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Dr Grace Lordan’s reaction to the ACT report’s response

news published date 1 December 2022
  • Thoughts & Opinions
Dr Grace Lordan discusses the reactions to the latest Accelerating Change Together report, 100 Diverse Voices report, that was published on 28 November.

Before I talk about my reaction, I think it’s worth stepping back and sharing a few thoughts on the report, entitled “100 Diverse Voices”, which includes an exciting new framework that allows firms to maximise productivity and support diversity and inclusion. Based on 100 interviews across financial and professional services, we discovered that there’s no ideal one size fits all approach regarding the organisation of work and time. This suggests that the current four-day work week trials in the UK may already be outdated because of the inherent rigidity it would demand.

The UTOPIA framework, as we have named it, has each letter standing for an action that organisations can implement to make their workplaces more inclusive for all employees. What was particularly great during the development of UTOPIA was the opportunity to build on many of the themes we detailed in the GOOD FINANCE framework that we introduced in June 2021, as part of the year one activity for the Accelerating Change Together (ACT) research programme.

That framework was focused on retaining women working in the middle ‘ranks’ of an organisation and asked that we move from a compliance phase, where we are reliant on quotas and targets, towards a culture phase where managers become inclusive leaders, making sure that all employees, including women, get equal opportunities and visibility.

Both frameworks recommend a culture where people are trusted, where there are high levels of psychological safety, and every person has a voice within the organisation in which they’re working, but the UTOPIA framework goes one step further and really puts an emphasis on autonomy and on ill-being, e.g., burnout, isolation, etc.

Essentially, the findings flag that leaders need to let go of wanting to know what employees are doing at all times and focus instead on measuring outputs. We also discovered that leaders should concentrate on minimising ill-being of employees, as opposed to maximising happiness. What makes people happy is truly unique to each individual, which can be too challenging for employers to accommodate.

With the release of the report, I started scanning the comments on the Financial Times article and on LinkedIn in particular, and I was pleased that over 80% of comments showed people are in agreement with the view that presentism does not support productivity and performance. The views from the 100 diverse voices cohort and the vast majority of the responses were aligned: we don’t need the mandates. Instead, what we need is a productivity lens and that the focus of conversations is on a workplace environment that benefits everyone, irrespective of who or what they are.

In rejecting mandates, we ourselves are firm that we should not impose them either. In their place, we encourage firms not to make broad decisions about when people should be in the office. Or whether people should be in the office or at home full time. People should be allowed to be autonomous in their choices. And I was surprised by how many agreed, especially given the overwhelming number of firms that have specified set days.

And this feels like a great opportunity. And it’s one that should be embraced, particularly given the generational gap I see that has opened up between younger employees, who broadly want to spend more time working remotely, versus older employees who want their teams to be in the office. The generations need to have the conversation together to determine what the best approach is as it is not the case that younger employees need to be in an office to learn from colleagues by overhearing conversations. Instead, for example, you could ask people to join an in-person meeting to set out the framework, talk through the background and determine the objectives collectively. All employees would then have exposure to ideas that are not linear, and the team could then disperse and get on with implementation, circling back to others when they have questions or need support. Currently too many come into the office simply to sit on video calls, rather than being present to be party to innovation.

In approaching work through the lens of productivity, it allows for good conversations about the level at which people need support, but that the structure of time doesn’t need to be rigid. It’s better coming together for the right reasons (only).

One of the things that has hit me the most about the conversations and the subsequent comments is that before I was hearing people say that they would quit, and now I’m actually seeing it. And this is driven by the low levels of happiness. But this is really a private matter beyond the remit of companies. Instead, we believe, there should be a focus on reducing ill-being and ensuring psychological safety – and approach which is far more achievable and can be implemented relatively quickly, e.g., the recent decision by the NHS to allow menopausal women to wear lighter clothing.

And I would add that although women have been the focus for this report, the message is the same for every group in society, whether they’re underrepresented or not. Meanwhile, we have been able to communicate that female employees are more than women and that there are other aspects to who they are that can mean they experience unfair and unequal treatment.

Last but not least, I have seen that women are now being seen as amazing leaders and that their unequal treatment is helping them to help others and not just women, but everyone who faces barriers to progression in their careers. It’s not about having to have had the exact experiences but having faced similar psychological hurdles that provides lessons to everyone.

If we were to crack these issues, I actually believe we would have found a utopian approach, and we’re not actually that far away from it given that the information being shared is really quite intuitive and given the views that I have read, across the board, are not polarised.

I hope you find the UTOPIA framework an excellent guide for the future of work, and I would really encourage you to look back on the GOOD FINANCE framework too, so you can make sure that you are both attracting and retaining women within financial and professional services. Ultimately this will lead to a greater share of women in senior leadership roles and sooner rather than later.