Reference no: EM133770823

Question 

Hybrid working at Softek Softek is a data analytics company founded in 2003 by Emilia Perez and Anthony Stewart, who met at university in Southampton, UK. The company grew steadily and by 2011 had a senior management team of five and a strong customer base of mainly specialist consumer retail businesses across Europe. Emilia Perez was appointed CEO and Anthony Stewart was Director of Engineering. The other members of the team were Raul Gomez (Director of Customer Success), Alison Silverman (HR Director) and Nazia Patel (Finance Director). In 2015, Emilia Perez decided to return to Spain to live and at the same time Raul Gomez identified an opportunity to develop the customer base in Canada and moved to Toronto, appointing a marketing director and a sales director for EMEA, while he focused on the North American market. With two of the senior management team located remotely, the company took a decision to embrace remote and flexible working, and over time the majority of the employees adopted hybrid working patterns, with support from the management team. HR Director Alison Silverman explained "as a data analytics provider, we do most of our work remotely and while it can be useful to meet colleagues face to face when a new project starts or if there is a particular problem to resolve, there is really no need to be in the office every day. By embracing flexible working we can attract a more diverse workforce, particularly people who have responsibilities as carers and people who are neurodivergent and find normal office environments challenging." With hybrid working firmly embedded in the company culture, the senior management team adopted different approaches to working practices. Anthony Stewart and Raul Gomez were happy to allow their direct reports, the managers of the software engineering, QA and implementation teams, and the sales and marketing directors, to recruit staff who wanted to be home based and to develop their own team structures and working practices. This allowed them to attract young graduates with relevant knowledge and skills at a time when skills were in short supply. Nazia Patel and Alison Silverman were less comfortable with the idea of fully remote working. Nazia felt that it was important to meet frequently with her team to ensure that they all understood and adhered to the established financial procedures and were able to keep up to date with financial reporting requirements and regulatory frameworks in which they operated. Alison Silverman was concerned that too little time spent in the office would weaken the connection between team members and that without the support of regular opportunities to spend time in the office, less experienced managers and staff would be less productive. On Alison's advice, all staff were appointed on contracts that required them to work from their local office when required to do so. When the COVID-19 pandemic occurred in 2020, in many ways Softek was well placed to survive. The majority of staff were used to working from home, so requirements to stay at home, such as the lockdowns in the UK, created little disruption and the teams that had been largely office based found themselves able to adapt to remote working. The company was able to take advantage of new tools for collaborative working that emerged in response to strong demand. The managers and team leaders tried hard to ensure that all the staff felt supported and spent considerable time in online team and one-to-one meetings, to keep everyone in touch with what was happening. The senior management team were delighted that the company seemed to be thriving at a time when many of their customers were struggling. When the pandemic was over, however, it became clear that the management team had different views on remote working. First, Alan Jones, the Sales Director for EMEA, decided that his sales teams should come back into the office for at least three days each week. Partly, this was in response to concerns expressed by some of the sales managers that "the sales teams were not as productive as they had been before the pandemic". They also reported that some of the sales staff didn't always respond to emails quickly or answer phone calls. They could not be sure what the staff were doing - maybe they were not working their contracted hours. The sales managers argued that requiring the sales staff to spend more time in the office would get them back into better working practices, build morale and ensure that they were all clear about sales targets and discounting policies. Pauline Wong, who headed the Scottish sales team, raised concerns that some members of her team, who lived in remote areas and had family responsibilities, would find it difficult to make arrangements to come into the office that regularly. At the monthly sales managers meeting, she suggested that it might be better to talk to the teams and see what could be done to help them find solutions to any difficulties they had, before bringing them back into the office. Alan Jones responded "If you want to be a Care Bear manager that's up to you. But coming into the office is a job requirement and if they don't know how to make it work, that's just tough. It's their problem not ours. I want them in the office". This left Pauline unclear about what she should do. Did she have the authority to let her team work more flexibly? Would the other sales managers think she was weak - being a "Care Bear" didn't sound positive? And would Alan Jones count it against her when it came to bonus time? Reluctantly, she decided that it was best to go along with what Alan wanted and told her team that they would in future be expected to spend at least three days in the office. However, she felt less confident about the direction the company was taking and decided to start looking for a new job. Raul Gomez, who had originally been very much in favour of remote working, felt that he had to support his Sales Director's decision and so added his support to the return to office-based working, putting pressure on the Marketing Director to bring his team back into the office as well. The marketing director was happy to agree, since he felt that creative people work better if they are in a stimulating environment and that bringing people together would make them more able to be innovative. Alison Silverman and Nazia Patel also brought their teams back into the office, seeing it as just a return to normal working. They were surprised when some staff questioned this "new" way of working and said they would prefer to continue working from home. Overall, the majority of staff who had been with company since before the pandemic accepted the return to the office, either because they missed the face-to-face interaction with colleagues or because they thought they had no choice. However, a number of younger members of the team, who were happy working from home, and some who had joined the company during the pandemic, grumbled that it was stupid to spend hours commuting into the office when they all now had tools for remote working and that there wasn't any need for them to be the in the office, when they could have a better work-life balance by working remotely. They also felt it was unfair that they would have to bear the extra cost of travel to the office. Anthony Stewart was the only member of the senior management team who strongly opposed asking his staff to return to office working. He had been impressed by the way the teams had organised themselves while they were in lockdown during COVID and believed that it was a validation of Softek's values "high trust, high creativity, innovation". Far from thinking that staff were "taking advantage" of working from home to work on personal projects during working hours, he noted that his teams were organising their work so that all team members could work at the times that suited them best while ensuring that they could provide full cover for their customers. He was particularly impressed by the way the teams had found or developed new productivity tools suited to remote working and how the team leaders made sure that those who were most familiar with the tools helped other team members to learn how to use them to the best effect. Also, it was clear that when there was a particular problem that needed to be resolved, the teams would work closely together to fix the problem and would adapt their work pattern to focus on the problem. Anthony also realised that several team members had chosen to move to rural areas over the pandemic period and he felt that for these people, travelling into the office most days would represent a genuine hardship. He was certain that insisting people everyone came into the office on three days each week would be counter-productive. People would be less motivated to work hard and some of the most talented might decide to leave. As he could see no real benefit to bringing the teams back into the office, he decided to let the teams decide for themselves how often and where they would get together. Most teams decided that they would meet once a month for a training and information session. They decided that it would be best to meet somewhere that was convenient for most people and that anyone who had a valid reason not to travel could join the meeting virtually, provided that they attended at least one out of three meetings in person. Anthony was pleased at the outcome of the discussion and approved a trial of the model for 6 months, although he was aware that this was very different from the arrangements for all the other teams. He was confident that his approach reflected the company culture and met the needs of the staff. He was surprised at the angry responses he received from his colleagues. Alison Silverman sent an email saying "it is inappropriate for you to unilaterally override the standard contractual terms - you should have consulted me, as HR Director. How are my team supposed to explain the different working practices to the staff? I can see serious problems arising from this". Nazia Patel didn't directly criticise Anthony's decision but instructed her team that they should refer any expense claim forms from Anthony's teams directly to her. This created a delay in processing the claims, leaving the people on Anthony's team waiting an excessive time for the expenses to be paid, as Nazia referred all claim forms to Anthony for approval after querying many of the items which had previously passed without question. Anthony was angry about these responses to his decision and asked Raul why he did not support remote working anymore. Raul's response was that COVID had changed his perspective, he thought that Softek would benefit from a return to office working and that Anthony should abide by the majority decision. Emilia Perez, the CEO, had stayed out of the discussions, hoping that her colleagues would be able to resolve their differences amicably. However, as relationships worsened and junior staff started to make unfavourable comments about the situation, particularly complaining that the company was acting inconsistently and moving away from its traditional values, she decided to call a meeting of the Senior Management Team to decide on a way forward that everyone could agree with. Please use HR concepts and provide suggestions and recomendations about the best way to adress the company'es challenges.