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Speaker 1: Kielta.

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Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a

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Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald with the

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Speaker 2: word crisis now comes talk about working from home as

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Speaker 2: oil prices rise and the cost of petrol surges towards

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Speaker 2: four dollars a leader. It's been flagged as a potential

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Speaker 2: voluntary measure in contingency plans. There's been no direct government

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Speaker 2: endorsement or mandate for working from home, but it's been

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Speaker 2: recognized as a possible fuel saving step if the crisis worsens,

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Speaker 2: alongside prioritizing essential sectors. Today on the front Page, University

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Speaker 2: of Otago Business School Associate Professor Paula O'Kane is with

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Speaker 2: us to take us through different ways of working and

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Speaker 2: what businesses could do to help out their employees. POLLA,

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Speaker 2: how has the current fuel crisis directly prompted organizations? And

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Speaker 2: I suppose the government agencies to reconsider or expand working

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Speaker 2: from home policies.

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Speaker 1: I suppose yeah.

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Speaker 3: So I think what's happened is that we've seen fuel

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Speaker 3: go up in price, and so that puts a burden

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Speaker 3: onto people in terms of getting turned from work. And

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Speaker 3: also we have a fuel crisis in terms that we

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Speaker 3: might not actually have enough fuel in the future to

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Speaker 3: be able to service the basic needs of the country.

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Speaker 3: So we're seeing a lot of rhetoric around, well, should

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Speaker 3: people be working from home so that they're not using fuel?

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Speaker 3: And I guess whenever I started to hear all of

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Speaker 3: that and we saw it coming right, I was like, oh,

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Speaker 3: for goodness sake, you know, we had this big conversation

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Speaker 3: after COVID. When COVID happened, we saw it as this

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Speaker 3: big social experiment to see if people could work from home,

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Speaker 3: and we proved people could work from home. But then

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Speaker 3: over the years since then, organizations have retracted. The government's

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Speaker 3: retracted right and it said, hey, bring people back to

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Speaker 3: Wellington public sectors. Employees need to be back in their offices.

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Speaker 3: And now we've had this other shock and we're asking

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Speaker 3: people potentially or we might start to ask people potentially

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Speaker 3: to work from home again. And so I don't think

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Speaker 3: we thought that through very well, and we haven't really

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Speaker 3: embraced some of the learning from COVID in terms of

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Speaker 3: what's happening in our environment and how we've actually got

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Speaker 3: to be prepared for that, but also how society has

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Speaker 3: changed right, So we work in much different ways. Our

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Speaker 3: lives are quite different. They're more complex, kinds of a

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Speaker 3: lot more going on. People have a lot more things

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Speaker 3: happening in their lives, and to be able to have

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Speaker 3: that flexibility to work from home sometimes actually reduces a

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Speaker 3: lot of stress on people.

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Speaker 2: Why do you think a lot of companies reverted quite

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Speaker 2: quickly post COVID to the back in the office agenda.

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Speaker 3: It's fair to say a lot of companies didn't. So

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Speaker 3: there are definitely a lot of companies that have kept

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Speaker 3: the working from home agenda there that have supported their

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Speaker 3: employees to work from home and have been quite positive

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Speaker 3: about it. But they also have a lot that have

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Speaker 3: been quite negative about it. And what I can see

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Speaker 3: is it's a little bit about presenteeism. So if you're

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Speaker 3: not in the office and you're not being seen, it's

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Speaker 3: harder to know what you're doing. And when we look

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Speaker 3: at the research into productivity from working from home, because

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Speaker 3: I think that's what everybody gets back to, right, how

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Speaker 3: productive are people working from home regardless of everything else.

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Speaker 3: That that's what it comes down to. And we see

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Speaker 3: the organizations say, well, we don't have the innovation because

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Speaker 3: people aren't together and they aren't making the social connections. Actually,

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Speaker 3: there's not a lot of evidence out there to support

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Speaker 3: any of that. Any of the evidence of the research

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Speaker 3: that certainly I've seen has been supportive of working from home.

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Speaker 3: We're looking about two thirds of people, and most surveys

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Speaker 3: say that they're actually more productive when they're working from

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Speaker 3: home because they've got time to concentrate. And a lot

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Speaker 3: of this isn't working from home five days a week,

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Speaker 3: this is one or two days a week. This is

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Speaker 3: enabling people to have that concentrated time. So I think

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Speaker 3: those productivity arguments are not backed up in the research.

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Speaker 3: And there's only one study that I have seen that

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Speaker 3: as used objective measures of productivity, so actual outcome or

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Speaker 3: output based measures, and that one has seen an increase

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Speaker 3: in productivity for the people who are working from home

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Speaker 3: a number of days a week. That other measures are

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Speaker 3: quite subjective, so there is self report and to sort

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Speaker 3: of clarify what they're like. But also that leaders find

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Speaker 3: it hard to work from home. So it's a bit

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Speaker 3: of research come out just in the last few weeks

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Speaker 3: in the New Zealand context. And because leaders find it

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Speaker 3: harder because they put a lot of communication in their

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Speaker 3: day to day job, they want to connect with people.

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Speaker 3: They have to connect with people to get their job done.

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Speaker 3: Then they see it from that point of view and

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Speaker 3: so want people in the office to make their jobs easier,

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Speaker 3: or because they think that they're being less productive when

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Speaker 3: they're working from home.

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Speaker 2: What examples have you seen, I suppose of businesses in

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Speaker 2: New Zealand doing it well.

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Speaker 1: All businesses not doing it so well.

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Speaker 3: From what I have seen, a lot of businesses do

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Speaker 3: do it well. That you need to be having those

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Speaker 3: conversations with your employees. So there's not this one size

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Speaker 3: fits all model and a third set. It's also not

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Speaker 3: just about working from home. It's about flexible work. It's

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Speaker 3: about where people work. So that could be at home,

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Speaker 3: it could be in hubs closer to home so they

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Speaker 3: don't have to travel so much, but they still get

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Speaker 3: social connection. It's about the times that people work, they

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Speaker 3: are is that people work, and also the tasks that

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Speaker 3: people do. So if you are wanting to work little

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Speaker 3: bit more from home, say for example, you're a teacher,

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Speaker 3: right you're on the frontline with students, but if you

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Speaker 3: look at what you could do, you have planning days,

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Speaker 3: you have times that you need to take to do

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Speaker 3: other parts of your job, and if you enable some

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Speaker 3: of that to work from home, then people do get

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Speaker 3: that concentrated time. So sometimes we need to think much

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Speaker 3: more creatively through what we're doing to enable people to

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Speaker 3: have some of that flexibility built into their lives. A

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Speaker 3: lot of the tech companies are pretty good at it.

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Speaker 3: They're quite aware of the technology that is used to

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Speaker 3: enable working from home. They have and they often have

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Speaker 3: those bigger budgets so they can have much more immersive

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Speaker 3: work spaces where whenever you're in a different venue, you

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Speaker 3: can actually connect in much better with people. Rather than

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Speaker 3: you and I on zoom right, they could be in

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Speaker 3: sort more interactive rooms with more interactive technology if we

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Speaker 3: need to do that, have that collaboration space.

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Speaker 1: I decided to.

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Speaker 2: Reach out to a whole bunch of companies in New Zealand. Right,

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Speaker 2: so big businesses from New Zealand's insurance, telecom and banking sectors.

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Speaker 2: Those are the ones I focused on. Thirteen of them

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Speaker 2: eleven actually have come back to me by by recording

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Speaker 2: of this. All of them cited working from home or

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Speaker 2: flexible working arrangements, so they've obviously got different policies for

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Speaker 2: different employees. You know, some of the A and Z

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Speaker 2: banking staff, for example a customer facing so.

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Speaker 1: They can't work from home.

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Speaker 2: But the sounds like they're not reworking any of their

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Speaker 2: policies or mandating anything. They're all keeping an eye on things,

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Speaker 2: keeping an eye on what the government says. When companies

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Speaker 2: talk about flexible working arrangements, do you think that it's

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Speaker 2: become a bit of a buzz phrase in this day

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Speaker 2: and age and the real You know, realistically, if an

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Speaker 2: employee goes to their manager and asks them about flexible

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Speaker 2: working arrangements, what is the likelihood of them actually being

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Speaker 2: able to fulfill that prophecy.

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Speaker 3: So I think it is more likely than you would think,

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Speaker 3: because when you think about flexible work, it is a

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Speaker 3: much bigger picture, right. So we've got the time flexibility,

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Speaker 3: the police flexibility, and even the task flexibility, different tasks

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Speaker 3: that you might do that might allow you to your

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Speaker 3: job in a different way. I think the challenge in

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Speaker 3: all of it is having a manager who can think

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Speaker 3: beyond the obvious, who can look at how we can

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Speaker 3: reorganize work to make it work using the technology. So

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Speaker 3: there's technology out there that can help scheduling that we

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Speaker 3: can allow people to self schedule. Particularly when you look

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Speaker 3: at frontline roles. If you look at hospitality, you look

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Speaker 3: at health, you look at teaching, you could actually empower

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Speaker 3: people to work together to roster so that people get

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Speaker 3: the flexibility that they need to actually support their lives.

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Speaker 3: So I don't think it's a buzzword. I think it

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Speaker 3: is an absolute necessity in the world that we live

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Speaker 3: in now. I think that complexity of the world that

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Speaker 3: we live in the fact that families have two parents

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Speaker 3: who go out to work often, we don't have the

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Speaker 3: village around us anymore. We don't have that network of

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Speaker 3: people that can help us. We also have a much

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Speaker 3: higher expectation of things that we should be doing with

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Speaker 3: our children. We have caring responsibilities. You look at the

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Speaker 3: younger generation, they want to be able to go out

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Speaker 3: surfing if the surf it's good, and maybe we can

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Speaker 3: work for flexibility around that. Their expectations are really high.

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Speaker 3: I think we need a full skill, actual change in

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Speaker 3: culture that it becomes a real norm rather than that

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Speaker 3: it is something that we offer it as an extra.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Interesting, actually enough.

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Speaker 2: Two Degrees's response was a standout to me. Actually, a

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Speaker 2: spokesperson said that employees have alternatives to driving through something

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Speaker 2: called work ride and Extraordinary. So work ride lets you

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Speaker 2: buy an e bike, a bike or a scooter with

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Speaker 2: no upfront costs, then pay it off through pre tax

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Speaker 2: payroll deductions, and then Extraordinary lets you take pre tax

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Speaker 2: income to pay for your commute across New Zealand's public

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Speaker 2: transport networks.

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Speaker 1: Have you heard of these initiatives?

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Speaker 3: Not those specifically, but I certainly know of those types

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Speaker 3: of initiatives. So there've been a bit in other countries

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Speaker 3: for years and years, particularly the biked work schemes where

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Speaker 3: the companies can clean back both the GSD and you

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Speaker 3: pay it before tax, your bait gets to half your price.

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Speaker 3: That's encouraging people to use that form of transport. Talked

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Speaker 3: about happiness budgets in the past, allowing people to use

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Speaker 3: a certain amount of money for things that will make

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Speaker 3: their life easier, which is a good impact on their jobs.

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Speaker 3: So these are the technological solutions to those and so

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Speaker 3: those are certainly things that can help with people's well being.

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Speaker 3: They're things that people value whenever they are working, and

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Speaker 3: for the organizations, they're really targeted to make life easier

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Speaker 3: for people. So they're absolutely fantastic, and I think a

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Speaker 3: bit more government support around things like that to really

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Speaker 3: have them embedded across New Zealand organizations rather than be

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Speaker 3: these standout examples. Right, So two degrees absolutely, I was

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Speaker 3: actually before you. I was looking at it yesterday anyway

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Speaker 3: in relation to something else. And they have a lot

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Speaker 3: of just small parts around the flexible work policy which

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Speaker 3: are really interesting. They've got long weekend policies that they

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Speaker 3: try to enable people to leave at two pm on

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Speaker 3: a Friday. If it's a long weekend where possible, they've

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Speaker 3: got summer working time it's a little bit shorter, and

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Speaker 3: those are quite quite cool things to do and they

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Speaker 3: do attract people. But I think we can think a

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Speaker 3: little bit more creatively away from this traditional workplace. The

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Speaker 3: traditional workplace came about in the sort of the turn

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Speaker 3: of the nineteenth into the twentieth century. Life has changed

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Speaker 3: horrendously since that, particularly in the last sort of ten

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Speaker 3: to fifteen years. But even whenever we saw a lot

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Speaker 3: more females entering the workplace, but that offices and work

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Speaker 3: were designed around men, right, Imagine if they're actually designed

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Speaker 3: around families, it would be quite a different organization of work,

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Speaker 3: and I think that's where we're really lacking. Need organize

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Speaker 3: work differently.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, how do we I suppose, if it's not government

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Speaker 2: mandated or government subsidized, how do we get to a

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Speaker 2: place in a culture where these examples are not seen

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Speaker 2: as going above and beyond for your employee.

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Speaker 3: So, but if they become the norm, then that actually

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Speaker 3: has everybody doing it a little bit of government and mandating.

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Speaker 3: And I'm a bit scared of using that word, but

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Speaker 3: perhaps maybe it's not mandating, but it is incentivizing so

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Speaker 3: things that organizations can do that can make work life

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Speaker 3: better for everyone by incentify things like the bike to

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Speaker 3: work scheme where you get your bike before tax. Right,

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Speaker 3: that's an incentive together a bike and hopefully also to

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Speaker 3: use your bike and return. So I think that incentivizing

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Speaker 3: those good behaviors and santilizing organizations to undertake those and

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Speaker 3: also really to do a little bit more research into

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Speaker 3: the impacts of those for those organizations and to compare

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Speaker 3: them against potentially organizations that aren't offering such things. You

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Speaker 3: could see really where the impact was and when they

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Speaker 3: do get normalized, say when maybe f I don't.

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Speaker 2: Know when, No, let's say when.

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Speaker 3: When they do get normalized, then I think we can

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Speaker 3: end up with a much better working environment for everybody,

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Speaker 3: and then that has flow on effects right to the

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Speaker 3: wider society if we have people in working environments that

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Speaker 3: are more positive.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw also a genesis came back to me.

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Speaker 2: It's that it subsidizes public transport costs by fifty percent

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Speaker 2: for employees in their Auckland and Hamilton offices through Auckland

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Speaker 2: Transport And why could they transport?

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Speaker 1: That's something that's that they can do as well.

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Speaker 2: Have you heard of any other initiatives that might work

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Speaker 2: well here, because, like you said, everywhere around the world

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Speaker 2: that has been doing this for I don't know decades now,

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Speaker 2: haven't they.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, I mean we've certainly seen those bike for

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Speaker 3: work schemes and the public transport those are quite common

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Speaker 3: Germany very much so, huge amounts of public transport subsidization

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Speaker 3: for people. We've also seen things like the government actually

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Speaker 3: trying to support rural communities. So we've seen this in

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Speaker 3: Ireland where they are really supporting working from home so

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Speaker 3: that we rejuvenate your rural communities and that they don't

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Speaker 3: say the hospitality businesses, so the retail businesses get a

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Speaker 3: bit more of the pie there that self organization of

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Speaker 3: work has talked about an awful lot. And whenever we

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Speaker 3: empower people and give them more of that autonomy and

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Speaker 3: more of that control over their day to day work,

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Speaker 3: that those are seen worldwide as qualities of high quality jobs.

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Speaker 3: So really giving people options to do things like that

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Speaker 3: working from home?

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Speaker 1: Will you rule it out because it screws the cafes

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Speaker 1: in the cities, isn't it when we do this, Well,

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Speaker 1: it's not up to me.

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Speaker 4: Actually, employers around the country will decide what works for

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Speaker 4: them and their workforces, and employees will negotiate with their

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Speaker 4: own bosses about what suits them. I've heard anecdotally that

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Speaker 4: many employers are already being pretty pragmatic about it, working

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Speaker 4: with their workers to say, well, actually, okay, if you

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Speaker 4: work from home a little bit more, that's okay with me.

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Speaker 4: I've had to read through the government's phase system again

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Speaker 4: and nowhere does it mention working from home or mandating

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Speaker 4: anything for that matter.

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Speaker 2: Do you think that that is intentional? Do we have

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Speaker 2: some PTSD COVID situation going potentially?

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Speaker 3: I mean I sort of read level too that that

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Speaker 3: sort of insinuettes that is a possibility, but it certainly

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Speaker 3: isn't mum Dad as necessary. I think it will be

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Speaker 3: difficult to Mandy unless you're actually going to the lockdown

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Speaker 3: scenario because is it one day? Is it two days?

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Speaker 3: You actually need to encourage organizations to think about it,

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Speaker 3: and potentially we wore the behavior that does it rather

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Speaker 3: than mandate it, because if you mandate it, you have

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Speaker 3: to start to put perimeters around it, and those perimeters

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Speaker 3: could be really really tricky to work out.

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Speaker 2: How can organizations adopt a kind of more balanced, forward

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Speaker 2: thinking workforce plan to kind of handle this instability like

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Speaker 2: fuel shortages or a pandemic, or geopolitical tensions, things like that,

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Speaker 2: because they're going to be popping up more and more

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Speaker 2: often in future.

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Speaker 3: Absolutely, yeah, I mean we've got to create that resilient

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Speaker 3: workforce that can jump. And it probably is a little

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Speaker 3: bit around working from home and making sure that the

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Speaker 3: technology is in place, that we look at people's health

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Speaker 3: and safety when they're working from home. There's certainly a

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Speaker 3: push around that to make sure that that's in place.

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Speaker 3: But also we've got to build the work dace culture.

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Speaker 3: So you know, at that COVID lockdown, we picked up

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Speaker 3: our desks in our chairs and we went home with them.

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Speaker 3: You know, it was quite a different scenario. Now we've

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Speaker 3: actually learned well we should have learned from that, but

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Speaker 3: by taking away some of those working from home opportunities

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Speaker 3: over the last few years, we're losing that organizational learning.

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Speaker 3: So we actually need to enable people to work in

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Speaker 3: different places and spaces and to have the setups to

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Speaker 3: do it, have the technology to do it, have the

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Speaker 3: culture to do it, have the organization to do it.

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Speaker 3: Leaders need to be really skilled in communicating. That comes

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Speaker 3: up hugely in the research that we've done. But they've

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Speaker 3: also got to be sort of think about how they

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Speaker 3: measure productivity and move it away from that input based productivity.

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Speaker 3: So if you're in the office workingly ours, then you're

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Speaker 3: seeing to be productive, but actually you and I could

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Speaker 3: work at CMRS and you could do ten times as

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Speaker 3: much as me and we can be sitting beside each other,

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Speaker 3: so it's not a real measure of productivity. A measure

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Speaker 3: productivity is actually what you achieve. But what we see

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Speaker 3: is that managers find it really hard to set good

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Speaker 3: output based goals which we can then measure people against.

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Speaker 3: So addressing some of that culture, addressing some of those

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Speaker 3: leadership skills that people have some of that goal setting

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Speaker 3: or KPI setting or whatever we call it in different organizations,

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Speaker 3: so that as we shift between some of these shocks

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Speaker 3: that we get and we have to potentially work from

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Speaker 3: home where we have to organize ourselves differently, that we

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Speaker 3: have those tools and players to be able to do it.

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Speaker 2: We were having this discussion in the newsroom, right but

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Speaker 2: I'm prepping for this episode, and my producer cannot believe

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Speaker 2: that companies aren't proactively implementing work from home type of

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Speaker 2: scenarios in order to alleviate pressure on employees but also

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Speaker 2: the country as a whole. I'm more cynical, asking you know,

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Speaker 2: and saying, why would they if there's no direct benefit

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Speaker 2: to themselves or shareholders?

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Speaker 1: Where do you see it?

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Speaker 3: Oh? So I'm probably with your producer. I think we

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Speaker 3: need to be getting ready for it. I think it

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Speaker 3: could happen even if we're not Monday at it to

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Speaker 3: work from home. We might be taught we have only

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Speaker 3: got a certain amount of fuel and we can't actually

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Speaker 3: get to work. So that in itself, why not a mandy.

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Speaker 3: If you can't get to work, you can't get to work,

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Speaker 3: so you've got to be prepared for it. I was

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Speaker 3: listening to a story about teachers in rural Northland. I

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Speaker 3: think it was where they just can't afford to drive

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Speaker 3: the big distances to work. So the skills have already

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Speaker 3: had to reorganize so that potentially they only have to

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Speaker 3: come in three or four days a week because it

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Speaker 3: feels too expensive for them and it's not going to

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Speaker 3: help their own personal situation. So this is already we

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Speaker 3: have to be prepared, and I don't personally think it's

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Speaker 3: going to get any better in the next little while.

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Speaker 3: So I think organizations are mad at them and not

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Speaker 3: to be prepared for getting having people at home a

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Speaker 3: day or two a week in order for them to

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Speaker 3: actually keep functioning.

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Speaker 1: She's going to be incredibly happy with that answer. We're

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Speaker 1: going to have to cut that unfortunately.

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Speaker 2: Do you think that there is I suppose I'm going

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Speaker 2: back to this man dating situation, but do you think

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Speaker 2: that there is actually any chance that the government will

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Speaker 2: men date working from home? A Given it's the parameters,

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Speaker 2: it's going to be incredibly difficult and be the COVID

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Speaker 2: response and how hard this government went on the last

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Speaker 2: government over everything it did during the pandemic, I mean,

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Speaker 2: can it.

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Speaker 3: I don't think that we haven't seen the detail of

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Speaker 3: level three and four as far as I'm aware, but

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Speaker 3: I will imagine if you're getting to whatever level four is,

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Speaker 3: there is probably going to be a mandate around non

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Speaker 3: essential jobs that can be worked from home should be

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Speaker 3: work from home. But up until that point, I think

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Speaker 3: you've got to put the onus on the employers to

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Speaker 3: think about the good of the society in order to

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Speaker 3: encourage their employees to work from home to reduce that

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Speaker 3: fuel consumption. And I understand the reluctance to mandate it

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Speaker 3: because I don't think it's a clean mandate like it

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Speaker 3: previously was with COVID. It was a pretty clear and

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Speaker 3: to some extent it covered pretty much everybody. Those who

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Speaker 3: weren't covered were pretty clear to see in terms of

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Speaker 3: our retail and in terms of our health workers. And

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Speaker 3: that's a different conversation about the fairness of all of that,

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Speaker 3: I understand. But until we're at those really really high

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Speaker 3: levels where there literally isn't fuel and in which case

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Speaker 3: you probably don't need to mandate it then anyway, because

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Speaker 3: we can literally get to work, right.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 2: I suppose for HR leaders or CEOs that might be

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Speaker 2: listening to this episode, what are kind of some immediate

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Speaker 2: steps that you would suggest that they can take in

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Speaker 2: terms of perhaps working from home policies or making sure

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Speaker 2: that employees are resilient in future kind of scenarios.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think we've got to really get their

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Speaker 3: readiness into this. So that readiness involves sitting down, getting

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Speaker 3: teams to sit down and look at what can work

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Speaker 3: for each individual team. So if we were forced into

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Speaker 3: the position where we had to have a day or

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Speaker 3: two working for more or even back to fill working

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Speaker 3: from home, how would that operate within us? How would

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Speaker 3: we have our communication? What technologies do we have on this?

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Speaker 3: What's your setup at home? Like, what support do you

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Speaker 3: need from the organization? What technology do you need? How

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Speaker 3: can we work together? We saw a lot of social

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Speaker 3: activities during COVID happening online, so what do we need

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Speaker 3: to do to create that cohesion? And there's not a

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Speaker 3: one size fits of for that. You've got lots of

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Speaker 3: different types of teams out They're operating in lots of

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Speaker 3: different ways. Some will already be doing working from home

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Speaker 3: a few days a week, and so they will be

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Speaker 3: much more prepared. Others will not, and they need to

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Speaker 3: think about how they can keep up that interaction and

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Speaker 3: that communication, which we don't know is essential, but it

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Speaker 3: can actually be achieved through the technological tools that we

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Speaker 3: have right there.

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Speaker 2: I'll tell you what, It's going to be difficult getting

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Speaker 2: this desk and these screens into my small flat, but

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Speaker 2: we'll try.

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Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us, paula problem.

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Speaker 3: Thank you.

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Speaker 2: That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You

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Speaker 2: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage

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Speaker 2: at ziherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is

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Speaker 2: hosted and produced by me Chelsea Daniels.

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Speaker 1: Caine.

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Speaker 2: Dicky is our studio operator, Richard Martin, our producer and editor,

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Speaker 2: and our executive producer.

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Speaker 1: Is Jane Ye.

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Speaker 2: Follow the Front Page on the iHeart app or wherever

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Speaker 2: you get your podcast pasts, and join us next.

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Speaker 1: Time for another look beyond the headlines.

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Speaker 3: M HM