework.

Pay attention to culture and worker wellbeing. Investing in this through the transition and on an ongoing basis will be important to ensure the connections and culture remain intact, especially when workers are not physically together.

Use a multidisciplinary team working in an agile way. Making complex changes quickly is a huge challenge. The risks are reduced if the relevant skills and experience are brought together in a single project team. This includes business leaders, HR, technology, operations, property, legal and communications

Use technology to make the experience relevant to each individual. Broadcast communications can be supplemented with tailored tools to focus interactions with workers on the details that matter to them. Standard Chartered did this to facilitate decision making on details like work patterns and locations and then leveraged the technology to automate timely updates of employment contracts

Use data to inform the change and monitor progress. This massive change is new to most organisations. There are lots of opinions and views – some thought through and based on experience and some, not so much! The business case for hybrid working should be robust and informed by relevant data. Progress should be monitored and plans modified to stay on track.

Do

Engage your workforce whilst developing your plans, during implementation and on an on-going basis – this is a rapidly developing area
Facilitate (with a structured process) worker preferences and balance with business needs. Flexibility is a two way deal
Ensure the flexibility adopted is relevant to the work and supported by a data-based business case

Don\’t

Accept the status quo. Just because moving to a new way of working is challenging does not mean change should be avoided. Most roles can be done well with some degree of time or location flexibility
Ignore the need to get the supporting details right, e.g. risk, tax, legal, regulatory and compliance issues
Equate flexibility to removing structure for how individuals work or the need for guidelines and controls. Trust is essential, but done right, hybrid working does not mean compromising on what is most important to get right

What is the role of HR in supporting this change and how do you think this new way of working will change HR?

Tom: It has been clear that there is an immediate need for HR to be a key part of the teams driving this change. Some of it is the technical detail and some about helping build the environment to support it. But the change in how individuals, teams and organisations operate also brings a need for HR to change. For example, moving to a hybrid workforce accelerates the need to deliver HR support though digital channels. But it also means, in the longer term, that to be effective the digital channels need a much more ‘human touch.’ So whilst basic operational activity should be automated, there will be a growing need to think through how to make more sophisticated people support using the new tools available to us.

Looking forward, what do you think is next for hybrid working?

Tom: The tech supporting hybrid working is getting better and as this becomes the new normal it becomes easier – one of the difficulties in the past was that those who worked more flexibly were outliers. We’ve passed this in many organisations with hybrid working having reached a ‘critical mass,’ although there are still organisations catching up.

I think the trend to explore new types of flexibility will continue including different ways of contracting with workers. It will be easier to access larger talent pools which will enable thought to go into how work is organised and located. For those now joining the workforce, the emergence of ‘hybrid-working natives,’ who have never known anything other that hybrid working will be interesting. One of the lessons from the last few years for us, is to stay connected with the experiences of our workforce and business leaders. Not all changes work out as planned. But it is worth it. About 75% of our workforce report their experience has been positive. Making a success of hybrid working is an ongoing journey.

Mike Aldred co-led the design and implementation of flexi-working at Standard Chartered and is a founding partner of 3XO, an advisory firm dedicated to supporting boards and their executive teams to design and deliver their people strategies.