2 Operating in uncertain times

During the pandemic organisations’ ability to manage uncertainty became critical. Many had to make decisions and implement complicated changes, including digital transformation at an accelerated pace, to pivot most of the workforce to remote working during lockdowns.

The video below provides some insights from contributors about their experiencing of adapting ways of working during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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LOUISE CASELLA:

In Wales, Welsh Government were very clear about what the requirements were about presence in the office and how we worked in the office and when you could come into work and when you couldn't. That was different to in England. I think that's going to be one of the interesting things about the pandemic. It's really exposed devolution and the powers of different governments to take decisions within the UK.

We therefore had to make sure it was well understood what we had to do within the office in Wales vis-à-vis how working in Milton Keynes on campus works, and really understand how we adapted our processes in Wales, adapted our working practices, made the office safe for those for whom coming into the office mattered and it really was important for them to be in.

But also supported those who weren't coming into the office as well. So getting that balance became quite a challenge. But it meant really understanding what were the legal requirements upon us and really understanding how we kept people safe and well whilst they were here. We've paid a lot of attention to trying to balance what the organisation needs with what the individual needs throughout the pandemic. I think we started off very much focusing on the individual.

We recognise that this was a big change for everybody and what came first was getting their home life sorted out and getting themselves working whilst at home. Was a very different challenge to before. So we very much focused, at the beginning, on what the individual needed and making sure the individual was well equipped to do that. As time went on, we spent more-- we paid more attention to what teams needed and what the organisation needed. And therefore, how we fitted the individual's needs into that.

So trying to balance off team objectives to, perhaps, how an individual would like to work. So we had to think about the whole of that picture and navigate our way through it. And I think our emphasis at the moment is probably much more on the team than the individual was obviously respecting what individual preferences may be. But we are, obviously, we have students to support, we have work to do, and people are working for us to do that.

So how they come together to do that is where our emphasis is now. Is about the outcomes and the service to students. Whereas at the beginning of the pandemic, it probably would have very much been on that individual’s circumstances and making sure that individual was safe.

MATT WINTLE:

Before the pandemic at Admiral, we had around about 350, 400, what we would call homeworkers or flexible workers, which is a small portion of the population of the employees at Admiral. We're about 10,000 strong. And very quickly, within a few months, three to four months, we went to 6,000 to 7,000 people working at home. And that acceleration would have taken years-- three, five years if we'd done it in ‘peacetime’, if you like.

So that's what changed really. Was this huge acceleration of capability to allow people to do their jobs effectively to the same quality, serve the customer as well as they do in the office, at home. So that embracing of technology to be able to do that had to happen, and it had to happen fast. I think it was fascinating the way that it did happen. Admiral prides itself on a culture that's very empowering and giving people autonomy to make decisions. And actually, in that period of time, we needed to go back to a bit of command and control because it wouldn't have happened.

That acceleration and the way in which we managed to make that happen would never have happened if we hadn't gone back to a bit of planning and a bit of we've got to make this happen. But we did it, and everybody bought into it. And then we quite quickly became aware that we needed to get back to some of the great things Admiral's always done around communication and culture and redress that balance of that kind of shock, if you like, of getting people working from home.

Where it's landed us now is a much more wide use of technology across the business, if you like. So you would always have the IT departments and the data areas who would be at the forefront of using some of these tools - collaboration tools, messaging tools, those sorts of things. And now that has to be everybody because that's the way that we're communicating most of the time.

So the real shift is in the way that we communicate and the tools we use to do it. And when I talk about communication, that could be a meeting or it could be a document that you're sharing. And that's fundamentally changed through the pandemic.

JONATHAN MORGAN:

The pandemic changed the way that Object Matrix worked in so much that prior to the pandemic, probably 90% of the workforce was in the office on a daily basis. Post the pandemic, maybe, 90% of the workforce is working from home on a regular basis. So it has changed.

It has changed the way that people live and organise their lives, it's changed the way we organise the work, it's changed the way we schedule the work even because the schedule of the work should allow smaller units to work with regular communication so that we don't just leave someone for a month and then come back to them. So in many ways, the pandemic has changed the nature of the organisation much for the better, and some things have been challenges.

SARAH JONES:

The University adapted very quickly to the pandemic. Our new digital services directorate was created within months of us going into lockdown. New teams, new functions were put into place, new blended learning - teaching and learning standards, the implementation of the Jisc discovery tool. It was very fast and a big shock for a lot of people. The usage of Teams, we were very lucky. We were already using Teams as an institution. However, it did mean that people had to be learning a lot, very, very quickly whilst also carrying on with their day-to-day work.

Teaching had to carry on, library services still had to carry on, everybody was carrying on whilst also trying to adapt to doing this all from home. During lockdown, we had the opportunity to develop services that we would not, otherwise, have had the time to develop because we weren't dealing so much with the face-to-face side of things. And we've been able to carry many of those services forward since coming back on campus. And I think it's allowed us to view the student journey in a different way.

MICHAEL WOODS:

The need to adapt to the pandemic in March 2020 was quite significant for us. We went very quickly to having to switch to working from home and teaching online. And I think one of the challenges for us now is finding that correct balance going forward. I think all of us, students and staff, have seen this as a learning gradient of adapting to new ways of working and to new technologies.

It wasn't necessarily fully new. We have for some time, for example, always recorded our lectures and made those available to students. So the idea of students watching lectures online or accessing those resources online was not necessarily new. What was different was that they were doing that instead of being in a class rather than in addition. So one of the challenges, I think, has been not in itself just moving to an online way of working, but subsequently moving to a hybrid way of working where we are teaching different aspects and different ways.

Now, I think in terms of how we take that forward. I think we do value in-person teaching and we value the campus experience. That's been important to the students' experience in Aberystwyth. It's also important, I think, for staff to have that campus interaction. But we're also reflecting on what was a value of the hybrid form of teaching and the online forms of teaching that we may maintain.

Certainly, I think, we've appreciated the ability to use more online resources, support our teaching, and making those available in addition to the in-person taught content. So that may well be your short videos explaining particular concepts on methods or techniques which may go alongside other teaching content.

And then I think finally more broadly, I think, as a way of working, I think we are continuing with many of our meetings conducted online. That we are more flexible in the working conditions we are able to offer staff with more working from home. And it's important, I think, that we do still have opportunities where we bring people into campus, where we meet in-person and campus. But we also see that some of the routine work, some of the routine meetings can be offered more through online platforms.

NICK BARRETT:

It really is extraordinary how something like the OU has weathered the storm and I think really grown into its potential to a certain extent. So yeah. Very exciting experience. I wouldn't wish it on anyone, but in doing so, our ways of working are much more aligned with the experiences of our students. And I think that's helped teach me the value of why we do what we do.

There were so many challenges and potential legal landmines that we had to avoid and navigate as we started to switch our experience. Now, as the OU, I think we were slightly protected compared to some higher educational institutions. I mean, the Competition and Markets Authority, let's get technical here, have requirements about not misselling the experience and of course, many organisations had promised a face-to-face learning experience.

Now, we are distanced by design, but we had a lot of face-to-face encounters. Summer schools, for example, tutorial groups. And we had to, again, as an organisation, switch those quite rapidly. Making sure that we weren't falling foul of regulations. We spun up some really rapid reaction groups to look at this. It was a very agile period of decision making.

We were talking in a different way with different folk in the room. It cuts across normal governance, which obviously carries risk, but it brought a freshness to the way we make decisions around circumstance rather than protocol, if that makes sense. We were reacting to situations and really thinking through what we were trying to do. So I think there were some benefits there. The challenge, I guess, was trying to keep people informed and engaged. And see that this wasn't just something we were doing because of the short-term pandemic, the crisis management element, but some of these things are going to actually have a long-lasting benefit.

LLINOS NEALE:

Welsh ICE has been so agile during the pandemic. It's had to be because, obviously, we're a physical space and physical spaces were just places people didn't go during the pandemic. So we needed to make sure that we were still offering the businesses based here access because they needed to get important pieces of post, that kind of stuff. But we also needed to make sure that the community and everything people were getting that wasn't physical space from this all went online.

Now, the hub has evolved and grown to respond to what people need post-pandemic. So people need to be way more flexible. So they're going to be needing space where they can do things online as well as in-person. And this has to be a way more dynamic space for people. So we're just evolving to respond to that.

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The impact of the pandemic on mental health, inequalities for certain groups in society, the economy and infrastructure are key areas organisations now need to focus on, alongside sustainability and how they can contribute to targets linked to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] (UN SDGs) (UN, 2022) and reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, workforce practices were evolving in response to organisational trends in the late-twentieth century.

If you research ‘trends for organisations’ online, you will see a consistent focus on:

• changing workforce and expectations
• authenticity, resilience, and purposeful business
• equality, diversity and inclusion
• flatter, more agile organisations
• sustainability, including climate change, net zero targets and global economic instability
• digital transformation, sometimes referred to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and effective use of data (Baker, 2021; Marr, 2021; Kropp and McRae, 2022).