HSBC plans to cut its ‘global office footprint’ by 40% by requiring its staff to work from home. Is this strictly true? Their employees will still be expected to sit at a desk, with a computer and a telephone – it’s just that the office, computer and phone are in the employee’s home and not in the office of HSBC.
This will be a massive cost reduction for HSBC in terms of rents, building maintenance and business rates, as well as cleaning staff, canteen savings, and window cleaning.
Lloyds Bank has been less prescriptive telling its staff that they can choose where to work. But it expects 80% will opt to stay at home at least part of the time.
What I want to know is exactly who wants to work at home and who wants to go to the office? I suspect that it is the young who live in cramped accommodation, possibly with young children who want to go back to the office. They don’t mind the commute and like the social comradery of office life. It is also important to them to learn the skills of their profession how to deal with tricky situations and people. They want to impress the boss to advance their career and get noticed by their seniors. It is easier when in the same office to make sure that instructions are properly understood, and any queries ironed out quickly.
However, the senior professionals have larger homes with possibly one or two rooms which they can adapt into an office, they have older children who are more often out of the house and do not revel in the social life of the office as much as the junior members of staff.
But with the juniors wanting to go to the office and the seniors wishing to work from home – how will this affect the career progression of the employees?
The boss of Goldman Sachs has said ‘remote working is not conducive to an innovative, collaborative, apprenticeship culture’
And what about Professional Indemnity Insurance – will claims not be allowed due to a lack of supervision?
Then there will be a whole host of other insurance issues as well. What happens if an employee trips on a computer cable and injures themselves while working from home? Is this a domestic or office accident? Which policy – if any will take the claim?
Then there is the tricky issue of whether the right to work at home should be made a statutory right and if granted how will it affect travel industries. We have had enough intrusion into our working and daily life I am not sure we want any more rules and rights. Furthermore how can you define the difference between hairdressers and bankers?
Even more worrying was a comment made by Tony Blair – if firms find that jobs can be done as well remotely, they may decide to outsource them to cheaper locations in the north – good, but overseas – bad!
And then there is the impact of working from home on an employee’s mental health.
More people will worry as to their long-term prospects if they do not get regular feedback; social chat with the boss over the coffee machine, the gentle smile of a colleague who sympathises with another acknowledging a ‘hospital pass’ of a difficult matter or impossible client.
Picking up on mental health issues won’t be so easy to detect if the staff are working half the time at home.
Other issues which could be affected could be cross referral of work. Spotting a colleague from the real estate department in the corridor may trigger a thought about a client’s real estate issues which may otherwise have been overlooked.
Of course, like with every shift in habits, new things emerge as old ways of doing things are challenged.
Cross referral of business across an organisation has always been tricky. However, the members of my professional network, Caroline’s Club are finding new ways to use the tools we provide for purposes such as cross referral of business. They sign up for a panel session and then invite colleagues from different departments or jurisdictions to share client stories for the members of our network. The Club records these sessions for YouTube, but the recording can also be used for internal cross referral purposes.
We encourage our members to tell client stories (and give them a useful Template to follow) because they are 1,227% more memorable and one of the four ways to avoid the innate fear of the influence of strangers – or the resistance to product push.
Where a member hosts a panel session, we encourage each panellist to record an interview for Apple I Tunes and Spotify which we then promote on our newsletter which we send to our 8,000 professional subscribers. For each interview we provide accurate feedback on open rates, click throughs and website visits. Some members have suggested offering a prize to the professional who has the highest open rate and suggests they link their recorded interview onto their email signature to increase the open rate by sharing it with all their colleagues, contacts and clients to whom they send an email.
If you would like to promote your services and skills to our network of private client professionals and join our Culture of Care click here to find out more and if you would like to join Caroline’s Club simply register here where you can see what we are up to and if you would like to join simply upgrade your membership.
If you would like to find out more simply register here