Microsoft Stories Podcast: Season 2, episode 5 – Here’s how you can work flexibly, have an impact on your team and keep your boss happy
Hello and welcome to episode five of Microsoft Stories, a podcast about technology and the people who use it. I’m your host Katie Gale, Philanthropies Co-ordinator at Microsoft UK.
In this episode I will be chatting to Nick Hedderman, Director of Modern Work and Security Business Group at Microsoft UK, about how the UK is coping with going back to the office.
I want to find out how he makes flexible working work for him and his team, how to have great meetings no matter where you are and what he really thinks about companies forcing staff back into the office.
Click the play button and join us on our journey.
Episode transcript
Katie Gale
Hi Nick, it’s lovely to have you here with me today.
Nick Hedderman
Thank you for having me.
Katie Gale
I’m just going to kick straight off. Where are you working from today?
Nick Hedderman
Well, I am currently sat in my home office, but this week is looking pretty flexible and variable to be honest, there’s always something new and exciting around the corner, and no matter when I look at my calendar it changes every day.
Katie Gale
Where did you work pre-pandemic? Was it a split between working from home and working in the office?
Nick Hedderman
Well, Microsoft has always been a hybrid workplace. In fact, before the pandemic, the locations that I would typically work in reflected the type of work that I was trying to get done. That might have been travelling internationally or within the UK, meeting with customers or our partners, working from our offices when I wanted to interact and connect with my colleagues. Equally, also working from home when I needed to get things done, so I think it really depended on what I wanted to achieve.
Katie Gale and Nick Hedderman
Katie Gale
So, this flexible working scenario that we’re starting to go into now doesn’t sound that different to what you experienced before.
Nick Hedderman
It wasn’t. The only major change is there’s perhaps more permission and recognition for the different types of locations depending on the task in hand. For example, getting stuff done, I personally find is better done at home.
There should be no feeling of guilt spending a day working from home knowing that the outcome is going to probably be higher and impactful, but equally in terms of connecting with people and getting a sense of shared community and really coming together with purpose, that role is much better served in a physical location.
Katie Gale
Talking about locations, where is the strangest place that you’ve had to work from during the pandemic?
Nick Hedderman
I wouldn’t necessarily say it was strange, but I certainly took advantage of my 4G-connected Surface Laptop during the summer months and took great pleasure from sitting in the garden to enjoy a bit of fresh air. That was certainly enjoyable. But more recently, now we’re back to a little bit more of an in-person connection, I’m finding that just being able to use my phone connected to Teams, with my earphones in means I can take meetings from pretty much anywhere. In fact, just a few weeks ago I was doing a full meeting with video on in the back of a taxi in London and it worked just great.
Katie Gale
I do think it’s fantastic. Just being able to just dial into a call while out on a walk. For me, that was a really nice thing to be able to do – a one-to-one with my manager while on a walk.
Nick Hedderman
Where’s the strangest place you’ve worked from, Katie?
Katie Gale
I was thinking about this before we got onto the call and I don’t actually think there’s anywhere particularly strange. I’ve worked from Paddington train station, just sat waiting for trains, trying to work among busy commuters and people visiting London. But other than that I don’t think I’ve worked anywhere particularly unusual.
Nick Hedderman
That’s the challenge ahead. You’ve got to find the weirdest place.
Katie Gale
Yes, I think that’s my goal – to try and find somewhere really unusual. How do you understand where and how your team is working every day?
Nick Hedderman
Well, the first thing I’d say is I actually don’t have any issue where people work. It’s not about where they’re located. It’s about the outcome. It’s about the impact that they’re having. If they’re trying to get their heads down and working on some deep Excel analysis and they find that being at home with a large monitor or in a nice quiet environment is the best place to do that, then great. I have no expectation about the team necessarily being in a particular place, but I would say there’s some things we’ve done to make it easier to bump into each other because that’s one of the challenges when people are increasingly working in the way that they want.
We’ve got this fantastic PowerApp that someone built internally within Microsoft just to signal at the start of each week where you’re going to be. We can all see our planned locations for the week ahead. I was looking at it just a few minutes before we joined this call and I can see who’s going to be in certain officers on which day. And I can do the same for my team so they know, if they want to come talk to me in person, where I’m going to be. That helps to put a little bit more structure around the serendipity of being together.
Then the other thing I’d say is we’re quite planful about when we do come together. Our motto in our team is about being digital first, but together with purpose. So we really make sure that the times when we’re making the effort are very well structured and very well planned. We have a monthly team meeting, it’s a full day and we make real effort in thinking about: what’s our agenda? What’s the preparation required? How do we really get the most out of that time? How do we leave a little bit of time at the start and the end so people can go off and do one-on-one meetings in person and take advantage of being in the same location together. So, there’s a lot of thought that goes into that.
I think that that purpose-driven physical meetings are so important.
However, individuals are going to have to really start thinking about the selfless act that they need to do in order to benefit the greater good. That may well mean that while it might be more convenient for me to work from home for a couple more days that week, I’m going to make the effort, I’m going to get in the car, I’m going to get on the train, I’m going to go to that location because I know my peers and colleagues are going to be there and the subsequent outcome is a lot richer.
Katie Gale
Yeah, I think that’s so valuable. I know you mentioned a recent meeting that you did in the back of a taxi. Are there any other examples of recent meetings that went really well and that potentially were hybrid?
Nick Hedderman
I think my team meeting is a good example. We will always try to be together in person, but it’s not always an option for everyone. There may be reasons why they need to be working remotely, and in that case there’s always a Teams meeting set up and we turn that on at the start of the meeting.
One of the things we make sure is we’re using the right technology to make the meeting inclusive, so we’ll either use a Surface Hub or we’ll go into one of our meeting facilities that has a Teams room set up. The beauty of that is you have then got great audio and video feeds for those people who are attending remotely and they can really see and hear and immerse themselves in the conversation.
Having a clear agenda helps, with a moderator. Ideally, that moderator is not the person leading the meeting, because they can then help to facilitate, check the chat window, look for digital raised hands, make sure that the people online are really included in the room and vice versa.
Essentially you have one inclusive meeting where everyone feels equal, everyone can contribute and you can focus on the agenda.
Then get really clear about the actions to follow up. Take those notes, record them in OneNote, publish them out afterwards, and get on with the particular things that you agreed from that meeting.
Katie Gale
Definitely. You mentioned Teams as one tool for hybrid working. Are there any other tools that you’ve discovered that have worked really well for your team?
Nick Hedderman
Microsoft Teams is very much at the heart of the way we operate as a team. It really is that canvas to help you work synchronously and asynchronously to support those people in the room and those people who are remote. It does so many things, it helps you to meet, it helps you to chat, it helps you to collaborate, it also helps you to automate workflows as well. Some of the things that we’ve really focused on is thinking about the way we structure our channels. We only have seven of them. They’re designed around the things we focus on in our business. We publish stuff as we’re going along. We share information. But when we want people to take action, we make sure we @ mention people. That’s sort of the Teams etiquette of working out loud, but @ mentioning for action.
We also integrate apps into the flow of our work within Teams, so we bring our OneNotes into the different channels or the different teams.
We also use Microsoft Planner, which is a great way to keep a track of the different actions that need to get done. Again, that’s integrated into the flow of our work. We’re increasingly using Microsoft Viva now. It’s launched and in the market. It’s a fantastic tool, thinking about the learning we want to achieve as a team some of the insights into how we’re operating and working together. It’s a lovely way to be able to understand the interconnectedness of the individuals within the team – How we’re sharing things, how we’re getting stuff done, and some of the trends around the way in which we work, which is a great way to be able to optimise the way we can evolve.
Katie Gale
Yeah, I think that’s so important so you don’t miss messages. If people don’t @ me, half the time they get lost. I think there are some tips there that I’m going to take forward.
When you speak to organisations, what do they say their biggest flexible working challenges are?
Nick Hedderman
One of the key themes I hear is how do I trust my people to get stuff done. Actually, we’ve seen the that over the last couple of years, especially in the UK, people have seen their productivity has either stayed the same or increased. 84% of people in our recent survey said that was the case.
But I think that if you’re just myopically focused on hours worked and location, you’re missing the trick. Actually, a lot of success and quality of impact comes from believing in a greater purpose of the organisation – being a purpose-led organisation with a great culture that supports people to do their best work and work in teams and work flexibly, depending on what they’re trying to achieve, is really at the heart of it. So, if you’re going to give people that flexibility and if you’re going to create a culture that’s purpose-driven and allows people to flourish and thrive, you’ve got to be able to look at data to give you some confidence that that was the right choice.
As a leader, that’s the number one thing that we hear: help me measure how people are working and to look at some of the trends. Not individual level performance because that starts to bring in the question about privacy, and privacy is ultimately a human right. We believe that and the technology is designed in a way to support that. But looking for the trends in the organisation. So if I give people more flexibility, does that allow for better forms of communication, better forms of outcome?
Katie Gale
How can organisations roll out hybrid working?
Nick Hedderman
There are a few things to think about. Number one: role modelling and leadership is absolutely critical. If managers and leaders don’t lead the way and demonstrate what this new way of working is going to look and feel like, then others will simply not follow and they won’t have the permission to do that. So I say that’s probably the most critical thing for organisations to think about.
The policies around their people and what they’re going to do to be able to support them in this new way of working.
They need to think about the place of work and how the office evolves to be a more inspirational place to come together to connect, to brainstorm, to be creative, not necessarily just sat there at a desk doing email or having remote meetings.
Think through the processes that support this new hybrid way of working. Especially tasks that can be automated, more regular tasks. I think that’s really important.
Think about technology and how technology can be an enabler for this new way of working, and think about how you digitally weave all of these scenarios together. Whether it’s synchronous or asynchronous, in person or remote, having a team agreement is another thing I would highly recommend. Sit down as a group and think about what you do together. How do you get stuff done? How are you going to work? What are the ways you’re going to work. and also encourage teams to think about some of the selfless acts that they need to make in order to help the team.
Finally, I would say experimentation is so critical right now. The way in which we’re going to work today will feel different tomorrow because we’re going to learn, we’re going to experiment. We’re going to try new things, and like any good scientist, to be able to experiment you need to have a hypothesis.
You need to then have a way to measure the experiment and then you need to be able to take that data, those insights and use them to shape and hone. So I think the final thing I’d say is just go in open-minded, experiment, learn and enjoy the journey.
Katie Gale
Open and honest communication between leaders and their employees sounds like the real key here.
Nick Hedderman
Yeah, there’s got to be a conversation. If you just start dictating, “you must be in the office these particular days a week”, it has no buy-in to empower people to work how, when and where they want, knowing at times they might have to be selfless in in the act of what they do.
A lot of bosses are worrying about staff being productive, but how do you use these tools of measurement to ensure that your team are being productive?
Katie Gale
I think like talking about it like an experiment, it feels spot on. It’s new to a lot of people. For myself, I’m early in career, so flexible working is something that I’ve never done before, so it’s a whole new experience for me. And I also think that health and wellbeing is an increasing priority for a lot of staff today, especially post-COVID.
What do you do to encourage your team to take care of themselves and create a positive work-life balance?
Nick Hedderman
It’s a really important question and I think every leader should be asking that right now – how do I make sure that my people aren’t burning out? We’ve seen it in the data. We’ve seen an increase in working between the hours of 8am and 9am, and equally in the evenings as well from 5pm onwards. The commute has, in many cases, been replaced with work.
I would recommend thinking about the length of meetings. Just a simple act of changing a half an hour meeting to 25 minutes or an hour-long meeting to 50 minutes is a really good practise. It gives people a chance to have a break in between meetings, and there’s scientific data to show that if you give people breaks, the stress on the brain significantly reduces versus someone who’s got back-to-back things in their calendar. Encourage walking meetings with video turned off, and give people access to their own data so they can come to the conclusion about how they’re working. Are they feeling overworked, are there other ways they could block time in their calendar so they can have some time to get stuff done, decompress and understand their own feelings. Encourage them to be more mindful about the way they approach work.
Katie Gale
It’s also important for bosses to look after themselves, too. How do you make work work for you?
Nick Hedderman
I feel like I’m empowered to design my work week in a way that works both for the business and for my personal life.
I’ve got a young family, three kids under the age of four. I make sure that I don’t have any meetings before 9am, so I can be present for getting them up and ready, breakfast, and off to whatever different activity they’ve got for the day.
Equally, I really respect the hours between 5pm and 7pm, so I can pick them up and feed them and get them into bed, and be part of their daily routine. In some cases that means I do work in the evening, but I’m very comfortable with that and that’s my own contract with myself. I always respect my own weekends, Friday night, Saturday and Sunday to make sure I’m recharging myself for the week ahead.
Katie Gale
Last question, Nick. What advice would you give to people navigating this new way of working?
Nick Hedderman
Knowing that it’s going to be an experiment and that you’re not necessarily going to get it right to start with is a good mindset. You then have to get everyone in the organisation comfortable with that because change can always be uncomfortable.
Taking people on a journey and explaining that some of these things may not work is the second thing. But be really open minded to the fact you’ve got permission to reimagine this new world of work. The changes that people are going to make in the next few months and years are going to really shape the way that people work for decades to come. People are going to be looking for a workplace that has this level of flexibility and they are empowered to do their best work with a culture and a purpose that really drives them. That matters for attraction of great talent and retention of great talent, and it ultimately matters for business outcomes. Organisations with highly engaged employees have a 21% greater level of profitability.
Katie Gale
It sounds like it benefits everyone. Thank you so much, Nick, for having this conversation with me. It was so knowledgeable and I’ve learned so much about flexible working, and I’m sure all of our listeners have, too.
Nick Hedderman
Thank you, Katie, for having me.
Katie Gale
I’m afraid that’s all the time we have for today. Thanks for listening and make sure you look out for the next episode of Microsoft Stories soon. Bye for now.