The Great Workplace Test – Are You Ready? – UK

During an insightful 30-minute presentation, Martin spoke openly and honestly about the challenges faced by Arm during the pandemic, and how the company has overcome some of these.

Arm employs 7,500 people globally, with its headquarters in Cambridge, England. When the pandemic hit, like many other businesses, most of its workforce moved to remote based working.

The company is now looking ahead at how some of the changes introduced during Covid could be set to stay in the future, including hybrid working, and has enlisted the help of MovePlan to support it through this.

Martin believes many companies are referring to hybrid working as a temporary measure implemented to cope during the pandemic. At Arm, he said hybrid working is a “continuous journey,” with the model introduced in all but three of the company’s 21 offices. He explained that Arm is constantly assessing this new way of working, considering the reasons why people choose to go to the office versus working from home.

According to Martin, the three main reasons people choose to go to the office are: to meet others; for a change of workplace; and for focus time and to use the facilities. Whereas people decide to work from home because: they want to avoid a commute; or they don’t have confidence in Covid safety measures.

At Arm, the Workplace team have been gathering quarterly data, including from IT and staff surveys, to analyse the changes. “Don’t expect everything to succeed every time,” Martin advised, adding that sharing the findings of analysis enables workers to understand any changes made and the purpose of them.

However, Martin added that at the forefront of any changes should be a “solid engagement strategy.” He said Arm has relied on self-awareness tools to understand individuals along with focus groups, which he said: “Have given us a bottom-up view of what people wanted to see.”

Addressing the need to assess people’s productivity when working remotely, Martin explained that implementing productivity measures was not the right approach for Arm, which instead produced a hypothesis. He said: “If people are healthy and happy, have the right tools, and are listened to and managed well they will be productive.”

He added the importance of providing “equitable experiences” explaining: “People do different roles within the business so equitability is more important than equality in terms of hybrid.”

Touching on the term hybrid, Martin highlighted that hybrid is “just a word,” adding: “There are so many different flavours of hybrid.”

Read more about the term hybrid and why everyone needs to speak the same language, from MovePlan’s Suki Reilly here.

Following Martin’s presentation, MovePlan’s Loki Cheeseman chaired a Q&A, leading proceedings with a question about the human experience and how Arm has encouraged human skills.

Martin responded to say that Arm has invested in social prompts to understand how behaviours might be different, as well as investing in leadership: “It’s taking a different type of leadership with more empathy and understanding of your team, and how to check up on people. We need to hear from leaders and individuals to find out what’s not working for them,” he said.

Loki asked Martin what was key to inspiring leaders to make the changes implemented at Arm.

He responded: “Focus groups certainly encouraged them. I don’t think we have ever done such deep and detailed engagement. We took 120 people on a 12-hour journey to talk to them and understand them as individuals. It created so many nuggets of information that we wouldn’t have otherwise got. It reset the understanding. We thought XYZ but people thought ABC. It really forged the company back together again.”

Siobhan spoke about the challenges of offering choice when it comes to hybrid working, explaining: “If you give people choice to come in whenever they want then half the team could be at home. Some places are offering a structured coordination with maybe team charters where you agree with your team when you come into the office.”

Siobhan agreed, explaining the type of work MovePlan adopts with clients to bring employees on-board when it comes to change, including focus groups and interviews. She added: “If you give people choice to come in whenever they want it could be half the team are in and half are at home. Whereas if you use a structured coordination with maybe team charters where you agree within your team when you come in that might work better.”

Siobhan said a common theme when it comes to hybrid working is “connection and community. She added: “It’s bringing people together and creating that connection and community which is key. We have an opportunity to get things right now and humanise the workplace.”