As part of Legal Island's 25th Anniversary series, we are exploring how the work environment has changed since Working Time Regulations were introduced in ROI in 1997 and NI in 1998. At the time, laws on maximum working hours and breaks were progressive and hailed as a way to increase employee efficiency while protecting wellbeing. But have we gone too far?

Now employers are struggling to attract and retain talent, with the CIPD reporting 51% of employees have flexibility in their current roles. As the business landscape continues to evolve, it is increasingly clear remote work, flexible schedules, and employee well-being are more important than ever. With the government supporting the right to request flexible working from the first day of employment, are employers’ needs coming second? How can employers navigate the challenge of employee expectations without sacrificing organisational agility?

Michelle Halloran, Principal Consultant at MHRS Ireland, Olga Pollock, HR Manager at firmus energy and Julie Holmes, Knowledge Partner in Legal Island discuss:
• What are the issues involved in remote work?
• What lessons can we learn from the 4 day week experiment?
• How can you balance the organisation’s needs against those of your employees?

This conversation provides valuable insight into the current and future state of work and how HR professionals can adapt and innovate to ensure both the organisation and employees thrive.

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Recording

Transcript

Julie:  Good afternoon. Welcome to our Workforce 2.0 webinar, "That Was Then, This is Now". My name is Julie Holmes, and I work in the Knowledge Team at Legal-Island. Welcome to our discussion on the evolution of flexible working and working time over the past 25 years.

Organisation of Working Time Act was introduced in Ireland in 1997, and working time regulations for Northern Ireland were introduced in 1998. At the time, laws on maximum working hours and breaks were progressive and hailed as a way to increase employee efficiency while protecting well-being. Now, we're grappling with remote working, hybrid working, and the four-day week experiment.

Have we gone too far? With the government supporting the right to request flexible working from the first day of employment, are employers needs' coming second? How can HR navigate the challenge of employee expectations without sacrificing organisational agility?

So, first, just a word about our sponsor. Legal-Island's webinars and podcasts are sponsored by MCS Group, and MCS help people find careers that match their skill sets perfectly. They also support employers to build high-performing businesses by connecting them with the most talented candidates in the marketplace. If you're interested in finding out more about how MCS can help you, then head to www.mcsgroup.jobs.

So please join me in welcoming our expert speakers today. We have Olga Pollock, who is HR manager at Firmus Energy, and Michelle Halloran, who is MD of her own human resource management services organisation.

So I know that Michelle and Olga have a lot to contribute on this topic, and I'm going to ask them to tell you a little bit about themselves. So, Olga, if I can ask you to start off please.

Olga:  Sure, Julie. Thank you very much. Yes, I am Olga Pollock. I have worked in HR . . . gosh, I was trying to remember there. Since 2002. So that's quite a wee while. Generally, I've worked in a generalist space looking after the entire employee lifecycle, from attracting candidates through to onboarding inductions and all the lovely stuff that happens in between somebody joining and somebody leaving an organisation.

So, my goodness, a lot has changed in this landscape over that time. I remember my very first real job after university sitting at my desk after the first day thinking, "Gosh, I survived. I didn't run away. I didn't burst into tears".

And I remember thinking, "Right, 5:00, time to go", and nobody moved. Everyone sat there. And 10 past 5:00 came, quarter past 5:00 came, and nobody moved. And that was sort of a bit indicative of that type of culture back then when there were long hours. There was the expectation that if you left at 5:00, it was frowned upon.

And of course, now then we've moved such a full complete circle to people leaving at their designated time. That's absolutely fine. Gosh, people have families and commitments outside of work, and that's absolutely fine too.

So, yeah, I've seen it all from, I suppose, sitting at a computer to the introduction then of laptops and being able to work remotely and away from the office. If you anybody remembers the BlackBerrys, I was there whenever they were first introduced and everybody was . . . I suppose it was this idea of this "always on" culture. And again, the landscape of flexible working and then, of course, COVID came and everything went into disarray.

But we'll touch on all of those great things, I guess, in a minute. I suppose, Michelle, maybe I'll pass over to you.

Michelle:  Thanks, Olga. And congratulations, by the way, to Legal-Island on your 25 years.

Julie:  Thank you very much.

Michelle:  Well done. I was just thinking there when Olga was talking I've been working since the '80s. I try not to be too specific because you'll realise how old I'm. But I started my career in computer science, and then I moved into . . . I was bond trading in the city, in London, and then took a fairly radical decision in 1998. So it was a very seminal year for me as well to move back to Galway, to quit the fancy job and all the rest of it.

I had a 6-month-old baby, and there were literally no family-friendly initiatives at that stage. I was facing a choice. And if I was going to stay doing the kind of job I was doing in a city dealing room, I wasn't going to see my children. I could've afforded a nanny, but I wasn't going to see them for 12 hours a day. And it wasn't what I wanted.

So I had been dabbling in human resources training and I was a people manager in the last bank I worked for there. And I decided I'd try and retrain into it when I moved back to Galway. New baby, no house, no job, big decision, and off I went.

I was very foolishly . . . This will tell you how innocent I was when it came to kids. When I was expecting Ross, my first, I thought, "Well, what am I going to do with all this maternity leave? I know what I'll do. I'll register to do a Master's degree in finance, because I have nothing to do".

Julie:  Wow, Michelle.

Michelle:  Oh my God. I hopefully hear you smiling. Any of you who have had young children, you know how nuts that was. That's how innocent I was.

But I wished to finish the Master's, and I did my HR degree. I sort of blagged my way into my first HR job with an IT start-up in Galway, convinced them to give me the go, and then went and did my HR training. So it was a big year for me.

And really, my memories of that time . . . I went on, I had my second baby, Nina. She's 22 months younger than Ross, and, signs on, then I waited five years to have a third one. But the big memories for me around that time were how difficult it was being a woman in the workforce. It was so difficult.

I remember expressing breast milk in a toilet cubicle in the company I worked for at one stage. There was no flexibility. We were chatting about this the other day, Olga. There was no afterschool care in Galway, which is a medium-sized city. And it was a real struggle, but a very exciting time as well in our world. Lots happening.

So there are my memories, and it's wonderful to see how things have changed. And it's wonderful to see the breadth of family-friendly initiatives, work-life balance that we've now got. And I think we need to remember that's been hard won. It's been hard fought for, and it's really been in this 25 years, hasn't it, that that has really happened for us.

Julie:  It has. That's great. Okay. So thanks very much to you both for your introductions. And I just want to say to the audience as well that you'll see that there's a questions box there. So if you have any questions to ask as we're going through everything, again, please feel free to drop those in, and we'll get to those as soon as we can.

So I think that Olga has already touched on the work hard, play hard almost culture that there was, and Michelle's talked a little bit about family-friendly policies. So, Olga, I'm going to start with you and direct this question towards you. How do you think the HR landscape transformed in terms of flexible working over the past 25 years?

Olga:  I mean, as Michelle has very eloquently given us history of her experience when she started out, it was a very almost hostile environment in terms of flexible working. It wasn't even a concept back then, and it was very much a bit like God forbid you would leave at 5:00. It was very much frowned upon. Your work was very, very separate from your home life. Home life didn't infringe upon work. You were there to work, and that was it.

And I guess whenever the whole idea around flexible working came into force, I suppose it took a long time for employers to sort of adjust and get into that mind-set that, "Oh, okay, we may need to start to think differently". I expect it took a long time for employers to actually get on board and engage with it. But back then, it was very much seen as a perk or a concession for employees with special circumstances.

And then, of course, EU directives relative to the workplace were like nothing we'd seen before in Northern Ireland, such as the Working Time directives and Part-Time Workers directive too. So, suddenly, there were legislative pieces in place where workers were really having, I suppose, a statutory obligation to take these things seriously. And then, of course, came the legal right to request flexible working for all employees, not just parents or caregivers.

And I do remember prior to that change coming to effect, I guess the right of parents or caregivers to be able to make flexible working requests sometimes was quite divisive in an organisation because it was seen as a bit of, "Well, it's all right for them. I don't have children, I can't have children, I don't have caring responsibilities, but what about me? What about my life and what about my needs?"

And sometimes it was quite hard to justify that other than, "Well, it's just the way it is". And it didn't seem fair. So the introduction of being able to request it for everybody regardless of their circumstances I think was a huge leap forward for employers.

In Ireland, there have been similar moves towards promoting flexible working, but still some way to go, I guess, in terms of legislative changes. And while there is a right to request flexible working, there's no obligation for employers to accept it.

Yes, they have to give it serious consideration or certainly be seen to give it serious consideration, but sometimes I guess where employers maybe are a little bit more traditional, they'll maybe go through the tick box exercise and still have that sort of old set mind-set that, "Oh, no, once we give this to one person, we'll open the floodgates to everybody else", which is, as we know, very wrong and it's not necessarily typical of a progressive, sort of forward-thinking organisation.

Working time regulations, there's the whole idea around certain maximum number of hours per week, the introduction of rest breaks, etc. I think back in the 1950s, the average working week was something like 48 hours per week. Many of us probably on this call are thinking, "I wish. That would be nice". But in terms of sort of that average, whereas now we're looking at maybe a 37-hour working week.

But again, are we happier? Studies by the CIPD would say, "Well, not necessarily because of the inception then of . . ." I can go back to the BlackBerry, the laptops, the iPhone . . . sorry, my light is motion-sensored. I'm not sitting in the dark . . . and this "always on" culture.

And if we remember back to the '90s and noughts, you have, I suppose, these so-called maybe early influencers, these big sort of entrepreneur types that wore a badge of honour on their sleeves doing 100-hour weeks and these crazy hours.

So, yeah, I think there's still a long way to go, but I think the shift has really been a hugely positive in terms of opening up that flexible working arrangements for everybody across the organisation.

Julie:  Thanks very much, Olga. And interesting that you mentioned about part-time workers, because, as you say, when you both talk about trying to juggle things like family life or just basically wanting a better balance in work life, part-time workers . . . I mean, it was okay to almost treat them unfavourably. It was almost like they didn't get access to training. They may not have progressed in their careers the way that they wanted to because it was just seen very much as, "Well, you're only part-time, so therefore you're not really as committed as all these people", just as you said about doing 100-plus hours a week.

So, Michelle, for yourself, talking about doing 100-plus hours per week, what about employee expectations versus some of these . . . I think that Olga had a nice phrase there about these big leaders in business that want everybody nearly to emulate that and do 100-plus hours per week.

Michelle:  Yeah, my goodness, there's been a massive sea change, Julie, in employees' expectations, hasn't there? And another thing that happened in 1998 in ROI here was the Employment Equality Act and the Equal Status Act came out. The UK opted for a more piecemeal approach. We just went big bang, and we had one huge equality act. And coming on the heels of the Organisation of Working Time Act in '97, then you had the Part-Term or Fixed-Term Workers Act in 2001. Those three things really did an enormous amount to change the landscape.

But you know what? Funny you should say it about part-time workers being considered in some way to be inferior. I am still asked today in 2023 by business owners, "If I hire someone, A, part-time or, B, on a two-year contract, do I have to give them the same benefits as my permanent staff?" In 2023, I'm still getting that question.

And in 2023, I'm still saying to business owners, "You know what, folks? I don't ever recall maternity leave ever bankrupting a business. You don't need to worry about someone going on maternity leave".

So whilst there's been a big shift in expectations, there is still a legacy. We still have to fight the good fight. But what I do think has changed, and I think it's very positive, is . . . and Olga touched on this. The expectation now is that flexible working patterns aren't just available to people with small children or caring for dependents at home. The expectation is that it should be something that's available to everybody.

 And if I want to stick my EDI hat on for a moment and think about society and the way it might change, what I think that will mean going forward is both men and women will feel empowered to look for more flexible arrangements. And perhaps we'll start to see the family responsibilities being shared more equally, and we might actually really start to see some progress in terms of true equality.

I mean, the number of times back in the day a man would be told, "What do you mean you have to collect your child from school? Can your wife not do that?" That needs to go.

I think that the change we've seen . . . And you're right, all that legislation started it, but what really crystallised it? And Leo Varadkar said this. He said, "With the pandemic, whilst it was a dreadful thing, the side benefit was we achieved overnight what we would not have achieved in another 15 or 20 years", which was we actually had no choice but to start working remotely. And we discovered, "Oh, we can do this. We can actually do this".

All of those arguments that had been put up by, I suppose, traditionalists . . . Let's be honest, human beings don't like to change. All those arguments kind of went out the window.

So, in terms of expectation, I suppose . . . I mean, I'll talk about my own two older kids. Nina is now in her first year in KPMG on the graduate accounting programme. And her older brother, Ross, he's two years out of college now working for an investment bank in Dublin, and both are on flexible working arrangements.

So Nina's a year-one graduate. She's still very much supervised. And I said to her, "There's no way you're going to get a hybrid work. They'll need you in five days a week to teach you how to be an accountant". And she said, "No, Mum, we can do Mondays and Fridays from home", and then she has her three-day supervision in work. And similarly for my son.

This is their first job and this is their expectation, so this is what you're going to see going forward. That's not going to be a nice-to-have. It's the baseline expectation. So I think that's a really, really positive development.

There is something, and Olga and I will touch on it as we go along though, that we've got to be mindful of. Microsoft did a survey last summer, and they surveyed something like 22,000 people in 11 countries. And they found that 87% of employees working hybrid-working patterns believe they are productive. And to be honest, all the hard research supports that only 12% of leaders trust that their team members are productive in a hybrid work environment. Microsoft have dubbed it productivity paranoia.

So there's something there, isn't there, that we need to think about. And that's I think something that needs to be addressed going forward.

Olga:  Yes. Long way to go.

Julie:  Yes. It's funny you're saying that, Michelle, as well because Martha Stewart, as you know, well-known American businesswoman and basically home lifestyle entrepreneur, weighed into the debate last week, and she said that she feels that Americans need to get back into the office. Otherwise the country is going to go down the drain.

So you've got people like Elon Musk, again, who calls it morally wrong, Martha Stewart. So a lot of people out there who, as you say, are in that 12% and don't believe that people are actually as productive as they should be, or working from home isn't as effective as they thought.

Michelle:  Wow. And I wonder is Martha Stewart in an office 48 hours a week, Julie?

Julie:  Well, it was a little bit scary. She was saying that if you work for her, you're expected to be on call 24/7. But again, that kind of shows going back to just that different expectation really about not having that work-life balance.

So I've got a couple of questions here already, but, Maria, if I could ask you to bring up the poll for us please, that might be a good time to do that.

Okay. So what we're going to move on to next is about flexible working. So you've heard about how 87% of people say that they feel that they're more effective at work. And Michelle also mentioned about some of her own family having flexible working arrangements and finding it very beneficial.

So could you just take a look at this poll question for us, please? As an employer, as an HR professional, do you use flexible working as an attraction and/or retention tool? Pretty easy, just yes or no.

Wow. Okay. So thanks very much, Maria, for bringing up that result pretty quickly for us, and I think the results speak for themselves. So people are seeing the benefits of that and, again, how it ties into their recruitment plans.

And I guess what we'll need to address later on too is that there are some organisations where you can't have as much remote working, and there may be times when it's more appropriate. So I know we'll talk about that as well.

Just to move on from the poll, how effective do you think employers have used this? Is everybody as aware of it as our audience, or what do you think?

Olga:  I would absolutely agree with our audience, but I would caveat that by saying that whether we use this as an attraction or retention tool or whether we use this just as something that we have to offer.

And I think it probably leans more towards the latter in that with COVID, pretty much overnight we went from the cosiness of our offices to working at our dining room tables. Most of us across the globe, I expect, were in that situation. And that shifted people's expectations. A bit of a catalyst, I suppose, for change in many regards, both in terms of employers and employees.

So people are expecting some sort of hybrid model, if not fully remote. And whether you use that as an attraction or retention tool, or whether you just offer that because you have to offer it to attract and retain staff, I think it's probably more that we're forced to, but for the good.

There's obviously a lack of mistrust there, given the stats we heard there in terms of leadership. And the whole, I suppose, argument around that is are people actually effective from home. But I think the proof is in the pudding and productivity is still there. People are still generating their work, and revenue hasn't been impacted. But then surely, that sort of lack of trust is more an issue with leadership than the system itself.

So in terms of some stats, there was an HR Practices survey in Ireland this year that found that 90% of businesses surveyed have faced a skills shortage, and that's up from 85% last year. And 50% of employers are reporting higher employee turnover rates.

It has been absolutely brutal in the last, I guess, year or year and a half in terms of attracting and retaining staff. Firmus has been impacted by that. And I know in my own sort of local HR network, a lot of us are sort of in the same boat. There's a little bit of comfort there to know that we're not alone.

We've made offers from a range of sort of entry-level positions right through to quite senior-level positions, and we've actually come to the stage where people have turned down our offer when they have demanded to work . . . Well, when they're not given the option of a hybrid working model during their probationary period.

So we try and encourage people during that sort of period of learning and growth that the best way to do that is properly being predominantly in the office in those early weeks and months, learning by working alongside each other, looking somebody in the eye, and all that great stuff.

We've had people actually pushing back and stepping away from our offer, and we've lost them because of that, which personally I don't think is particularly unreasonable. But there we have it. That's how much things have swayed in the employee's favour, I guess.

The Four-Day Week report found that 15% of employees said that no amount of money would induce them to accept a five-day schedule over a four-day week to which they are now accustomed. So that's another very interesting piece of research.

There are some really interesting stats, and I know that we'll touch on that later, around the four-day working week as well. So it's definitely a must in terms of attracting and obtaining staff. And I think those that don't will probably struggle to keep on people and to attract people into their roles, although I'd be interested to hear . . . Maybe I could be proven wrong on that point.

Julie:  Okay. And on that note, Olga, too, we've had somebody ask about how do you actually address either leaders or managers who are reluctant to let people work from home because of those concerns? So I'll just open it up to either of you. What do you think would help to convince them or what types of . . . just talking about retention even or attraction, Olga.

Olga:  Yeah, I think it's . . .

Michelle:  Yeah. Sorry, go on, Olga.

Olga:  I was just going to say, it comes back to the proof being in the pudding. If a manager or a leader or whatever has reason to believe that somebody is slacking from home, well, what's the evidence? Questions need to be asked. Why do you think that? What has been the impact on productivity? Are there periods when they're seemingly not active on their account for a certain period of time? Have you spoken to that individual?

A lot of the time, assumptions are made without actually anything to back it up. And I think that's majorly flawed. Yes, if somebody is slacking, but that could easily happen in the office as well. It's how that person is managed and supported into being productive, but a sweeping statement to think that, "Oh, no, it doesn't work", I think is just not going to cut it.

Julie:  Michelle?

Michelle:  Yeah, I agree with Olga, Julie. The proof is in the pudding. I think Edward Deming said, and he was the godfather of quality assurance, "In God we trust. Let all others bring data". Let's look at the data. Let's stop relying on perceptions.

As Olga very rightly says, that individual . . . And I had some of these conversations with more traditional employers during hard lockdown when it was a government mandate that we weren't to go into our offices, and they were trying to drag people into work. "Oh, look, we've evidence that so-and-so is slacking at home". And I said, "Well, so-and-so is probably the person who's lingering at the water cooler longer than everybody else when they're in the office".

So, as Olga says, you'll always have a small percentage of problematic employees. Deal with those and deal with them properly, but don't tar everybody with the same brush.

And then the other thing I've been doing in training is sharing with line managers tools for tracking their productivity and the productivity of their teams. So using a simple task tracker, good measurement by objectives, regular and clear communications.

And if we're doing all of that, I'm saying to line managers, "You should be able to turn around and say, 'No, that's not correct. Here's the data. Here's how productive I am.'"

And actually, the research on the four-day working week, which is where people are doing, say, 32 hours rather than 40, is that productivity has not changed. In fact, it's slightly higher. It's like 1% or 2% higher.

So, yeah, I think you need your data and say, "Well, what has caused you to think that productivity has dropped? Here's the data"

So I do think that line managers have to be more intentional about monitoring what our teams are doing and how we're doing it, more intentional about setting objectives. We need the metrics because what we don't want is the leaders in industry and in society, and in the public sector, as they're there too, dissing what is actually a very, very positive initiative in terms of well-being and mental health and productivity.

Julie:  Thank you. And actually, you just brought us into that next question nicely. So what are some of the key considerations involved in remote work? I know that we'd talked a little bit about this earlier on as well, but again, if you could just expand on that.

Michelle:  Yes. I mean, I'm a big believer in being practical about things. And picking up on something Olga said about probationary employees, I completely agree with her. That's a time when you need a lot of face time. You need a lot of face-to-face contact with a more senior mentor.

And I can hear where you're coming from, Olga. You're trying to balance that against attracting new hires. As I said to you, my son and daughter have started their first jobs. That's well established now. "This is the way things are, Mum. This is the way the world is".

So what I think is you've got to have a very good onboarding process and a very good planned probationary process. You have to make sure that you've got a line manager who's proactive, but also appoint a mentor/buddy. And formalise that process so you've got guidelines and checklists in place for that buddy and for the line manager so that they are really properly paying attention to those first 90 days.

They should cross over. In my opinion, there should be three days a week in the office, and that should be crossing over with the team, planning who they need to engage with, and making sure they're there to cross over with those people.

And allow for some time when they can just be with you in the office, just sit near you and ask you a question if they need to ask you a question and so forth, if you are their line manager.

So I think what we can do in the HR community is we can offer a lot of support to our line managers in the form of practical things like checklists, what you ought to remember to do.

Again, I still have people tell me when I . . . Sometimes I'm asked to do exit interviews if there's a problem in the workplace and they're trying to get to the bottom of what's going on. And they'll say to me, "Nobody introduced me around to the team when I joined", or, "They didn't have a desk for me".

We got away with a lot when we were five days a week together. You had lots of opportunities as a line manager to support people in an ad hoc way. So if you weren't filling in your forms and you weren't doing your checklists and you weren't doing your training plan, you could kind of make up for it. But now that we're not together as much, I think that's one thing we have to be very practical about.

The other thing I think we need to be very practical about is health and safety. Boring, I know, but ergonomics are very important. Are they in a comfortable space at home? And are we annually doing a review and an audit of that and making sure that people's workspace at home is adequate and comfortable? And is it ergonomically compliant?

What we don't want in 10 or 15 years' time is a generation of workers telling us they have back pain and RSI because they've not been using appropriate workspaces. And it's our obligation, as we know, as employers to make sure that that is safe and appropriate. That's a very practical point.

But back in the '90s, I was working in a dealing room in Copenhagen, and we were so naive. We used to cradle the phones, the old black phones like this, and I'd be typing like this, and I woke up like that one morning. And it took two weeks to straighten up. So I learned early on the damage that can be done by poor posture and what have you.

And another very practical thing that we need to pay attention to is when we're having our online engagements, our video conferences, are we cameras on or cameras off?

So let's look at the basics. We talk a lot about employee engagement, Well, my goodness, if I walked into a meeting room with you with a paper bag over my head, you'd find it difficult to engage with me. And yet we routinely don't challenge or question people who leave their cameras off on online meetings.

Now, there's a flip side to that coin. You can't be asking your team members to be at six or seven meetings a day because they're going to get worn out from being on camera for that time. So you've got to be mindful of that. Fewer meetings, but better quality. Have fewer meetings and say, "Guys, let's all put our cameras on, let's say hello to each other. And then if we're reviewing a document together or whatever, we can switch the cameras off". But we have to pay better attention to that.

So there are some very basic practical things, Julie, that strike me, and they all feed into the bigger issues, which I know we're going to talk more about, like engagement and well-being.

But health and safety, checklists for probationers and being in the office with them, and the etiquette, if you like, of the way we're handling our virtual meetings I think are very important.

Julie:  Okay. That's a good point about the meetings, Michelle, because it's so easily overlooked as well, and then people . . . The camera's on, camera's off, it's all a little bit . . .

Michelle:  It's all over the place, isn't it? Yeah.

Julie:  It is, yeah. We had email etiquette and now we almost have Zoom meeting etiquette and online meeting etiquette as well. More needs to be done on that really as well.

So, again, Olga, just back to you, talking a little bit about that and about those blended and hybrid working arrangements, how do you think or how have you found most organisations are setting those up? Michelle's given examples of onboarding and other times when people should be there in the office for collaborative work or when somebody new starts, but what do you think about when organisations actually decide what the pattern is? How do they go about doing that?

Olga:  I think it's very much dependent on what works for each organisation. And I suppose some of the better organisations, better employers out there will really empower their own managers and their own teams to be able to establish rotas, I guess, that work for that team. I think a one-size-fits-all across the entire organisation isn't necessarily going to work.

I mean, it does make more practical sense that there's always sort of a core base of staff within the office, where an entire team to be out of the office at once maybe doesn't necessarily work so well.

But again, if you're doing all the great things that Michelle has outlined there in terms of making sure that you're making the best use of technology, keep maintaining regular communication, to have empty seats probably isn't entirely a bad thing.

But back to the HR Practices survey Ireland, it found that 34% of employers were centrally setting those hybrid working arrangements, or based on individual team needs, that rose to 47%. And in terms of the blend days at home and days in the office, it seems to be sort of this two and three, either two days in the office and three at home, or vice versa.

And I know anecdotally, with a small sort of benchmarking exercise that I've been involved in locally, that tends to be quite commonplace. Of course, there are some employers that have 100% remote working, and it would be absolutely intriguing to hear from them and hear how they're making that work. Brilliant if it is working really, really well.

And then you've got the other sort of extreme. Only 5% of people are on-site for four days a week, and then something like 19% are variable. So the two and three seems to be the most common setup.

Julie:  Okay. Interesting that people are on-site two or three days per week.

Maria, if you could bring up our next poll question for us please, because we've talked a little bit about culture and engagement.

So the question for yourselves in the audience is, "What is the most challenging aspect for you in relation to remote and hybrid working for your organisation?" Do you find that it's sustaining the culture? Is it supporting well-being because you're not seeing people in those informal contacts all the time if everybody is in every day? Skills shortages? Is it about your managers' ability to deal with performance? Or is it teamwork and collaboration?

Unfortunately, you can just choose one of those options. So if you just take a look at that for us please and figure out which one is most applicable to you.

And then, Maria, whenever you're ready to bring up the results for us, please. Okay. So I think that it looks like it's . . . let me see. So 35%, managers' ability to deal with performance. That's interesting. That's not quite what I expected. What about yourselves, Olga and Michelle?

Olga:  Yeah, I think I wasn't expecting that either, though it does make sense. Definitely, the sustaining culture and the collaboration/teamwork is not a surprise. I would personally agree with that.

I think as much as I am an advocate for remote working and hybrid working, there is a price to pay for that sort of lack of, I suppose, people being together under the one roof, those water cooler conversations. It's not that we're really going to come up with incredibly innovative solutions to all the world's problems at the water cooler, but I think just that social connection is really something that can take a bit of a hit.

But it's interesting around the performance, actually. I wasn't expecting that.

Julie:  Yeah, it is. There are three of them . . .

Olga:  But it makes sense.

Julie:  . . . that are very, very close. So just following on then, Michelle, what do you think are the advantages and disadvantages, especially with those results in mind?

Michelle:  Yeah, I'm actually not massively surprised at the managing performance coming in there because it's harder to . . . There's an anxiety. It's harder to spot, it's sometimes harder to pick up on performance issues, and it's more difficult practically to deal with them because you're like, "Well, do I want to have this sensitive conversation with Julie over a video link, or will I wait until we're in the office?" And then we're in the office and something else comes up and, "Oh, look, maybe I got that wrong".

It's because we are a bit more disconnected. Olga is right. It is a challenge for us to manage. We don't have as much face-to-face contact. So, again, a lot of the training I'm doing with line managers is around this need, and I'm getting eye rolling.

I know that they're putting their cameras off and saying, "Oh, for god's sake, does she know how busy I am?" I'm saying, "You've got to be touching base with people, folks".

You've got to be touching base with people intentionally at least once a week to say, "Julie, how are you getting on? What was last week like? What were your challenges? What do you see as your key priorities for the week? How can I help you if you're feeling overwhelmed?" We've got to be more intentional in all of our communications. And if you are having those every week, it will be much easier for you to deal with the performance management.

Really, I'm interested in the culture feedback there. This is definitely something that's coming down the tracks at us in HR. I'm hearing it anecdotally, because we have the double whammy. COVID kind of completely put the kibosh on all those sort of barbecue days, Christmas parties, and social engagement we would routinely have through work. And a lot of that has stopped.

And of course, those of us in HR were always very nervous about the Christmas party anyway, and Paddy getting drunk in the corner and what might happen, etc., what might be waiting when we got back to our desks in January. So you had that anyway.

But again, we're going to have to pay more attention to this. And we're going to have to, again, be more intentional about building our culture and developing those engagements.

There are obviously massive advantages to hybrid work. Not having that commute every day. I'm sure we can all feel it. Our fatigue levels have decreased. You're not as tired. You don't have that exhausting commute and that battle to get in and out from work depending on where you're living.

The other huge advantage is being able to get your head down when you need to do a task you really have to focus on and you don't want to get interrupted. We're social creatures. We interrupt each other constantly at work, not to talk about the weather, but to ask each other work-related questions. But when you want to talk to me might not be a time that suits me, and vice versa. So that's a huge benefit, and I see that as a big bonus when it comes to productivity.

I think all of that reduces stress levels. Time is our scarcest resource nowadays. We're right at the top of the Maslow Triangle in the westernised world. We're looking at self-actualisation, and we're all about, "Right. We don't have much time. How do we make the most of it?"

Our grandparents were just figuring out how they were going to feed their much larger families and make sure that they grew up and got jobs, basically. We've moved on from that. So we're thinking about time and how we use time, and everybody has more quality time, I think, working in a hybrid pattern.

Now, there's something, and Olga and I were chatting about this the other day, that we do need to watch out for, though, which is are we creating sort of a two-tier workforce? We've got a lot of people who cannot avail of hybrid work.

So you've got customer service staff, you've manual workers, you've care workers, you've health sector workers, doctors and nurses, you've the whole hospitality sector. You have the firefighters who are out on strike at the moment. You've emergency services. There are an awful lot of people who aren't able to avail of remote work.

And I smiled slightly there because I was doing some work with a port authority a couple of weeks ago, and one line manager said to one of the staff, "If you can figure out how to pilot a boat from home, I'll let you have hybrid work".

But that was in reaction to . . . this man was saying to him, "It's not fair. Those office workers are swanning off to work from home, and we're here on-site all the time".

Now, I'm not saying that we remove the benefit from desk-based workers, but it is something we're going to have to think about. And I think we are going to have to think about what we can do for those workers who can't do a hybrid pattern. Perhaps a four-day week is something we should look at more closely for that part of the workforce.

But we need to be careful here, folks. And I think, Olga, wasn't it Elon Musk who used that as an argument against hybrid work? He said, "Yeah, but you're at home in your comfy remote office, and the person delivering your mail and the person coming in to do your garden and the person coming in to paint your house, they can't do hybrid work". So are we creating a two-tier society here?

So that's a disadvantage I think that we are going to have to think about as a HR community and how we keep that balance.

And not to depress anybody . . . I'm depressed because mortgage rates went up another quarter per cent last week. But we do have an escalating cost of living crisis. That's not what we're here to talk about today, but it's in the background and we need to be very careful right now of making sure we're looking at every section of our workforce.

It's especially hard for companies who have a bit of both. It's easy enough where you're, say, a public sector government department and everybody is desk-based and there are no problems. But it's difficult where you have people who must be on-site and people who don't have to be. So that I would see as a disadvantage.

And the other thing I would say is . . . I read an article the other day that was commenting that our grandchildren are probably going to say we really didn't consider the fallout from COVID the way we should do, that it's had a massive impact on us societally.

I think there's kind of a major PTSD episode going on with us all at the moment. People in hospitality are saying to me that members of the public are really rude coming into them. Everyone's finding it very, very tough to work in those jobs. Restaurants and catering managers are saying to me, "I can't get staff because they can't bear the conditions. They can't bear the abuse that they get". And everybody is telling me in those customer-facing roles that they're seeing this.

So something's happened there. Is it that we've forgotten our manners, that we need to re-socialise, that we're actually still a bit anxious and stressed out because of what's happened to us? If we're working home alone, those issues can prey on our mind. So the whole socialisation side of things I would see as a disadvantage. It's something we need to pay attention to in a hybrid pattern.

So a bit of a long, rambling answer there, Julie.

Julie:  It wasn't rambling at all. You made a lot of good points. And again, it is important to remember just the fact that we do have manufacturing, hospitality, healthcare sector, all of those sectors as well, and so maybe it's more looking at alternative types of flexibility.

Somebody suggested before about shift work or starting . . . just so that it doesn't seem like we're creating this . . .

Michelle:  I think so, yeah.

Julie:  . . . two-tiered system as well.

Michelle:  I think that's our next job, Julie. Yeah.

Julie:  While we're speaking about flexibility as well, Olga, I'm just going ask you a little bit about the four-day week, because we've got a couple of questions about that as well. So what lessons do you think that we've learned, really, as part of this whole reworking of working hours in the last little while?

Olga:  I mean, again, COVID has a lot to answer to, but this idea of a four-day week, I suppose, really came to the fore during COVID whenever we were . . . I suppose it was a bit of a catalyst for change and people were looking at more flexible working and better ways of working.

Yeah, there's a whole, I suppose, trial across the UK that involved . . . Was it something like 61 employers? Historically, employers have resisted shorter hours going back to . . . Excuse my light. But the record shows from this investigation that it's not economically harmful. So it's this idea that we work shorter hours on the same pay, staff are happy, mental well-being is much healthier, and revenue isn't affected.

So I suppose people are working smarter. They're really being, I suppose, forced to look at inefficiencies. We've talked about meetings quite a bit. How often are we in meetings for an hour or more and we think, "Gosh, that was such a waste of time"?

So this idea of reorganising our work and making change happen, eliminating those sort of low-value activities and making every hour in the workplace count.

And if I look at the . . . I've just got stats actually around that trial that took place from June to December last year. Sixty-one companies, nearly 3,000 workers, and included a range of different organisations from different sectors and sizes.

And the idea was that really from an administrative perspective, it was reasonably easy to put in place as long as the employers were left to manage, I suppose, the hours themselves, Whether it'd be spread across a longer period of time or a shorter period of time, I think it was very much left to each organisation to decide how that was going to best fit them.

And the key business metrics showed the signs of positive effects of shorter working hours. Company revenue, for instance, stayed broadly the same over the trial period, rising by 1.4% on average depending on company size. And there were huge benefits in terms of mental well-being, greater work-life balance.

So most of the organisations actually that took place in that trial . . . out of the 61 companies, 56 are continuing with the four-day week. That's 92%, and 18% of those making it a permanent change. So there's absolutely a revolution in terms of this idea of moving from the five-day to a four-day week. It seems like a win-win for both employees and employers.

Julie:  Thanks, Olga. That brings me nicely onto the question about how do you think it impacts on employee well-being? So, Olga, you'd mentioned about reduced stress levels. Do you think it advantages any groups in particular as well? Is it better for women? Is it better for people with disabilities?

Olga:  I think so.

Michelle:  Definitely better for women.

Olga:  Yeah, or people, I suppose, generally with caring responsibility to be able to have that flexibility around their working day.

And there's also this idea of not . . . A lot of employers are trialling the idea of hours not being fixed, this idea you work whatever hours to suit to fit around your life. And that is absolutely revolutionary for people, mums, dads, people with elderly parents, to be able to fit their life around work. I mean, how wonderful, but yet revenue doesn't suffer. Productivity doesn't suffer. Employee well-being and flexible working, and work-life balance are all winners.

But I am not sure if Northern Ireland are quite ready for that yet.

Julie:  Okay. And what do you think, Michelle?

Michelle:  Yeah, I mean, no question it is so much better for well-being. And it's also the expectation. It's the change in attitude. It's that it's okay to say, "I need flexibility". Whether you're male or female, it's okay to say . . . I'm sorry, that's my dog misbehaving. He's been okay so far, but he let himself down there. I think that it's okay to ask for flexibility.

What was going through my head when Olga was talking there was back in . . . It was probably around 2002, and I had two very young children, and I was working in a very big and busy HR department. I had to go through hoops to request that rather than working from . . . What was it? Rather than working from 9:30 to 5:30, could I work from 9:15 to 5:15? Fifteen minutes I was asking for, because I was getting into trouble with the crèche for arriving late to collect my children.

So I was getting into trouble at work because a manager would decide to come to me at 25 past 5:00 to have, as one of my kids call it, a DMC, a deep meaningful conversation, about a problem he or she was having with a staff member. And I'd be saying, "I'm sorry, I really have to go". And he or she, and it was usually he in those days, was looking cross with me.

I was legging it down the road to try and get my kids from the crèche. And then the crèche manager was standing with her arms crossed looking furious because I was the last to collect my children.

I felt everybody was cross with me all of the time, and I was failing all of the time. And it was like, "Well, we'll give you the 15 minutes' flexibility, but don't tell anybody about it, and you're very lucky to be getting it".

So that awful feeling for most of the time my children were young, I just have this knot really in my throat, that knot in my stomach of, "Gosh, I should be somewhere else. I shouldn't be where I am now".

So what's changed in terms of well-being, I think, is so significant that you don't have to feel like that anymore. It's perfectly acceptable to say, whether you're a mum or a dad or a single person or a carer, it doesn't matter what really, "I need to finish at such a time today", or, "I've got some commitments I need to take care of", or, "I have some personal business", or whatever it might be, and it's not a big deal. In fact, you most of the time don't even have to ask because you're able to organise your work around it. So, to me, that's massive in terms of well-being.

I think that the only thing we have to be careful about is the risk of isolation, because we don't always know what's good for us. We kind of get stuck into our little rut at home. And sometimes, much as we maybe don't want to engage with work colleagues because it's a bit of extra effort, we probably need to.

One thing I'm saying to line managers, and this is kind of working with Steve Covey's ideas around time management, is, "Leave people alone to do their heavy lifting in the morning, to do their individual tasks if they're working a hybrid pattern or working from home. Engage with them in the afternoon. Have your meetings, have your conversations, have your phone calls in the afternoons".

Gallup did a poll during lockdown, which showed that the time of day people feel most isolated at home is mid-afternoon. So, again, I'm all about the practicalities. I think there are little things we can do just to make sure that somebody isn't . . .

If someone lives alone, they don't speak to somebody from one end of the day to another, that's really not good for us. So that's just what we need to watch out for.

Julie:  I think that's a great point, Michelle. There was someone I worked with, and during COVID, any opportunity that there was to go in the office, she did. She lived on her own, and so she just thought, "Much better way to interact. At least there's somebody else there to have a chat to or just check in".

Michelle:  Again, as I said, and you may have heard it too, the anecdotal feedback I'm getting from people in the hospitality sector and customer service is we're not being very sociable as a society. We're a bit cranky at the moment. So we probably have to do some work for our own sake, and for our employer's sake really, on keeping up our social skills and redeveloping them.

Olga:  I think personally for me being able to work from home, have that flexibility, and all the amazing things that come with it, personally I absolutely love it. I'm there for the Amazon delivery driver. I'm there for my Tesco shopping. Great for me. But what about my team? Not necessarily my direct team. What about the wider teams? What about the wider business?

So collectively, individually, we all love working at home because it gives us peace and all the great things that come with it. It doesn't necessarily have the positive impact back to culture and teamwork. Sitting beside somebody and having that social connection and interaction I think is definitely one of the big downsides of home working, and it's something we're still figuring out and we're navigating through, isn't it?

Julie:  Yeah, it is. So I'm just aware of the time. We also have a couple of questions as well. So just to finish off, I'm going to aim this question at both of you. Do you think that employers can meet employee demands and maintain business continuity?

Olga:  Yes, with a bit of thought and a bit of structure and providing, as Michelle has pointed out, the open communication, even if it's something as simple as the timing of that, making sure that . . . Maybe connect with people in the afternoon, the importance of those one-to-ones.

I was on a call the other day with some our own directors here in a board meeting, and one of the non-execs . . . Actually, he has worked for a large global business in England. He said, "Look, we have one day a month where it's mandatory that everybody comes in to the office and works together. It is brilliant for culture".

It's so simple, but you could coordinate that with some sort of fun staff event. Usually, food works well. Barbecue, whatever it happens to be, getting everybody together under the roof and just chatting and having a bit of a craic, I think, would . . . It's quite simple, but probably a very effective solution.

Julie:  Michelle, anything to add to that?

Michelle:  Yeah, I would agree with Olga. And yes, I think we can absolutely meet employee demand and maintain business continuity. My sister's worked for a high-tech American company for 30 years. She's based in Galway, and she's working with a U.S.-based business and has done so for 30-odd years. The high-tech sector were way ahead of us anyway when it came to remote working.

It's completely feasible. It's perfectly possible. It just requires a little bit more self-discipline from us in terms of intentional communications on a regular basis.

Obviously, if I don't talk to you about, "How are you getting on, Julie?" two or three weeks, I'm losing that connection with you. And when we were in the office all together, I would've probably said, "How are things, Julie? How are you getting on?" and we would've had it as a casual chat. Now, I have to go out of my way to do that.

So I think we just have to have those disciplines. And that's an adjustment for us because we're very used to relying on ad hoc communications, face-to-face ad hoc communications. We need the face-to-face piece.

I believe very strongly in a hybrid model. I wouldn't be a fan of exclusively remote working. That's probably partly due to my personality as well. But I think a hybrid model is very powerful.

We just do need to think going forward about that very large sector of our workforce who can't avail of hybrid opportunities and how we kind of even the playing field. I'm thinking ahead and I'm thinking of the kinds of issues that could come at us, so that's something we need to watch. But yes, of course, we can. I'm in the 87%, and not in the 12%.

Julie:  That's great. Thank you both very much. Thanks, everybody, for sending in your questions. I have asked most of them throughout, but somebody's just mentioned here, Michelle, about, "I do worry about younger people starting off their careers and how much they're losing out by not building close work relationships at the start of their career". And I'm just directing that to you because you were saying about your own children and just starting off in the workforce as well.

Michelle:  Absolutely, Julie. And actually, the same son I was talking about, his first two years he had to work exclusively remotely. He was here in his bedroom upstairs in Galway. I had one doing exams, I had another doing that mock junior cert, and I had him starting a new job all from home. He then changed jobs two years later, and he jumped on the chance to go into work. Now, he loves the bit of flexibility. It's kind of a two or three pattern he does. But he jumped on those days to go into work.

And it was only after he came out of the two years working exclusively remotely we realised how depressed he had probably been. He really wasn't enjoying work very much during that time.

So I couldn't agree more. And again, as the elder lemons, I think we have to make sure we're . . . Even if they don't always want it, we have to make sure that people coming into the workforce are socialising, are coming into the office.

See, we have that. We have that base, and that's how we spent most of our careers, so we've got those skills. They need to develop those skills, and I think that's very, very important.

Julie:  Okay, thank you. And, Olga, do you find you are doing anything different with onboarding, again, since all the changes with COVID? Do you do anything to your newer workers?

Olga:  Well, we would have some activity once a month, and we would vary the day of it. And again, we've talked about food. Firmus staff love food. We love eating. We are feeders. But it's lovely. So we'll vary the day from month to month to try and catch people that maybe are on a different rota.

So it's not particularly innovative, but it brings people together. It's a nice time to sort of have a bit of a chat, catch up with people from the different departments, and things like that.

I mean, we make full use of technology. Obviously, we use Teams and . . . Goodness, we've got all sorts of different communication platforms.

But we do tend . . . As a management group, we were doing that a lot on Teams in the early stages of COVID, but we make a point now of having those in-person. And I have to say the difference . . . Everybody really appreciates. The difference between having a meeting online and having it in a room together is night and day. The level of, I suppose, engagement is just not the same.

And also, in terms of training classroom, sort of face-to-face training and learning interventions, it's so much more powerful in person than it is over Teams. Sometimes in Teams, you do have those people that could just turn their mic off or their screen up, and you don't get much back from them.

So it's simple, doesn't really cost too much, but increasing those opportunities, especially for new starts to be more in the office with peers, is really, really critical.

Julie:  All right. Great. Well, thank you both very much. I think we easily ran out of time. We're just a little bit over now, but thank you both very much for a great conversation.

And again, you can tune into the next episode of The Olga and Michelle Show on some of our future Legal-Island events. So thank you. That was great. Lots of practical tips for everybody. Lots of learning too.

And you'll see that Maria's brought up just a little reminder about a save the date for us. So this is part of our anniversary webinar series at Legal-Island for our 25 years. And so next week is "Behind the Scenes at the WRC's Adjudication Service: A Sneak Peek Beyond 2023". So, again, Michelle and Olga won't be there, but I'm sure that they will be with us in spirit and watching or tuning in if they can.

All right. So thanks very much. Oh, sorry, we've also got another one, which is 3 July. So that one is about AI. Thanks, Maria. Workforce 2.0, about the rise of the machines. Again, just remember, at the moment, we're still smarter than robots, so we can make them as inclusive as we decide. That's the angle from that one.

And then we do have our Annual Review of Employment Law for 2023. It's pretty exciting this year because you can attend either online or in person. So if you're in Northern Ireland, you can join us in Belfast on 7 November 2023. And if you're in Ireland, you can join us on 29 November 2023.

So thank you very much, everybody. Enjoy your afternoon. Again, remember to do those check-ins with everybody, and we'll see you all soon. Thanks very much again, Olga and Michelle. And thanks, Maria, for all the tech support.

Olga:  Thank you.

Michelle:  Thank you, Julie. Thanks, Maria. Thanks, Olga.

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