It's time to change the way we work

We held a virtual staff briefing this month with the executive team. Other than car parking, the subject that dominated the chat box was the issue of home working. My organisation is not unique, in that this area needs further work to enable meaningful engagement with our staff.

The questions called for clarity on the future, in addition to the need for some principles to guide managers in approving individual requests to work at home. Another recurring theme was the perception of fairness among colleagues: those who work from home do not have to commute and there is a perception that homeworking is easier. This is largely due, I would suggest, to policy differences on home working, which in the NHS have been locally led.

Since the onset of the pandemic, in line with national guidance, our trust saw a rapid shift to remote working for many support teams, upending many existing work practices. Tech giant Microsoft (2021), whose software has enabled much of the new remote working, recognised that the pandemic was causing not only a public health crisis, but also ‘technological, social, and cultural disruption’. Looking forward, Microsoft (2021) expects some of those who used to work from offices to continue working remotely and others to adopt hybrid models that will involve a combination of working from the office and working remotely. The current situation presents us with a unique opportunity to: