Creating the right atmosphere in the modern office is vital

As part of our series of special focus weeks TheBusinessDesk.com has been looking at the issue of the changing nature of the workplace.

The advent of the digital age, the changing nature of the workforce and changes in society have all had a major impact on the nature of running a business.

The special focus week is being run in partnership with the Total Excellence Centre, The Floorbrite Group and the GC Business Growth Hub.

And as part of our coverage we held a panel discussion at In Touch Networks in Spinningfields Manchester.

The panellists included:
• Sharon, chair of the Institute of Directors
• Louise Gatenby, founder and CEO of The Good Board
• Nina Wyers, director at The Floorbrite Group
• Karlie Jelly, managing director of In Touch Networks
• Dawn Duggan, people Amesu, skills and talent lead at the GC Business Growth Hub
• Claire Smith, head of business development at Moneypenny
• Tom Courtney, lead training consultant at Total Excellence Centre

Dawn Duggan

We work with a lot of businesses across Greater Manchester and one of the key aspects that we hear about all the time is about how do people recruit the right members of staff and then how do they keep the right members of staff.

One of the first things we do is take them back to basics. We look at their policies and what they offer their staff and their teams.

We ask if firms engage with their staff and ask them for their opinions and then do they take those opinions on board. We spend a lot of time working with firms to help them implement new policies and processes.

It is all about listening to people and then making sure you do the right things in terms of what people want.

At the Growth Company we have made a big transition in the last 12 months. We have moved into different areas.

We know have a dress for you day, a work for you day and a day about holidays and absences.

Team members can now work their seven hour day anytime between seven in the morning and seven in the evening. It is entirely up to them and they can fit their work around other commitments.

In the past we would expect people to dress smartly and professionally at all times, now if you know what you are doing on that day. If you are in the office all day then you can come in dress how you want.

It is about putting that flexibility into the workforce and all of that came in response to staff surveys.

When we are recruiting staff one of the first questions we get asked now is what are you packages and what are your flexible working and agile working arrangements?

Karlie Jelly

Karlie Jelly
Previously, we were based up near the arena. We had a beautiful office. It was open plan and it had room for about 80 people.

But what we found was that we had built that for what the business wanted, it wasn’t specific to what our people needed.

When we were moving back to Spinningfields and or new home it was a case of thinking how do we engage our people on this journey?

It was a case of thinking how do we get them to look at the space and design it for themselves?

We had a huge huddle board and we got them to design mood ideas, like you would if you were moving home.

We have got pool tables and slush machines. We have got company zones and we have areas where people can go and play on consoles at lunch time.

It is about creating zones where people can go and relax. We have a motto here that we work hard and we play hard.

If our people need to go and think about creative ideas then we have an area where they can go and do that.

The place where we are now caters for all of our employees. They are in the centre of Manchester. They have things on their doorstep that they can take advantage of.

Louise Gatenby

Louise Gatenby

We have made huge strides in recent years and the fact that we are talking about mental health on this panel says a huge amount about where we are now.

There are some fantastic initiatives taking place. Perhaps the question to ask is if you broke your leg would you be worried about telling your boss and needed some time off, the answer is probably not.

But if you had a mental health problem then would you feel just as comfortable having that conversation.

We would all say we might think twice about having that mental health conversation. Some of the statistics suggest that although mental health problems are having a big impact on attendances just over half of people will not tell their boss.

While we are making great strides I still think we have got much further to go. I think we are living in a world of contradictions where there are lots of competing dynamics.

On the one hand we have got lots of people who are suffering from stress because they are working long hours at the other end of the spectrum there is mass underemployment where three million people in the UK would like to work more hours.

There are lots of dilemmas, one of the things that is a major change is one of the things that employers have to get right is the why. More and more organisations are having to think about their purpose and what it is they are trying to achieve.

Then firms need to think how does that translate to the employer brand and how an organisation treats it staff.

Sharon Amesu

The nature of the Millennial workforce means that they are so much more conscious about the decisions they make about work.

People are thinking twice about traditional career paths. They look at the people at the top of the firm and they bear no resemblance to them.

And the way that people have worked in the past do not appeal at all to the new generation.

The driver in the past might have been renumeration but that no longer is the calling card for many Millennials. Firms are having to work harder than ever before at the connection they make with the people who work for them.