Hybrid working
The Bottom Line
BBC
4.6 • 606 Ratings
🗓️ 14 October 2021
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 2020, the pandemic hit, and the world locked down. Suddenly white-collar staff went from working in the office, to working remotely. But now we are opening up, will people want to return? Hybrid working has become the buzzword of employers across the country, allowing individuals to have more flexibility over where they work. So how likely is this to function effectively? How do businesses manage staff and productivity? And will there ever be anyone in the office on Fridays....? Join Evan Davis and guests to find out.
GUESTS Emma Stewart, Co-Founder, Timewise Sam Bowerman, HR Director, Retail Businesses, NatWest Group UK Lisa Kennery, HR and Marketing Director, The Pierce Group
PRODUCER Julie Ball
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:05.5 | Hello and welcome to the programme. |
| 0:07.4 | There is a conversation that I detect has very gradually become more fraught of late, |
| 0:12.5 | as we've dared to think the worst of the pandemic is behind us. |
| 0:16.2 | Is it perhaps maybe time for those people who are able to work at home in recent months |
| 0:21.1 | to possibly contemplate coming back to work, you know, like they did before. |
| 0:26.5 | Some newspapers and politicians have come to think of working from home as a bit lazy. |
| 0:31.9 | Others are saying it's worked so well we should build on the idea not to retreat from it. |
| 0:37.0 | So today we're going to talk through |
| 0:38.4 | that working from home debate and in particular at where many think it'll settle with some kind of |
| 0:44.3 | home office hybrid. Now, I appreciate this conversation will be viewed as an indulgence by the |
| 0:51.1 | many who can't work at home or those whose job has been damaged or taken |
| 0:55.7 | away by the changes of the last 18 months. But it is potentially a shift of such magnitude. |
| 1:02.3 | It's a topic that goes far beyond the employers and employees themselves. I have three guests |
| 1:08.0 | this week who will be discussing this with me. And first up, in the studio with me is Sam Bowman, who's the HR director of retail businesses at Nat West Group, UK. Sam, you are thinking very hard about this issue. Tell us a little about the working from home during the pandemic. Yes, I mean, at short notice, March 20, we enabled 55,000 colleagues to work from home, |
| 1:29.9 | a number of whom had never done that previously. I mean, I think overall, we've managed to keep |
| 1:35.1 | levels of productivity where we would hope they would be. People have found it a mixed experience, |
| 1:40.3 | honestly. People have liked the flexibility it's bought, but people have definitely missed some of the |
| 1:45.0 | connectedness and that's what we're trying to address in the next stage. |
| 1:48.3 | We should simply mark the fact what companies like yours and no exception there, |
| 1:55.3 | the most incredible thing that you know, at very short notice, you get 50,000 people setting up home offices and |
| 2:02.4 | managing to keep the operation on the road in more or less normal way. Because I don't |
... |
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