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Mindfully Moving Towards New Working Patterns Event - What came up?

Carolyn Norgate and Tony Nicholls recently hosted an inquiry with the Mayvin community to look at Mindfully Moving Towards Future Working Patterns. There were approximately 40 participants from the private and public sector and from a mixture of HR, OD and management roles. We organised participants into breakout groups of 4 and asked them to […]
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Carolyn Norgate and Tony Nicholls recently hosted an inquiry with the Mayvin community to look at Mindfully Moving Towards Future Working Patterns. There were approximately 40 participants from the private and public sector and from a mixture of HR, OD and management roles. We organised participants into breakout groups of 4 and asked them to discuss:

Given the insights I now have into my productive patterns, what are my needs and wants as we move towards new ways of working?

What are these needs and wants telling us about how we might support and/or lead our organisations in this move?

We then came together to discuss in plenary and found there were 6 key themes that came up across the breakout groups:

Nature

We started the session by asking participants to grab an object that represented something that got them through lockdown. Many of these were related to nature: house plants, walking boots, a photo of their garden, watching the seasons change on their favourite tree... People have spent a lot of time in nature during the pandemic particularly with their government allotted ‘daily walks’ and as a result feel more connected to it and are feeling the benefits of that. Feeling reassured and relaxed by nature and are keen not to lose that connection. How do we encourage people to get out into nature? Do we host meetings in the park across the road from the office? Do we take calls as a ‘walk and talk’ where possible?

Individual Timelines

“Holding space to the vast range of emotions our colleagues may be feeling -from gratitude to anger to hope to grief - and acknowledging that we are all on different timelines of processing / grief.”

“Allow people to be in different places in their processing of what has happened and where we are.”

“making time to check-in -its another big change that will effect people differently”

“People will be wanting to do things at different speeds and this needs to be supported”

“Recognising that it is only as we begin to experience hope and positivity that we can begin to process the past”

What do decision makers need to think about when looking at ‘back to the office’ policy and procedure?

“The importance of fluidity of ‘balance’ - it’s not a movement from one state to another but rather an ever adjusting renegotiation of relationships and space”

“How can we support people visualising what the future could look like and have things changed that will impact people's choice of career.”

“Open conversations - active listening”

“Recognise it will be messy and may not be right first time, might cause unintended consequences - be honest upfront about this-Adaptive leadership through complexity”

“The tension between post pandemic policy and new ways of working and relating”

“focus on boundaries - and balance between work and home in a new way”

“Not wanting to slip back completely into old ways of working, this has accelerated smarter working. Getting leaders and managers to talk about individual needs and wants and balancing them with business need.”

“be honest that we don't have all the answers, we need to work it through, try things out and learn together”

“Managers can often be uncomfortable not having the answers, so facilitated support would really help take that pressure off.”

“Will we have the courage to face into all we’ve learned?”

“the negotiation that will be needed to work out flexible/ different work patterns. We will need to equip managers and leaders at all levels to have these conversations, working out what permissions they will need, what are their parameters for negotiation, and what skills will they need to have good and sensitive conversations.”

“Maybe it’s an opportunity to develop a new 'social contract'... experimenting, discussing and making new rules together -making them explicit and reviewing frequently”

The function of the ‘office’

“hybrid working is the future but the search for a fluid balance of remote working and being together .....learning where you really need to be together ...for the messy interactions we miss”

“Think about what's really worth doing in the workplace, how we use that time and space in the best way - especially as it will be more limited - what you can easily continue to do at home.”

“opportunity to re-evaluate business needs - not just default to how it was before”

“What have we tangibly lost? Why do we need to come together and how can our accommodation support us in that? - Leaders facilitation skills and connect beyond the work. - Equipping our managers to have good conversations around all this?”

“Will organisations want to retain their office buildings post pandemic?”

“co-working space needn't be co-working within the same organisation ...we can co-work with different organisations to get that messy creative collaborative input”

“what sort of office space will be needed? Is it desk space or large workshop style space when teams are in the office...”

“Exactly, a new use of current space. More space for coming together rather than individual working space.”

“The organisation I Chair has got rid of its previous office and rented co-working space in 3 smaller shared office buildings”

“Yes, this is not just about practicalities, but about managing anxieties. I think others have said that too!”

“Office space bring people together to reinforce bonds -as well as creating exclusion an a senseof "them" and "us" - so working across virtual platforms not just internally but externally could really help move beyond that and open up a real an much wider sense of team”

“Are we clear about what our organisations have lost through remote working and want/need to get back?”

“So a question around why and how people come into the office - what is the office for?”

Equality and Privilege

“In the rush to connect physically again, let's not lose the benefits of IT connection which has been v inclusive. Enabled colleagues outside the London bubble to feel more included and connected.”

“Three roles structure was mentioned 1) all-in 2) hybrid weekly, 3) hybrid as needed. (Overcomes previous hierarchical thinking -higher up, more trust, more home-working!)”

“What is the new hierarchy of working places.... Is working from home still for the privileged? Or does working from the office become a privilege?”

“younger people are more likely to be in house shares and without basic space for home working -some of my team members didn’t even have a table and had to work from sofa”

To Keep from Lockdown

“Keeping hold of increased humanity, authenticity”

“In the rush to connect physically again, let's not lose the benefits of IT connection which has been v inclusive. Enabled colleagues outside the London bubble to feel more included and connected.”

“Keeping a sense of grounding, safety, space, new ways of connecting”

“Reminding people frequently of the essentialness of connection.”

“Treating people as people first, before the work position or/and pay grade.”

“On individual needs – we were talking about how to support diversity and inclusion -a possible re-patterning of how we view these”

“Hold onto the good stuff from wfh and wkg in the office, and see which can be carried across to the other”

“allow lockdown clothing - encourage deep connections as we have had from our homes - make work feel more like home - create safety - allow options to work flexibly”

“We also had some really interesting conversations of leadership - how it has had to change, and things we’d like to retain around empathy and flexibility (and avoiding micromanagement)”

“Articulate to my team and colleagues how I'm trying to hold onto the benefits from wfh -e.g. breaks to walk - to both ensure I focus on it and to give the message that it's good to do this. Role modelling.”

“Many people have listened more deeply and observed more intently, but also done things quickly, experimented, learnt new things - how do we hold onto BOTH ...listening more deeply, being AND doing”

“Even more than ever we need to see organisations in the wider social context in which they exist"

To read more on this topic please read Tony Nicholl's post event write up 'Mindfully Moving Towards New Working Patterns - local level interactions is where solutions to hybrid working will emerge'.

Also please join us at 12pm on Friday 2nd July as we continue the conversation and group inquiry into the challenges and opportunities we all face going forward. To RSVP please email [email protected].

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