In January this year, the UAE moved to a 4,5 day workweek with with Friday afternoon, Saturday and Sunday forming the new weekend for government employees.
This change in workweek for government employees will most likely imply a move to a new working structure for schools and then the private sector over the next months or years.
Hello Monday Club founder Angelique Slob got invited by Ivan Palomino, founder of Dubai based company Bessern, to talk about the implications and how organisations can best deal with the change to a shorter workweek.
Watch the video on our Hello Monday Youtube Channel or read on for the full transcript:
Ps: Our friends at Bessern combine technology, brain science and coaching to create a learning experience that is practical, motivating and made to last. Go here to learn more.
Read on for the transcript of the video:
Ivan
This is great. We are live. Angelique. I’m so happy.
Angelique
Hello everybody.
Ivan
So we are going to be waiting approximately five minutes to to let everybody be present. One. Secondly, if there is any questions, we are going to be using either the chat inside of Zoom because there is part of the gang of the cohort that is joining us via Zoom directly. And the other part is going to be joining us directly through the YouTube streaming. Today is a great day. So we are going to leave them a couple of minutes just to be ready. And finally end of the day with something that is quite meaningful for organizations. Right? It is about how do we get ready in fact to transform organizations to design the workplace in a way that makes sense. What can we learn out of so many good either research. I have heard that there are so many pilots going around, countries getting involved. I read very recently in preparation of this webinar, the research that is being done in Iceland. So it is a national drive to understand what is the impact of reducing the number of days of work country level. That was quite impressive. This reading.
Angelique
Sorry to interrupted but I just read a post. I didn’t read the article but I just saw my co host from Hello Monday Club posted something about the UK starting a six month pilot with the four day work week. And he is from the UK so he picked it up and he had all those questions already about the execution. So we are really excited to dive a little bit deeper in that as well and in the research and the results from Iceland and add that to our experience and ideas about the future of work.
Ivan
Angelique. So let’s start by just to say how much I’m excited about this because the way we met each other is a little bit with our common passion, which is how do we enhance the well being at work. And that was our initial discussion. And even though we have different profiles or different angles to enhance and make that the workplace become something that is quite awesome, where people feel at ease, where people are at their mental best, the two angles that we have taken is one. From our side, my side is a little bit more into the learning processes, how to use brain processes in order to help people embrace this agility, embrace the change. How do we create mental processes and mindset in order to want to change and be at our best? And from your side, it’s about the design of the organization. It is crazy that at the end these two elements are put together in order to drive change, which is something that is in the mouth of everybody, right?
Angelique
Exactly.
Angelique
Yeah.
Angelique
I am an organizational sociologist. So I see organizations as part of structures that we are part of and they affect us. So there’s obviously a counter effect, but we are collectively part of structures that have an effect on us, on our well being, but also on the way we actually how we shape society in the broader sense. So the organizational structures that we operate in are really determining a lot in our lives, in our society and it’s super interesting and if you look at how you could change that and what effect what effect that could have on well being but also family life, just taking care of elderly people, it can go really far. So excited that we are active in this field in this time when we are about to change and that we have the opportunity to change. That’s great it’s just amazing.
Ivan
They call us the rebels, in fact, Angelique, we are people who are really trying to drive this change in organization. But I think that you have been a little bit humble in the way you describe yourself. So from my perspective, you are a person who is responsible, who is engaged and advocate for the future of work. You are the strategist helping organizations define how they want people to work. You are an organization Sociologist.
Ivan
You have been the founder of Hello Monday Club, which is kind of a think tank where ideas, creative innovation is happening. I have heard very good things about your mastermind group of like pick and choose. How do we call it HR Innovators, where you are in fact changing the way people work and you are not scared to go and try and see what are the results. Tell us a little bit more about it.
Angelique
Yes, thank you. So my name is Angelique Slob and indeed the founder of Hello Monday Club. I am from the Netherlands and I used to work as an Interim HR manager. And in that time we had in the Netherlands the new way of working, which was all about more flexibility, working where you want, when you want hot desks in offices and a little bit where a lot of companies and other places in the world are moving to right now. So it’s very interesting that I can use that experience that we have for my country. But at the same time, I was active as an HR director, HR manager. And I was like, well, I think we miss a very important critical element in this whole movement of the new way of working and that is moving to result driven and autonomous workforce. And a lot of critics were saying, well, it is about managers are not able to let go of control and people were picking up that narrative and people were just using that as kind of fact and also as a reason not to change. And I challenged that. So I said, well, I’m not sure if it’s true and if it’s true, we need to know why, because then we can find a solution for that.
Angelique
And that actually that question was the starting point of my journey that has led me to where I am today and I’m still on, obviously. So I went to University, I studied organizational sociology, alternative concepts. And after that I started my own consulting and I started to do it fully remote. So I also left my country. So I took my laptop, I went on a one way cruise across the Atlantic, never came back. I came back, but not to my old life. And that was seven years ago. And I met so many people, so many people quitting their jobs saying, I’m traveling and I’m starting my own business because my company didn’t give me that flexibility. And all I saw was a talent drain. It’s still so hard for companies to give this flexibility and create autonomy and meet the employees needs and we need to change that. So that has become the base my academic research and that the development that I noticed. That has become the base of my work at Hello Monday Club. In the core it is consultancy. But in this new age with Covid where we see that there is global transformation going on, we are building more like an ecosystem or if you want to call it a boutique conference online where we bring people together and give them access to a high quality, good level of resources and one of the things we do indeed is the mastermind for HR leaders forward thinking people who really say, okay, we want to be on this opportunity to change the way we work and also therefore the way we live and it’s really important that we take this we call them future of work leaders, HR innovators as you wish
Angelique
they’re people that are not afraid to be challenged and to also reflect on their self and their role and yeah, it’s an amazing bunch of people and I’m really happy that I’m like today I live in Brazil in Salvador de Bahia. So for me it’s like it’s still in the morning while a lot of people here watching is probably all evening and yeah, my life has changed and it is great to be able to share this with other people get people involved.
Angelique
Bring everything I’ve learned back to the corporate world thank you so much for having me and giving me also this opportunity to connect to the people in your Region
Ivan
Angelique so you are really a person who wants to talk so you have decided to move away from the corporate to recreate and redesign how you want to live your life so let’s do that also for organizations .
Ivan
Now a little bit about myself my name is Ivan Palomino I grew up in a country that is very similar to your country Angelique, Switzerland. It is very similar in terms of approach, even mentality there is a lot of good jokes that we have back in Switzerland but I come from the French side not the Swiss German side.
Ivan
The Swiss German side has a language that is more similar to yours. By the way, I’m an engineer so I love data. I cannot be just intuitive about results. I got passionate about understanding how the brain works. I dug in a lot of literature and I complemented my education with neuroscience behavioral science. By the way, behavioral science is something that I have used on my 18 years of corporate life because out of the 18 years we’re in marketing and you use behavioral science to nudge people to buy stuff that they don’t need, right? In our case when we cofounded this startup called Bessern, a German word that means to improve, when we co founded it with Elena which she might be in the crowd today the main idea is how do we create a way of learning stuff that affects behaviors and do better cultures? So we needed to dig a lot in terms of positive psychology, neuroscience to understand how the brain processes change and change is difficult. You mentioned just before this idea of controlling your people is such a difficult thing because we have been formatted by our society, our parents for so many years and it’s difficult to get rid of it.
Ivan
So what we do is to create a process of getting rid of all beliefs, creating a new mindset and ultimately practicing what you learn if it is a soft skill, if it is about how you believe in yourself or how you believe that you can bring something with purpose in your corporation. So that’s in a nutshell of what we do.
Ivan
Now coming back to the topic today so interesting enough, beginning of the year in the UAE has been a dramatic change and I got a lot of comments from human resources about it. So suddenly the government has decided to reduce the number of working hours in a week a major change in fact that shows a little bit the type of leadership that the UAE wants to have. Also the perception and this importance that they have given about the happiness and well being of their population. So it’s a dramatic change but suddenly HR people find themselves discussing so what should we do? Are we going to pay people less? How should we organize the work? Should we have more control? And then there is a bunch of Legends, the big Legends that happens about these type of cultures work better in Japan they wouldn’t be able to do that.
Ivan
There is not so many organizations that are changing so is there a proof really that we can work less and have as much or the same efficiency productivity at work? Does it have any benefits for organizations? So all of this is kind of the topic that we want to discuss and Angelique, we are going to benefit a lot on your experience working with so many human resources people, your experience in human resources and the fact that your country was at the forefront of the change. So that’s something that I’m looking forward to start in the discussion but everything starts with the situation. What is really the current situation today? Is there anything that has changed during Covid or not? Let’s be blunt about it.
Angelique
Everybody was talking about it has been such a huge revolution because people are now working remotely. I’m just leaving the crisis part and people were like having to home school children. Obviously that was like a very intense period as well. But if we look at work itself, the major thing I would say the major thing did not change and that was our mindset. So we are programmed as you said, formatted into a time and present mindset, time and present as in 8 hours a day going to a certain place and there is where to work. And people were starting, oh, now we all work remotely and that’s amazing. That’s a revolution. Well the real revolution would be if we were to change that they had a physical time and present mindset. We moved to a virtual time and present mindset. So fundamentally we didn’t really change the way we were. At least not in a way I think would help us to create sustainable organizations for the future. So have people who are supposed to be working from nine to five still being there all the time online behind the computer available. And even worse thing is that we even saw people starting to end up making more time and more hours because that line where we have that structure that just become blurry and that led to expansion of the work week for many people and that in turn led to less efficiency and more burnout and less well being.
Angelique
Especially in the beginning not have a choice that to start people and just say okay let’s just make it work and able to give you all you need.
Angelique
So side effect change their minds about what it means to be.
Angelique
I spoke to a person in a large company and he said well every time we feel we miss some crucial information, it meant this only meant that we already did not have the crucial information. We were already working without it. So this has also helped us to define what is important for us and what is not so important. A lot of learning so people learn to organize their work differently to become more effective. And that’s something I predicted from the beginning as employees will be starting to see the benefits of not having an office, not having to commute and they will be shifting their priorities. And what we see happening now, companies change into four hour work week, compressed work days, more flexibility in place and time is actually a direct consequence of that shifting of that experience and therefore shifting of priorities. So employee is saying okay, I don’t want to go back to the office full-time because I think it’s really great that I can go for one in the morning in that 45 minutes that I would be commuting otherwise. So little examples of people are changing.
Ivan
Yeah. So it is true that we as humans we are resilient and we adapt to new situations. But the adaptation hasn’t been without paying. There has been certain consequences. 41% of employees are considering leaving their current employer this year and this is a research, in fact Microsoft has done because they are quite interested about this story, about the impact of remote places and I guess it has to do with the type of software that they do. So 46% of these people who wants to leave their current employees say that they are likely to move because they can now work remotely so they can choose. And that goes to something that is quite important for human beings. It’s about having the control of your destiny, deciding how you want to manage your life, not being into the control mode where everything is systematic and pre programmed. But at the end it doesn’t depend on you. The reality is that employees want the best of the both work. So over 70% of workers want to have these flexible remote work options to continue. But there is still a 65% that are craving more in person time with their teams.
Ivan
So there is a mix. It looks like a contradiction, but this contradiction in fact is not affecting everybody in the same way. So leaders are having a good time. They feel like they are thriving during this time of COVID that everything is okay for them. But when you look at sub segments like people Gen Z, the younger generation, these guys didn’t have enough time for onboarding. There was no one to help them get into the real work. Then you have the working moms who have two or three jobs to do in parallel who is suffering the most. In fact the number says that 60% of Gen Z are really in the survival mode, in the struggling mode. And for the mothers working moms is 56% of them. Another thing is that new employees are not having a good time. 64% of them are in panic mode. And the sad thing is that at the end companies want to be innovative. They want to attract right talent and we know that there is a war of talent. That is not easy because now there is more choice where I can work from where I can work. So this Gen Z, in fact they are at risk and they will need to be somehow reenergized repurposed.
Ivan
The wall of work as it is today without any change is not made for them. And they are the ones who can tell you goodbye and they are the innovators. They are the ones who take solid decisions. I want to work from Thailand, I want to don’t have an office so they can take these radical decisions. And at the same time the fact that they took the decision makes that they are innovators that they can bring a hell of a lot of value for corporations. Right.
Angelique
So this was a development already. As I told you, so many people leaving their jobs because they wanted to travel, they have the flexibility. Many people who started their own business, I think in the US already, almost 50%, there will be almost 50% freelance. Why not it is probably their dream to become a freelance but to have that autonomy. So there is the need for autonomy. And I’ll talk a little bit about how that is from the organization perspective in a bit. But as you say, individuals want to be in control of their own life. They want also to meet the needs of their family. They might have other interests, other projects. Going to a place for spending their full days is a very male concept that is exclusive by nature. So the lifestyle business, a lot of lifestyle coaches already like business coaches, been doing florishing for years. It’s like work where you want, when you want and have your own business. That is also meaningful and making an impact. Autonomy and wanting to make an impact are two very important things and we should remember that. So what happened now? Because there was already like percentage of people leaving corporate and becoming freelancers or starting a startup because of that need.
Angelique
But now because of the suddenly the shift to a global labor market, it means that that becomes accessible for a very large group of employees. And if almost 50% is already considering of leaving, there’s no company who can survive if 50% of the employees will leave, even if it’s spread in three years, almost no company can survive. That because it’s like the costs are immensely and at the same time replacing people is going to take you months, especially because they’re going to get back. So we want to have a look at ourselves as an organization to change that. And this brings me to the good news. The exact needs of employees are actually what will drive your success as an innovative organization. Because in my studies, when I finished my thesis, my master thesis, and obviously I used all the resources, I studied a lot of materials. One of the most important things for knowledge workers is astronomy. The other one is having a clear mission and higher mission, higher goal, because people want to be connected to something that won’t do, something that is meaningful, that is giving them an impact, and that will give them that sense of engagement, that sense of togetherness and that will stimulate also their innovations for innovation.
Angelique
We also need space. So everybody here, when do you get your best ideas? Just the question, what is your place for your ideas?
Ivan
When I’m not working on the idea, when I’m walking around on the streets discussing with my eleven year old child about things of life, whatever it’s called, that’s where ideas come.
Angelique
Exactly. And a lot of people say in the shower I have great ideas. Once I was like vacuum cleaning the house and cleaning the house and going for a run. It all has to do with taking that and getting your subconscious doing the work. And we are trying to do so. The mindset that we have eight to five, productivityhours, time and present hours, command and control, that is all connected to physical and repetitive work where people were cut off of knowledge. It’s a very different organizational concept that was valid and brought value in its time. But at this point we have to move to a very different approach of work if we want to be effective. So giving our employees and autonomy and a lot of space. So it’s both in time and where you want, but also how to execute your work. It’s very important. But also you don’t want to create like a company where you don’t know, nobody knows each other. So you also want to bring the people together and align them and you do that with giving them a very clear organizational strategy and having a higher mission in place of purpose.
Angelique
We are here together working on improving the world and we do it by our product. This is how we actually achieve that. So those are two things that are very important. They are important for your employees to thrive and therefore for your organization to thrive and get the best out of them.
Ivan
So two takeaways from what you just said. The first one is indeed in order that people are that they are intrinsically motivated, that they have motivation from within, they need three things. This started with purpose. Something that is higher than just making money. Making money is not a purpose that human loves, is beyond that, something good for the society, for the bigger, for the bigger group. In fact that we are doing a beautiful thing for the people. Secondly is having the possibility to have mastery, to become better at what they do. This is where the learning part makes sense. So instead of teaching them, this is how you should be doing. Find your way about how you should be doing the things is help them with a mental process and the mindset that they can because we have been formatted in the way that we cannot. Right. That’s parenthood. So we were saying purpose, we were talking about mastery and the possibility to decide by ourselves what is what we want choosing and that’s the three elements that can generate that people are going to be believing in wanting to stay in the workplace if they have this option.
Ivan
And if we think about ourselves, we also want that. But it seems that when we become leaders we forget about that. We have a certain type of amnesia about what we wanted back in the days. Right. The second point that you mentioned is this belief that more hours is the best so working more hours. And I read an interesting piece of research by Stanford University Professor John Pengavel that found that productivity per hour declines sharply when a person worked more than 50 hours per week. So we’re talking about not even the normal 40 hours, but there is a decline in productivity after 50 hours per week. So in fact, after 55 hours, productivity dropped so much that putting in any more hours would be pointless.
Angelique
So I can elaborate a little bit on that because 8 hours a day is optimized for physical repetitive work. They were like, this was like Taylor and got all picked up by Henry Ford. So this is still the blueprint of how we work today is an industrial concept. So at that time I found out that 9 hours after 8 hours productivity was declined in that line of work. Simple, repetitive, you didn’t even think about. And that people were not exposed to all kinds of information all day and people just went on a bicycle to work and come back. Because this is why one of the reasons why we had an eight hour workday at that time. Also a government who formalized it and also saying that it’s going to be more well being. Also that was also a very good reason from a capitalist point of view because if people work 8 hours a day and have a little bit more energy, they can actually spend the money that they make thus driving economy and bringing back money to organizations. So you don’t want your workforce exhausted. Also not from a capitalist economical growth point of view.
Angelique
And now we are making knowledge workers working at least 8 hours a day and still thinking that we can push that productivity. I can tell you that there is a lot of research that for knowledge workers and creative work, 4 to 6 hours a day is optimized. And my personal experience totally. I am like 4 hours in my mornings. I’m at my best. I also think that if people hire me, they should pay more for the hours that I do in the morning because I’m giving them the best, my best time. But after four to 6 hours, your mind, we are exposed to so much information and we work in a highly demanding working environment that we have to use our brains, be innovative, be focused, bring us into flow. And it’s not possible to do that for more than 4 to 6 hours. This is why people in offices are taking breaks doing something else because their mind wanders and you’re still forced to be in that building. So this is the only reason we’re not going to go for that run. I’m literally after 4 hours, my body needs to move. I feel like I’m getting restless.
Angelique
My mind starts to be distracted. I’m getting hungry and I’m like, okay, it’s time for break. And then maybe later in the day I’ll take another 2 hours to do something anwer emails or something or like focus on the presentation, just making sure that I get the most out of my day. But I know it doesn’t make sense for me to push myself after that 6 hours. And on top of that we have to understand that these are the conscious working hours. During that conscious time we have to bring ourselves into a flow, stay focused. But we have all these innovative problems, like problems that need solutions, that needs ideas. And then we go cleaning the house, we go for a run, we go for walk with your eleven year old, you go do something very different and then you get a solution for that problem. So maybe in that sense we are still very productive and we are still working 24 hours a day because our subconscious is working 24 hours a day. The output, the actual output, the time that you can work on the deliverables is that you can be innovative connecting with other people is limited to be optimal.
Angelique
So there’s other research to back that up. I don’t say that the research that you have did not valid but we just should have good look at it. We will be talking about the four hour workday work week. No four day work week. This is something that companies experimenting with and countries are doing pilots and research. What do you think about that, Ivan, from your point of view?
Ivan
So there are two ways of reading. So I’m not on the approach of let’s change it without validating. You know why? Because it’s a little bit like what’s happening during Covid. So we can adapt to the situation but we are not doing it in the optimal way because we haven’t created the right processes in order to, for instance, work remotely. So a lot of people were feeling lost, maybe lost a little bit of motivation because of the sense of belonging being reduced because they didn’t have these habits that they had already developed in the physical office and they had to do it at home. So it was a little bit of a painful exercise for everybody because they had to learn by being thrown in the swimming pool or in the sea, in the ocean, in the ocean. I would say. I like the approach that countries you mentioned, for instance, the United Kingdom. Let’s do a pilot and see what are the results. Iceland, they didn’t say let’s do it for the Coronation. Let’s do it with 1% of the working population. Several companies are doing mini pilots where you can measure the impact and the processes, the tools that people need to have in order to be at their best in a big change.
Ivan
Any big change needs to be accompanied by a mental process of adaptation, losing the fear. And in order to make it real, even the technology has to be adapted in order to make it less painful for people. So going step by step by a certain amount of population, looking at your own results instead of believing whatever results are published by any people and learning on the way what should be the optimized ways to deploy a big change? That’s the way imagine you mentioned just before about Henry Ford. So that was a time where they moved from six days per week to the five days per week. So imagine the big change that happened. So in fact this has already happened and we have survived and people have worked less from it’s just that we forgot that it was back then in 1930s or something like that, that this major change happened and we have forgotten that it is already existing and we have survived. People are not lazing around. We have become more productive in the sense that we generate more innovation, more added value with services that we are not anymore in the factory just working with our hands.
Ivan
People, companies, countries have become wealthier because we have got the possibility for our brain to have a break, to reconstruct, to recharge, to create connections around the different areas of our brain which creates innovation and that brings value.
Angelique
Exactly. In that time there was also predicted that by today we would be working 3 hours a day.
Ivan
Wow.
Angelique
So we see the decline in hours but then we also see them going up and we have a nice white paper that will explain it a little bit more. We’ll put the link later. So we didn’t go to 3 hours a day. But actually if you look at the nature of our work and our society, we probably should have. So what my thoughts about the four day work week or that would be four and a half for your region and as you say, just compressing the work day and it’s the same as giving people flexibility. If you do not change the underlying beliefs and paradigms and the way your operating processes and policies employee relationships, you might get in trouble. So enforcing this by government in a way it’s good in another way it is causing trouble, it is risky. It can become a risk for companies that would not be able to adapt because they have for example a leadership team that is like really far of changing the paradigm and the way they work. So it would be good for everybody here in companies to also review keeping in mind those developments and global labor market war on talents, governments
Angelique
There is so much going on. So if you were to hire new leaders, really be really selective in who you hire and make sure you hire people that can actually drive that change. So also I see that four day work week, it’s basically still a time and present mindset. It’s still 8 hours and we just decided it’s probably not optimal and it’s still not giving the autonomy that companies need because you’re still telling me when I need to do my work. I know there is gains. I’ve been working in the Netherlands, we have the right to work part time many years. I went back for 32 hours, even like 15 almost 20 years ago. And it’s nice to have that extra day. But it doesn’t mean the other day shouldn’t necessarily be 8 hours. And maybe for some people it works really much better. So some people would say, okay, I love to have that one full day on top of Friday, Saturday and Sunday. And it’s lovely because I can disconnect, I can do all my errands. There’s other people that say well I like to work in the morning and then have a really healthy lunch and have my afternoon to do my other things.
Angelique
Spreading those hours, even maybe onto six days will give me an opportunity to have my best daily routine and develop my more healthy habits and spend time with my family because I don’t want my family to wait for four days and then be available for them full time. And also if we look at the innovation that needs to be innovative, that is also something still you cannot catch in four days necessarily. So I do think obviously there are developments. We are moving to less hours, compressed work weeks, compressed work days. It’s quite interesting to see what route we are going to be choosing. I do say that we should not forget all the data and the research that is out there that might indicate that indicating that a more full flex model where people can actually work when they want rather than that being dictated in a certain structure is going to lead to really human centered and sustainable organizations that is also more inclusive and will just help us on a global scale to be more innovative and development.
Ivan
What I like is that you mentioned the fact that it’s not because there is the change or the decision to go into the one direction. We need to have to give people the flexibility to choose how to deploy the change or something that matches their individual needs because this is what they’re asking for. When I gave you the numbers before it was like it looks like a contradiction. Yes, I want to be with them, I want to be with my team, but I need to have the flexibility. There are a couple of things in fact that corporations that have been quite resilient through these changes have done and it has to do a lot with the leaders that they have. And that’s why also this big highlight that you made about that leaders should be ready makes a lot of sense. So organizations are resilient, they have managers capable of breaking down problems and distribute them. That was one of the biggest impact drivers. So if they are able to allocate the work to the remote teams correctly, each of the teams are clear about the near term goals and objectives. That means that continuous communication should be going, that they have personalized discussions, these coaching discussions in order to enhance, motivate and help them do their best and understand them at the personal level.
Ivan
That is something that had a big impact. Also during this time, especially during COVID, employee recognition from leadership has got a big impact. But here we are not talking about money, we are talking about the simple thanks for doing this or the ovation in front of other people being recognized. Angelique, you have done an excellent job as a team. Let’s go around and let’s have a drink with Angelique or a virtual drink. So these small little actions do not cost a thing. But we need to understand that it is not about just creating the process to reduce and deciding how to do it. It is about making sure that the leaders are ready to manage. By the way, this story about leadership. So it was last year in the middle of the year that there was a KPMG study that was putting leadership readiness at the biggest threat. And leadership readiness was number eleven in terms of threats before COVID. So suddenly CEOs have recognized that leaders are not ready to manage empathically in a human way, distribute stuff, distribute the tasks, have clear objectives. During Covid, they were not simply ready. So there is a lot of lack in terms of how do we make sure that our leaders have the right skills, psychological resources?
Ivan
Because it is starting to have individual discussions with a lot of people and the mindset where they start believing that their people can and that they can do it. Right. Angelique, I just wanted to spend some time. There is a question here. How about automating the repetitive task of employees to increase productivity and satisfaction?
Angelique
Yeah, right. I do definitely something and it’s interesting. I’ve been speaking and mentoring a lot of startups as well in the last years and the mindset that you find in startups is like can we automate this? And I caught myself automating a process or spend like a full afternoon automating a process that will probably happen once a month and it’s likely not that repetitive. So it doesn’t really make sense. But I adapted that little mindset of this is something that could be automated, doesn’t mean you should. But yes, automation and repetitive tasks. So be very clear about what you’re actually want. To get the most out of your employees you do want to automate repetitive tasks. There is a lot of technology out there. In my experience, there’s a lot of people, and I’m not talking about the very tech savvy startup people – they’ll be fine. They create their own solutions if they want to. But in average organization people have a lot of trouble in adapting to technology. You can usually see they will still have an Excel file, although they have a new HR system and creating like a high workload and leading to burnout.
Angelique
And I’ve seen this not once but I’ve seen it many times. When Covid hit all the technology to work fully remote and fully distributed and fully asynchronious and automate a lot is already there it exists but there’s like not so many companies that really optimize it. Because if you would say that 4 to 6 hours that people would be working would not be, would also be spent on being innovative, creating happiness. If people can get a lot of those tasks from their plate because they are eating energy, they are using focus. It’s very difficult to become in flow if there’s like repetitive tasks that are not stimulating your brain. So yes, for creating effective employees, this is a little bit more the operational side of things, yes. See what you can outsource. See what you can automate. See what you can just stop doing. And it also goes for example a great example is also more practical level meetings. Be very aware of what is the objective of the meeting, who should be there? How often should this meeting happen, how long should it take?
Angelique
So there is a big opportunity to make a mind shift. When you look at the competitive task to automate, really analyze your meetings and move to what are the objectives. So you are moving to this whole different workday and see what you can do more asynchronous. So instead of a one on one you can also send a video over the presentation and say hey, you know this is my presentation. Have a look at it later this week and come back to me. It’s very much increased efficiency and that will support that shorter work week or shorter work day and give people more sense of wellbeing fulfilment and just come to better results. Great question by the way
Ivan
Angelique I’m going to pick on a small portion of what you just say and I’m going to expand on that. The big challenge that we have today with technology is that we believe that in order to make people tech savvy we need to throw a couple of software in the company and that will solve problems. Now the thing is that in order to digitalize a company and if we do the parallel with a startup we should be continuously reinventing. We need to be curious so that we choose the right solution that is not adding to the more pain for people. What if I have a solution where I need every ten minutes? I need to put some numbers that would be completely stupid. But it happens in big corporations like the ones where I was working in the past. It happens that the system became a burden and after a couple of years after spending so much money it was ditched. We just had to put it under the carpet. But everybody forgot that it was 1 million and a half to develop this beautiful system.
Ivan
So what we are saying is that in order to digitalize and provide people the capacity to use more frequently their brains and to don’t do this repetitive task and become like a numb at work. And it’s not challenging anymore. And if it is not challenging, we want just to die in front of the computer. We need to create the process of generating the curiosity for people to go and try stuff, go and pile of stuff. Now most of the software that is you have trial period, you can play with it. Sometimes it costs you peanuts rather than starting developing yourself or saying oh this is stuff from the It Department, It Department. It is not a job to try new stuff. If I am a marketer, I need to know what is out there, what could benefit. So it cannot be like a human resources person teaching to the It Department. We need something to automate my, I don’t know the bonuses, the benefits and without them understanding being consumer centric enough to understand the major pains of the users. So technology is the way to go. But we need to create people, to think about technology, to continuously embrace it, to continuously try stuff continuously do many mistakes.
Angelique
Exactly. So we have to realize that we encounter new challenges and for new challenges we need new solutions. What we see happening is very human to say, okay, there’s a new challenge but I’m falling back in a solution because I don’t have an alternative.
Ivan
I don’t know better.
Angelique
Exactly. And with Hello Monday Club we have so many connections also with great solutions out there, so we also collecting them so that at least as HR people now they exist and they will be like because some people like, oh, I was discussing something like this myself and just during the crisis. There’s a great solution out there and it’s a SaaS and it’s like low cost and you can just basically outsource your problem to the solution. But in saying that, I really want to make sure that leaders and people in organization understand as you say, because this is super important, we cannot just buy a tool and implement it and say send an email. We now have this tool and now I did my job to solve this problem. No because we need this whole and I’ve worked with future of work related startups helping them to improve their clients success because we’ve seen that happening with various great solutions out there. They were like Angelique I sell my solution but the people not start using it. How do you think that? Why is that? Because it was one email and everybody went back and kept on doing what they were doing before.
Angelique
So we have to understand that it’s all connected to culture, mindset. Yes, technology, both operational processes and technology are important but they need to be supported by mindset change. An intention to drive work, to rethink work, an intention to always be able to challenge each other, especially in leadership teams, but in a safe way. Do not just somebody in your company saying oh that’s a dinosaur, he doesn’t trust his employees. No, it’s not constructive. And we all have our old ways of thinking. And sometimes in one area you might be very forward thinking, but you might just be very backward thinking in another area when it comes to work or like what it means, those things are very connected to our values. I come from a part in the Netherlands where like working hard, getting up early and working really hard is imprinted in values for generations. And then if there’s a company and people are young and they live with their parents and the parents like it’s six in the morning, you have to get up because you have to get to work. How can you expect and this person once, maybe twice, starting at midday.
Angelique
But we need and this is something that could take a generation or even up to two generations to change. And all we need to do right now as leaders is enable the next generation. Leaders that are often like 40, 45 all that we need to create now the setting that the next generation can actually start making the changes and we are helping them to reprogram. We need to reprogram ourselves. And it’s all about that reflecting and coming back and challenging. Even like you said, there was research that people want to work remotely, but they want to connect in person with that team and with that team, I challenge them. Do they want to connect in person with their team or do they want to connect in person with other human beings? That is a mindset change. And I’m sure all those employees say I miss that daily day connection with my team because so that is what’s been taking away and they don’t have an alternative in place yet. Oh no, I have lunch by myself every day. You can invite a neighbor to have lunch for you because that person is also working from home.
Angelique
Yes, this is a mindset and it’s also nice to make it playful and safe and just say is that really true?
Ivan
Exactly. If you don’t mind, there is another question that I really like. It is related to the next generation. In fact, it’s Afshall saying great perspective. Angelique and Ivan, thank you request for your views. Will the physical workspace still exist in next five to ten years?
Angelique
I love the question mainly because it is connected in the five to ten years time frame and that is so important and that’s what we do as well. We always say, well I understand first where you want to go in five to ten years and then you know what steps to take for the next few years. There will be physical workplaces, but they will have changed. So I can totally see larger companies, especially larger companies having physical places where people can meet where they facilitate the need for people to not work necessary from their private space, that have events, where they can allow people to come. Especially larger companies probably want to do that by themselves. Smaller companies I would recommend to look into coworking spaces to facilitate. It is good to have a work – go back. I know someone who did a PhD your physical working environment and I live in Brazil, so I can confirm it’s true. It’s very important on your productivity. So it is not necessarily the kitchen table from your house where you also eat and you have your children. Definitely not. It doesn’t mean that the narrative of office and working from home, there is a lot of gray area.
Angelique
It will be changing. People will finding their own needs. We already seen like I’ve lived in coliving spaces where people just work together, live together, where people can travel. I’ve seen a lot of people bringing that combination. You see a lot of people saying I want to go to the office a few days, I’m working from home another few days. There will be physical places where people go and they will be optimized for work. And people should have the flexibility to choose what is their most productive place and where they’ll need to go.
Ivan
Just on my perspective, if in ten years we haven’t reduced the physical space by, let’s say 50% to 60%, then it is a bad thing. Because all of these Gen Z who are popping up in the workplace, they don’t want the physical space, they want to have the choice. So they need to have the flexibility to come when is required, needed or wanted. If in 5 – 10 years companies are still paying the same amount of rental charges, that means that they have done something wrong. Next question quickly. We need to focus on providing microlearning rather than lending costly training which nobody remembers. Technology helps on this. So that’s a good one of trainings and workshops by the way, Angelique.
Ivan
So there is sometimes this brainstorming sessions of two days where people don’t generate a single innovation. They’re there together, they’re discussing fighting approaches for handling some challenges. But there is no real innovation because the brain and you say it several times is not made to have focused for a long time and then an environment of pressure. When you have timing for the next step, it is not the best in order to generate creative ideas.
Ivan
That’s why best ideas come on shower or walking or discussing with your eleven years of time. So basically the way learning is done today, in most of the cases it is wrong. And we know that because we have been spending lots and lots of money in trainings of one or two days. When do the people have the possibility of want to digest the information and secondly, to practice the change. You cannot have a five days training about managerial skills and expect that you have better managers because nobody had the possibility to practice a single step. So what happens and there is data on that is that after two months only 5% of the population attended that training remembers something. Now let’s look at Elearnings LinkedIn put out. There are certain numbers. Only 11% of the people who start an Elearning finishes the elearning. Why? Because we need as human beings to have a feedback loop to tell me if I’m thinking it right and if I’m doing it right. So there needs to be like a way to give me feedback on what I’m practicing. It is an amazing idea to have Elearning. But Elearning alone or physical training alone are not the solution.
Ivan
They are rigid. You said it right. Technology now allows to have something that is individualized where you can practice. But it goes beyond just a simple 6 hours learning. It cannot be. People do not learn. Our brain is not made for that. So I think it is 07:00 o’clock, Angelique, any last words that you want people to remember?
Angelique
I think I said the most important things, but maybe we can summarize for everybody in an organization in a leadership position that five to ten years time frame is good. Think about we need autonomy, we need to be innovative connected with a higher goal and we need to feel engaged. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be in a traditional setting. So always be creative and challenge each other in your organization in a safe and playful way to bring change. Get feedback from others. I find it very important people make the right decision since we are now creating a foundation of how work will look in the future for next generations. So make sure you’re well informed, use academic research, talk to the right people, get great input from your peers and make sure you have an open mind when it comes to solutions and being creative. Listen to your people as well what the people in your organization wants. That’s basically like the high over advice I want to leave people with.
Ivan
Angelique, first of all, I wanted to thank you for your time and consideration, what you are doing helping organizations. It is amazing because you get to see life, the impact of what you propose, what you work together with the decision makers in order to change cultures. And this is something that has a lot of impact from the bottom line side and from the people side. And we mentioned something that is quite important. So we are continuously creating content. So Angelique, if you register to hellomondayclub.com, you have a white paper who has additional insights on the topic so that’s something that people can benefit of. I also recommend to go to Bessern.Substack.com to register to our newsletter. Our stuff is about helping people to learn and create better cultures to use behavioral science in order to notch the brain to take action. That’s the two sets that we wanted to share with you. Now if you have questions you want to get in touch there is one LinkedIn Angelique Slob or Ivan Palomino or you can take a big picture out of our emails so that you can ask us any questions because it’s always good to have some particular tangible stuff not just the big idea.
Angelique
Exactly. Yes if you send me an email and also I think you will set up with a recording on my website you can download. If you sign up you get our white paper on work-life integration which gives you some good insights and dimensions. I mentioned my research and we have a white paper available and that is about the most optimized working environment for knowledge workers. It’s more academic and yes hello@hellomondayclub.com it’s easy to remember. Just send me an email reach out with any questions. If you are in an organization and you are involved in workplace transition transformation and you want to have a chat with me just send me an email. I’m always open to talk to people and help.
Ivan
Thank you Angelique, guys. Thank you too for making it and knowing you’re interested in this amazing topic and I have learned a bunch of stuff.
Angelique
Thank you very much Ivan thank you so much for the opportunity and everybody here attending and also the people watching the replay later. Thank you so much. I am happy that we all part of the exciting times and we’ll make it work.
Ivan
Thank you have a great day. Bye.
