The Great Debate UK

-Dave Coplin led Microsoft’s Hybrid Organisation programme. The opinions expressed are his own.-

Here’s a modest proposal for your business. Stop making staff commute to office blocks and instead create attractive new workplaces that encourage people to drop in, bump into each other and hold ad hoc meetings in comfortable and stress-free spaces. Make sure you have the best coffee and food of any of your competitors. Don’t give staff their own desks but offer the flexibility to work from wherever they like and to choose their own computers. Take an axe to hierarchical constraints that constrain progress and watch out for middle managers that are likely to be your biggest impediments to change. Make IT systems accessible from any device, anywhere in the world. Sounds outrageous? Perhaps, but these tactics and strategies are precisely those being adopted by many forward-looking organisations.

With the macro-economy playing the role of elephant on the table this is a difficult time to be running a business. The default position might be to cut headcount, or at least freeze hiring, and sit out the downturn until more propitious times arrive. However, it might also be that a radical change to the way in which business is run will help create some far-reaching effects in cost of operations and facilities, ability to serve customers, the chance to make the most of teams and the opportunity to hire and retain the best people.

In 2010, Microsoft gathered together a series of experts in business management, social change, workplace design, technology and economics to describe and discuss an emerging approach it called the hybrid organisation. This is not intended to be a prescriptive definition but in this model companies enable their staff to work most productively through smart design of buildings, adopt a flexible approach to where work gets done, seek long-term goals rather than fill in short-term scorecards, and reject (or at least question) outmoded practices such as rigorous groups and roles. In this way, the group suggested, organisations would be best positioned to take whatever the economy and other external stimuli had to throw at them.

A year on, we examined close-up what’s happening at companies that have stepped away from business as usual and have become hybrid organisations. The stories that came back through extensive interviews with executives were remarkable.

Dutch electronics giant Philips instituted a Workplace Innovation Programme. Originally intended primarily to save costs, the project evolved into a broader and strategic change management programme that would help staff collaborate on new ideas and provide the tools and environment to attract top new employees. To that end, the company promoted “activity-based working”; in other words, staff had no fixed desks or phone lines but instead worked where they would be most productive and used wireless communications for voice and data.

Programme director Peter de Winter concedes that not everybody is happy: some staff members don’t like the increased noise levels of the open office environment. Middle managers often “don’t like the idea of having their office taken away”. And, he adds, in any change programme many will not be happy and some will become actively disengaged. But the final outcome is most staff love the way they now work.

At GSK, part of the journey towards becoming hybrid was, literally and metaphorically, to ensure transparency by knocking down brick walls where C-level executives sat and instead installing glass to invoke a sense of accessibility and openness. This was one aspect of the pharmaceuticals giant’s SMART Working project whereby office space is divided into collaborative and quiet workspaces.

Macquarie Bank installed an atrium and central, bright red staircase to encourage people to meet and work together.  There were some surprises. It’s often said that organisations and managers shouldn’t “sweat the small stuff”, and should instead focus on the big issues. But Macquarie discovered that it was very important for staff to have great food and drink, especially top-notch coffee. West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue included a ‘for sale and wanted page’ on its collaboration system to encourage staff participation.

Most that have embarked on the journey toward being a hybrid organisation freely admit that they are still travelling and even that providing a hard return- on-investment calculation is difficult. But, they argue, staff tend to be happier, work with others more closely, stay longer and are proud of their workplaces. With no sign of improvement in the UK’s roads and public transport systems, with real estate still expensive and with a new generation of knowledge workers accustomed to the notion of work/life balance, it would be surprising if more organisations don’t head off in interesting new directions and view ‘work’ as something to do rather than a place to go.