Trust your people and they will reward you

A recent CIPD report has found that 80,000 employees or 3% of the workforce have left jobs in Scotland because of return to office policies. I simply don't understand why creating a vacancy and recruiting and onboarding a brand new member is staff is preferable to supporting a person to work remotely.

But employers are still mandating days in the office.

Early in my career, pre personal computers, let alone laptops, working from home in the kind of roles I did back then simply wasn't feasible. Commuting and office life was the default. It took me a long time to let go of the assumption that if you weren't in the office you were skiving. But what I learned in those early international marketing jobs was that you could form a sense of team, even if people weren't in the same room as you.

Later on, when I got to CLIC Sargent and most of my staff were based in our charity shops, in regional offices around the UK, working in multi-disciplinary teams in hospitals and not in the same office as me, I inherited a lot of flexible working patterns and it really woke me up to the fact that if you trust your staff to get their work done well and on time, but are relaxed about exactly when and where they are working, they reward you time and time again with commitment and loyalty. Everybody wins.

And this was well before the pandemic which should have taught us about how adaptable we can be about ways of working.

So I really do encourage employers to hold back from mandating specific work patterns. Even the word mandates should be rethought. Employers that are ordering their staff to comply have already lost trust.

I helped facilitate a really interesting meeting yesterday with some colleagues as part of the Resource Alliance Peer Leadership programme. I would have been even more use if my internet hadn't decided to down tools for the first fifteen minutes of the meeting.

We spent a lot of time in the check in at the beginning of the meeting with people sharing what was going on for them at the moment - people grappling with new roles, uncertainty, and feeling tired. Change and anxiety were common themes yet people were scoring themselves 7s and 8s out of 10 when they’d just described some really difficult stuff.

People who work in our sector really are optimists!

Useful links 🔗

The UK government recently announced a ban on non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) used to cover up workplace harassment and abuse. Good.

Day of the Week 📆

It is 40 years since Live Aid.

They didn't invite us to Live Aid so we did our own thing.

What am I reading? 📚

I've just started Bob Dylan's Chronicles: Volume One.

I love this quote:

Happiness isn’t on the road to anything... happiness is the road.

Bob Dylan's grandma ❤️

What am I watching? 👀

We've been enjoying Shifty. Our recent political and social history brilliantly told through edits of 80s footage spliced and juxtaposed. It's really good.

What am I listening to?👂

Ezra Collective were one of this year's Glastonbury-from-my-sofa highlights.

God gave me feet for dancing.

Joy-giving things 😍

Have a great weekend, everyone

Lucy

If it’s your first time reading this newsletter, find out more about me here.

I write this newsletter because I believe in sharing ideas that help us work towards a truly equal world, particularly in the workplace.

Share it with your friends so they can read it too 📣

ChangeOut is created by Lucy Caldicott. You can find more about my work at ChangeOut.org. If you’re looking to have a chat about culture, leadership, purpose, equity, or a facilitated team discussion about any of those things, get in touch. You can also find me on Bluesky, Instagram, and, LinkedIn.

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