Flexible and Agile working with the Employers Network for Equality and Inclusion

For many of us in the UK, home working has been a frustratingly unchanging reality for well over a year. While the debate around removing COVID measures continues against a rising number of cases, most organisations have already spent many hours discussing what the future of office working will look like in the coming years.

The Employers Network for Equality & Inclusion (ENEI) roundtable in June 2021 on flexible and agile working brought together a number of public and private organisations to review the options and give feedback on their current thinking.

Agile versus flexible working

Debbie Rotchell of ENEI outlined the trends already in play in the labour market pre-COVID due to improved technology and the globalisation of markets and talent. “The expectations of staff and customers have changed,” she said. “Working from home during the pandemic has worked out better than expected and in fact delivered unexpected benefits.”

Debbie summarised the different modes of working that have emerged, including agile, flexible and hybrid:

Agile working means working where, when and how you choose, maximising productivity and delivering best value to the organisation.

Flexible working involves an adjustment of working hours and/or location, usually through a contractual change. It is often seen as an employee benefit and is a fixed change, without the capacity to flex up or down as demand fluctuates.

Hybrid working is a mix of these models.

The drivers for future focused ways of working, such as agile and hybrid models fit into categories including efficiency, enticement, business continuity, sustainability, productivity and personal choice. They vary from savings on office costs, to reduced disruption from viruses and lower carbon footprints.

Drivers for future focused ways of working (ENEI)

ENEI research on home working during the pandemic showed that 52% reported an increase in workload (58% of females, 43% of males) and 37% were working longer hours (although more men than women reported a reduction in hours). Overall, 30% were working the same hours but at different time. Most people felt that working from home had a neutral or positive effect on performance although 69% reported Zoom burnout.

For home workers, the quality of their work, feelings of loyalty, responsiveness, effectiveness, efficiency and motivation all improved. Not only that, they saved money and time on commuting, gained extra hours with their family, found more opportunities to exercise and socialise and felt they had greater trust and autonomy from managers.

A survey by LinkedIn showed that on average, a £21K pay rise would be needed to tempt homeworkers back to the office. By contrast, 70% of companies are planning to review working from home pay scales. Should employees still receive London weightings for example or have their travel costs to the office covered? Are these permanent or transitional changes to pay and conditions? Time will soon begin to tell.

Remote working creates more inclusive workplaces, as staff feel encouraged to speak their mind more freely. Increased numbers said that leaders valued different perspectives. In the ENEI survey, 74% would like to continue to work from home, 73% found it easier than expected and 63% expect that employers will offer more home working options.

Debbie’s recommendation to employers when considering their flexible / agile / hybrid working offering is to ask the following questions:

• What are your drivers for changes to work practices?
• What are your aims and objectives for the changes?
• What do employees want to do?
• What do leaders want to do? Are they committed to building the culture required to make different working models fair and effective (for example, not privileging those who work in the office or in other more visible ways)
• How will you know if it has been successful?

How to make hybrid working a success

Claire McCartney from the CIPD feels that employers should first trial and then learn from novel ways of working. Her recommendation is to review flexible working policies now and put inclusion and fairness at the heart of your return to the office strategies. How will you address learning and development, presence bias and work allocation if some staff are office based and others work remotely?

The CIPD have handy toolkits to assess roles for suitability for hybrid working. 

For CIPD, there are 7 strategies for making hybrid working a success:

• Develop the skills and culture needed for open conversations about wellbeing
• Encourage boundary setting and routes to improve wellbeing and prevent overwork
• Ensure effective coordination of tasks and task-related communication
• Pay special attention to creativity and problem-solving tasks
• Build in time, including face-to-face time, for team cohesion and organisational belonging
• Facilitate networking and relationships across teams
• Organise a wider support network to compensate for the loss of informal learning

For many employees, it is important to avoid a two-tier system, where some employees have much better access to flexibility than others. There is already a large unmet need for compressed hours, flexible start and finish times and part time working. If home working is not an option, 74% of employees think that they should have other flexi options. The CIPD is calling for the right to request flexible working to be a day one right. They are also recommending informal and adhoc flexible working arrangements to be considered and for flexible working to be the default option.

Overall, I think it is still difficult at this point in time to predict what employees will want to do once the office is judged to be a safe place again. Who gets to say that it is safe, what evidence to we need for that and who do we trust to provide it? Employee experiences have been vastly different throughout the uncomfortable roller coaster ride that has been our home working year. This is due to the hugely unequal burdens of stress, caring responsibilities, home schooling, illness, bereavement or domestic abuse that have fallen on various sectors of the work force, particularly impacting women and employees from ethnic minorities.

Right now it is challenging to make a fair evaluation of the productivity gains and benefits of home working when it is still an enforced, rather than chosen option for many. As has often been said, we are not working from home, we are at home, working during a crisis.

In a post COVID future, whenever it finally arrives, I feel that it is vital to promote flexible, agile and hybrid working as proactive choices, open to everyone regardless of career stage without stigma. We should not relapse into viewing flexible working as a potentially career limiting option that you are forced to take due to other commitments. We should instead embrace it as a solution that offers better options for employees, employers and not least, the health of the environment.

Intercultural competencies with CamAWISE and Danielle Feger

In April, as our personal cultures in the UK started to expand again post lockdown, I joined CamAWISE and Danielle Feger, Research Development Consultant, for a workshop on Intercultural Competencies and Leadership.

What does culture mean?

Danielle initially asked us to define what the word ‘culture’ actually means. Everyone has a slightly different definition, but it often boils down to ‘the way we do things around here.’ It is important to remember that there is a distinction between a description of a culture and a stereotype. Stereotypes assume that every individual is the same within a culture, when in reality people who are part of a culture will share some, but not all, of the typical characteristics.

Cultures can be national, regional or corporate. Even within a business, there can been differences in culture between employees, who might be local and speak the same language, compared to leaders who may be more international.

“You do not see the world as it is, you see it as you are,” advised Danielle. “You might be tempted to think ‘they are doing it wrong’, unless you are aware of your own cultural standpoint.”

The cultural iceberg model – what lies beneath the surface

Edward T Hall described culture as an iceberg, where the visible elements that you might observe on holiday, such as age, behaviours, language, gender and clothes are easy to spot. When you live and work in another culture, you start to sink deeper into areas such as favourite foods, festivals and traditions. It takes much longer to find the invisible cultural aspects, such as assumptions, thought patterns and gender roles. These elements are internal, unconscious and difficult to change.

Low and high context countries – say what you mean and mean what you say (or not)

Another way to analyse culture is to consider low and high context countries. Low context countries feature direct, precise and logical communication styles. “You say what you mean and you mean what you say,” summarised Danielle. People focus their attention on what is said and words are chosen carefully. Germanic and Nordic Europe, UK, US, Australia and Canada are examples of low context countries. Often, they are relatively easy to enter as a visitor.

High context countries pay as much attention to what is not said, through clothes, body language and reading between the lines. People from high context countries speak indirectly using nuanced communication and avoid conflict. Arab countries, Southern Asia, Sub Saharan Africa, countries with a lot of shared history, tend to be high context and can be challenging to join.

When working in a multicultural environment, clashes can occur when you mix high and low context individuals. If you are high context, you might feel that you are being patronised by low context communication, because in your eyes it is constantly repeating things. If you are low context in a high context environment, you might feel that people are not being open with you or explaining things adequately. “If you are not sure which approach to take with a co worker, take the low context approach and explain that this what we are doing and why,” recommended Danielle.

In an appraisal situation in particular, there is a big risk of miscommunication. If you are high context and experience low context feedback, it can feel too direct and confrontational and you might feel discouraged. If you are low context and receive high context remarks, you do not hear clearly what you have done wrong and may not understand how and where to improve.

“Some cultures can come across as abrupt or harsh. Others may come across as not taking anything seriously,” commented Danielle.

For neurodiverse people, for example those with communication challenges often associated with autism, low context environments and approaches could be particularly helpful. It is also important to make the rules for interaction clear. It could well be possible for neurodiverse people to thrive in a high context culture, if it has a clear set of expectations for different situations.

Cultural intelligence – understanding and adapting

Cultural intelligence, as defined by Thomas and Inkson, is the ability to understand and adapt to other cultures. To develop cultural intelligence, you need knowledge about other cultures combined with mindfulness, so that you can pay close attention to cultural cues and reflect on them non judgementally. You also need to have the skills to deal with situations, enabling you to choose your behaviour and body language according to the circumstances.

Cultural intelligence can be split into three aspects: cognitive, physical and motivational or emotional. Those with cognitive cultural intelligence will have clear approaches and plans for interactions and can tell if something is going well or badly. To have physical cultural intelligence, you will be able to adapt your body language, expressions and speech style to suit those from another culture. People with emotional cultural intelligence will feel relaxed about dealing with people from different cultures and are confident they can adapt to situations that are unfamiliar.

Be aware that the people you meet may not be typical of their culture. For example, academics who are often high context in their research communities, and have lived and worked abroad for many years, may not be similar to the average person you meet on your holiday travels.

Cultural dimensions – six features of cultures

Geert Hofstede referred to six cultural dimensions, including power distance, indulgence vs restraint, long vs short term orientation, uncertainty avoidance, individualism vs collectivism and masculinity vs femininity. To explain these, Danielle summarised power distance and uncertainty avoidance.

Power distance refers to the relationship between those with high and low power in society, for example between leaders and their employees. In a low power distance environment, there are few formalities, mutual respect and consultation across the power spectrum is expected. With a high power distance comes a hierarchical approach with less need for consultation. Subordinates expect to be told what to do and can be disorientated if this is not made clear.

Uncertainty avoidance reflects how acceptable uncertainty is in the culture. Strong uncertainty avoidance leads to a multiplicity of laws, rigid codes, behaviours and beliefs, together with intolerance of unorthodox behaviour. Leaders are expected to have all the answers and employees resist changing jobs, even if they are unhappy at work. In a weak uncertainty avoidance culture, changing jobs is commonplace and people are more comfortable with ambiguity from leaders. They may have a dislike of rules, written or unwritten.

How to be culturally aware?

For Danielle, the key to being culturally aware is to practice cultural mindfulness. Develop an awareness of your own culture, essentially the lens that you are looking through. Build awareness and knowledge of other cultures and look ahead towards areas of potential conflict. Practice acceptance of cultures different to your own. Be aware of whether an incident may be a product of someone’s culture, rather than their own individual characteristics.

“We tend to blame the situation for our own shortcomings, for example if we are late, but blame the other person if it happens to them!” reminded Danielle.

Danielle recommends:

• Increasing cultural and personal self-awareness by reflecting on your own experiences, past and present
• Increasing awareness of others within their own cultural and personal context (is a characteristic cultural, or is it particular to them as an individual?)
• Learning to manage your emotions and thoughts in the face of uncertainty, change and challenging circumstances
• Learning to shift frames, attune emotions and adapt behaviours to other cultural contexts

“As a leader, being culturally aware does not mean taking on all aspects of the culture of everyone in your team. Just be aware of how your culture comes across,” said Danielle.

“We need to be in charge of ourselves in order to adapt to another culture. As a starting point, look for the areas that you have in common with people across all cultures, to build connections and work from there.”

Cordelia Fine: Why does gender diversity matter?

In October 2020, I attended the virtual keynote by Cordelia Fine at the EMBO/EMBL conference on Gender Roles and their Impact in Academia. Cordelia Fine is a Canadian-born British philosopher, psychologist and writer. She is a Full Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at The University of Melbourne, Australia. Fine has written three popular science books on the topics of social cognition, neuroscience, and the popular myths of sex differences.  Cordelia spoke to us about why gender diversity matters.

Having analysed media articles on gender diversity, Cordelia found that 72% of them mainly looked at the organisational benefits of gender diversity, with most just stating that injustice exists. Only rarely did the media give the case for gender diversity, for example that it reduced power imbalance or helped an organisation to represent the community it served better.

In Cordelia’s view, journalists should go beyond plainly stating that gender imbalance exists in academia, or present this imbalance by itself as an injustice but should go on to explain why this is unjust. The counter argument is that people are not interested in the unfairness itself, they just want to know the benefits of better gender equality. But is this actually true?

In reality, we know very little about what people think about workplace gender diversity and what worries them about it. Cordelia’s team aimed to find out more about attitudes and concerns. They aimed to:
1. Learn how attitudes are moderated by demographic and organisational factors, comparing horizontal vs vertical workplace gender diversity i.e. between sectors and within the hierarchy
2. Better understand and respond to concerns, resistance and backlash

The study included 241, gender balanced, mainly Caucasian workers of whom the majority were managers. Cordelia’s team showed them the statistics for their sector and asked about the reasons, benefits and downsides of efforts to achieve greater gender balance across industries, occupations and in leadership positions. Benefits might include representation, fairness and a reduction in bias or disadvantage. Downsides might include undermining meritocracy or PC / virtue signalling. Participants could also say that there were no benefits or downsides.

The responses showed that perceived organisational benefits included a more diverse workforce with different attributes, a range of business benefits, a better workplace, a wider talent pool and benefits to the consumer. Downsides reported included psychological interpersonal damage resulting from tokenism and damage due to resentment from others.

In summary, people seem to care more about justice than concrete organisational benefits. There are substantial minority concerns, for example regarding psychological damage. Women are generally more positive than men about workplace equality, but this is more about justice than organisational benefits. Some said they could see no benefits to the organisation. People are also more positive about vertical workplace gender diversity, within the heirarchy than horizontal, across different sectors. They are more likely to say there are no downsides to diversity within the hierarchy. A wider study with 1000 participants is now underway to explore these findings further.

One tentative implication of the initial study is that horizontal workplace gender diversity is a bit neglected. We should be chipping away at that because sex segregation by occupation is the single biggest contributor to the gender pay gap in the UK. For leaders promoting workplace gender equality, they should work to anticipate concerns and address them upfront.  However, don’t give up on the justice arguments!

Organisational benefits are important but inclusion then becomes based on women needing to add value to the organisation in order to justify the efforts being taken. If the evidence for the benefits becomes shaky, this impacts on the justification for increasing diversity. The argument should be about what the organisation can do for women and to deliver justice and fairness for all.

On the whole, employees do care about gender justice for both vertical and horizontal diversity so there are receptive grounds for these ideas. That leaves the question of how to address the concerns of those who stand to lose from better workplace gender equality. It is not acceptable to just give up on the idea if people are concerned about diversity vs merit. Merit does not just reside in individual attributes but also in what people of all genders bring to the organisation. Affirmative action measures can help to facilitate access to goods, positions and opportunities, such as fellowships for women. You can also balance direct versus indirect actions, direct actions including those specifically targeted at women. An indirect action would be targeted in a way that benefits women more, for example for people who have taken time out of the workplace. Indirect actions often encounter less resistance. Try to get the naysayers involved by sponsoring someone – when not being forced, they are then part of the positive change. There is no simple answer to this issue but building up resentment is not good for anyone.

Diversifying school governing boards – some hints and tips

As schools tentatively throw open their doors for the first time since the March Covid shutdown, Governors for Schools turned their focus on anti racism and diversity on governing boards.

Hannah Stolton, CEO of Governors for Schools welcomed a diverse panel for a discussion on diversifying governing bodies. As a member of a network of governors and a former Chair of Governors, I know that recruiting governors is a never ending activity and broadening the demographic of volunteers can be an added challenge.

Josephine Okokon, headteacher and governor, recommended the individual approach to bring people on board. “Think about what people are adding to the community as well as their leadership skills,” she advised.

Raj Unsworth is an advisor to a headteachers round table group and has been a governor in many settings, from schools in the proverbial ‘leafy’ areas to challenging inner cities. “In each case, I was usually the only black or brown face in the governing board,” he said. He pointed out that multi academy trusts have more flexibility in their governance structures than maintained schools, including reducing the number of parent governors or eliminating them altogether. “By phasing out the parent governors, you remove a common route for BAME governors into governance,” he warned. In his view, governing boards should reflect society in general NOT just the profile of a particular school. “It’s important for all students to see BAME governors in leadership positions,” reminded Raj.

Adrian McLean, a parent governor explained that ‘word of mouth recruitment’ tends to perpetuate the existing make up of the board. Personally, he said that he rarely encountered other black males in governance. “Schools can be intimidating places and if you have had negative experiences at school yourself, you may not be motivated to go back as a governor,” he said. His advice is to approach community leaders from a range of backgrounds to either take part themselves or to recommend others they know. “Put ads up in places you usually wouldn’t consider, like the local gym. Ask yourself whether you really require previous educational experience or a degree to be a governor? Offer training and mentors to bring people on board,” suggested Adrian.

Governor Rosemary Hoyle advocated establishing a “culture of everyone”, encouraging boards to have honest discussions about their diversity and to perhaps appoint an equality, diversity and inclusion link governor.

Sharon Warmington, founder of the National Black Governors Network warned that racism in secondary school could be subtle but still obvious. Black students may find themselves automatically placed in low achievement groups, or being given careers advice with limited aspirations, which happened to her at school. “Just the presence of black governors and leaders in school makes a huge difference,” she said. “That could be on websites, photo boards or at school events and in the staff.”

Key things to remember:

• Avoid tokenism
• Diversifying your governing body is NOT lowering the bar – it is about widening your reach and being more inclusive
• Reflect your school’s ethnic make up at least, but strive to represent society as a whole
• Reach out to professional networks e.g. Black Lawyers Society, BME groups at banks, black churches

Overall, if you want to inspire *all* your students, remember you cannot be what you cannot see!