TOP OF MIND - Nick McKissack

Iam writing this article from my desk at HRNZ National Office in Wellington. Despite the work-from-home (WFH) craze, I’m one of those people who prefer to come into the office. I have a couple of reasons for this. The first is that I like to keep some separation between my work and home life. I have the sort of role that can make it difficult to switch off from work. The second reason is that I happen to enjoy the social side of working. I’m lucky enough to meet and interact with many people in the course of a work week. Some of this is online, but I like to engage with people in person as well. So for me, WFH is only a good option when I have a significant task to do that requires no distractions or if I have an online meeting that will last most of the day.

At HRNZ we have a flexible work policy that allows team members to WFH. We have various ways in which the team are working. We have team members in Auckland and Sydney who operate in a permanent WFH set-up. We also have team members who have fallen into a regular pattern of WFH one or two days per week. Other team members will tend to WFH on an occasional basis and that’s mostly for personal reasons. We’ve also had people working from airports, trains, cars, hospitals and vacation spots.

For HRNZ the flexibility around location – where you are working – is well embedded. It seems to work for everyone, and we meet as a whole team once a week. People join the meeting from wherever they are but it’s noticeable that, on this day of the week, most people are in the office.

Flexibility isn’t just about location though, that seems like a reasonably recent obsession. Again, at HRNZ, we have quite a lot of flexibility around contractual relationships. We have permanent staff, casual staff, contractors, volunteers, interns and consultants who form the overall team. These arrangements are driven equally by business needs and the preferences of individuals. It makes for a fluid team where we can bring in capabilities as and when we need them. It makes for a reasonably agile business. The need for this was perhaps the greatest learning for us from the pandemic disruption.

I think the next frontier for flexibility relates to how we define jobs. The days of a tightly defined job description are behind us. It’s maybe a weakness of HR practice generally that we try to squeeze people into boxes. While it’s true that certain things have to be accomplished in a role, it’s also true that people rarely fit comfortably into the box that’s been created for them. We need to focus much more on using the strengths that people bring to our organisations than we do on picking away at weaknesses. For a small organisation like HRNZ, this kind of flexibility is vital. Our roles have broad requirements because we have a small team covering many bases. It’s far better to think in terms of the strengths that a person brings that contribute to the team instead of just a specific role.

One of the great leadership skills of the future will be the ability to build an excellent team by harnessing the potential of people and showing flexibility about how, when, where and what work we do.