[00:00:00] **Andrew Lloyd Gordon:** Hi, I am Andrew. Welcome to the Work Unraveled podcast. In each episode, we break down a piece of the workplace puzzle, providing practical insights, fresh perspectives, and actionable solutions to help you navigate the ever-changing world of work. 

[00:00:15] **Scott:** And I'm Scott, whether you are a leader, a professional, or simply curious about what makes organizations tick, this show offers strategies to think smarter, work better, and lead boldly join us as we turn workplace complexity into clarity.

One episode at a time.

[00:00:32] **Andrew Lloyd Gordon:** I'm sure many of our listeners are either listening in the car or they're, you know, jogging or probably, or possibly working from home. And, and the topic we're gonna talk about today is this, this, was gonna say new, new way of working. It's, it's quite established for many people, but hybrid working. Is this something that's quite recent for you, or have you been working from home and working in different locations for a long time?

[00:00:55] **Scott:** Like many, I, it all changed for me when Covid happened. Uh, before that I was office based, uh, a hundred percent, well, pretty 99% of the time. The only time that I would, not be working in the office was when I needed the Headspace to do some deep work, and I would say to the team, I'm gonna work from home today.

Because I need to get my head down. I don't want any interruptions. I'm here if you need me, but please hold any calls unless you know, so I would actually use home as that place to do that deep work focus. What about you? How how's your working from Home Journey been?

[00:01:32] **Andrew Lloyd Gordon:** I have a much longer, uh, history of working from home. I started, I can't quite believe I. It's as long as it is, but I started working for myself in 1999 party, like it's 1999. And when I started, I worked, I actually was made redundant and I, I worked in office. I mean, I've got a varied working history like many people.

So I, I was used to working in the offices. Then I got made redundant and I started working for myself, which is fine. I actually was quite happy to be very redundant I looked at the time when I set myself up as a, as a consultant to look and get, uh, serviced offices. know, with the receptionist and desks and something, and it was so expensive, I thought, I'm gonna work from home. So back in 99, started using one of our back bedrooms as a, as an office. But you know what? It was considered very, very poor. It was a poor show. I tell people that I actually work from home.

I had a telephone number that I gave people on my business card. I had this address. It was on a science park locally to me, because back then. In the early, uh, late nineties and early two thousands working from home, you were a failure. was something that you, you, you couldn't, you weren't successful enough to have an office. So it's fascinating that it's switched to now where it's quite common. It's quite normal, isn't it, I think to,

[00:02:55] **Scott:** Mm.

[00:02:55] **Andrew Lloyd Gordon:** people to work from home. It's actually sort of the norm. Have you, have you sort of seen this trend though, people trying to get people back in the office.

How do you feel about that, this idea that people should be working back in the office?

[00:03:06] **Scott:** Yeah, that's, I see headlines like that quite a lot. It's obviously since Covid companies have been struggling with that, they've obviously got bills to pay rent to pay for buildings. And the thing is that the. Until people had a taste of it, they didn't know any different, did they? They, the, the commute was what you had to do.

You had to spend an hour a day in your car going to and from the office, and that has its benefits. Maybe we'll touch on the, the cognitive switch off between leaving the office and then. Time to get your brain into home mode. 'cause that, I know that has an impact on people who work from home exclusively or quite a lot.

And I think that's been what people have kind of struggled with certainly in companies and the challenges it presents. Well, what does it mean? How are we a team if we're not all co-located? And what does that mean for a manager's ability to. Manage or lead their staff. And then we get into topics of trust.

And I know we're gonna cover a lot of these things. Um, but certainly there, there seems to be, you hear, you know, quite often X company has dictated, every employee will return to the office 90% of the time

[00:04:13] **Andrew Lloyd Gordon:** Yeah, I think what's fascinating is this. two camps. There's one where working from home is seen still

[00:04:19] **Scott:** I.

[00:04:20] **Andrew Lloyd Gordon:** I talk about my own experience in the 1990s. I can't believe it's that long ago, there's still a camp that if you're not in the office, you're not working. Uh, my, my wife at the time would talk about, you know, not working from home.

She, she'd expect me to be, you know, putting the washing on and she'd get quite cross if I came. She came back and the lawn wasn't mown like, no, I was working. So there's definitely a culture. There's, there's definitely a perspective. I was there, definitely a perspective in some managers, certainly that if you're working from home, you're not working, and then there's this other camp that says you have to be in the office. Maybe not these days, five days a week, but you should be in the office. And if you're not in the office, you know you are, you are slacker, you are lazy. But a lot of people like you will say, well, hang on a minute. I have to spend like an hour to get into work. It's very stressful, it's very costly. And then I get into work and then you put me on a teams meeting, which I could have done from home. I actually think. Getting this right where you allow people to work from home when they need to, like you mentioned, but also working in the office when they need to is actually a real boon for organizations if they get this right. It can help with productivity, it can help with employee engagement, it can help with communications, it can help with so many different things.

But that balance is, is really tricky. So you talked about your experience when you work from home, did you have to seek permission to go work from home or were you in a, a manager or a position where you could just choose?

[00:05:43] **Scott:** I was in a manager position so I could choose luckily. , Certainly for me, I, I did find it, I did my, it depends what we define as work, but I did my best deep work. I. In those times when I needed to tackle a really complex problem that didn't need anyone else at that point in time, whether it was, working on a business case or something that really required no interruptions, as much as I wanted to be there for my staff and I, I was in the same office as them.

I didn't have my own posh office to the side. So it was very much an open culture. But there are times when actually, as we know, deep work, you need to have no interruptions. You need to be able to focus. And for me, I was able to do that at home.

Uh, and that's why I would, I wouldn't do it that often, , but I would take that time out and that was, yeah, as you said, really productive there. And I got something done in a day that would've taken me weeks of intermittent interruptions, going to pointless meetings, having my inbox overflow. I would just switch off from the outside world and get my head down.

And as you say, it's that balance that can benefit employees and the workforce, but it is that balance and presents some challenges to logistics around, well, are you at the same time, and it's quite perverse what you said around you come into the office to then sit on a teams call. It's like Exactly. You could have done that from home.

[00:06:58] **Andrew Lloyd Gordon:** Yeah. And, and, and when you talked about open plan offices, I've worked in open plan offices and the, the, the, the reason why people say they've got an open plan office is, is to improve communication and improve collaboration. They are interruption machines. Open plan offices, in my experience, and you said about needing to get away to get some deep work done, you go into an open plan office and it's often incredibly noisy places, even unintentionally if people are on the phone, although people don't tend to use the phone so much, but you know, if they're on the phone in the corner, somebody's having a discussion, maybe a bit of an argument going on.

So people start, you know, listening into that argument. People are asking whether you want a cup of tea, there's somebody's birthday and there's cake. To have open plan offices can be incredibly, um, difficult to work in. So yeah, I think in the past there was this idea that I'm gonna go home to get some deep work done. Now that people saying that should be a red flag to any manager. If, if like you felt you couldn't get anything serious done, then you know we should be questioning the workplace. The advantage then, this is I think where we talk about hybrid working is. There's definitely something around workplaces where people are face to face.

You build that culture, you get to know people as colleagues and as friends. So I think one of the challenges with hybrid work, and this is where I think this is what we wanna talk about, is the balancing act is really quite tricky. 'cause if you have people working from home exclusively, they can end up feeling isolated. I mean, you would, you would, how often were you going working from home? Like once a week perhaps.

[00:08:31] **Scott:** No, it was probably once a month, once every two months. It wasn't that frequent 'cause I didn't need to, the nature of the work meant I needed to be using my brain with other people, working with teams. So the power of standing in front of a whiteboard with people and mapping out a process and, and that kind of stuff is very hard to do.

And my experience, I've done that kind of thing online with clients remotely using tools these days. But the large amount of my work was either being in meetings. That's a whole other podcast episode. But, , yeah, being in meetings or just being there for my team and doing some problem solving stuff when it, when I needed to write reports, when I needed to do presentations, that was the time when I didn't need anyone else.

I just needed to get my head down. It wasn't that frequent, luckily.

[00:09:16] **Andrew Lloyd Gordon:** Right. Uh, yeah. And again, I think that when you look at a lot of workplaces, how much actual work is done, certainly in

[00:09:22] **Scott:** Hmm.

[00:09:22] **Andrew Lloyd Gordon:** offices, there's a lot of chat, there's a lot of conversation, there's a lot of back and forwards, a lot of movement. And as a manager you might look at that and go, this is not productive. Now this is what, again, this, this difficulty we have with hybrid working is. That interaction that people are having where they're laughing with each other, where they're joking, where they're teasing each other, where they are asking questions face to face, that's what you'd call culture. That's what you can't actually put on an organizational chart.

You can't, you can't see that. You can't touch that. It's the culture of the organization. Ideally, as a manager and as a leader, you are developing a positive workplace culture where people are engaged and they're enthusiastic and they're hardworking, that, that culture is incredibly difficult to maintain when people are working from home. If people are on their own. In their back bedroom, at the kitchen table, whatever it is. They might be productive. Like you say, you know, they're getting through their work, they're getting through their inbox, but they can end up being isolated. They're not getting the banter and now. one of the things we have to be really careful about, 'cause my, my banter can be your, you know, um, unpleasant comment or something.

So we have to be careful what you mean by banter. But you, you lose the human touch. So let's say, I think hybrid working offers, organizations that flexibility that we need people in the office. build the culture. We need people in the office to get to know each other, to rely on each other, to build friendships, but we also need to give them space and time to go and work from home like you where they can be incredibly, uh, productive and focused and get a lot done.

So that, that is a real tension I think, from organizations is if you leave people exclusively working from home, they can end up feeling isolated. They're not part of the team. There's, there's also something else called, have you heard of proximity Bias?

[00:11:11] **Scott:** I've heard of it, but you will be able to explain it better than me.

[00:11:15] **Andrew Lloyd Gordon:** Well, this idea that

[00:11:17] **Scott:** I.

[00:11:17] **Andrew Lloyd Gordon:** tend to unsurprisingly know and like people that we spend the most time with. And if you are manager, and this is something that's some research around that, people who tend to be in the office more tend to get the promotions, they tend to get the, you know, they get the best, best projects.

They get the new projects, they get the exciting stuff. Primarily because they were in the office when it came in, and maybe the manager said, anybody got some time to take this on? And a hand goes up in the, in the open plan office. So the proximity bias is something if you're working from home all the time, you, you might find that you're not getting some of those exciting new things happening because you just weren't physically there when, when it came in. There is some research as well that people who tend to work from home actually have a slower progression on the career ladder. So what happens in, in organizations is, and I'm sure people know this,

[00:12:08] **Scott:** I.

[00:12:08] **Andrew Lloyd Gordon:** be going down to make a coffee and there's a copy of your colleagues having a bit of a sort of secretive chat. And you go you side along and go, Hey guys, what, what are you chatting about?

Well, you, you overhear something and they'll say, oh, have you heard that? And there's a new project starting, there's a new team being created. There's a new job role being created. And you pick it up like by osmosis. I. And

[00:12:32] **Scott:** Yeah.

[00:12:32] **Andrew Lloyd Gordon:** who are in the office will hear about maybe an opportunity, they'll hear about a new job, they'll hear about a new project by accident if you like. you are working from home the first time, well guess, guess when you would hear about that new job? If you only working from home. When? When do you think you might?

[00:12:48] **Scott:** When it's too late

[00:12:49] **Andrew Lloyd Gordon:** yeah. Or they put it out on the company newsletter, you know, like

[00:12:52] **Scott:** Hmm.

[00:12:52] **Andrew Lloyd Gordon:** new, new opening. And if they send it round, one of the sort of round robin emails. But by that time, the person who is in the office probably has already, you know, made themselves known. They've talked to the manager, they've talked to the team to say, you know, I'd be really interested, and they're ahead of you.

So I'd say some the research suggests that people who are ex exclusively working from home, they're actually on a slower career path. But ironically, they're more productive, like you said, because they're getting things done.

[00:13:19] **Scott:** There's potentially a bit of a double whammy there, isn't there? Because the, the potential slow progression for people in their career, plus those people who are exclusively working from home and excluded from that culture will feel disengaged potentially.

They will feel not part of the team. And we saw that. And in terms of actually impacting mental health as well, didn't, we saw that during covid, didn't we? Where people suddenly lost that. That environment that they were so used to where they would have those water cooler conversations, where they would be with people who are friends, where you actually had to, you know, just sat on a screen most of the day and then we'd get into the whole presenteeism, right?

I've gotta have that green dot and show 'I'm online. Or people are gonna think, I'm not working, I daren't go make a coffee or go to the toilet. But you absolutely did that when you're in the office. We know that people's mental health was affected a lot by that, so it feels like a double whammy potentially for those people.

Now, not everybody, don't get me wrong. There are some people who. Prefer to not be in that environment. And it isn't one size fits all. They actually prefer a bit to be more isolated. They may, that just may be how they work, how they tick, but there's definitely gonna be a negative impact for some people in terms of that, that mental health side.

[00:14:35] **Andrew Lloyd Gordon:** Yeah, COVID changed everything in so many ways in our, in our society. And Covid was one of those sort of epoch. There's like pre covid and post covid, before when people had to go into workplace, they had. You know, that social interaction then they had to be at home when they were isolated. It impacted a lot of people's emotional health and, and mental health, and many people are still suffering from that experience. we've done, I think, is for many organizations, oh, people like working from home. They are productive at home. Let's keep it without, and this is probably what we're talking about today without examining how we do this, and I think many organizations I talk to and work with, hybrid stuff is ad hoc. some organizations have got policies in place, some organizations have thought it through. Many organizations have sort of stumbled into this and, oh, Helen, she sometimes works from home. John never does. You know, Dave over there does a bit here and there, and, and the hybrid policy is, is a little bit messy. So what you can end up with is that some people who really should be in the office more aren't, and vice versa. and if you think about, as I, as I mentioned, workplaces are often for many people, their main social interaction that they get in their lives. They, you know, you, you probably know the statistics that many people meet their, their spouse, their partner through work. Um, one of the key questions when you ask an employee engagement is, do you have a friend at work? It's really important you have somebody or some people that you feel at least friendly towards at work, but what we've done since Covid many organizations is we now have this messy hybrid thing, and we're talking about things like trust.

In terms of trust, I think that a lot of, uh, managers think that employees aren't productive.

In the research, Microsoft did a, a survey in, in, in 2022, most employees. Think they are productive. So you've got this gap, this trust gap that managers don't think that employees are as productive as they should be, and employees think they are being super productive. You then mix into that this, this person's at home, uh, are they working, are they effective? And you mentioned the green dot, making sure that you, there's even software that managers and companies can have that track key, key strokes. Have you have you come across this?

[00:16:53] **Scott:** I've heard of it. Yeah. I mean it's down to what we define as product productivity, isn't it? And this is something that I'm quite strong on when I'm working with clients is you can be productive, you can produce stuff, but I. It can deliver no value. If you're just typing or producing reports or you are writing loads of emails, is that adding value to your customers?

So actually, if you know, hands on keyboard, and I worked with, I used to manage software developers, and it's not about the amount of code that you write, it's about the. Solution that you deliver at the end and the less code you write, frankly, the better, actually, from a technical perspective is less chance of bugs and things go wrong.

So I think managers need to understand what they mean when they say being productive, and how do they interpret what productive productivity is? Is it just producing stuff of no value or is it producing stuff that makes a difference? And yeah, if you, your employees in the office typing stuff just 'cause they feel they have to versus at home solving a problem that actually is gonna deliver a load of value to the company I know, which I would choose.

[00:17:59] **Andrew Lloyd Gordon:** Yeah. You know, we come back to the same issues very often is that as a manager, as a leader, you should ideally have is a value map. You know, what do we do as a team, as a business, as a department that adds value? What is that process? What is that? System that we have. We have internal processes, we've got external processes, we've got internal stakeholders, external stakeholders, and ideally what you've done is you've mapped that out a manager, you're trying to make that process as efficient. The danger is, and this is something we've seen since. Taylorism and Frederick Taylor. Um, there's this idea what's called Taylorism, where it was the old, um, time and motion guys. I, I remember my dad years ago talked about that he remembered somebody coming to his workplace and they, this guy had a clipboard and the guy was watching what they did.

My, my dad worked in engineering and they, he watched what these guys did and, and timed them, and that's what was known as, or still is known as Taylorism. So a lot of managers. Like you mentioned, expect that just because somebody's in the office, physically in the office, tapping away at the keyboard, they are productive. But if you don't understand what the value process is as, as a team, you can't tell what is productive or not. So people tend to be busy. So we as a manager, when we talk about this hybrid working, is which parts of the process lend themselves to being in the office? which, which stuff that we do needs people to be face to face. Which stuff do we do is better done at home, or at least if we don't want people at home or when some people don't wanna be at home. I mean, if you've got a very small house, you haven't got a lot of room. people resent. I remember during Covid, people resent having to give up some of their. You know, if

[00:19:44] **Scott:** Hmm.

[00:19:44] **Andrew Lloyd Gordon:** apartment or something for work, I've gotta find somewhere for work.

So yeah, giving people that flexibility is key. But as a manager is working out what's best when people should be together what's best, where if they want to be, they can be working from home we've not touched upon this in a coffee shop. Um, did you see there was something I saw on the news, I think it was today.

Um, or was it on LinkedIn? Um, pub working? Did you see this?

[00:20:10] **Scott:** No, I haven't. I haven't seen this. We've moved on from coffee shops.

[00:20:15] **Andrew Lloyd Gordon:** yeah, it was, it was, I think it was one of those A boards, those chalk, a boards. They put outside pubs and it was a pub somewhere. I can't, I should find where it was. And it was 15 pounds a day. Fast wifi, a lunch and a place to type in the pub.

We can't have everybody working from home and we may, may not have the space anymore to have everybody in the office, how do we. How do we sort of meet everybody in, in the right place? What's best face-to-face? What's less working from home? The thing I'd, I'd emphasize though, is if you are, and some companies do this, you're trying to cut costs by getting people work from home, you are losing the human element. You are losing that face to face interpersonal relationship stuff, and that is something you won't see on a, a spreadsheet. You, you cannot calculate that. You, you can, you can guarantee it's gonna affect your business. It's going to make your team less, less cohesive. You're gonna, you know, break down relationships rather than build them up. So there's also a point, I think, as a manager, where you say, you know what, it might be more productive to be at home, from the team perspective, we should spend a bit more time like you did face to face. And

[00:21:28] **Scott:** Yeah.

[00:21:28] **Andrew Lloyd Gordon:** a real tricky act to, to pull off, isn't it?

[00:21:32] **Scott:** Yeah. Well then you're into logistics like, well, Fridays don't work for Sandra, but they do for Ryan. And depending on team size and logistics, you know, then we get into, well, could the meeting happen? In both online and in the office. The technology's there to help with that. But is it quite the same? You know, you don't get those social cues, you don't see other people's faces and expressions, and we miss out on a lot of that if we're not physically present, don't we?

So again, I don't think there's any right or wrong. It is a tricky one. There's just pros or cons, isn't there? And it's about trying to balance that in the way that, as you've said, works for. The employees, but also the the employer, and that is the tricky situation, I think will never please everybody.

[00:22:23] **Andrew Lloyd Gordon:** Yeah. I think the first step for me, if I was gonna advise any, any business that was interested in this is, is, is map out the, the experience as it is. As I said before, I think a lot of organizations maybe don't have a clear view on what their hybrid working actually is. a general feeling that somebody goes at work from home sometimes as a general.

So having that mapped out I think is a really healthy step. I think agreeing some boundaries. Around what do we have in-house and face-to-face? What do we do? Um, hybrid, making sure there's some sort of rituals, you know, having meetings that always start with five minutes before where we, we just chat before we jump in.

I, I've, I've worked with clients where they are literally clicking from one teams meeting straight into the next one

[00:23:07] **Scott:** Yeah. And the, the cognitive impact of context switch before exactly that. I, you would, you would generally have a walk if you had meetings back to back, you in the office would still maybe have a, a brief walk to the next office rather than being in the same office. You still get that small. Disconnect.

And we haven't touched on, I mentioned it earlier, we haven't touched on the, the commute and the impact that has pros and cons

[00:23:31] **Andrew Lloyd Gordon:** Yes.

[00:23:31] **Scott:** being able to switch off and work when you leave. Um, but yeah, you're right. It can literally be from one thing to the next. Click, click, click, and you've just spent all day sat in front of a screen.

[00:23:41] **Andrew Lloyd Gordon:** I, I, I have, I've got, I've got people I work with. They are, they are on a teams meeting back to back. One after the other. The number of people that tell me I was, I was talking to somebody the other day, she literally has a team meeting on in the background with on mute, and then she gets on, she goes the camera off.

Some meetings they insist camera's on, but she's actually typing away, doing something else while the team's meeting is running. She's got to be seen to be in the meeting, but she's not listening. She's not even got a camera on

[00:24:11] **Scott:** And I like to think, what would that be? What would that be like in the real office then? And actually in the meeting, this person's just physically the equivalent of completely disengaged. I'm just gonna type, I'm gonna make some phone calls. You know, it's the same with people with their cameras off in meetings.

That's like going into a meeting and then putting a bag over your head and not looking at anybody.

[00:24:30] **Andrew Lloyd Gordon:** Excellent. Well, there are meetings where people go in and they, they are, I was, again, I was at a meeting not so long ago where there was somebody just typing away and he completely wasn't interested in the meeting. He was just getting on with his work because he'd been told he had to be in the meeting. So, as I say, I think you need to have those boundaries. You need to be clear, map that hybrid working process out, have an open discussion with your. Your team. I think as well, people will, will want to resist coming into the office and there are people very, very strong. They don't wanna come in, they don't wanna make the effort to come in. And I think that you, you wanna make it worthwhile coming to the office. You want to make coming into the office an enjoyable, positive experience because like you said, if I'm gonna have to sit in traffic for an hour or more, delayed trains getting around the M 25. Roadworks, potholes, et cetera. Boy, oh boy, it has to be worth me coming in. you might go, it's your job, you're supposed to come in, but what you're doing is you're now giving people, like you said before, COVID, you didn't have a choice. You had to go in Monday to Friday, nine to five. Now I know what it's like to be at home and I can work from home, and you've dragged me in to sit on a teams meeting.

[00:25:41] **Scott:** If they see no value, as you've said, they're like, well, why would I come into the office to then sit on a video call actually, if they can come in? Because the culture benefits them, because the environment benefits where actually we do need to work on this physically as a team together.

We'd need to get around a whiteboard or some post-it notes and. Really work this out and maybe go and sit with customers and experience the customer experience. You know, there is a danger of getting disassociated even more from your customers, depending on the nature of work and getting disassociated from your, colleagues, which is again, the risk that we're talking about.

shall we wrap up with some, some final tips for people to summarize?

[00:26:21] **Andrew Lloyd Gordon:** I think the first thing is to acknowledge that this is the world we live in. It's not gonna go back to the pre covid times. Yes, there's some organizations pushing people back to come into the office, but this is the way it is now. So. Just, we have to get used to it, but we have to get better at it. So as I said, I think you need to map out that hybrid experience, understand who's doing what, where people are mapping out what is good being in the office and what is not. people that flexibility, but also emphasizing to people why you want them to come in. It's not just the fact you wanna see them, see them working at a keyboard. You wanna do something face-to-face that you cannot do, um, virtually. But

[00:27:02] **Scott:** Yeah.

[00:27:02] **Andrew Lloyd Gordon:** do run virtual meetings, make them as human as possible. Giving people the space at the start just to gasp, you know, and just to talk to each other. Having the very effective meeting. And then maybe five minutes at the end just chatting again, try and make them more human experiences, even if they are virtual.

[00:27:19] **Scott:** Also thinking about the, those employees who do work from home most of the time actually as a manager, to just check in with them. You know, don't have to only have a call with them because there's something to talk about with work. There's a danger that they really become disengaged. So actually have a regular check in.

Just check in how you're doing. Is there anything I can help you with? Is there anything you need from me? Talk about the weather. You know, talk about how things are and because it's very easy to not see. The things that you might see in an office, especially as a leader, if somebody's struggling, if someone's looking a bit stressed out, if you're not seeing them in that office and they're at home hardly with their cameras on you, don't know what's going on.

So I think it's important to remember to make those check-ins as well. If you can't physically get them into the office as often as you'd like, or they want to come in.

[00:28:09] **Andrew Lloyd Gordon:** I think that's a really good point. Just the fact that you haven't heard from somebody doesn't mean they're okay.

Thank you for listening to the Work Unraveled podcast. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to subscribe to the show so you don't miss the next one. 

[00:28:22] **Scott:** If you'd like Andrew or me to help you or your business, whether it is for team productivity, leadership, coaching, or communication skills, our website addresses are in the show notes.

Thanks, and until the next time.