At SThree, our purpose is to bring skilled people together to build the future. We do this by understanding our clients’ talent needs and matching them with the brightest brains in their respective industries. Through the disruption caused by COVID-19, this purpose has never felt more relevant nor more important. It’s what guides our actions every day.
Since the early days of the pandemic, we’ve been engaging with organisations around the world to understand how they’ve been impacted. The future of work has consistently been one of the top challenges highlighted – followed closely by re-building supply chain resilience and accelerating digital transformation. Based on this work and our expertise as the only global pure-play STEM staffing specialists, these three tips can help your business to adapt to flexible working.
Ensure you have the right people with the right skills to enable tech solutions
It’s easy to understand why the future of work is so important. During the initial response phase, businesses across the globe – SThree included – had to react rapidly to enable remote working.
The logistical challenge of making sure that people had the tech, systems, tools and access to physically get work done was no small feat. Our IT team delivered what should have been a 12 – 18-month global hardware upgrade programme in just over two weeks. Even with our in-house expertise, this task seemed daunting, but with the right teams and talent we were able to achieve this goal. Trying to achieve the same results without the right people would have been impossible.
Having the right people with the right skills is a critical success factor. From speaking to our clients, we know that 70% of them are struggling to find the talent they need. Historically, hiring managers were limited to searching in their immediate location, but we also know that the people and skills you need aren’t always going to be on your doorstep. And with 75% of our clients actively hiring right now, one potential benefit of the pandemic is for flexible working to remove barriers to the workplace to reach previously inaccessible talent.
Evolve from managing people to enabling people
Leaders are having to think differently and creatively as they engage and lead their teams remotely. Everything from setting expectations and measuring performance to creating a sense of camaraderie needs to be re-imagined for a remote environment.
I’ve seen stories of companies tracking keystrokes, mouse movements and taking screenshots to monitor how much time people are spending at their desk. We believe that motivating and inspiring is a much more effective way to manage people effectively. Long-term, we expect most businesses will change how they measure success from measuring manual effort and input, to a focus on the outcomes that need to be achieved.
Leaders will also need to create opportunities for people to ‘get away from it’ in the same way that making a cup of coffee, or walking to a meeting room might help to break up the working day in a traditional office setting. We need to be extra mindful of burnout or ‘Zoom-fatigue’ or the ‘tyranny of Teams’ and do what we can to help people to maintain a healthy work-life balance.
Be prepared for a mix of on-site and remote working
Home working doesn’t work for everyone. I, for one, miss the social aspect of the office.
When we do start transitioning back to the office environment, safety has to be the first priority. That means, for the immediate term, making sure that the space is set up in accordance with local government guidance so that those who want to return to the office can do so safely.
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Businesses also need to think about the role of the office in the future too. A recent poll of attendees at one of our #STEMSeries virtual events showed that 75% of people would prefer to be based at home either most or all of the time. Having large workspaces that aren’t being fully utilised is uneconomical, so I think we’ll see more flexible, collaborative workplaces becoming more commonplace.
There isn’t going to be a one-size-fits-all solution so business leaders should start preparing for a hybrid model that allows their people to have the flexibility to enjoy the best of both worlds.
By Mark Dorman, CEO of SThree
About SThree:
SThree is the leading global STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths) recruitment agency. It is a FTSE 250 company with £1.2bn turnover spanning 15 countries, 45 offices and 3,100 employees.
About the Author:
An internationally experienced leader with a track record of growing business profitability, productivity and market share, Mark joined SThree from McGraw Hill Education, and was previously at Wolters Kluwer.
Originally from Dundee, Scotland, Mark graduated from the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and spent three years in the British Army’s Corps of Royal Military Police.
