Hybrid Working - How Technology Can Impact The Workplace - Podcast Episode 3
hi everyone and welcome to episode three of i am's podcast on navigating hybrid working and this episode is going to focus on technology both how to use it successfully in a hybrid working environment and some of the kind of considerations around and how it can be a hindrance and some of the pitfalls of using it and so if we kick things off with you phil in terms of your perspective on a full roll out of digital transformation make everything digital eradicate face to face problem solved yeah um i mean it's an interesting topic that and i guess it's easy to think from everything that's happened that digital is the be all and end-all solution um and if you look at kind of what we've had over the last 18 months or so you could argue that it is the correct solution if nobody ever went into into the office again then digital has to be the only solution but where people are kind of going back to the office or being hybrid or being solely remote i think there's always going to be a place for um a blend of all the solutions really still face to face resources knowledge basis courses um and it i guess the key thing is not kind of trying to follow the trend um i think it would be very easy for us to say oh everyone's moving over into 90 digital and they never do any face-to-face training anymore or very little and because everybody else is doing that i need to do that or my business needs to do that as well i think we still need to keep that right back to basics of a training needs analysis and saying what is the best solution for the end result that we need to actually get one of the big debates at the moment is obviously resources versus courses i still think there's a place for both of course sometimes you need a more hefty course sometimes you need a resource so yes for me it's always going to be digital enhances an experience and it's utilized in the right way that's what makes technology a good solution not just following the trend i just want to dive in there actually the resources versus courses conversation um this has come up a lot recently um i know lots of us have posted about it on on social media we discussed it in other places and i think the biggest thing with that is when you look at where it came from uh the excellent book by nick nick shackleton jones about how people learn and people pulled from it resources not courses but that's not what he said what he said was courses are great for developing long-term understanding and preparing you for future events resources are great if you need to do something right now the argument was never and should never be one or the other it's all about using the right solution to get the results that you want so i think you're spot on there with the starting with a needs analysis um kind of it dispels that as even being a debate because the right solution is just the one you should go with regardless of whether it's course resource coms digital face-to-face mix of all of the above so looking at it from the right solution perspective what do we think are some of the things that digital can contribute and what does it fail to replicate i guess to me it depends on a what experience you want to create for your people i think that's still a big part of it um you know if your values are about being a people business i think that still needs to drive your learning solution as well um there's still ways that you can convey that in a digital medium of course um being kind of a people company but you there is that argument to say well let's create a solution yes that's right for the the the outcome but also that represents our company values as well um and again it depends on the overall solution i think so for example simulations are always a a big debate about whether they're useful or not useful you know system simulations and they do have a place i think um are they the sole best way to potentially do a simulation uh to train out systems probably not because it fragments a learning experience sometimes where you're learning a system then later on you learn the policy in a different course and you don't get that kind of connection between ask x question at this part of the process but a simulation can be useful for uh post training and kind of that you know i've forgotten how to do x process let me go on and complete this simulation to refresh myself but the main process is learned potentially in the training room so i think it's very hard to say that any particular um type of content is better suited to digital and it's about looking at the overall solution never look at something as an individual solution i think somebody goes oh we have this issue so therefore we create this course and before you know it you've created 100 courses on multiple different things and they never link up you always need to step back and say well how does this fit into the bigger picture and is there actually something else that we've already created or already doing that actually we can just enhance that particular piece of learning rather than create something completely new yeah i think i'd i'd mostly agree is that the the content weirdly doesn't necessarily drive particularly digital or face-to-face solution um and i kind of this kind of got reinforced to me this week actually i've been a fairly long-term and vocal um thorn in the side of vr in the l d space in the it's not good enough and it's not really that effective um but just this week actually i experienced some excellent vr training um that was all to do with mental health um it's very very clever very well made it's a topic that historically i would probably have said you need to get people together to discuss to really make an impact because it's human right it's a highly personal topic but actually i think that's probably the most effective um sort of bit of um uh kind of walk in the shoes of training that i've ever i've ever seen done uh obviously highly specialist and it could only be done in a digital world but um historically i think it's a topic we would have said oh you get them in a room and you talk about that kind of thing so i think it's far less content driven and much more about the actual quality of what you produce you've got historically digital content has been ah make it a powerpoint slide and put some next buttons in and we always talk about this is that you know digital is not all it's not an equal playing field there are different levels of quality different levels of design and visual quality different levels of learning design quality and i think that's actually got far more to do with what works digitally and what works face-to-face as opposed to just the content yeah and just to build on that as well i think we always need to go back to the kind of that first question of what does somebody actually need to be able to do or do differently and if you can't create that experience in a face-to-face or digital format whatever that might be then to to still go for that solution is always going to be the wrong solution you know there is always that kind of reactive uh part to being in the in the l d space uh especially in internal teams where an x issue comes up the director says we need to solve this problem and suddenly you have to jump on it and solve that problem and often the solution to that is well let's do something digital because it's cost effective it's easy to schedule people in and it's it's quick to get out there and train all of our staff but if that's not the right solution there still needs to be that consideration to say what's the right thing for the people and what's the right thing for the business as well and and that flips itself on its head as well sometimes people will ask the an l d team for what is the right solution and we'll go well let's do it digital and we can do this big game and we can do all of this stuff big fiasco stuff off the back of it because that's what our people want we need to engage them but sometimes there does need to be that place to say absolutely um you know people need to be a consideration in a learning solution but if a the business still needs to be a consideration there as well so sometimes almost quick and dirty does need to be the solution if that outweighs the cost of doing something a longer term in regards to like the volume of complaints for example that's always a key driver to to train him so i think technology there's always a time and a place to go big and bold and there's always a right time to go face to face versus digital but it's about assessing here and now what your business is and what the problem is and what you need to get out of the back of it let that drive it all the time no matter hybrid or not hybrid that should have always been the case and how much do you think we should be taking note of the technology that people are using in their personal lives and how they're learning socially and is there a value in us starting to you know try and jump on board with some of that with workplace learning i think i would say for sure i mean i think there's a reason why you see an increased amount of posts around how can l d use tick tock for example you know i guess you know there is definitely some crossover i think it's finding the right vehicles for these things isn't it but i think i don't know the general my sort of personal view probably on this is that these things are a little bit cyclical but i think certainly um if a few years ago you know because i think micro learning and kind of short courses content was actually a bit of a dirty word but i think um it's kind of come back very much very much on trend and that kind of sort of short bite size content you know and you just look at the way the majority of people learn these days and it's new and this whole generational thing is probably you know rubbish really actually you know i know if i i was doing something the other day and i couldn't work out to do it so i went on to youtube and watched the six sixty second video you know um and i think it there is definite lessons to be learnt from that crossover between those worlds yeah i think i i think i kind of agree uh i think we maybe pay slightly too much attention to it at times though and i think the biggest way you see that is with the kind of 2018 to 2020 everything's going to go mobile and then it didn't because no one wants to use their mobile phone for their job unless their work is providing them a mobile phone and that's perfectly reasonable why should i give my personal mobile phone to the business to load up learning on it that's my phone not theirs if they want me to use a mobile phone they can give me one if they don't i'll use the equipment they have given me and i feel like that's an example of where l d kind of got a bit ahead of what was actually going to happen because it looked at social learning which is a great place to look and it's where we see things like youtube and as you say tik tok and i think they're fantastic examples of platforms that we can mirror we can benefit from we can imitate but assuming that everything's gonna go mobile and then it didn't meant a lot of businesses invested a lot of money in mobile first approaches and all these things that then proved to just kind of be a waste of time and money because that jump was never going to happen and anyone with a little bit of sense would have gone hang on shall we ask people if they want to use their mobile phones no we'll just assume that they use them at home and therefore they will use them at work and we never quite thought about the difference between home and work which almost sounds strange when we say it out loud yeah and it's still a piece for mobile learning of course isn't there you always want to have that mobile first approach still in your design because obviously there might be somebody who does eventually complete it on their mobile phone but if you know if you look at the the stats out there the majority of people that complete a piece of e-learning or digital learning on their phone are very small they use it again more for those kind of quick resources um because it's easy accessible like like youtube for example or a quick google search whatever it might be but people don't really want to be sat there for probably 15 minutes unless they have to because they're out in the field and that's their only device that they can maybe that they have and then really most people will still use a tablet laptop or pc because that's what they tend to work on anyway i guess taking a more strategic view to to kind of the the social learning aspect i think from my point of view having spent years having to report on data and and and stuff like that i guess another consideration that you do need to utilize uh or think about sorry when when using social media and things like youtube and stuff like that is what needs to be tracked and what doesn't need to be tracked um obviously the the reason for an lms historically has basically been to almost say well this person has done x course on x date and they've completed or not completed realistically do you need to see if somebody's done this motivational video on on a ted talk or youtube have they researched customer service skills on google do you need to see that that's a decision for you as a business and again that drives your solution and what you promote and what you don't promote because if you want visibility shall i say so you need visibility of that there's a very difference between want and need let's just clarify that if you need visibility that people have completed these more social aspects to their learning then probably look to get your own internal resource or course available to those people if you don't need to track it utilize them absolutely promote them of course there's a consider i.t consideration of course a lot of companies do have things like tick-tock youtube and stuff blocked as a as a site so there's a bit of trust there as well in your people and saying well if we unlock these we need to trust that you're using it as a learning resource and in the right way you're not sat there watching youtube videos of cats between between your job that's what i'm doing right now i feel like we're all minimizing windows as phil's yeah yeah the cats are so cute though but let's not deny you know youtube is a very powerful learning tool um you know i've probably used about three or four times myself this you know in the last couple of days alone um especially for software and adobe is a classic one you know you can use adobe for years and there's still something you go no idea how to do that because is such powerful tools the first place you go is youtube of course it is um it wouldn't necessarily be the first place you'd go though of course if you're in a particular job trying to do a process because if that's on youtube well i think you've got some bigger issues in your company as to why your processes are on youtube so there is a time and a place for it it's a powerful tool and we don't always have the time a resource to build these uh kind of courses or resources in your business excel is a prime example where a lot of people will say we need an excel course program catalog because we use excel people need to know how to use it so therefore they spend months creating these courses when actually all of that is available for people on tap on youtube and if anything they'll probably still go to there rather than doing your course on the lms do you think sort of on that note that causation is harder than ever to pin down because people are learning so much socially and outside of work and through through all these programs that the organization doesn't have oversight of so are we getting less confident in being able to say no it was the internal training that's resulted in this you know great improvement because we just don't know what else people are accessing i think if anyone ever had total confidence in that it was false confidence and they they should be glad to be rid of it um because i think it's one of the the big sins that perhaps uh much of the industry certainly myself has been guilty of in the past of going correlation equals causation we did this training things got better training worked did it are you sure did nothing else happen in that time um did a manager do some coaching was there were there performance updates was there a system change has the time of year altered the customer base or what they're called you know there's so many variables going on in most businesses at any given time i don't actually think it's that much more difficult now to prove causation i think it's always been exceptionally difficult to prove um the with any absolute certainty the effectiveness of training you you can set metrics um but you have to kind of allow for the fact that other stuff is going to happen as well as your training whether you like it or not you can't kind of sterilize the work environment to the point where the only uh the only stimulus people are receiving is your training and the flip side to that of course is when people use the argument that training didn't work so you you track the metrics off the back of doing x intervention or or whatever it might be you see that your your data and kpis improve off the back of that for two or three months and then suddenly it dips down and people go well training wasn't effective but behind the scenes of course if those skills aren't coached if learning and coaching sorry training and coaching aren't aligned and working together then those skills don't get embedded they don't sustain so therefore of course they they appear off if they're not used but it's very dependent on whether people have or haven't used those skills in that time frame so yeah you know i'm an agreement it's a very hard thing to pinpoint specifically that your intervention has improved x metrics so therefore you've saved why money um there's always going to be a place for it of course one of the biggest things we always have to do is justify uh as as l d teams are what we're doing and our value because often whether first people get cut whenever there's a new deal or money needs to be saved so if the more you can try and prove your worth of course the better and i think then it becomes about how you prove that and rather than trying to prove it with absolute statements of this happened and we 100 caused it it's more about demonstrating your involvement in key performance increases in the business or compliance you know if you aren't being sued because you haven't reached gdpr or whatever you it might be that you could have been sued for that that's clearly a demonstration that at some level the training is working it's one of those it's never going to make you money it just means nothing happens when that's the best scenario and that is happening the training is being proven effective it just doesn't always feel like it there's an education piece here as well i think isn't it because a lot of what you're talking about here is well i guess as as is all training ultimately it kind of introduces the behaviors or the change that you want to engender and i think ultimately culture isn't just gonna suddenly miraculously shift you know in fact culture can you know well it's probably quite quick to break down but it will certainly take you a lot longer to hit that kind of cultural high note so i guess you know yes it's obviously like we've been discussing valid to track and to to see whether your interventions are heading in the right direction you know you can track that to you probably your normal business kpis almost but ultimately you kind of need to be in this for the longer term and recognize that all these things are hopefully going to combine to take you to where you want to be culturally yeah yeah well if we shift focus a little bit and and move on to sort of accessibility conversation around digital you know what do you guys i think think about some of the kind of key concerns around that and how do we make sure that we're not isolating people and just providing for the tech savvy um so i mean i guess there's two conversations there there's the quote unquote tech savvy and there's accessibility um technically the same topic but i think there's there's there's two different groups of issues there's the i don't like using computers and refuse to develop those skills at which point my belief is actually that businesses should say well look you you now live in a digital world i appreciate it may not always have been that way we're going to support you in learning it but we're not going to create a non-digital option just for you because i don't think that is the right solution because where do you stop with that that means potentially you've got two versions of everything you would never go okay well you don't like using technology so you don't have to use the internal computer systems you can print everything off and work on paper and that's obviously the extreme end of that conversation but you know i i think training should apply that kind of that kind of thought and say the solution is not to not go digital because some people go oh a computer i don't know it's to encourage those people to engage with that um kind of digital world it'll help them outside of work as well guarantee you they've got a phone in the facebook account if they can do that i'm pretty sure they can log into an lms there it's far simpler let's be honest um the accessibility side i think is far more on the sort of l d design world and there's been a big shift over the last year um certainly in the uk where it's not a legal requirement yet but i think it is definitely an ethical and moral requirement on anyone creating content and we see that championed by people like susie miller all around the country really just to abide by simple kind of what called the whackag standards that apply to all websites anyway and just thinking about basic stuff like closed captions and transcripts and naming things and providing alternative text that you know we all spend a lot of time making sure it's embedded in every single step of our content um and it doesn't take much work and i think that's why when people sort of say oh i don't want to do accessibility because it's more work i don't want to do accessibility because it kills courses and this kind of thing it doesn't have to it doesn't need to it just needs to be applied in a sensible way so i don't think that and the technology is there now to mean that everyone can access um sort of digital content so it really doesn't need to be a barrier as it might have been five ten years ago do you think it's it's basically we're at a point where we just need to be designing that as a default so rather than you know i've seen some articles around how do you encourage staff to have honest conversations about their accessibility needs and their disabilities and and make a culture which allows for those conversations but i guess part of that is or one approach to that is just that you design for everyone to accommodate everyone from the off yeah yeah i mean i think so we're going for a good time i'm just gonna say that you know a lot of workplaces have potentially gone well we don't have a large um kind of uh workforce that with disabilities that have been being claimed um but it's not just necessarily that there's a lot of people potentially that are dyslexic and maybe never been diagnosed with it um you know you just need to look at my spelling to probably say actually um it is probably you know at 32 years of age and i still can't spell very well probably i've got a degree of dyslexia there that i've never bothered to to check out um but also it's environmental kind of situational sometimes um so a busy workforce if you're working in a call center and you have nowhere to go and do your your e-learning while trying to listen to some audio or watch a video it can be really hard no matter what headphones you you've got unless they're noise cancelling which often are provided by uh companies having some closed captions there just to help with that kind of environmental noisy environment can really help and you know you might break your arm and then you can't use your mouse so suddenly you need to resort to maybe trying to to control the e-learning via your your keyboard so it's not just about disabilities it's also about what enhances that experience just to make it a bit easier for people when they want it really yeah yeah that was exactly my point really that i think when we think about learning content we designed i would say that a lot of it we did just because we thought it was best practice not necessarily because it was for accessibility and you know i mean i could think of plenty of examples even now actually where we talk to you know different people and i'm still always surprised when people say to me do we have to use voiceover as in our computers don't have audio um you know so you know the idea statements out there is so varied even today you know organizationally you know people are still catching up on that front but you know we just you know felt that you know you do do these things because people like to to consume content in different ways it's more about the learner experience than anything else you know we we had a podcast into the content which isn't really a podcast it's like the voiceover in mp4 format we get a lot of feedback from people that say i just love it because i can download that and i just like stick my earbuds in and i listen to it um and it's not for any particular accessibility reason but you almost don't know how this content gets used but it's the right thing to do because it satisfies a lot of different you know learner um desires i guess yeah how about um kind of issues with digital fatigue in terms of how do we spot the signs that you know people are getting overloaded with you know face-to-face meetings always being on camera and that they're they're lacking maybe kind of that or feeling overwhelmed by that reliance on technology and what do we do about that question one simple way just ask people you know if if people are getting fed up with zoom meetings or whatever it might be then you you know if you've got an open and honest culture you would hope that somebody would raise that with their boss i guess you do you know zoom is a great example where people still hate it there is a great need for it and there's a great place for it um i know there's certainly meetings with either clients or even internally when we're discussing stuff where just having that camera and being able to see somebody does surprising how much of a difference it does actually make um and plus it forces people to actually pay a bit more attention as well i know it sounds silly but when you're when you're on a phone call and somebody can't see you it's very easy to either do this email or do this quick reply or actually pay no attention whatsoever um if you know that x person isn't quite a talker and they're having their little piece in their meeting so i think just that camera piece does does add a bit of interaction um but yeah you just got to ask people a thing you know get the feedback if it's not working is there a different way that it can be done and change your approaches not everything is we're not going to get everything right straight away um and we still need to keep going well we've tried this how's that going engage with your people utilize surveys anonymous surveys and stuff like that how are you finding it if you don't like it why don't you like it make sure you get that why you know just make sure it's not personal preference over uh accessibility or it just doesn't work because my wi-fi is rubbish at home whatever it might be um so yeah just just ask people we're too scared to sometimes just ask people outright just to say do you like this or not is it it's like when um some years ago when um with one of my leaders it's the same with um coaching what is the name we've got all these models around coaching theories and how to coach different people and social style styles and myers-briggs and all this stuff but nobody actually just thinks to go well why don't i just ask you how you like to be coached and managed and get it from the source rather than trying to guess and put them into your model and then theorize and then use your nlp skills to to coach them in a certain way uh it's a you know conversation more powerful than a model or guessing whatever will be totally great i think more practically i was just saying sorry tom three um as i suppose more practically i think certainly seen a lot more late where you know i don't know making sure that you don't book zoom calls between 12 and 1 you know kind of let people have the natural time to break i mean we use hubspot as our crm they've got a well-being week this week where they basically kind of give everybody pretty much everybody in the organization the week off and they've kind of implemented processes obviously they still kind of maintained that core tech support but they're sort of saying hey look for this week talk to your account manager before they go if you're renewing this week do it before this week you know if you've got a bill coming up you know if you need it delaying let us know the week before um we've got our help pages if you need us you know anything urgent of course we'll deal with it here's the dedicated mailbox somewhat more to this you've seen that increasing i think so i think there's lots of practical steps that you can take to help break some of that tech sort of vicious cycle that you get into so sorry tom the other tom what interrupted you there oh just because one of the elements of fatigue we often forget about then is actually that it's not zoom or google chat or what you're doing it's how you're doing it it's bad facilitation especially in the learning world when everything first jumped onto zoom you just got a trainer sat there for three hours going and here is the content and i'm going to talk to you and you're going to answer questions and so on and so forth and if they were really stretching it they might use the chat um it was a bit like going back to msn messenger days for those of us that remember said messenger and rather than school to talk to the same people you were sat with like 20 minutes ago all evening um that's what we did it's how you pass the time before netflix was invented but after the home phone was kind of obsolete that was the important thing but we don't live in that world anymore we live in the world where you can have breakout rooms and polls and interactions in your zoom call or you can use teams to split people off into completely separate calls to go and do activities and come back you can replicate far more of those interactive elements that we would typically say was face-to-face training than we used to be able to on digital platforms but very very few of the sort of digitally facilitated sessions be them lnd or be them general meetings use that functionality and when we talk about fatigue and someone says oh it's another same old one-hour zoom call sit here listen turn off well it's no wonder they're fatigued you're using five percent of what the software can do and all that extra stuff has been added to help you engage and excite your audience um so kind of what do you expect to an extent if you refuse to use that functionality if you've got the software you're paying for it it's a bit like buying like a i don't know a fast car i don't drive and never going above 30. why not use what it can do to help prevent or at least stave off um that kind of boredom that you get with some digital content you can do a lot more if they're actually interacting with it rather than just passively sat there going yeah and great you consider the amount of time as well that people actually in their day-to-day life spend on technology then all of a sudden you get into your work environment and you can't stand using technology then you need to ask yourself what why is that um you know yes people go oh well i'm stuck on a zoom call for one hour whatever it might be but i'd certainly rather be doing that than being back in the office in stuck in back-to-back meetings you know i've been in that scenario where your entire days back-to-back meetings meetings about the meeting you've just been in and then a meeting to prep for the next meeting so you know you could argue that actually it's a bit more efficient using this technology people are used to it um so if somebody can sit there for an hour scrolling on social media but they can't stand being on your zoom call for 15 minutes like what you're saying tom 3 you've got to look at the facilitation and how you're using those tools rather than saying well this isn't necessarily right um for our workplace and we've all just done that sorry before we move on i can see you've got the move on face about to come on gemma so wrong face but i was just going to say as well we have to remember that the last kind of year and a half is not a good measure of this because the last year and a half has not been let's do hybrid working because it's the right thing to do it's been oh everyone go home go home now we'll figure it out as we go don't go outside you might die yeah it's this kind of this has not been a good measure of how to create really great digital content this has been a measure of how quickly can businesses adapt to something they were completely unprepared for uh and when we talk about people being oh they're not willing to sit there for this well a lot of people have gone from being potentially very relaxed people what they were normal people to being very anxious people or people in situations that they don't know how to handle um so i think a lot of what we hear at the minute is probably not the best measure of what the what the real long term view will be of being at home and doing digital and using zoom what what about fatigue in terms of ability to switch off so we've introduced you know we've got this real reliance now which is probably here to stay with things like teams and slack a lot of people have those apps on their personal phone you know people are chatting well into the evening and the weekend how you know i appreciate you know a lot of it is will you set the culture as the leadership team of what's okay and what's not but some people like that for some people that's part of their social connection and they like the flexibility of being able to jump in you know when suits them so how do we get that balance right i i think we just need to be it's going to be a learning curve it certainly is um i i think like you said yes it's more than culture but it starts from that leadership and down really and then making sure that it's acceptable for you to not feel obliged to reply um the joy of hybrid work and of course is um and even remote working is that you can flex your hours that that little bit more so if you want to do 10-6 you you you almost can you know we spoke about that in one of the previous podcasts that it's more about output than than kind of clocking in and clocking out which is because you're there between nine and five doesn't mean you're productive if i'm more productive because between the hours of 12 and 8 and that doesn't impact the work then allow people to do that so it's recognizing that people might be working different hours you need to make your own personal choice with that work-life balance and saying do i or don't i want these apps on my device and if i do need them on my device um so i'm you know i'm a prime example where uh we use slack i have it on my phone uh i have that on my phone i don't really know why anymore because i never really use it it's more of a backup but if i'm popping out to the the shop something like that it's more peace of mind for me knowing that i'm not missing maybe something an urgent message but i do have a setting on there that after six o'clock it doesn't notify me of any messages so if i do check it it's out of my choice to do so rather than uh kind of that notification pinging up and and feeling obliged or kind of having that inquisitiveness about your behavior and going i need to see what that message is is it important because you can only see the first two lines uh and then you kind of sit there until 11 o'clock at night scratching your hair going i wonder if i'm getting fired tomorrow uh or maybe it was just something really simple um yeah is that one of the the dangers of the flexibility of ours where you feel like if you don't reply at seven you can miss out on an important conversation or you hold something up you know if we're all working at different times on this 24 7 tech that's a bit of a risk isn't it or that some people may feel a pressure that they they must engage at the point where everyone else is chatting or fall behind there's two sides to that i think if your workforce is so dispersed that the hours they're working are preventing the job being done that's mismanagement and so it's a slightly different conversation because i don't think anyone would argue that everyone should just be able to work whenever they fancy it you know everything should be in the frame of assuming it works for you and the business because otherwise you could go okay i'm going to work from one in the morning until you know whenever that might lead you up to however long your working day is going to be and you're the only person working there um so there are some sort of sensible limitations that to an extent prevent that but i think there is a massive responsibility that businesses i think perhaps a lot think they live up to it but maybe fall slightly short of the mark in this world we're talking about when it comes to things like people with anxiety disorders or people who worry beyond the oh well don't worry about it response or just leave it you can get that message tomorrow for some of us we'll kind of go hmm yeah it'll lurk me but never mind it's fine there are people who can't that's just not how it works for them um and i think they're the the the solution is very simply that managers need to speak to their people they need to make sure they're regularly in contact with them being digital being remote does not mean you don't need to speak to them every day it doesn't mean you don't ever meet up it doesn't mean you don't have phone calls just because you've got zoom as well prime example being some people don't want to discuss something on camera but they might discuss on the phone they might discuss it by email it's keeping those open lines of communication and when you know something isn't right doing something about it not just saying oh well if there's a problem they'll tell me well no they won't because that's what the problem is and that's but we see it all the time right and people end up six feet under before they go there's a problem over here and then everything's been dropped um and so managers actually now need to be more proactive than ever because they can no longer see the person sat at the desk getting worried or upset so they need to have those conversations more regularly and be a bit more direct in there not just you're right but actually getting to that next level of look i've noticed that xyz what what's going on um and what do you need from me how can i fix it rather than relying on people to come forward okay so how how do organizations take all of this in and decide what digital tech is right for them and their people is it an lms is it an lxp you know do we use slack are there aspects of teams you know what are kind of the key things that the conversations they need to be having to think about this i need to stop by oh god tom i was just gonna say start with what do you already have in house um is the most always any question really is what have you already got especially these days for most businesses you've got microsoft chances are everything runs windows in-house more or less by the sort of few businesses that base everything on macs and if you've got windows and your business chances are you've got office well that means you've got the full office suite you've got teams you've got to do you've got pretty much everything you want already on your doorstep so before you start looking at shiny stuff that's advertised look at what you've already got in house look at what your it team has already got inside the infrastructure i think that's where a lot of mistakes creep in when people immediately jump to the most popular or the shiniest new solution rather than looking at what they've already got yeah very similarly i i guess my was a slightly different starting point but get very similar kind of process i'll say start with what you need to be able to do and then map what you have already that does that job um similar principle don't bring something in and disperse everything just because this product does this need and this does that need figure out everything you need to be able to do and why you need to be able to do it look at what technology you've got does that do the job if it does is it the best way of doing that job so yes use existing tech if it's working and it's doing the right thing if it's not is there a system that can combine it or another system that you've already got that you could be utilizing all of these particular needs into one particular system um so yeah that that would be my starting point always start with the need and why yeah the danger of over complicating it and we've got loads of different technology in play and no one knows where to go for anything yeah yeah i think so i think i guess as well you know i always think was it sort of people change delivered through processes enabled by technology you know so as a kind of sort of sort of way of cementing it so in other words i guess people might be tempted to jump straight to that technology piece right early on but that's probably the last place to begin you know and it really is you know ultimately i think most of this should really be people transformation people change which also means you need to look at your processes and then probably your data as well and then and then think about well what's the stack because these guys have been saying you know and then what have you got what do you need to add to and how do you continue to make sure that all builds together because i've also seen plenty of i.t technology stacks that are really really disparate and therefore you know they really struggle and ultimately you want it to be integrated to probably be cost effective but also to have any chance of really being used and embedded in the organization feels like a nice bit of wisdom to finish up on tom thank you for that and so next time we'll be moving on to episode four and focusing on leadership in the hybrid working space so we'll be exploring things like uh trust which keeps coming up a lot and and you know having that trust in people and also upskilling our leaders you know are there new areas around well-being around performance management when you're not together you know how do we get people and managers especially in a position where they feel confident and competent to deliver that
2021-10-17 14:42
