New Workplace Culture – A Best Practice Guide

Key takeaways

1. Treat culture as how things get done, and measure it through trust

   Gautrey defined culture as behaviours, values and how leaders role model them. Great Place to Work's measure is trust between leaders and employees and between peers. Gautrey said remote working forced many organisations to trust people to get on with the job without someone looking over their shoulder.

2. Make values lived, and build a wellbeing strategy that acts before problems arrive

   Leightley said many organisations have a set of values but few live them day to day. Leightley's wellbeing strategy covers financial, physical and emotional wellbeing, and aims to improve quality of life as well as respond when things go wrong. Financial wellbeing support has seen strong uptake as cost of living pressures grow.

3. Family matters more to employees, and men and women say so equally

   Bright Horizons' Work and Family Snapshot surveyed 1,500 employees across 186 of its client organisations. Nearly six in 10 said family had become an even higher priority, with identical figures for men and women, while career remained a priority too. Priest said younger employees in particular expect to have both, and the panel were not surprised by it.

4. Plan for care breakdowns, including care for adults

   The same survey found two thirds of employees had a childcare breakdown in a year, and over half of those disruptions lasted five days or more. A quarter had adult or elder care needs, and over eight in 10 of them faced short-notice changes to that care. Gautrey added that employers are often unaware how many staff have caring responsibilities until the topic is opened up.

5. Give frontline staff flexibility over when and where, even if not over home working

   Leightley described a growing sense of unfairness when office staff can flex and frontline staff cannot, and a team that chooses its shifts, hours and locations in response. Gautrey cited an HR director at a 6,000-employee chicken factory using technology that lets people pick up or drop shifts. Gautrey's advice: ask frontline employees through surveys or focus groups, because they often know which low-cost changes would help most.

6. Market benefits to employees, using real colleagues' stories

   Gautrey recalled a CEO's view that no matter how often a message is repeated, it has not been said enough, and said managers have a role in reminding people what is available. Priest recommended "real models" rather than role models: colleagues sharing how they used a benefit. Leightley runs benefits weeks and tells benefit stories at inductions and conferences.