Since we got the exciting news that we’ll start sailing again this summer, there’s been a palpable shift in feeling across the business. Months of painstaking scenario planning (and re-planning) is now being put to the test. I can’t wait for our ships to be sailing again. After all, creating unforgettable holiday happiness is what we’re here for and what we love; it’s exciting to know that doing that is within touching distance again.
Getting to this point hasn’t been easy. Many of us experienced significant changes to what we do on a daily basis, due to the organisation changes we made in June 2020 and the extraordinary challenge we’ve all had to face of working remotely for what’s now been a whole year.
We did it though. We had to make it work, for the business and for ourselves…. and we have. There have been highs and lows. We’ve reflected, dug deep, made changes, and persevered. We’ve shifted our mindsets and expectations and most of us have found opportunities amongst all of that to make positive lifestyle changes too. The single most positive thing I’ll take away from this situation is the resilience and brilliance of our people….what a team!
Now, as we prepare for life inside and outside of work to start feeling more like life before the pandemic, we find ourselves at a crossroads. We all have to make some conscious choices about how to create an environment where we can individually and collectively do our best work, and preserve some of the best bits of what we’ve learned through the pandemic.
As a leadership team, we don’t want to sleepwalk into a future way of working. We want to be considered about the environment that’s created, so that our business and all of us that are part of it can thrive.
- What is it about our old working lives we can’t wait to resurrect?
- What ways of living and working do we need to leave firmly in the past?
- What new habits that we’ve formed that we want to continue?
- What new rituals do we need to establish to continue to be happy, well and productive?
Through your EEG groups and the recent pulse survey, we captured your thoughts on all of these questions to inform our thinking and approach to what’s now being commonly termed as ‘hybrid working’. Hybrid working – where office-based and remote-working practices are combined – is being widely touted as THE future of work but the reality is, for many businesses, including ours, truly hybrid working is pretty new territory. It represents a ‘third way’ which is in many respects as yet untested and our move into it will be somewhat experimental.
Many of you are already starting to think about what future ways of working and living might look like;
Before lockdown, I would often stay late after work to avoid traffic or to finish off tasks I hadn’t managed to complete in the day. I am hoping to leave this bad habit behind once we return to the office as having time to be able to wind down in the evenings has really improved my wellbeing.
Vicky Burns, Senior E-commerce Executive, Cunard
Before, I remember always rushing between meetings, trying to find rooms, not having time to get a drink. With Zoom you can go between meeting literally with the click of a button so it’s been easier to manage time. We need to not go back to that rushing about and change some of our scheduling habits going forward.
Becky Lester, Senior Management Accountant
Previously when we were in the office full time, it was challenging for our homeworkers to feel involved in the business and collaborate effectively. I would really like to see this as a thing of the past when we establish our new ways of working as we have done so well to create an inclusive culture.
Jess Sherwood, Customer Contact Centre
You cannot beat colleagues coming together in person to create ideas and overcome challenges. Personally, and also based on conversations with my colleagues, I feel that we do miss that sense of in person togetherness.
Hannah Matthews, Guest Experience Manager, P&O Cruises
Personally I’ve reinvested some of my commute time into exercise, which has made a massive difference to me and I’ll aim to continue that on the days where I’m working remotely in future. I’ve also consciously made space for thinking and doing in my diary and will continue to do that moving forward; without doing that it’s easy to get scooped up into meeting mayhem which I know is counterproductive and means I don’t bring my best self to what I’m doing.
I hope we’ll all use the insights we’ve gathered and ideas we’ve shared via our EEG reps to experiment with our ways of working going forward. If the last year has taught us anything, it’s that change is iterative and it takes time to adjust. We’ll have to take some leaps of faith, try, fail and learn. Rather than defining a prescriptive set of rules, a new way of working should simply be the outcome of us building on the foundations of trust and living our Culture Essentials.
In thinking about your future ways of working, take a look at the Behavioural Expectations set out by our Culture Essentials and take the opportunity to talk to your line manager about what a healthy, realistic and fair way of working will look like for you in the coming weeks and months.