Transcript

Christine

Welcome to Insight Brilliance, the podcast looking at everything related to internal communication and employee engagement. Season one is all about being culturally curious. We’ve got a great topic to talk about today. It’s the role of Virtual intelligence, or VQ, in the digital workplace. I’m speaking with Hannah from H and H, who’s going to talk about how we can make that work in the hybrid working world. Hi there, Hannah.

Hannah

How are you doing?

Christine

Great on this, well, it’s no surprise to say it’s a rainy day.

Hannah

It’s standard for 2024. I’m surprised we haven’t got webbed feet and fingers!

Christine

It’s because we don’t all have to venture out to the office every day.

Hannah

Well, this is true.

Christine

Now, in the physical workplace, we talk about the importance of emotional intelligence. That’s recognising our own feelings, the feelings of other people, and bringing that emotional component into the way we behave, the way we act in the workplace, and also how we adapt to our environment. And it’s become known as EQ, like the emotional quotient. Now, virtual intelligence, or VQ, relates to how we do that in the virtual working world.

And you’ve developed a model for making this work. Can we talk about how this has all come about with the shift to the digital workplace?

Hannah

Yeah. So the evolution of digital technology has been advancing for over five decades, which is bizarre to think, actually. It all feels like it’s happened in the last two decades, really. However, the lockdown did accelerate our adoption of digital tools and platforms, and so we have never been comfier using these things than we are now.

Christine

That has big implications, hasn’t it, for internal communications and employee engagement.

Hannah

Oh gosh, yes. So whereas previously, internal communications, it’s absolutely brilliant to bring people together. The line manager relationship, the face-to-face experiences. You know, we know that there’s huge value in it and that there’s actual a lot of benefits to be had from that. But when you’re dealing with situations, as we are now and have been doing for the past few years, where you are trying to connect and replicate the quality of those face-to-face interactions and working practices within a space where people are remote, isolated and connecting through digital channels – that’s been the challenge, really, as to how we can enhance that experience, ensure that people feel connected, that they’re able to share their thoughts, feelings, and to really communicate effectively, within that very changing dynamic.

And we as an IC agency have been helping our clients to do that very thing, whilst getting to grips with this surge of new technology, new platforms, channels, and digital tools that have come into the workplace where, you know, we’re trying to help people embrace those and make best use of them, whilst also enhancing employee experience.

So, it’s a fascinating area. It’s one that we’ve grappled with ourselves, that we’ve grown the agency and have many, many people, geographically located, not necessarily together in person. So, this was the kind of fuel really for getting us to this point with this model.

Christine

Working from home – it has been quite popular, hasn’t it? It’s got so many benefits. Personally, I save a lot of time and money on the commute. With family life, it means I can manage my home life and my work life better, and also find the time to focus and concentrate in a way that really works for me.

Hannah

Yeah, yeah. And you’re not alone. Yeah. Loads of people have found that the benefits of working from home or remotely or hybrid working or whatever, you know, even if you’re in the office a couple of days a week – but the benefits of having that time, the choice really, of where you work at any point in time, what’s going to work best for you in that moment, whether that’s because of concentration needs or because you’ve got some life commitments to juggle your work commitments around, or whether actually you just prefer your home environment and you get your best results working there.

You know, whatever the reasons are, there has been huge benefits discovered and now become part and parcel of expectations, working life. And, you know, quite a lot of generations now are requesting and asking and choosing employment roles that offer them that flexibility and that opportunity to be, you know, the masters of their own ship to choose what works best for them.

And I just think that’s so wonderful and empowering and such a great thing to retain in our working world, that I just hope that we don’t choose to lose it for whatever reason.

Christine

Yeah, yeah, it is ideal for so many people in so many ways. And it sounds like we’ve really evolved to a good place. But not everybody agrees, do they? There have been some very loud voices in opposition to the whole idea.

Hannah

Which I find incredibly bizarre. But actually, when you look at the statistics and the reasoning for this, you kind of get it. But, KPMG released a research report last year, late last year, that demonstrated 64% of global CEOs are predicting the full return to the office by 2026. That will be, you know, full time and, you know, the reasons for doing this are cited as a reduction in productivity, a lack of or lessening of collaboration, of creativity, of innovation.

They feel that people working remotely, is causing these issues, these drops in results. Which, you know, having a commercial head on it, you know, you kind of dispute that it’s not a valid argument.

Christine

But it does seem that they might have a point in some circumstances. There are good, as you say, commercial reasons for returning to the office. But how do you feel about that?

Hannah

I can’t help but think it’s a little bit of a copout. And there actually, there are other reports that, well, that suggest that there are that’s not the main reasons. They’re not being entirely truthful about that, that actually it’s about monitoring people’s behaviour and having visibility of people working or not working. So yeah, I don’t doubt there’s some truth in that.

However, I just I really, truly think that it’s still such early days of this new way of working that we have to learn how to make it work. We haven’t really invested time, effort, energy into exploring those particular outcomes and understanding better why that might be happening and how we can reverse that a little bit or improve it.

But I have to point out the elephant in the room, because it would be really bad not to. Clearly remote working is not a possibility for everybody who works, you know, those in the hospitality sector, people who work in manufacturing, it’s like, obviously it’s not a luxury that everybody can have. And it mainly tends to be the luxury of the knowledge sector. You know, those who work in offices and generally tend to work, at computers also. It’s not really suitable for everybody.

Christine

You need to be quite disciplined, don’t you?

Hannah

Yes. It doesn’t suit everybody. You know, there has to be good time management. There has to be good discipline. You’ve got to be focused. You’ve really got to enjoy your job. I think if I boil it down, you need to be, very mindful about your actions. Yeah. And concentration.

I mean, that’s potentially where a lot of the erosion of trust has come in. And so I think for those that it does work particularly well for, that’s where we need to focus time and efforts in ensuring that they continue to enjoy this option.

Christine

And just to touch back on what you said earlier about how the development of digital ways of working, the technology that we use now, that has become so very important, that’s developed over five decades effectively. With the recent, quite recent rapid rise in digital platforms, are people in the physical workplace going into the office, interacting more virtually, or are they talking to each other? Are they giving each other documents, handing printouts, or are they using those tools more?

Hannah

That’s a good question, because this idea that by hustling or forcing everyone back to the office is going to naturally lead to more interaction, collaboration, you know, this face-to-face, discussion and dialogue, which is what global CEOs are claiming is going to happen, I don’t think is going to be the reality because what you effectively find is that people, as you say, are tuned into digital channels, even in the office environment.

And in fact, back in 2018, the Royal Society ran a study where they observed the behaviours of employees who shifted in the work environment from a cubicle arrangement, a kind of cubicle environment, into an open-plan office space, and I guess the assumption here is that when you remove those physical boundaries of the cubicles or office walls or whatever, and put people into an open space where there’s more flow of people, more natural personal interactions, these things will increase.

But actually the results showed that there was a well, it was a shocking kind of, shocking results, really very surprising. But what they discovered was that face-to-face interactions fell by 72%. And email interaction rose by quite a whopping 56%. Wow. That for me says a lot, really, about what we assume and what the reality can sometimes be.

But it comes down to human psychology. You know, when these results came out and they were being studied, it revealed something about the trend towards open-plan office that threw it all into, that challenged it, really, that disputed the idea that open plan is great for human work environments. It’s potentially not, you know, people naturally, psychology dictates that people naturally seek psychological privacy.

Christine

Right. We make sense of our surroundings by boundaries, by physical spaces and walls and cubicles.

Hannah

Yeah. And there’s a sense of safety from that. But when you remove that and throw people into a fully open-plan space, it can be quite overwhelming on the senses. There’s a lot going on, there’s a lot to process. You find, you can find yourself a bit discombobulated with it and you feel exposed. You feel exposed to people around you, you know, and you’re trying to work within that environment. So it can be very distracting. And this is why you find that people start to build these physical boundaries through any means possible. It could be stacks of books, it can be files.

It can be a whole host of things to replicate what you would find in the protection of natural walls around you. And then also you get the huge headphones, the bucket headphones going onto people’s heads as you quite often see, which is a hiding signal. You know, it’s like, don’t interrupt me, I’m busy. Or I stare intently at my screen and there is a signal for everybody to leave me alone – I’m very, very busy here. But it limits the interactions with other people.

And they also found that with this rise in emails is that I need to interact with my colleague across a couple of desks away, but I don’t want to stand up and be visible in this space and deal with everything that might come at me. I’ll just send them a quick email. So I think there’s the rise of digital tools and channels that makes it possible to do things in different ways. But there’s also this preference towards using them in those kind of environments. But also we’re so comfortable in them now. They’re so natural to us that they’re just second nature, aren’t they?

Christine

Yeah, I can totally relate to that because there are times when I go into the office, there are lots of people in, and I really do enjoy the buzz and it becomes a bit like white noise. But then if I want to send some information or give some information to a colleague who’s just sitting just across the room, I might have headphones on, as you say, they might, I can see that they’re focusing, so I don’t want to disrupt that. So I send them a Teams message. So they’ve got what they need and what I need to give them. Yeah. And it’s just a bit quicker and it’s clearer when there’s no long conversation needed. But it’s nice to be working in the same room.

Hannah

Agreed. So I do think virtual working, regardless of whether we all go back to the office or whether we continue to work remotely or in a hybrid situation, working in these digital environments is going nowhere. You know, it’s only going to increase, I believe. So the challenges we have, as I see as employee engagement experts, is to try to enhance these working environments, you know, work out how what we do can actually create a better employee experience and better cohesion and better teamwork.

Christine

Yeah. So there is something in there about applying the emotional intelligence you would use in the physical workplace and adjusting that for the virtual workplace so that you can get people in disparate locations stimulating their collaboration and connection, and then nurturing that culture that you would have when everyone’s together. And that that’s the basis of the model you developed, isn’t it?

Hannah

Yes. The behaviours required in that virtual working world are subtly different to the physical world. You’re right. You don’t have access to the physical cues that you would get through body language. You know, you have to try harder through a screen to create that connection with people to build trust, you know? So it’s a really interesting topic. And this model captures the key components, really, of where IC can help to nurture virtual intelligence. And I think it’s through this that organisations will find that a hybrid remote working model can be really effective, but it needs working on.

Christine

So the model really breaks down the findings that H&H have had, and the things that we’ve experienced, the way we’ve supported clients. You can see the model on the Insight Brilliance website, but can we just talk through it? There are three main themes to it, aren’t there?

Hannah

Yes.

Christine

So there’s Know Your Stuff, Adopt The Actions, and Trust Is Everything. Could you talk us through Know Your Stuff first of all?

Hannah

Yeah, sure. So like, well, any hybrid empowered workplace needs the digital tools, channels and platforms to enable people to do their role as effectively as they would be able to in a physical workplace. But the crucial thing about a digital ecosystem is that it’s invisible. It’s pretty much invisible. And if you’re working remotely, your understanding of what’s available to be used or in what instance or how, how people tend to use them in the organisation is completely like, you don’t know what you don’t know.

So being absolutely crystal clear and transparent for people and guiding and signposting them on what that ecosystem looks like is crucial. So it’s almost like arriving in a new city and having no map, no street names, and no house numbers to help you navigate that environment. You’d be lost within a second, wouldn’t you? You know, you’d waste time trying to find your way around the place.

So, it’s crucial and critical that IC become the guardians and the guides of that digital sphere. Now, I know I have a responsibility there, too. But when it comes down to communication, clear communication through induction, through ongoing updates and, you know, making sure people have the knowledge they need, IC can make a massive difference here because what tools are used for what purpose and in what instance and how they’re used in an organisation can be can be different across different organisations.

And so the quicker you get somebody in the saddle and up to speed with how they’re used, the more efficient they’re going to be in that working environment, and the more there’s going to be consistency across the way that they’re used. So I think for the individual, it gives them the confidence and the ability to work at pace.

It means that they’re aligned with their colleagues on what tools we use in this instance and how, but it’s just that clarity on it all. It’s about comms being able to share the lay of the land, give the picture, you know, for people clearly.

Christine

The clarity, that’s what it comes down to, isn’t it? Because there can be a lot of assumptions where people ‘Oh, all people know how to use Teams, will know how to use email and when to use it’. But I like the way the model boils down the Know Your Stuff component as the role of IC being to inform, educate, and signpost.

And that’s exactly as you said. It’s like arriving in a strange city. You need to know exactly how the land lies. I think the second one is the second theme is Adopt The Actions. And you say that the role of IC is to establish, embed and role-model. Would you talk us through that, please?

Hannah

Yeah. I mean, we’re so gifted as IC people to be the facilitators of really rich and meaningful and useful conversation. So this is something that became very apparent at H&H through our own experience. Actually, the courtesy required to work collectively in a digital environment is so important. And it sounds really obvious, but it’s also very subtle.

So nobody knows when you’re present and working at your digital device, you know, unless you make it clear because I can’t see you. So, visibility and being absolutely on the game, on the ball about letting people know when they can expect you to be present or when you’ve disappeared off for whatever reason and when you can be back, can make a huge difference to other people’s working environment.

So your actions have a huge impact on other people. I think more so in the digital working world than it does in the physical world, because in the physical world, you can see if somebody has gone off to do something to get their lunch or, you know, they’ve gone off for a meeting somewhere. But in the, in the virtual world, that’s completely invisible.

There’s also this piece around people’s working patterns and preferences. Some people are night owls, some people are early birds. You know, if you’ve got flexible working policies and that people are coming online at different times, then, it becomes even more important that piece, when you’re waiting to hear from somebody, you need a, something from them, a piece of knowledge, or you want to ask a question or you’re waiting for them to hand you something that you’re working on together, knowing when to expect that or knowing when you’re likely to get that answer, can alleviate some of the stress and worry that comes from thinking ‘Have they seen this message? Are they aware that I need this thing?’ Or ‘When are they going to be here so I can get an answer to this question because I can’t move on until I’ve got it.’ So the Adopt The Actions aspect is around finding, consistent, I guess, rules, guidelines for an organisation around what behaviours are important or what ways of working should we all agree tol that means that we know what to expect, that that just kind of creates a smoother working environment because we all know what those working practices look like. I know that I can, you know, that you’re going to tell me on your status when you’re here or not. I know that you’re going to acknowledge and be responsive to my messages.

I know that you go to pick the kids up at, you know, half-past nine in the morning, or I know that we restrict our meeting window to these times. All small little things that can just make the work and experience so much more predictable and more relaxing, I guess. And, yeah, totally more efficient.

Christine

And collaborative. There’s one thing that struck me, I joined H&H in 2020 during the lockdown, during the first lockdown, and I thought, it’s amazing how quickly you’d sorted out this virtual workspace where there was a constant discussion if you wanted to be party to it on Teams. So it was like everybody is in the same space, but virtually, and lots of communication, there was real effort put into nurturing that, that collegiate kind of atmosphere. But online.

Hannah

Yeah.

Christine

So the whole Adopt The Actions, that’s really important to live that, to live what you want to see.

Hannah

Absolutely, absolutely. And actually, you know, there were people if you cut them down the middle, they would have email through to the core, you know. So this whole venture into the Teams sphere was very uncomfortable for them. But at some point we found that there were multiple channels of communication going on between team members, but people were kind of getting lost in the – it was like a snowstorm of comms where I don’t know where that landed. Where did that piece of information come through? I know somebody told me this, but I can’t remember what channel it came on. So we defined some guidelines around, you know, we use Teams in these instances and we use email only for those moments. And that just created so much clarity and, you know, and started to reduce this chaos down into something that was really manageable.

Christine

So something really quite reassuring as well. Just to touch on that, I guess that invisibility of people being away from the physical world, that could be where some of the trust breaks down for some employers who think, well, I can’t see if people are actually there or if they’re working. And that brings us to the third theme, which is a really big issue at the moment. It’s a big talking point. Trust Is Everything, where the role of IC in this respect is to nurture, elevate and activate. I’d love to hear a bit more about that.

Hannah

So yeah, it is a big topic actually. Right now it’s crucial really. So trust, every great relationship, be it personal or work, is built on trust, you know, and the difficulty within a virtual environment is having the opportunities to naturally build relational trust. And that’s a really important bond between people who are going to work on a task together or work on a project together. It can be so much, you know, you can work so much better and effectively when you feel a connection with somebody, you know, the quality of work output is higher. The enjoyment or fulfilment in doing it is higher. And you feel, you know, you feel connected to that person in a digital environment. It’s really hard to build that relational trust because it comes from personal bonding, and it comes from having conversations about work, non-work-related moments. It comes from knowing more about their personal life and their background. But when you operate in a virtual world and we know this, we’ve experienced this too, you enter into meetings with a specific purpose and task and reason for that meeting, and it tends to just crack on. And it’s very task oriented. What we’re missing is all of those wonderful, lovely passing conversations and moments, making a cup of tea in the kitchen or, you know, heading down a corridor to a meeting and bumping into somebody, of just catching up with people on a social level, you know, just so what we’ve really encouraged at H&H is that there are moments or permission given for people to spend time just chatting together online, you know, before your meeting starts, share stories of what you got up to, make sure that you’re catching up with it. Have a cup of tea together, just chat about anything. Just keep it non-work-related, you know. Learn about each other’s backgrounds, passions, hobbies, interests. That way you find these connections and build that relational trust, which really is the foundation for good work in relationships.

And then you’ve got your competence based trust. Now, competence based trust comes down to the task and the work itself. And this is where you feel that you’re working with somebody that has the skills and abilities to do what needs to be done for their particular contribution, and that, you know that they’re going to do it in a way that helps and supports you in what you need to do as well. So it’s done on time. It’s they do what they say they’re going to do. It’s done to a good standard. You know, they’ve got the intelligence to bring it to life. And that’s easier in the working environment because you build that trust through constantly performing in a really good, solid way really.

But IC can really help with trust in an organisation by building trust, by helping leaders communicate strategy, by being transparent and honest and authentic in the way that they communicate across an organisation, that can also foster this lovely sense of trust in an organisation which is sometimes missing when everybody’s, you know, working so remotely or individually.

Christine

The trust works both ways doesn’t it, we need employees to have faith that everything’s working as it should, that people are making the right decisions for the business, for them.

Hannah

Absolutely.

Christine

It’s a brilliant model. It goes through some really great advice on how to make this work and how to foster a culture of togetherness and community while working virtually. But how do we know that it’s working? How do we know when it’s working? So how do you measure it? Which is, that’s the eternal question in comms, isn’t it?

Hannah

The holy grail in comms! Well, with the model comes a series of questions that we’ve recommended that can be used to explore these topics within the workplace, to get a gauge and a sense of where are we at on these? You know, how good are we at these behaviours and how much of this have we got in place to help and enable our people to work productively? Use them as a benchmark, get your first results and then go back and re-monitor after you’ve put into practice some of the methodologies that we suggest as part of the model. And hopefully, you know, you would expect to see an improvement there, but it is about measurement. Talking to people, delving into these topics, actually opening up the discussion and dialogue and hearing what it is that people what their experience is, how they’re finding it.

Christine

Yeah. And as with any measurement, if it’s not working the way you want it to, you can go back and tweak it, can’t you, you can look at what you can change.

Hannah

Definitely. You will discover that there’s aspects of this model that you’re absolutely smashing out the park and others where you didn’t realise that that was a bit of a barrier. You know, let’s delve further into that and explore that further.

Christine

Fantastic. Thank you. Thanks for talking through the model in such detail. It sounds like a grand claim, but getting this right can actually be life enhancing, don’t you think?

Hannah

What, enabling people to have the choice?

Christine

Yeah.

Hannah

Of how and where they work best. Yeah absolutely, it is life enhancing, yeah.

Christine

And also the quality of the experience that people have when they’re at work, whether they work in the office or remotely, as a group, that quality of experience they have.

Hannah

Oh my gosh. Yeah. I hear what you say. The working in the virtual working world environment through this. Yeah, definitely can be much better.

Christine

Let’s have more of it.

Hannah

Yeah. Let’s, agreed.

Christine

Thanks very much, Han.

Hannah

Cheers.