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Psyched For Business Podcast Episode 3

by Richard Anderson - Co-Founder on

Episode 3:
Why flexible working should be non negotiable for all businesses

In this podcast episode Richard Anderson is joined by Amanda McNamee, Senior Mental Fitness Scientist at Fika.

Amanda is a Business Psychologist, who is incredibly passionate about Positive Psychology and Mental Fitness - both in and out of the workplace.

In this episode, we cover:

✅ What creates the foundations for a great company culture

✅ Why flexible working should be a non-negotiable for any business

✅ Advice to organisations on how best to improve on-boarding and productivity in a fully-flexible workplace

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Episode 03 - Transcript:

Voiceover (00:00):
Welcome to Psyched for Business, helping business leaders understand and apply cutting edge business psychology principles in the workplace.

Richard Anderson (00:10):
Hi and welcome to the Psyched for Business podcast. I'm your host, Richard Anderson. Thank you very much for tuning in, in this episode, I'm joined by Amanda McNamee senior mental fitness scientist at FICA. Amanda is a behavioral psychologist who is incredibly passionate about the subjects of positive psychology and of course, mental fitness, both in and out of the workplace. In this episode, Amanda talks through what creates the foundations for a great company culture. She also outlines why flexible working should be a non-negotiable for every business. And she also talks through some advice to organisations on how best to improve onboarding and productivity in a fully flexible workplace. Thanks again for listening. I hope you enjoy the episode.

Richard Anderson (00:55):
Amanda McNamee, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Amanda McNamee (00:58):
Thanks Rich. Thanks for having me.

Richard Anderson (01:00):
It's great to have you. It's funny because when we were having a conversation in advance of this recording, we realized that I used to work with your husband for quite some time. You work with my wife, you're a business psychologist. Uh, we specialize in psychometrics and we never met before small world, but I'm, I'm glad we've managed to connect. So Amanda, obviously, we're gonna talk about a number of interesting things I think on this podcast. I certainly think they're interest in that this whole notion of, of flexible working, hybrid working versus remote and office based. And I know that you are a, a huge advocate of, of flexible working, whereas I've been more, much more office based. So it's probably gonna be a bit of an interesting conversation, but before we get into the ins and outs of that, would you be happy just to give a bit of a background, introduce yourself and how you got into the whole world of business psychology and mental fitness?

Amanda McNamee (01:45):
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks Rich. So I'd, I'd spent gosh, over a decade in academia, mainly around the area of behavioral change. It's, it's what brought me over to the UK in the first place and quite enjoyed that, but started to head in the direction of positive psychology, really, and this idea of flourishing and thriving. And that really works in, in both education settings and in the workplace. So I enjoyed some, some time in my own consultancy afterwards, focusing on this area then had a, a brief dalliance in the, the digital world. Um, you've mentioned a husband already. We, we had our own startup there and then around the time of the pandemic returned into the more, okay, how can we learn from the research that we have start moving towards applying that for both kids I've mentioned when we spoke before, you know, I'm very passionate about ensuring that, that we give kids as the best opportunities possible, but also within the workplace, by the time our kids are in the workplace that maybe cultures are, are a lot more positive, that they're a lot more team oriented and that work days aren't as, as rigid and as school orientated as, as they always have been.
Really. So I suppose, 16 months ago now I joined FICA who are involved in micro training in the areas of, of mental fitness and team culture. And the idea being that we know what really helps individuals and the skills that we can develop as people to, to perform at our best, particularly when we're facing challenges. Because the thing is with our mental health, we tend to only really know that there's a problem when there is a problem and we don't really train in advance of that. Whereas you think of sports, we all tend to train in advance of something big. You wouldn't go out and just run a marathon with without having trained for it. But yet we encounter life's challenges. We haven't done any prep work and, and we find ourselves quite floored by them. So it's really, you know, within the workplace and outside of that, how can we ensure that our, our confidence and our connection skills, our positivity skills are, are built as best as they can be so that we can continue not just to kind of cope when we face a challenge, but actually thrive through it and maybe even use the, the challenge to build upon and grow from there.

Richard Anderson (03:58):
Brilliant. And, and, and talking about mental fitness. So it's a, it's an interesting concept. So it's, it's one that I have to be very honest. I, I, I wasn't hugely familiar with it, but fairly recently, this, this notion of mental fitness, but I like the way that you'd describe it in terms of, we presumably need to be armed with the knowledge of, of mental health. Because as you said before, we, if there's a problem in the workplace or there's a problem in our personal lives, you only really become aware of that when you're in that challenge. And it's probably better to be armed with that knowledge of principal. Is it akin to physical fitness in that respect? Would you say, like you said about the marathon, for example.

Amanda McNamee (04:32):
Yeah, it is that we, we can train, there was this idea. I, I'm not sure if you're familiar with Carol Dweck, but she's all about, you know, the power of yet and mindset. And there was this view that, you know, you, you're either born confident or you're not, you're a positive person, or you're not, you're motivated or you're not. And, and that's not the case. We, we can actually train all of those skills for everybody, for, for school kids, for people in the workplace, you know, you can become more motivated, more focused, more resilient, more connected to those around you. All of these is the idea that we, we build those skills now, before you perhaps perceive even a need state for them, so that when you do face that challenge, you have the skills and the ability to work through the challenge and to perhaps even help others working through it as well, because you are already aware that this, you know, is something that I have. But I think then in a workplace it's really helpful as well, because if you have the mindset that knows these skills can be changed, it's not a case of thinking, oh, well, you know, Jimmy over there is just not that bothered. It's a case of Jimmy at the moment seems to lack motivation, but that's something we can actually help him to train because being more motivated, we'll have him more engaged, which will make him more likely to stay with our company, but also result resulting better productivity for us as well.

Richard Anderson (05:42):
I guess it's, it's so important for managers to be armed with that knowledge as well, that they can do it with their direct reports. Really interesting stuff. You also talked Amanda about culture and positivity and building brilliant business cultures. And it's something that I'm very interested in as a subject of culture, because I've, I've seen businesses purport to have a fantastic culture because they've got maybe a pool table in the corner of the office drinks on a Friday night that, that, you know, that, that whole idea of brilliant culture, but what for you makes a positive working culture and how do you best go about building that

Amanda McNamee (06:16):
I think a positive working culture starts with, and it's a real buzzword at the moment, but the idea of psychological safety culture is where you are comfortable as an individual to voice concerns that you might have or voice challenges that you might be facing around, maybe workload around resources, that you also have a position to say, you know, I, I think we could try this. And it's, it's this idea of, of failing safely that you could try something and if it doesn't work out, it doesn't really matter. You, you crack on and try the next thing. There is no blame culture when, when things go wrong, but there is a sense of accountability that you learn. If you have made a mistake, you learn from that. I think that for me, is, is kind of the foundation of any really great culture is that everybody feels that it doesn't matter what your position or what your title is that you're in an, in that very comfortable position of saying, let's try this, or I'm not happy with this, or could we look at doing this instead?
I then think on top of that, it's around knowing and understanding the people in your team and knowing what works best for them and what works for you and having that open communication and that open dialogue, for example, where I work, I'm partially cited. So I much prefer to have voice notes and calls rather than texts, particularly long slack messages and emails and things like that. So I have that conversation with my colleagues and where that works for them. That's how they choose to contact me. And for me, that's how I would choose to contact them. But I know in some instances, you know, if it's a kind of a clear look at, we need 1, 2, 3, done for some people it's easier if I put that in a list format. So I might still record the voice note and then just have the kind of the three bullets afterwards.
The benefit of that as well is we obviously feel more connected because a bit like I'm doing what you, now, we have a bit of preamble at the beginning and a bit of a chat and a bit of a listen, how was your weekend? What did you get up to? And it's much easier to do that in a voice note because you feel like you're not necessarily wasting time and it, it's not just a platitude at the beginning. Hi, how are you? Can you go and do this please? So I think, yeah, they're kind of the, the beginnings of great team culture, having this psychological safety, being able to communicate, feeling part of a team, understanding who's involved in your team. And then it's having clear work roles as well, you know, and that might change from project to project. It, it's not, this is my role, and this is all I'm doing.
It's knowing what your role is and what part you play in a particular project, because that allows you to engage fully. You're not facing a period of, of uncertainty around, okay, well, what are the expectations of what I do here? You know, what you're expected to do, you can engage in that you feel more engaged because you have the meaning and the purpose of your role in that particular project. So that then stops you becoming disengaged and, and feeling a bit disen about what's going on around you. So for me, I think they, they all play, but it comes down to all of these things are built on kind of a foundation of communication of this idea of, of training together as a team. So you, you come together, you agree what the norms are around communication. You agree with the norms are around being comfortable and safe to voice concerns or raise challenges.
If that's what you need to do, how you would go about doing that. And this isn't a license to say what you want when you want, you know, we, we still need to be respectful in how we communicate, but it's having that norm as well. I think one of the, the interesting things from, from the lionesses success recently was one of the first things that the coach said was behaviors. We agreed a set of behaviors, and that is what we kept consistent throughout our entire performance. Having those group norms and behaviors that facilitate the psychological safety, the good communication, the ability for you to know what your role is for a particular project, or to ask what the role is. If you're not sure, all of those norms for me is, is what makes a great culture

Richard Anderson (09:57):
Brilliant. So those norms and those behaviors that, that you've just talked about there, is that something that, I mean, you can use figure as an example if you like, but is that something that was, did you involve all of the team in, in having that initial discussion about how best we want to communicate for example, or was it done by the founding members and then passed on the members of the team? And at what stage I'm asking lots of questions here, but at what stage is that typically done in your experience?

Amanda McNamee (10:23):
I think there will always be visions for example, or perhaps we have what's, what's called a big hair, audacious goal, something that, that is part of our vision that we're all aligned with. And we've all joined Fecon, knowing that this is what we're, we're trying to achieve, but when it comes then to the actual behaviors and the norms, yeah, we, we have got together as a team, so we work fully remote, but we get together once a quarter. So we might have spent two hours one day, or even an hour, one day as, as part of one of those team days where we got together. And we said, okay, what do we want in terms of these visions? How do we think we best achieve these? And what do we, as individuals and as team members need to do this. So when it comes to communications, what are the things we like?
And then we might break out into a working group to say, okay, what, what are the expectations? So we have, for example, a, a focus period on a Wednesday for a couple of hours, and we've agreed that nobody is compatable during that focus period, you don't send slack messages, you don't ring people. Everybody has that time to focus exclusively on their work, get what they need to get done done. And it would only be really a strong exception that you would say, okay, let's maybe it was a client who could only meet at that time on a Wednesday, you would then meet them, but you would take your time somewhere else in the day. So we'd agree what the kind of the norms for that period are. We've all agreed that, you know, there was no expectation to reply immediately on slack. If you wanna do your own focus work during the day, perfectly acceptable to shut down slack and, and crack on with that.
But what we would tend to do then is maybe just update your slack status to say, gonna do some focus time for the next couple of hours. We'll, we'll check in on the hour, if there's anything urgent, those are the kinds of things we agreed as, as a group, certainly much the entire business. And then within my team, which is behavioral of science, we've agreed our own norms as well, but the founders were part of the conversation, but only part of it as a member of the team, certainly not a, a kind of a deciding member, if you like.

Richard Anderson (12:13):
Yeah. I, I think it's so important. And it it's one of the things that I've been talking about so much recently, and I have I'm yet to have done it is to establish our organizational values, for example. And then once we've done that, hopefully the behaviors aligned to those values. But when I undertake the exercise probably facilitated by somebody who knows what to do, and I'll, I'll certainly involve the entire team because I think it's, it's absolutely imperative. You mentioned then it was quite a nice segue into the next few minutes of discussion was the fact that you guys work fully remote. Now I know that that was a, a must for you when I hear fully remote. It's funny because just it very quickly. So before it was popular, I used to work from home all the time. So my first sales job, I was a business development manager.
We used to sell educational resource was up and down the country. And I would do that from home. And I had a very small house at the time. It was my first job and I was penned into this very small room, doing work all day. And then I was on the road. It put me off Amanda for, for life wanting to wanting to work from home. And I think I'm of the preference in truth, where I need somewhere separate from my home to work, but let's go to kind of flexible work. And why do you think it's a non-negotiable? Why do you think every business should offer the facility for workers to work or more?

Amanda McNamee (13:24):
I'll say, first of all, I think for me flexible working it's location. So it's, it's remote hybrid or home, but it's also the hours that you choose to work as well. I think for me, it's, it's kind of the, it's the full package, because I think part of, of working from home, I wouldn't necessarily see a, a massive benefit working from home. If you exclusively, still had to maintain a nine to five, for example, it wouldn't necessarily benefit as much, although it would still be my preference to, to traveling into an office. I think flexible working for me, isn't non negotiable because I think life's busy. Life is really busy, you know, the majority of us have, you know, and I often joke we have more going on outside than we do in work. So trying to fit work in can almost be a challenge.
But I think in terms of I've mentioned earlier, you know, I've, I've challenges with my eyesight. So for me, just in the lighting to soothe my needs, having extra large monitors that isn't coming into, maybe a flexible workspace where the desks have been moved around. I'm not trying to cart fig monitors rather than just my laptop and things like that. For me, that's one of the reasons. So from an inclusivity perspective, I think it's really important. There's lots of people where quieter environment really helps to concentrate for example, or there's some people who, who need a particular environment that works for them. So I think that's something that we do need to consider, but I think flexible as well, there's more to life than work. And one of my non-negotiables is you mentioned earlier is that I do get to work remotely. I have two young kids for me.
I choose to either walk them to school or collect them from school. My husband does the other one. He's also fully remote. That's something that I choose to do, but it's very important for me that I do that now all of our family live in Ireland. So maybe that's why I feel that need, because we don't have the grandparents maybe to, to facilitate that for us. So that could be one of the reasons why that's a driver, but I think flexible working overall is all for me that it represents his choice. And I think the more we can choose to do something, the more we feel empowered, the more we feel motivated to do something because we feel we have that choice. Once you remove choice and you start saying, you have to, then we're starting to kind of come away from what people are intrinsically motivated to do.
I work very hard at, at FECA and I enjoy the work I do there, but the majority of the reason I can enjoy that is because of the times I'm choosing to be really focused, which oftentimes is half six, seven o'clock in the morning. I can do that. I'm not disturbing anybody. I'm not waiting for an office to be opened as much as I can be very sociable. Nobody's coming over to chat me for that early morning coffee. I'm head down, get my work done for those first couple of hours. And I, I feel that that works best for me.

Richard Anderson (16:00):
I completely get that. And it's very well explained. I've said to you in the previous conversation that we had, although we are office based as an organization, I'm very, very open minded when it comes to these things. And, and, and for me, the jury's still out. I can very much see that the benefits and the positives. And I think that I'm one of these, these people, maybe we're an organization that we are office based, but we do give staff the opportunity to work from home when they need to work from home. But I, I have to admit that if somebody's working from home, they'll normally tell me. And I'm assuming that puts me in the non flexible work in bracket, but again, I'm still open to these things. So how would you go about if you were a business that, or has historically been office based, how would you go about introducing those a new, a new way of working?

Amanda McNamee (16:46):
I think really it's about, I mentioned earlier to conversations and discussing things as a team, I would work first of all, with the team. What is it that the team want now when it comes to flexible working, I think, and particularly being fully remote. The biggest challenge that we've faced for the last couple of years is uncertainty. And there's an overhang of that uncertainty that sits uncomfortably with all of us, especially I imagine business leaders around, okay, are we being really productive right now? Are we getting the most that we can get? Are, are people actually working when they're at home? Are they sat on their pajamas? Are they doing enough hours? And I think there's all these concerns. And if you can't see people because we're really poor at measuring productivity, in the traditional sense, we tend to equate bums on seats to productivity.
And if we can see people then surely they're working. So I think we have to dispel that notion. First of all, before wherever we start thinking about flexible working, and then I think the key to anything, the key to a good marriage, the key to relationships with their kids, the, the key to good working relationships is communication. It's having that conversation around, look at what works for you, you know, and if you said to me, Maddy, you're very welcome to work flexibly here. You just need to let me know. I don't perceive that as flexible. The reason being if I wake up in a particular morning and maybe one of the kids isn't feeling well, so I do my a couple of hours work and then at half age realize, okay, maybe he's not gonna be able to go to school. So I need to start thinking about what are the options there.
I need to have that conversation with my husband who has, what hours, when and how does that work having to then involve you in that conversation just becomes an additional stress that I need to think about as opposed to being able to kind of switch that off completely, but knowing as well that the prime hours of working, I could communicate that with you and say, look at rich, I'm gonna have two hours worked done before you even open the office on a morning. Now you can get those two hours out of me, which are gonna be really productive and probably the equivalent to about four hours office work. Does it matter to you the amount of time I spend doing that task? Or are you just looking for it to be a quality well, flowing succinct thought leadership piece, if, for example, if that's what I was producing.
So it's having that conversation, first of all, with your staff, it's also, we moved to remote, working in an unplanned way, really, because most of us in March, 2020 became remote and then had to try and get all the equipment that we needed. And we were in exactly the situation that you talk about, you know, maybe in cramped bedrooms or in shared accommodation or in houses with kids or other family members that weren't used to having to be quiet because somebody was on a call or somebody needed to concentrate. And we never really took the time to say, okay, what, what actually needs to happen here is we need to train people in some of the skills I mentioned earlier, focus being one of them, okay. We can sit at a desk for an hour and maybe get a task done, or we can train ourselves to focus really succinctly for 25 minutes and probably get more done than we would've got done in that particular hour.
So it's then working to train, okay, how do I work best? How can I be at my most efficient and most engaged in the work that I need to do? But for you as a leader, how can I support my people when working remotely, rather than just managing and leading them in the ways I always have done, they're now working in a very different way. I'm working in a very different way, but I'm still just doing the things I've always done. So you haven't changed your behavior. You're expecting that they won't change their behavior, but your environment has completely changed. So you can't consistently behave in the same way when you environment and everything around. It is not what it used to be. So it's starting to think, okay. When I say flexible, flexible to me means whenever it works for you within client reasons, expectations around meeting the client, there has to be an expectation.
There, there has to be a thing that says, okay, you know what, when you have that conversation with your spouse or whoever it is, if there's kids involved, or if there's builders on site, or if you're sharing an office with them, you could, I have a client call from 12 to one today. So I'm gonna need the office and I'm gonna need the quiet there, which may mightn't have been a conversation you would've had before. And if you were in the office, you would've just gone out to meet the client. So you would wouldn't have needed that same level of quiet and that lack of distraction in those times. So ultimately the initial part of it all is communication. What works for people? How would that work for you as a team? What are those norms you might have to agree that says, okay, generally, can we try to be online between 10 and three?
If that's reasonable and if you're not online, can you just update your status? Still let us know that you're not online. So if we are looking for you to do something urgently, that we know that you've had to pop out to the doctors that you've, you've had to pop to the post office. And I think you're gonna get the most out of people there because people are being then facilitated to do what they need to do along with what they want to do, which makes them more able to engage in the work because they're less distracted by, oh, well, I have to be out here at five o'clock because I have to get to the post office before is at half five.

Richard Anderson (21:32):
I love what you said before about, you might do two hours work and half six in the morning, which would be the equivalent of doing four hours in the workplace that, that, that amount of productivity, because for me as a business owner, that's massive, you know, and I never think about it like that. And I think I'm so ingrained in thinking about the job or work being nine or five in an office, because that's the way it's always been for me. And that's what we've probably done recently. Whereas the reality is, I guess it's all about pro productivity. That's, that's all, any business owner business leader wants, or I do really, really like that. I think what you said before about uncertainty is, is it's a very, very fair point. You know, when I was, when I was looking into this, to this topic in advance of this discussion and thinking, well, why are business leaders trying to get people banged into the office? I think it probably does boil down to a bit of uncertainty. Nobody likes uncertainty to, again, I guess it's part of that psychological safety that maybe that you were talking about trying to talk psychologically. That's not why I afford it, but I'm guessing that it all kind of ties into that, but do you feel that there are people Amanda, that, that will abuse the system? If it's put in like that,

Amanda McNamee (22:35):
Which is people that abuse the system all the time, it, it doesn't matter. There would be people doing that in the office, just the same, you know? And I don't think that's a majority at all. I think when we're talking about people abusing the system, I think, have you ever done a speed awareness course for, for driving? You don't have to admit to it, but we all have. Yeah. Unfortunately I have. Yeah. But I think one of the things that always stuck with me is when you have that course, one of the first things they say is, I bet you probably didn't even realize you were speeding, just because you didn't realize the speed on the road itself. And the time I was done, I think it was 35 and a 30. I genuinely thought I was in a 40 zone. And it's that lack of awareness that you think, okay, you know, how can we raise awareness around what it is that, that we need, what it is that we want and people in the workplace.
I think when they're abusing a system, they're not intentionally abusing a system. They're maybe sat with nothing to do there's that with nothing to do, or they're not able to concentrate because it might be for them that they need a very specific environment for them to actually get flow to happen. You know, they need to be able to focus for that flow time. And I think there's very few people going in sitting, playing solitaire on their machine or watching YouTube by choice. I think if people are doing that, it's because they're not engaged and they're not motivated because they don't know what the purpose of what they're trying to achieve is they maybe don't have the role clarity that they need to have. They don't know what the, the outputs that they need to deliver are. So there's a lack of communication happening there around the clarity of what they're doing, the meaning and the purpose aren't there.
And I think if you actually gave them something within their skill set or trained them, if they were lacking, the skills needed to do the job, then we would find ourselves increasing productivity, immeasurably, because people are becoming engaged. I don't think anybody ever chooses to go into work and sit for 40 hours a week and do nothing because that it's so destroying. It's a complete waste of their, their time. And the slowest way for 40 hours to pass is, you know, for you to be clock watching, we all want to be able to be engaged in something because it's human nature to kind of get stuck in and, and, and get it done. There's a very, very tiny majority who would intentionally abuse the system for their own game, because ultimately you're gonna get more out of it if, if you can just get focused and get done.
So again, I would argue it's the environment, it's the communication. And it's the leadership that are affording those opportunities. And perhaps even causing those opportunities to happen by not giving the, the right support and not ensuring people know what they want now. Okay. Employees themselves need to be more able to say, and this is where the psychological safety comes in. Need to be able to pick up the phone and go rich, look, I know we talked about this and I know you told me what it is I need to do, but I still don't really get it. And maybe I should, but I don't. So can we be really clear on what it is you need from me by the end of the week and what you think that looks like so that I can go away and do that? Cause right now I'm not sure. So I'm just gonna fast around and, and probably produce something that that's not really good quality at the end of the week.

Richard Anderson (25:30):
Interesting. So we're talking about flexible work and I know that you made the distinction right at the beginning, it could be fully remote. It could be hybrid. It could be office base, but working when you are able, or when you want to work, essentially, do you think, therefore I'm under the businesses should give the option for their staff to have some sort of office to work from as in when they want,

Amanda McNamee (25:52):
I think there definitely needs to be the option for a different environment. I would say for some people that that could be an office. I think the reason for that is like you've mentioned, you know, we will have some people, particularly younger people, perhaps that are in a house share that have a very small room, or maybe they're in their, the parents' home. And I think it's not healthy for you to have the place of work where you're spending, you know, eight, nine hours a day and where you're sleeping for hopefully eight hours as well, having that as the one environment can be challenging. And I know we can manage it, but it's, it's a matter of having a really clear divide in terms of, okay, I need to be getting out for a walk or I need to be getting out to the gym.
I need to be getting somewhere in between those two sessions. So that I'm, I'm differentiating between the two, when we were here for the beginning of the pandemic, I didn't have this office. This was a carriage. So I was working in the living room and the kids were at home now that was fine. Somebody needed to be with the kids. That, that was the reality because they were at home during the pandemic and my husband was working upstairs, but it was really difficult then in a nighttime, because my desk was still sat there where I wanted to kind of sit with my husband, watched some TV, relax. Wasn't much else. We, we couldn't go out and go anywhere because we, we weren't allowed once I, this became the office that I could close the door on. It meant that work was work and home was home, but that's a privilege for me to have an office space that I can close the door on.
So yes, I definitely think there needs to be environment. Do I think that needs to be a shared office where you're in with your colleagues all the time? No, I don't think that's what it needs to be. I think now there are so many facilities around in terms of co-working spaces, shared office spaces. I think they're more than sufficient if it's just an environment, but I also think for some people just getting out to a coffee shop for a couple of hours. So I think if you are talking about having your staff that they're remote, I think having a budget for them to use shared office spaces or having a coffee budget, for example, that says, okay, look, there's 25 quid extra a week, go to coffee shops. If you find that you're gonna be productive there and you wanna do your thought leadership pieces when you're in there, or you wanna have your client calls when you're there, go and do that.
And there's a budget to get yourself a cup of coffee in a cake while you're there for the couple of hours. That for me, I think again, it's about choice. What works for your team? Do they wanna work in coffee shops? Do they wanna work in shared office spaces, or if they wanna work in shared office spaces, because you're not paying the overheads of a large office, maybe give them a bit of a travel budget. You are up in Newcastle, I'm down in Darlington, whatever it is. And we decide, okay, let's vote, travel to Durham or work in a shared office space today. So we are getting a chance to bounce ideas off each other. We're getting to work together, but it's a choice. And, and we're choosing to, to engage in that.

Richard Anderson (28:32):
No, I just wanted to clarify your thoughts on whether there should be, this should be something. And, and the reason I asked the question is because when I very first started evolve, assess whenever it was 2017 and I was doing that work from home, I think at the time I couldn't afford an office <laugh>. And as a result, I worked from home when everybody else, or the vast majority of the people working in an office or place of work, one of the first things that I wanted to do when I had enough money to do it was to, to get an office because I'm an extrovert. I mean, I, I thrive off being with the people and being around other people. And I think that was one of the crucial things for me. It didn't really matter for me, the fact that I didn't have the staff, it was just me at the time.
It was just getting out there and being with other people. So I think coffee shops, I think shared working spaces would more than suffice for somebody like me, but I think it's an important thing to consider. And you mentioned before about younger people, I think I was reading on the NS website that I think those people younger than 30 reported fewer distractions at home. So anyway, the, the of it was, they were keen to get back into the office and I guess for the camaraderie and those types of things, but again, does it have to be the office? Could it be shared working space? Could it be coffee shops? So I, I, I hear you on that. Just a, what about onboarding in inductions in a remote environment? So I put a post out on LinkedIn a couple of months ago saying that I was office based keen.
You get other people's thoughts. It was just a genuine question. What are other people doing? And I think hybrids seemed to be the most popular option, but there was a lady on there saying where, where remote only in a conversation Sue between her and somebody else saying, well, one of the challenges is with remote is bringing people up to speed who are brand new to the company and onboarding. So when you are not in a physical environment and seeing everybody working in the different departments, do you find that that's a, that's a challenge for some businesses, and if it is, how do you get around that?

Amanda McNamee (30:16):
I think it's a challenge for businesses if you haven't planned for it. I think that's, you know, it ultimately comes down to what sort of effort are you prepared to put into getting people up to speed? What effort are you prepared to put into communicating cross team? We, as humans will always kind of, we're programmed to, to default do these kind of heuristics, what are the quickest and easiest ways we can make decisions? So if somebody sat across from us, it's much easier for us to shout over to them and go, oh, come here. Can you just tell me what that deadline is on this? And what's the roadmap for this and, and where in the process does this fit. And that seems a much easier way than actually setting up a, a meeting, maybe a touch base once a week for 15 minutes says, look at, okay, you know, I'm in behavioral science, you are in product.
What do I need to know about what you're doing? What do you need to know about where I'm, what I'm doing? Where's the overlap there? So I think ad hoc sometimes seems to us like a much easier way of, of having those conversations. But I think ultimately that is just because of a lack of planning. And because for us, it seems easier to do that. I think if you are bringing somebody in, in remotely into an organization, it's again, down to making sure they're aware of kind of, what are the ways to communicate? What are the key things to do? What generally works. There are so many platforms out there at the minute. I mentioned slack earlier. There's lots of them that allow it. Doesn't have to just be a video call or a message. It can be a voice note. It can be just a voice call.
There's so many quick and easy ways it's establishing. Okay. If I haven't got a status there and I'm green, gimme a shout. If you have a question for me, go ahead. You know what I mean? If I can't answer, I'll ring you back later on. It's the same as, as how we use, you know, our, our phones. Normally I think what we need to consider I guess, is we have a standard way that we've always behaved. What, what is that quick, easy way to have a conversation, find the information we need, because that's ultimately what we're aiming for. I think it's stopping and saying, okay, if we're choosing to work in a remote or a hybrid way, because that affords us a much better work life balance or work, life integration, whatever way you want to view that, what do we need to do in advance of that to ensure that we're all still able to do what we need to do, workwise that none of us are feeling isolated.
None of us feel that we don't know what's going on and that we can also integrate as teams. So for me, as part of a behavioral science function within a business that has three or four other functions, we have quick catchups and those catchups go ahead some weeks and other weeks they don't where quick message at the start is, do we need to actually chat about anything today? If there's nothing my side, if there's nothing, your side, great, let's catch up next week or no, there's nothing my side, but you've been in Portugal town, how the trip went, you know, so we still have those social catchups, but what we then tend to do is have quality time together more often. So I've mentioned earlier, we have, uh, once a quarter meetup where we get together for a day, we do a little bit of work in the morning, but ultimately we end up doing a lot of team based activities, not team building or team bonding, but we'll just go and, and play dart together, or we'll go and do an escape room or we'll go and do something together and then get a nice meal out afterwards.
We're all getting a chance to connect, chat, see how things are going in, in that in person way, if you're not prepared to plan for these things, is the ultimate takeaway for that. You, you're not going to achieve those. It's like anything. If you're in an non long distance relationship, you know, you can't just rely on ad hoc communication. Cuz one partner is always gonna feel a little bit less contacted or less thought of than the other you have to kind of have, okay, what, what are our non-negotiables here? We're going to guarantee that every second weekend, one of us is gonna travel to see the other or once a month. That's what we're gonna do, or we're gonna have calls every two days. And if that means we need to schedule those calls and it feels a bit formal it's so be it because it's more important that we get the time together.

Richard Anderson (33:53):
Brilliant. I can't believe that time. I could sit told you all day, especially about these topics. It is really interesting stuff, but just, just another couple before we wrap up at Amanda, one is we talked briefly before the call about Spotify, but, uh, I know that's a, that's a shining example of a company that have done the working from anywhere flexible work in that have seen the profits have gone through the roof, kind of attritions write down, but I was interested to hear your thoughts on what the research is telling us in terms of productivity, in terms of output, or is it, is it still too early to tell for remote only businesses since, since the pandemic?

Amanda McNamee (34:27):
I think the, the thing is it's, it's a different environment, I think is one of the challenges that we're facing. So we also, in particularly in the UK, what we have is pandemic happening, Brexit happening energy price is now quite problematic, changing governmental leadership. We have a lot going on at the moment that it would be very unfair to try and unpick and say, okay, productivity is down, but it's exclusively as a result of working from home. What I do know is in terms of productivity, if we're talking about hours worked, for example, those who are hybrid working are working more hours than anybody. They're also feeling a bit less productive interestingly, but the, the more hours worked is counteracting the lack of productivity that they're experiencing. So they're the people I would worry about most, most so than remote workers, more so than people in the office to a certain extent, I think being hybrid can actually be a bit challenging.
That's just from research. We, we conducted with about a, a thousand people that seemed to show that those who, who were hybrid were working a bit more and feeling a bit less productive. But I think productivity is generally something that seems to be a self-report thing. You know, how productive are you feeling? How productive do you think you've been in the last week when we look at organizations and how they're measuring productivity, we're really struggling for clear markers of what productivity is, you know, is it in terms of sales? Is it in terms of, and if it is in terms of sales and is that not just look sometimes, you know, that you, you are managing to get your product in front of somebody who has that problem that needs resolving now and has the budget at that time of year to deliver shortly. There's a time of year component that wouldn't really come into it in terms of working remotely.
I think the issue that we have is we haven't measured productivity in a way that we can continue to measure now because it's, it's always been more self-report, it's always being a bit more ad hoc leaders. Think their teams are more productive here because they're seeing them more often. And we all know about some of the, the government ministers that were walking around the offices, leaving pages on people's desks saying, you know, I look forward to seeing you in the office soon as if being in the office was, was something that, you know, equated to them, being pro productive. What we need to think is people might end up perceiving themselves as more productive because they're in work and they're having conversations, but they're also having these very stressful and long commutes. They're also having to pay either for their trained fairs or their, their petal prices, which are, are ridiculous at the moment.
And that's going to be having an impact elsewhere, which is then going to impact on their focus. It's going to impact on their engagement, on their motivation. They might then have more childcare costs as a result. So we need to then think about the balance of, okay, it might seem like they're being more productive because they're being in the office. They might feel more productive because they're being in the office, but what is the output of their work? And it's that output that we never tangibly been recording in a, in a really meaningful way that we could then kind of say, okay, well, it seems to be higher or it seems to be lower. Yeah.

Richard Anderson (37:26):
So you've got a basis of comparison. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So Amanda, I just finally, um, if anybody wants to connect with you gonna do that on, on LinkedIn or get in touch. Yeah.

Amanda McNamee (37:36):
I'm, I'm always happy to chat. I appreciate I can, can have views and I'm very happy to hear people who agree and disagree with them, particularly around productivity. I'd love for somebody to come to me and say, you know, we have a measure of productivity and this is what it is, and this is what it's always done. And I'd love cuz for me, if I'm wrong about something, there's a chance for me to learn. So yeah, very, very happy for, for connections, LinkedIn, um, is probably the, the easiest way I'm connected with you. So they'll, they'll find me via, via you. Anyway,

Richard Anderson (38:01):
What I'll do is provide you happy with it. I'll put, I'll put a link to your, your LinkedIn on our, on the blog post for this. And just finally, I know that you, you touched on it right in the beginning, but Fe for anybody interested in, in, in what you guys do, do you just wanna give a quick intro?

Amanda McNamee (38:14):
Yeah, absolutely. We, we are delivering micro training. So five minute team training in the areas I've mentioned before around, you know, the, the skills of mental fitness, which ultimately we know, um, are, are the facilitators to positive team culture, winning teams and working quite efficiently and effectively in a way that allows you to, to be engaged and, and feel like you, you have meaning and purpose in the role that you have. The beauty of what we do is that we're not asking you to create extra calls. We're not asking you to take time out of what you're doing. This is designed to kind of work alongside what you're doing and make teams more productive together because it might be that they, they do, you know, five minutes at the start of an existing call. And that five minutes increases psychological safety boosts connection takes away the, the uncertainty around, you know, certain roles that we have.
And ultimately, you know, we we're about ensuring that everybody has that mindset, that it is possible to change from, from kind of senior leaders to, to, to individuals themselves. It doesn't matter where you are now, when it comes to these skills, you, you can very easily train them. I say, very easily rich, you need to put in a bit of work. You need to put in your five or 10 minutes here. Nothing that's worthwhile is, is easy. There isn't a magic powder, but like your physical fitness, you know, if you train and certainly if you train as a team, you're going to be more effective and get the results of that.

Richard Anderson (39:35):
Fantastic. We'll also put the link to the website on the blog post as well. Amanda, thanks so much for your time. I've really enjoyed the discussion. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Amanda McNamee (39:44):
Really happy to be part of it. Thanks for having me Rich.

Voiceover (39:47):
Thanks for listening to psych for business, for show notes, resources and more visit evolveassess.com.