How Heritage and Liberty Life Assurance went Hybrid

The pandemic took everyone by surprise. The first few months were spent ensuring that we stay afloat and ensuring business continuity. We realized that we needed to accelerate smart working. Those with laptops worked from home, and then we adopted a shift work model.

And those who were at risk were allowed to take their desktops home. We also allowed some of our people to take furniture home from the office (desks and chairs).

We started with providing bundles for our people but realized after some time that this was not completely feasible. So, we had our staff set up internet with various service providers and then developed a solution to compensate them.

One of the things I notice about Felix as we talk is his calmness and humility, but also practicality. He is someone I wouldn’t mind being in a crisis with. So, I am not surprised when he tells me that one of their COVID-19 guidelines as management was to “communicate openly and with empathy and stand together with our employees.”

It was difficult to monitor and get our employees to be productive during work hours – we had conversations with our leaders to help them learn how to trust their people and create engagement. Internet connectivity and power blackouts were also a challenge for those working from home.

From a systems point of view, we put quite a bit of resource into Cyber Security to protect our data. And developed systems that help our employees have seamless workflow and not have to come to the office to print, scan or access documents and files.

The lack of human interaction was a huge challenge, that still manifests till now. We are currently figuring out how to ensure that our people can collaborate and have some form of human interaction. We also had an issue with working late into the night, into the weekend, and being unable to know when to stop working. Other people had challenges working with children in the house, visitors, pets, house chores that need to be done.

We wanted to figure out how to create a sustainable work plan, seeing that the end of COVID-19 was taking a longer time. We wanted to ensure that we keep our people safe, that we were keeping in line with government guidelines, and find a solution that would work for us as an organization.

The decision to go Hybrid and solutions came from members of staff and not management. We decided to start our process with a survey, and our staff told us that they like the flexibility of being able to plan their time and knowing when they are best productive. They were also happy to not spend time in traffic and be able to save money they would have spent on transport, lunch, and impulse buying.” [I knowingly smile at the mention of impulse buying.] Quite a few of our staff told us that working from home has helped them with self-discipline – being able to work on their ability to organize themselves and not procrastinate.

You will always get a mix in feedback, but it overwhelmingly pointed in the direction of going hybrid. We asked our employees three questions – do you want to stay remote, go back to the office, or work hybrid.

Let’s take a quick break from the interview. From my experience working with businesses in different sectors, I have found that there are three different kinds of organizations, and you can already tell where Felix, Heritage, and Liberty Life stand.

1. Organization Doesn’t Ask – The first organization simply doesn’t ask employees for feedback, ideas or encourage them to share their opinions. Employees may speak up but most times they are ignored or have their opinions squashed by office politics, silos, and bureaucracy.
2. Organization Asks but Doesn’t Act – This organization asks employees for feedback but doesn’t act on it. They will have files and folders with great ideas but asking their staff for feedback is just a way to tick a box and get a task done. The organization might even acknowledge receiving the feedback and appreciate their staff but still do nothing. This creates survey apathy – employees will not fill in surveys because they know that sharing their opinion is a futile exercise.
3. Organization Asks, Acknowledges, and Acts – You will be surprised that there are not many organizations that ask, acknowledge, and act on their staff’s opinions. Those organizations that do, score highly in engagement, employee experience, and customer experience because everyone is involved in the process of making their organization better. Opinions are welcome not only at the product and service level but also at the organizational design level.

“You know Baraka every organization is unique with the way they operate. It is important to understand the critical activities required of employees. If they cannot be done remotely then you need to have people in the office. Another thing businesses need to figure out is whether they have the resources to enable people to work in the office. You also need to have a framework and be very clear on what your working arrangement is. Need to ensure that it is not left to interpretation.”

The ability to manage your people remotely is an important aspect. How can you repurpose your employees so that you are all headed in the same direction? Not every organization will be able to go remote, but you can start slowly and increase your scale as you go. But it is important to note that the scale might be different depending on the industry, and the size of the staff team.

We have spelled out and based our policy on the function of your role, there is a clear remote and hybrid policy. We haven’t had to change our employees’ terms of service as much because the only thing that has changed is the description of the workplace.

We have a set number of people who are working in the office (close to 10%) and most of them are working in branches where we are serving our customers. Most of our people are working remotely. It is not compulsory. You can apply, though it will need to be sanctioned by your line manager. There are non-negotiable areas, and there are areas where you work remotely and then work, and areas where you come in shifts. Now when I go to the office, our workplace is almost like a ghost town because people only go to work when they need to.

“Hotdesking – not have a permanent workspace, come in and work when you need to. Those who are in the office will have somewhere to work from. Make a lot of rooms for meetings – collaborative space. We are currently brainstorming on what to do with all the extra space that we have. We will create some services that will be beneficial to employees – a prayer room, gym, recreational center, and so on.

A few things come to mind. Optimization of smart work – we are still at the initial stages when it comes to technology. There are new processes that have been brought in. We also need to reskill our workforce to the new technology.

With accelerating new ways of work there will always be challenges with skilling. Ensuring that everyone is well wired and understands how to work remotely. We understand that there will always be pockets of missed productivity, despite working remotely.

So far we are doing well, but we are also constantly challenging ourselves to deal with the hearts and minds of our people.

We are still work in progress. We are using insights from our staff internally and seeing what can be changed and improved as time goes.

I finished the interview impressed as to how Felix and his organization are committed to the process of experimentation and improving their employee experience. As you can tell this can only take place through feedback from employees. In 2019 Felix told me that they would be focusing more on employee experience as opposed to engagement, and it is good to see them putting this into practice.