Working styles are something we get asked about a lot by Stribe customers, and we work closely with many of them to develop employee voice surveys that allow them to create really effective flexible policies.
But there seems to be an enduring debate across industries, between employers and employees about what’s the best solution…
Well, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. So we’d advise you to ignore the noise and focus on finding what works best for your team by using surveys.
Let us show you how.
Watch on-demand ▶️
Stribe’s COO Lucy Harvey joined MLP Law for an in-depth conversation about the back to office debate. Watch it on Spotify.
It wouldn’t be fair to offer advice about how to find the best working style for your team without first sharing how we do it here at Stribe!
Pre-pandemic our team was 5 days a week, 8:30am – 5:00pm working from the office.
But – like most organisations in the UK – the pandemic forced us to make some really quick, really big, and really brave decisions.
During the pandemic the team all worked from home and we introduced core hours of 10:00am – 2:00pm. What that meant is that everyone had to be online and available during these hours, but outside of those times it was up to each individual team member when they completed their work. Start early or finish late – totally up to you!
As restrictions eased, we re-opened a Manchester-based office space for those that wanted a more traditional office, but most of our team have remained remote and WFH – and that’s how we have worked ever since.
We have quarterly catch-ups where the whole team come together. And if there are in-person days needed, then we organise those. It works for us!
The key for us is making sure that we have super clear company objectives, and everyone knows how their role contributes to those objectives. Supporting all of that is a strong set of values and expectations that help us to grow and innovate.
Flexibility and feedback are key when choosing the best working set-up for your team – because it will differ with each organisation.
Let’s be very realistic – if (for example) your employees feel that they are performing their greatest work by being 100% remote, then creating a return to office policy that doesn’t align to their values will impact their engagement and they will begin to consider options elsewhere – ultimately affecting your employee retention.
Similarly, if employees feel they need an office space to collaborate face-to-face, but don’t have that option, they will also look elsewhere – so it is important to find a balance for everyone and communicate the changes effectively.
Surveys are your number one tool to help you do this.
Surveys help you keep your finger on the pulse of what everyone in your team is thinking while allowing for employees to anonymously share feedback, which results in more accurate and detailed feedback for you to work with.
The first place to begin is understanding your employees both in terms of what their own feedback and preferences are, but also their workforce characteristics and how that will influence working styles, engagement factors and what they look for in incentives.
Whether those characteristics come from job roles, generations, geographic location, worksite type, or all the above – your strategy needs to respect and address each perspective. Here are a few key areas you want to be considering:
Overall readiness to change
Processes and communications
Preferences for flexible working
Experience with remote or hybrid working
Health, safety, and wellbeing
Generational preferences
Disabilities, parents and carers needs
The great thing about taking an approach like this is that it really signals you’re prepared to hear employees’ feedback, which instantly creates a culture where employees feel that you’re really listening to their needs and feel comfortable speaking up.
Creating that listening culture will help you not only create a smooth transition to your working style, but also help you support employees with anything that may crop up going forwards.
If you’re starting to think about changing the way how your team works, there are a few key things to keep in mind. These steps will help you make any changes you’re planning a positive experience that uses employee voice as the foundation.
Continuously listen to the feedback of your employees
Ask for your employees’ feedback and genuinely listen to what they say. Getting thoughts and feedback from your employees will help you learn more about their preferences for working styles.Surveys are a great way to begin building that dialogue with employees about the changes you’re creating. Not only will this give you insights into their concerns and challenges, but it will also establish trust.
It’s essential you use an anonymous survey to collect the feedback so that employees share accurate and detailed insights with you. If you don’t do this, you run the risk of your new working policy not being reflective of what employees need and this will impact employee engagement.
To get started, your first survey should give you an idea of your overall employee engagement and their views on remote, hybrid or office working.
Align your questions with what your organisation wants to achieve and what your goals are for it long term.
This will give you the ability to repeat that survey over time to understand how your employees are feeling through any changes and beyond. You can use your first survey as a benchmark to help you see where you’re improving. After that make sure you continue to communicate, measure, action and improve!
For your ongoing surveys make sure you can segment and focus on lower-scoring areas so that you can target your focus and action-planning on those. Segmenting employee feedback data by teams, working locations, job level (e.g. manager), and working arrangements will help you better understand which areas need a little more focus.
Finally (and most importantly), only ask survey questions if you are able to act on them. If you can’t change your working environment, or you don’t have the budget to invest in new technology, then don’t ask those questions; your employees may become disheartened and disengaged if nothing happens as a result of their feedback.
Adopt a transparent approach
If you are making decisions about returning to the office, you need to be transparent about your reasons why. Share the what, as well as the why, behind your decisions.
With a few simple explanations, you can reassure people and help them understand the organisation’s reasons. Even if they disagree, they will have the information they need to move forward. There are a number of different reasons you can present. For example:
Never stop communicating openly
Make sure you have a thorough communications plan when you begin planning and rolling out any changes to your working policy.
Map out all your communications channels (e.g. internal messaging platforms, team meetings, internal newsletters) and make sure messaging is clear and reaching all employees affected.
If you’re encouraging people back to the office, those who are wary of coming back to the office will wonder why it’s necessary – especially if things have run well for the past few years. It’s important you’re honest and upfront about why you want to welcome employees back.
That level of honesty will reassure employees and help them understand why you’re making changes or introducing a new policy. And that it’s something that you see real value in, rather than something you’re doing to make their lives more difficult.
Communication around such a significant change needs to be something that’s woven into the fabric of your everyday. Make sure that you’re frequently updating employees on how it’s going, reminding them of the guardrails, and gathering additional feedback via surveys to adapt and identify groups that need extra support if needed.
Once you have a good understanding of the demographics within your teams and what their values and preferences look like, you can then layer in the employee feedback you gather from surveys to create a set of tailored incentives and benefits.
Some examples incentives we have seen work well include:
All of these have been tailored around some of the most common concerns for employees, or the priorities of employees. Doing that piece of work first to understand your employees’ unique values and preferences will help you shape a work environment that your employees enjoy spending time in.
At Stribe we’re all about bringing teams together, whether they’re in the same building or on different continents. We specialise in employee surveys for remote, hybrid and dispersed teams.
