Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Tiffany St James, co-founder of Curate42 and a digital strategist. I've had the great pleasure of helping large organisations and governments navigate new working environments for the past two decades. The changes wrought by the recent COVID-19 pandemic mean that the way we work has shifted dramatically. We've proven that we can work remotely without hindering productivity, but also reinforce the need for face-to-face interaction. We'll never entirely shift back to fully office-bound working. The future of work is hybrid. And whilst our employers and employees navigate the new habits and routines that we've all grown accustomed to over the last year, many organisations are struggling to identify how they can best engage employees in our new hybrid working environments. How can you better connect with people in a remote or hybrid working environment? How can you keep corporate culture alive when you're not under one roof? How can you set fair rules for all but a couple of people who wish to continue working remotely and those that wish to be back in the office? These are all questions currently front of mind for HR directors and heads of organisational change. And through research and best practice, including analysis of Microsoft's Embracing the New World of Work ebook, I wanted to share here practical advice on how best to engage employees in remote, hybrid, and in-office working environments. So first, let's look at culture. It's no surprise, I'm sure, that leaders must walk the talk. Recent research from Microsoft has shown an increase in chat messages and emails outside of working hours since we began working from home. No surprise to anyone, I'm sure. But this must demonstrate the respect for soft office boundaries by not communicating at all hours and embedding a culture where replies are not expected out of working hours. Ensuring that office spaces are set up to bring everyone together, even in our socially distanced world, and giving employees tools and devices to connect wherever they are. Encouraging and enabling time for social time is critical to help understand each other's needs and provide some of that social glue and the serendipity that people have missed from the in-office environment. They should not be on their own time. So the second point I wanted to raise is there are, of course, policies and processes that underpin culture. And leaders need to ensure they're not creating or conditioning what we call a two-tier workforce. Policies and processes must take into account remote, hybrid, and in-office working needs. In transformation, we look at people, processes, and technology, but we ensure that these are underpinned with inclusive policies and behaviours. So fostering a culture where people and performance can thrive is based on fairness and empowering every individual, no matter where they're working from. And really, what this means is taking responsibility for ensuring that all employees have access to the technology, resources, and skills that they need to succeed independent of location. Flexible working policies will be key to every organisation's talent, attraction, and retention strategy. The best talent will be seeking opportunities where they can thrive in a flexible working environment. And the third thing I wanted to raise was to encourage and reward new behaviours. Performance is not the only measure of success in teams. Consider how you can reward what psychologists call pro-social behaviour, helping others. And let's face it, rewarding pro-autonomy is what is needed right now too. So where is core culture metrics of traditionally revolved around things like compensation, perks and benefits, your work-life balance, and professional development, as well as things like career opportunities, how they feel about the culture, and the co-workers, and their leadership, and overall, feelings of happiness and pride in the company outlook. The best places to work in the UK look at eight key measures of workplace engagement, and that's leadership, my manager, my company, giving something back, my team, personal growth, fair deal and wellbeing. So working as hard on your employee relations as you do your customer engagement strategy is necessary now more than ever. So as a quick recap, tend to remote and hybrid culture, ensure your policies and processes underpin these new cultural processes we need to adopt, and encourage and reward new behaviours. Thank you so much for watching.