The Next Normal – Preparing for the Returning

In our recent virtual debate which was kindly sponsored by McCann Synergy, we asked Senior HR Leaders their thoughts on the impact of Covid-19 on their employees and organisations and asked how they are looking to re-board as we all look to reset for the new better. The debate is full of insights, opinions, best practice and forward thinking to help shape HR strategy for business across the globe in these challenging times.

Our Delegates

Matt Clarke, HR Director – Audit and Assurance, Deloitte
Charmyn Hall, HR Director, Oxford Instruments Plasma Technology
Julia Litchfield, Director, Chameleon Talent Solutions
Gemma McGrattan, Managing Director, McCann Synergy
Andrea Metcalf, Deputy Director of People and Culture, ActionAid UK
Brian Newman, Vice President – Human Resources, Live Nation Entertainment
Emma Nicholls, People Insights & Experience Director, City & Guilds Group
Nicky Clark, Director, McCann Synergy
Fiona Orchard, P&C BP Senior Manager, Stitch Fix UK
David Blackburn, Chief People Officer, Financial Services Compensation Scheme
Beatriz Rodriguez, Vice President Human Resources, Baker Hughes a GE Company
Jane Williams, Director, People Innovation Ltd

CHAIR: Jason Spiller, Editor, theHRDIRECTOR

The Covid-19 pandemic has had more impact on the world than any event since World War II. The lives lost to this dreadful virus are a tragedy, the impact on economies incalculable, and almost every aspect of life will change as a result.

In the midst of this omnipresent crisis, we’re seeing incredible human acts of duty, loyalty and kindness, as well as astonishing stoicism and inventiveness. There is also much to be learned and applied to the way we all come out of this difficult time and prepare for a brighter future. Never before have organisations collectively had to be so focused on their people. It’s not just about working from home; the current pandemic shines a light on an organisation’s entire culture, employee journey and people experience. Businesses are having to listen, learn and adapt. There is an opportunity here for leaders to redefine and re-imagine the future with their people at its heart.

How are you planning for the rebuilding of your workforces with both safety and psychological impact front of mind?

David Blackburn: We made a really big investment last year: a complete rethink of  our workplace environment. It was a big piece of work around our workplace vision and so when the lockdown started, that definitely impacted on how quickly the organisation was able to click into a new way of working. We’ve been carrying out pulse surveys during the lockdown and hosting live chats. The big discussion was around when should we start to come back to work in the office and, encouragingly, we had a really good response. But the general overarching theme is, understandably, anxiety. People have said: “I completely trust you as the employer, I can trust that you are going to do social distancing and that you’re going to spray the office. But there is no way I’m travelling on public transport until there’s a vaccine”. Others have said they want to come back as soon as possible. We’ve kept the office open one day a week during the crisis and we are going to continue this way until September at the earliest.

Brian Newman: I echo the sentiment over anxieties. In theory, social distancing is a way of managing the return with some people staying at home but, in practice, this is very difficult. It would be potentially frustrating to have a group in the office dialling out to those at home who are not on the rota to be in. There has to be purpose behind who is in and who is not, in order to make that more practical. I also think that the psychological issue is compounded in London, because of the public transport situation: the tube is an exception when compared to other parts of the country, and for many in London offices, using public transport is the only commuting option. I think we can realistically make offices very clean and safe places, but this is much harder to control on the commute to the office. I think demographics may also play a part here with parts of the workforce – maybe those who are younger and healthier – more tolerant to risk. Offices may transform post-crisis to become real collaboration hubs, and this should pose very practical questions now about whether we want to fill them with desks and just race to return back to ‘normal’, versus seeing the opportunities for really pushing on the flexible working transition and all that brings. The future of work, whilst slightly unnerving at this moment, is still one we can dare to be excited about.

Is this mandatory spanner in the works an opportunity to bring in the changes that have been put on the back burner, because everyone was too busy?

Julia Litchfield: While it’s a whole new world, a new environment, before the current crisis, there was change happening anyway: digitalisation, a more agile workforce, smarter ways of working than the traditional office environment and increased focus on mental health. Agreed, this crisis has created opportunity for accelerating changes, as it gives businesses a unique point in time where the world is almost crying out for change. Typically, there’s resistance, but everyone is looking to define the “new better”. There’s a difficult balance between the short and medium term. The immediate focus today needs to be on prioritising the physical and psychological safety of colleagues and a safe return to work. However, there’s a big question around how and when the balance shifts from what absolutely must happen right now, to the more medium- to long-term strategic imperatives, which will help organisations gain a competitive advantage.

Charmyn Hall: The impact of the pandemic forced us to develop a hybrid workforce model. We have full and partial homeworking, furloughed people and our team on site manufacturing customer orders, more so as Asia opens up. Our operations team have been working throughout lockdown and, like many companies, have had to become inventive about how we organise our building to keep us all safe. One of the challenges of this hybrid working model happening so fast is that not everyone has been able to appreciate the challenges of their colleagues in different situations. For example, staff on furlough are concerned about the future, some of the people based on site feel resentful that they have to keep commuting and home workers feel tied to Teams or Skype all day. Having listened to these different conversations going on, we have focused on three pillars. The first of these is health and wellbeing – many of the activities we are doing, other companies will recognise – and one positive coming out of this sad situation is that mental health conversations are now much more open and visible. The second pillar is all about continuously improving our health and safety. We are making a concerted effort to listen to ideas, act on them and then publish it so people know what has been done – a ‘you said, we did’ approach. Every Covid-19-related suggestion is recorded as a “hazard”, so everyone knows that we will take action. We show videos of our site online and share pictures to give people the reassurance that they can influence their environment, to help them cope. The third pillar is communication in every form that we can and, at a time like this, we appreciate we can never do enough. We utilise formal company meetings, ‘ask any question’ webinars without a set agenda, socially distanced walking around our site by directors to answer questions and listen to ideas. What we have reinforced is the criticality of line managers in a hybrid model as a key link in the communication chain, and this is a skills area that we will invest even more in.

Andrea Metcalf: We’ve sent a survey to our staff and have been talking to them about how they view coming back to the office, both in and outside of London. We have two sites: one is in Somerset and we already have people in that environment, because they can’t work from home as it’s partly a fulfilment centre. So, in order for us to continue fundraising and be financially sustainable, in the short, medium, and long term, we needed that work to continue. Due to the small numbers in the office, we’ve been using it as a pilot space, looking at what we can do, how we might approach social distancing, how we might review how things operate from a practical perspective – toilets and kitchens for example – so we can put in the right measures. We have a lot of resistance from people regarding coming back into the office and we’ve also had quite a number of people also saying; “why come into the office when I can work from home effectively?” Some managers in the past haven’t encouraged flexible working, although as an organisation, we do. So, this has been an opportunity for those fixed views to be challenged and changed and we will have a lot more people looking to work more flexibly in the future. Because this is a global pandemic and we are mobilising fast, we’ve been able to make decisions in a quicker way and we’ve been able to innovate in ways that we wouldn’t have done before. On the plus side, virtual meetings have been a real leveller, because people’s voices can be heard in a very different way; this has removed some of the power imbalances and created a different kind of feel to the organisation.

Emma Nicholls: There are a lot of different kinds of cultures across our Group. We were talking about how we want to move to a different culture pre-crisis, and we have a real opportunity to do that more quickly now. Our Corporate Learning businesses can work from home with minimal issues, but we also have more traditionally-minded workers who historically think ‘being chained to a desk’ is the best way of working, and then we have trainers who miss working with learners or clients and that face-to face-interaction. What I think most of our colleagues are saying is, they want more flexibility and so there’s a need for us take more of an individualised approach, while also thinking through a principle of fairness. Another key factor is: how do we make this future more inclusive? At the moment, everyone working from home is a leveller. So how do you make sure you don’t become exclusive moving out of this experience? How do you ensure that you don’t create an even bigger socio-economic or cultural divide between those who can work from home and those that can’t, or negatively impact certain groups over others. We want to make sure we are considering new models for job swapping, upskilling and recruitment processes that a different way of working presents. We have the critical opportunity to ask ourselves how and why we use workspaces in the future.

Jane Williams: My thinking is that we are not returning to the life we knew, at least until there is a vaccine or effective treatment. I am Acting Chair of the Riding Centre Membership Organisation, which is an organisation in transition. To help members run their riding centres, we have recommended safe operating processes for exiting lockdown, as used by the military and in manufacturing, to accredit centres and train staff to reassure their clients about their safe working. We developed a tailored equine industry risk assessment and we have worked with them to come up with ideas to keep their customer base close and remain viable. Eighty-five percent from a survey of 1,300 were worried about viability. A frightening figure. The fear is that clients will be made redundant or work reduced hours,

Fiona Orchard: We already had a range of tools designed for remote working and transitioned very easily. Equally, our culture has always been at the heart of everything that we do and our employees are bright, kind and motivated by challenge. We saw a real peak in our culture showing up in our daily interactions, through adoption of Zoom and other connection opportunities. Compared to other organisations, we had it easy, but personally I now have a hypothesis that, while people can be change resistant, they are also energised by novelty. So, now that working from home is normalised and not a novelty, we could see engagement dip. We’ll have Zoom fatigue, virtual happy hours will feel harder and maintaining the sense of community could become more challenging going forward. The default then becomes, “let’s go back to normal”; we have this real craving for coming back to what we are used to. But there isn’t going to be a return to ‘normal’, so let’s reset expectations and really ground in what the future might look like. Something I have learned is that there is value in being in an office with people, being together, face-to-face. We will achieve that, eventually, but for now, how can we take that magic and find a different way of using it? For me, it feels like a distant shimmer of light that I can’t seem to grab hold of yet. There are so many unknowns.

Gemma McGrattan: It boils down to: what are your people’s needs? There is an opportunity here to re-board everyone and focus again on purpose, strategy and values. Not surprisingly, some clients are having to change their whole strategy, because they’re in survival mode. They need innovation. They need the energy for that innovation, and the trial and error that comes with it. There’s the health and safety theme – many people are already focusing on this – and there is also the support theme around wellbeing. That support needs to extend to your leaders, too, because managing in this way, in this crisis, is very different. Due to the virtual nature of remote working, we need to focus on managing outcomes, and use this opportunity to reunite everyone. Some businesses will have people on furlough and, by contrast, other people are feeling burnt out, so we must avoid that ‘us and them’ situation creeping in. Also, in reuniting, it’s important to promote your values and maintain purpose. Then there’s the practical and logistical considerations, the support mechanisms and how to keep people innovating. Finally, it’s important to remember that while a number of sectors can change, there are some which still have to go back to a physical space – for example, the very hard-hit hotels or airlines markets – and some sectors like this might not recover until 2023.

Nicky Clark: It’s not necessarily about if and when people might be returning to a physical space, what is important is how you retain your culture, because culture comes through your day-to-day interactions with people. We have a communal kitchen at McCann Synergy, and a set of interactions throughout the day that really helped to reinforce our culture and all the fun things we do together as a group. It’s going to be a really interesting challenge for those that do continue to work from home: how you keep those levels of engagement and how do we put a plan in place  to substitute that? On the flip side, this is a huge opportunity if your organisation is going through big transformation programmes, whether that be HR or digital, as for most, this crisis will have been a catalyst to bring this change to bear during this disruption. So, expect a really big shift in HR and self-service and encouraging people to go online. Then there are some of the qualities that have been seen from people who are showing much greater compassion and synergy in these dark times. These are brilliant behaviours that we must take forward.

Brian Newman: The ‘new normal’ way of working today is very difficult – if not bordering on the slightly ridiculous at times – what with partners and children at home and no way to get out of the office. But this isn’t the way we should think of the future opportunities that working flexibly could bring. Currently, the pleasures of reducing the commute and what that time could be used for are questionable. Really, we should see the future as much more of an ultimate combination of flexibility, where collaboration with colleagues in shared spaces is possible and encouraged when needed, bringing people to the office for good reasons and enabling home working to be part of how we work, not the only way we work.

Gemma McGrattan: When you’re thinking about performance, and where the business needs to get back up to in terms of level of productivity and revenue generation, you have to consider what it’s going to take for us to ensure we unlock the potential of all our people to deliver under these new circumstances. There are businesses that have reduced revenues of 30-50%, so the focus has to be: how do we think differently, change strategy and ultimately survive? It’s a very commercial view, but critical for many businesses and you will need your people to help you deliver this.

Jane Williams: If you look at Tesco UK and Ireland, some of what they achieved is amazing, with 40,000 temporary staff recruited in two weeks to support the online business and revenue has tripled. It took several years for their online business to arrive at 6% of their total volume in the UK and Ireland; now it accounts for around 35%. The challenge for them is how to sustain this, as people have changed their behaviour during this crisis – they now shop once a week. The ability to respond quickly is key to success. Tesco have the capability to do that and the business model allows it.

How can organisations stay true to purpose and be consistent?

David Blackburn: I read a good article last year before any of this happened, about brands. They said your organisation used to be a glass box and your brand was what your marketing comms people decided to project on the outside. Now it’s your brand that is what’s inside and so, it is your internal culture that matters. I really like what that analogy is saying – it’s not what you’re projecting on the outside anymore, it is what’s going on inside your box. So, your culture and how you’re treating people says more about the organisation than anything.

Dare we compare this with what happened in the financial crisis, a radical change in culture, policies and procedure?

Julia Litchfield: There’s been a very gradual shift over the years from the time of the banking crisis to where we are now. Organisations have been more focused on corporate social responsibility before the current crisis, than they ever had been.  With the millennial generation becoming a bigger part of the workforce, I have seen a shift to a less financially driven mindset. Some organisations have been pivoting towards corporate and social responsibility, their purpose having a greater role in society and a real care for employees mental health and wellbeing. There’s now a massive business case to drive people-related change forward at pace. I think we will see an adjustment, but whilst sound and expedient short-term decisions are needed, to stay competitive, organisations should take a long-term view.

Gemma McGrattan: I think the balance of opinion is that you always have to lead with and live by your purpose. Actions speak louder than words. There is a balance between focusing on the values and behaviours, the character of the business and honesty when leading through uncertainty. You need to share the honest facts and truths, but then move very quickly to hope, purpose and values. Then, make any decisions with your values in mind – that’s definitely the way to go. The Airbnb CEO’s redundancy letter is a great example of honesty with humanity. So, always lead with purpose, but you have to actually live it. Employer brand is in the spotlight right now. What you say and do will be remembered.

Nicky Clark: Once the job retention scheme is over and things start to change, we’ll be faced with some really tough decisions across organisations. I think it’s not what you have to do, it is how you do it. We’ve heard of some horror stories on what some companies have done, like turning cameras off during redundancy conversations. This is just horrendous. Now is the ultimate test of purpose-driven leaders; remain true to your purpose and people will understand.

It’s a time where really listening to people is hugely important and making sure that there is a two-way conversation.

Andrea Metcalf: We’ve been doing weekly staff briefings and normally we would schedule them on a monthly basis. But now, we have our CEO every week talking to staff and we use technology e.g. Slido for questions, so people can ask whatever they want – and we have FAQ’s that are updated and weekly communications. We have a staff newsletter that we send and we have been much more intentional around that in terms of themes and information exchange, with people able to put in stories that they want everybody else to hear about. We’ve always been quite inclusive, but I think we’re being more intentional about it in a lot of ways. What that has led to is people feeling like they’re still connected to us and I think they really welcome, including people who are furloughed. In fact, we have a newsletter and hub purely for our furloughed staff – importantly, we take out all the links so that it can’t be seen as work – but they still feel like there’s that connection. We’ve also instigated a coronavirus communications team, as well as our crisis management team and what that group does is talk about what matters to people. Within the group are people from both sites, we have union representation and every Friday, we have a general update.

Charmyn Hall: One of the additional steps we took was to make an early decision to form a Coronavirus Consultation Group. While one objective was to respond early to any challenges that arose as a result of the crisis, the critical objective was to make sure we continuously learn from this experience and decide how we want to work in the future. This team promotes discussions on how we want our working lives to be different now and when lockdown eases. Initially, there was understandable nervousness about why we were taking a formal approach, but the level of engagement from the representatives has been incredible. They have actively engaged with their constituents to make sure that people have felt their views were heard. While I have been personally impressed by the depth of debate and thought about what we want our future work to look like, the representatives have also provided a level of pastoral care and they have picked up on issues that we may have missed so we can offer support early.

Emma Nicholls: We already had an Employee Forum in place, with representatives across the Group and, likewise, we ask them for feedback and insight and we’ll be working with our colleagues as we think about the phasing of return to, or change in, workspace. We’ve also run a survey too and so we are gaining insight into the ‘feeling compass’ for our organisation, at this point in time and what we want to keep for the future. We run regular webinars that are very open and honest and Q & A’s with colleagues. We’ve seen lots of engagement but, to be honest, we have quite an engaged workforce anyway – typically we have 80 percent upwards response rates on any of our engagement surveys with strong engagement scores. In fact, we’re doing pretty much the same things that we already had in place, but more of them and with a lot more transparency.

Brian Newman: We’ve been extremely fortunate and have had the opportunity to have some of our artists talk directly to our employees, about how they see the challenges and the ways they want to overcome this. Reminding them of our core business and the real drive for a full return to live – this is a mission that we have kept all our people focussed on and helps navigate the uncertainty we have had to deal with as a result of this virus. Traditional thinking around leadership has been challenged a little, for so long it has centred on clarity of direction and vision and, in some industries – and in the world right now – this is very hard to provide. Leaders and politicians cannot answer the questions that people want to know which is, when will we return back to normal? We have rallied our people to innovate and be at the forefront of the safety initiatives that are going to help people feel comfortable returning to their lives, as soon as this is deemed medically safe by the science. We’ve seen some amazing ideas coming from our employee population, like drive-in events in Denmark and exclusive content creation.

Gemma McGrattan: I think a lot of good ideas are developed on the front line, so if you can actively listen, there are lots of opportunities here. This links nicely with ongoing coaching conversations – an area performance management is keen to embrace – and there’s the opportunity to put this into practice. It requires leaders to know how to really, actively, listen. If you can, support your people with the best way to have those conversations, act on the results and tie that in with innovation, trial and failing fast. We’re seeing clients want to take this approach, asking questions such as: what do we need to do to activate and innovate quickly?

Is this an opportunity to reinvent your employee experience strategy and transform your culture?

Gemma McGrattan: Marketeers have always studied customer experience – looking at every element of that journey and improving each step. Now, we can do that for our people experience. From hire to retire, you want to be mapping the employee journey and identifying what elements can be improved. This is a good opportunity to look at your people processes again. What will the expectation be from potential candidates going forward? What areas do we need to shine a spotlight on and perhaps try a new approach towards? Gallup tells us that, if you’re in the top quartile for engagement, then it’s proven you can achieve 21% more profits – that’s a great incentive. Other areas we must focus on are wellbeing and learning. Learning is huge at the moment and many of our clients have focused on learning for people that are on furlough, but also learning mindsets, which ties in nicely with innovation. Recognition is hugely important, especially when people are going through all this turmoil and you’re not seeing them so much every day. In short, it’s vital to stop and take a look at your people experience, map this and check it’s still fit for purpose.

David Blackburn: The question about what would you do differently is always key, whatever the situation. I think there is something about what the crises has unlocked in terms of people’s connection to the purpose. Our strategy over the last few years has been to really bring the story of our customers to life. So, we’ve really changed our language; we used to talk about claimants not customers, we used to refer to the amount of compensation we paid as opposed to the number of people we helped. I think that we saw a big increase in engagement last year, because we are really clear about that new message. We have an amazingly simple employee value proposition, that this we’re an organisation that makes a difference in which “you” can make a difference. What we’re moving into is this world of ever-increasing personalisation, because people want responses to their own circumstances.

Gemma McGrattan: I was talking to a Chief People Officer the other week and she was telling me how we instinctively self-serve as consumers. With tech supporting us, we can move towards this in HR. Now is another opportunity to create a new model – embrace those self-service moments – but it does mean we’ll have to consider the role of the manager and that this relationship will be the one that delivers those very special moments and connections with colleagues. In future, colleagues will have more of a connection with the brand, so it’s important to think about who will create those special connections. Here is where you have to really think through the people experience and at which points do you deliver those moments of magic.

Nicky Clark: Something that we do a lot of with clients is employee experience mapping – the hire to retire – and what has become apparent in the past year or so is its alignment to the customer experience. I think it’s so important to become aware of employee needs, employee expectations and preferences. Right now, needs and expectations have shifted completely overnight, including all of the things that we’ve been speaking about for some time now: flexible working, working from home and bringing your whole self to work. All of that has now been kind of thrust upon us very quickly and that’s a huge opportunity, because I think now, by taking all of that on board and mapping out our complete end-to-end employee experience, we can really start to think about what we do. We need to ensure we’re true to our purpose and understand where the gaps are. Where are we falling down, and how do we address those areas? Looking at each area of the employee journey will create a really special experience for your people. We talk about moments of truth – not just for attraction and recruitment. It’s about spreading that through every part of the experience.

Are you planning to use this opportunity to reset and re-imagine your organisation? What future strategies are you exploring?

Fiona Orchard: Like everyone, we’re thinking about what that new normal looks like, but I don’t foresee a significant shift in the way we work. What this is showing for me is that we actually have a lot of it right – we are already pretty progressive in terms of flexibility and leading through values, which will be key for the future. There’s room for improvement, of course and we will likely have a different physical way of working for some time and will continue to listen to our employees, regarding further opportunities in how we work together. We are fortunate that we don’t have some of the challenges other organisations are facing, that have been established for a long time and worked in more ‘traditional’ settings with ingrained behaviours to change and influence. It may be a pertinent point to make that we are one year old as a business, so no lagging legacy to worry about.

Brian Newman: From a pure HR perspective, it’s a good time to question whether something was useful and whether it should continue – for example how fit-for-purpose was the talent system when you most needed to know where your talent was? Or the data system to help mobilise people to work remotely, in some cases overnight? Previous conversations about flexible working, have not been successful and now I wonder why – this has been an opportunity to re-engineer the pipework a little and rethink the future of work. It certainly wasn’t ideal the way it has happened, but certainly the learnings and opportunities must not be lost in a race to return to normality. Another example is the value of e-learning – having heard many reasons why it doesn’t work or doesn’t provide same experience – I have learnt that it is a brilliant way of connecting people in activity and this will take a much more prominent role in future learning activities. Also, we’ve learnt the amazing agility of our people to approach blockers by going around, or under or over – and this is something we must always encourage.

Julia Litchfield: Lockdown is opening doors that some would not have otherwise considered. For example, organisations have been looking at digitalising their platforms for some time, but some customers who would have preferred to consume through traditional methods are now being forced to adapt. While some companies may have been shifting to more flexible workforces and agile approaches, those companies who didn’t think it worked with their model have been forced to try it. While it isn’t going to work everywhere, it changes people’s perspectives. Consider learning; classrooms have traditionally been the preferred approach, but I’ve recently been rolling out programmes at scale on a global basis and classroom training just isn’t an option. My experience is that, as the learning has to be a series of short interventions with practical applications in between, over a longer period of time, the approach is even more “blended”. It surprises leaders – who would naturally favour traditional blended approaches, where classroom remains a large element – that this approach can have so much impact. So, I see that it is making people more prepared to embrace and fully explore interaction through technology. Learning is just one example, the way we work and the way we lead are other areas that needed new approaches. In times of such extreme change, a more fluid leadership mindset is critical, doing things that were successful in the past is not necessarily going to work today and in future. It’s a huge opportunity for organisations to embrace or accelerate the potential of a new operating model and consider change from the approach to market, to the employee value proposition. The way organisations operate including; digitalisation, agile and smart ways of working, involving virtual collaboration and collaboration between organisations, are just a few of the key areas to review. Even if we can all interact in person tomorrow, people’s mindsets are different, people think differently about working from home, whether it’s in a positive way or not. We can’t change the fact that everyone is thinking differently now about psychological and physical safety, personal and financial well-being. These perspectives are much higher on people’s agendas than ever before and organisations need to account for mindset shifts on multiple levels, in their adapted strategy, purpose and operating models.

Charmyn Hall: We used to benefit from industry trade shows, conferences and targeted marketing events around the world, to demonstrate our capability and value to existing and potential customers. Now we need to go through different channels.  Reduced travel means more time to work directly for customers, with more immediate response times. In the future, I can see this giving our staff more time at home and a better work/life balance, that is harder to achieve in customer-facing roles. It will also be popular with many of our staff who focus on reducing our environmental impact. The way people will work in the future is now firmly on our senior Level agenda, in a way it was not before. We are discussing the culture we need to support our growth and deciding upon how the way we work will support this new culture. We will need to help managers understand the best ways to measure output, not input and how to help teams connect and then work remotely.

Nicky Clark: Now is an opportunity to innovate and change. Speed and tapping into the power of your people and what they can deliver are key. They know your customers best; now is the time to take that on board and really drive those decisions forward, quickly. We’ve seen some brilliant moments of genius during this pandemic and it’s been in the public eye. People are more than capable of doing that within your organisation. We see this inside companies when we do any activation with colleagues. They come up with brilliant ideas of what the business can do and what they can change. It is really important to act on that energy.

Gemma McGrattan: One of the takeaways for me is certainly around personalisation and how you hit the sweet spot between personalising employee needs and having more of a consumer experience internally. Going forward, there will be a balancing act between what government needs us to do, what our people need, what our customers need and what our business needs. Achieving balance here will be an achievement for everyone.

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