Our fourth interview is with Eoin Higgins, Senior Consultant and Head of Business Growth in Australia. We spoke to him about the current state of flexible working in Australia and his "slow cook workplace strategy."

Eoin：Before becoming a consultant at V+C, I worked in the pharmaceutical industry, spending a long time in human pharmaceutical manufacturing at Pfizer Inc., now famous for its vaccines, and then in corporate roles, where I worked alongside some incredible leaders and people in leadership roles, learning that work and the workplace can be very competitive, but also places where people care about each other.

Sometimes people think you can either be competitive or compassionate, but it's not an either/or thing. What I learned from them is that you can be both at the same time. But not at the expense of compassion for the people around you. That's the way I want to work and it's reflected in the way I work as a work consultant.

Eoin： My first encounter with ABW was when I was at Pfizer Inc.

At that time, I was part of the manufacturing leadership team and learned a lot about leadership, culture, and organizational development, and I continued to do similar work after moving to the corporate department. At that time, Pfizer Inc. moved its office to the center of Sydney's business district and decided to adopt ABW there. This happened in 2018, but I had never heard of the term ABW at the time. However, this move was a valuable opportunity for me in two ways.

First, I was part of the leadership team at Pfizer Inc. Australia and New Zealand, where I was able to learn and experience ABW from a client perspective as a member of the steering committee for the workplace transformation.

Another benefit was that I had the opportunity to lead part of this ABW project and create etiquette for working in the new office. In the new office, employees were to share and use spaces prepared for each activity based on ABW. This shift to a new way of working would be a major change for Pfizer Inc., and at the same time, I thought it was necessary for employees to deepen their understanding of ABW in order to make effective use of the space.

At the time, I was not an experienced ABW consultant, but I gathered people from various departments across the company and communicated with them to gain a deep understanding of the behavioral elements of ABW and our own previous ways of working. As a result, we were able to understand what changes were needed to our traditional habits, and which habits were particularly difficult to change. Looking back now, I think this was the key to the success of introducing ABW.

Based on this experience and through my connection with V+C, I joined V+C in mid-2019 and began my journey as an ABW consultant.

Eoin：That 's right. My first year at V+C was 2020, the year the pandemic hit. I had no experience as a consultant, so I was trying to deepen my learning. Themes like "What is a consultant?", "What does it take to become a consultant?", and "What is my role as a consultant?"

In addition, I spent the past year challenging myself by learning three things at once: relearning the ABW I had learned on my own as the original V+C style ABW, and learning how to smoothly carry out consulting work with clients online.

Eoin： Let's take a look at what we've noticed, including what we touched on last year.

Since the outbreak of the pandemic, agile and flexible working styles have attracted attention. While ABW has become widely recognized, it has often been mistaken for hot desking. In short, a way to work without being tied to a location has attracted attention. In particular, there has been great interest in IT tools such as mobile technology and management methods such as managing teams working remotely. V+C has accumulated knowledge not only in workplace strategies based on ABW, but also in the field of coaching to train people and develop teams to work online, so we ourselves have attracted a lot of interest.

However, in the end, many organizations were reluctant to implement work style and workplace transformation due to the uncertainty of the future, and most projects that were already underway were progressing smoothly in preparation for relocation, with office leases approaching regardless of whether there was a pandemic or not. Even now, many companies remain very interested in new ways of working and are highly responsive to the latest information.

Eoin：After the pandemic subsided and it became easier to develop long-term strategies, two relatively easy-to-implement measures began to appear in many companies.

First, we created a space for collaboration in the office. The idea was that when employees return to the office, there will be more collaboration activities. So we decided to renovate parts of the office to create collaboration spaces. Second, we introduced a desk reservation system. This gives employees peace of mind, knowing that they will have enough space when they come and that their colleagues are working in the office.

But my point here is that these measures are not necessarily the right solution for all companies to the challenges they face today. We are seeing companies trying to make the first day of work a grand one by allowing employees to reserve desks in advance, encouraging collaboration, holding events to bring employees back to the office, offering free lunches, etc. All of these events are meant to activate the space. But the reality is that in many organizations, this is not working in the long term, and as a result, we are seeing a return to a more hybrid work model.

I believe this fundamental challenge is not something that exists because of hybrid working, but rather something that hybrid working should solve, and I believe this is a solution that many organizations have yet to find.

Eoin： The fact that modern knowledge workers are extremely diverse, including in the way they work. This may be the same in Japan, but knowledge workers in Australia are extremely diverse. In particular, not one person working there is the same, even within the same organization, and even if everyone is a knowledge workers, their function and role are different, and their way of working is very different. Sales, accounting, marketing, etc., the proportion of intellectual work and activities they perform is different. It also changes from week to week and over time.

With so many different ways of working, what about the policies that companies put in place? Recently, we have seen many examples of companies trying to apply a 'fixed' or uniform hybrid work policy, such as 3 days in the office and 2 days work remotely for the entire company. The aim behind this is to address the issue of team cohesion declining due to lack of opportunities for face-to-face communication. That is why such companies try to create a strict system by forcing or requiring employees to come to the office on certain days as a rule to ensure team connection.

What would it look like? Knowledge workers of diverse and fluid ways of working and inflexible, semi-fixed rules. These two are incompatible. So trying to bring the two together creates distortions within the organization. For example, suppose a company uniformly requires employees to come to the office on Tuesdays. Then the question is asked, "Why Tuesday? I'm in charge of finance, and I need time to focus on my own reports for the end of the month, quarter, and year. Why do I have to come in on Tuesdays?" The opinion goes, "Why do I have to come in on Tuesday? This is actually happening in every organization today.

To answer the original question, "What's the latest trend?", I think it's that companies are realizing that they can't make hybrid work work if they continue as they are. Addressing this issue requires a much larger conversation than just desks, reservation systems, and free lunches.

Eoin： That's right. With that in mind, I think the question of "how do we work" is completely linked to the question of "what is our company culture?" Who are we as an organization? How are we trying to work together? What do we want to achieve through our company culture? Companies often ask us for support when they are faced with these questions but can't find the answers themselves, saying "Please teach me how to introduce hybrid work." Unless we discuss it from a bigger perspective, hybrid work will remain just a work style policy.

Eoin： UTS College is a good example. It was a comprehensive project with a cohesive purpose and transformation that started with designing ways of working and then building the physical space and technology solutions to support those ways of working. It was also one of the most important projects in Australia.

UTS College started this project in the middle of the pandemic at the beginning of 2021, but they already had a deep understanding of hybrid work when they were contacted. Therefore, they understood that "the company policy of encouraging employees to come to the office three days a week may be one way to do it, but the most important thing is employee autonomy."

At UTS College, where everyone from management to regular employees held broad discussions and independently organized their own work styles and the office they would use, the idea that there is meaning and intention in coming to the office, even if it means not coming to the office five days a week, has become widespread. UTS College is a perfect example of this, as it tackled work styles with a broader perspective than simply setting up collaboration spaces or introducing a desk reservation system.

Eoin： I think this is a very important question. To start with, the answer is yes and no.

There are several major cities in Australia, including Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Perth, and the patterns of employees returning to the office vary by city. This is just my personal opinion, with no data to back it up, but Sydney's CBD (Central Business District) is very busy on weekdays and more lively than Melbourne. There may be hybrid work policies put forward by companies and other factors, but we can say that we are still in the transition period toward returning to the office across Australia.

Here is one thing I would like to point out about flexibility in work styles and frequency of coming to the office. Generally, when it comes to returning to the office, people tend to focus on the attendance policy presented by the company, and there are extreme examples of companies that proclaim "everyone should come to the office." On the other hand, from the perspective of individual employees, there are also voices such as "I don't want to come to the office at all," "I only go to the office one day a week," and "I want the flexibility to always work from home." At first glance, the voices of employees may sound legitimate in terms of flexible working styles, but both are lacking in flexibility. In other words, truly flexible working styles do not mean forcing everyone to come to the office, nor do they give all the options to individual employees.

What's important is to decide what we want to be as an organization, what are the goals we want to achieve as an organization, and how we work together to achieve them. I think it's important to be clear about this, so that you have the autonomy to come to work even when you don't feel like it or don't want to.

I often use fitness as an example to explain this issue. For example, let's say I decided to go jogging with a friend to be able to run 10 kilometers by the end of the month. But one day, I woke up and saw that it was raining outside and I didn't feel like running. Still, I thought, "I have an appointment with my friend, so I'll suppress my reluctance to go and go to training," and continued practicing. I think this kind of element is also necessary for work style and organizational activities. People want to be part of something bigger than themselves. And we choose the organizations we belong to based on our own values. I think it is important for the current work style to align the values of the organization with our own personal values and work together to achieve big goals.

The previously mentioned measures of setting up collaboration spaces and introducing desk reservation systems are straightforward and easy to implement. However, it is important to have the opportunity to have conversations from a broader perspective and involve more people to create a situation where people trust you to decide when and where you work. You need to be more persistent. It is difficult for individuals to be responsible for each other in order to achieve the organization's goals, but it is important to be intentional about your own actions and work style. Whether or not you can create employee commitment will change how people feel about and value coming to work.

Eoin： I didn't come up with the term "Slow Cook Workplace Strategy" myself, but I really like the name. The Slow Cook Workplace Strategy was born when I was talking about the aforementioned UTS College at WORKTECH Sydney. Another feature of this project is that it clarified the aspirations of the organization, which are the axis for advancing the work style project.

UTS College has consistently made decisions based on this ideal state, from their vision for work style to the office concept, layout of each space, selection of furniture and equipment, layout of departments, introduction of technology, and even the establishment of office operating rules. Even when we held a focus group to evaluate the move just the other day, we did not ask questions based on the physical space, such as "What do you like or dislike about this space?" Instead, we had a more fundamental discussion about how effective UTS College's activities were in achieving the ideal state and what activities are needed in the future. Their attitude of moving forward with the project without wavering from their axis toward their goal was truly admirable.

Generally, even if an organization posts posters or distributes materials about its values and ideals, only a few employees remember them. However, the members of UTS College have been discussing throughout the project how to achieve the ideal, which is to realize a better form of the four Cs (Collaboration, Creativity, Connection, a sense of Community).

The reason this was possible was because the management took the time to organize the desired image of the organization, and the project members had the time to discuss and deepen their understanding without rushing. It is common in many projects that there is no time to spend on the project itself, and the discussion of this important part is avoided by saying, "I don't want to talk about the desired image" or "It seems complicated". However, the members of UTS College decided to "slow down" (slow cook) in order to focus on this part and move the entire project forward with a sense of speed.

By clarifying your decision criteria at the beginning of a project, you can deal with all the various decision points that arise later in the project without any problems because you have something to evaluate your decisions by. In other words, you already have a basis for thinking back and deciding which ideas will best help you achieve your desired state.

As I said earlier, the term "slow-cooked workplace strategy" was not something I came up with myself, but when the moderator of our session at WORKTECH said at the beginning, "It's like a slow-cooked workplace strategy," I thought that was a wonderful phrase that accurately described this project. You take the time to prepare the recipe and ingredients, and once you put all the ingredients in, everything is ready. Once you put it in the slow cooker, you don't have to do anything else. This phrase sums up V+C's approach to the work style and workplace strategy and the way the UST College project team took the time to complete the project through repeated trial and error.

Eoin： I think this is because UTS College recognized that the pandemic had clearly changed the way the organization operates, and they were able to organize a positive mindset to improve and update the way they collaborate and engage in creative activities within the company. The interviews we conducted at the beginning of this project were particularly impressive.

In V+C projects, the first step is the discovery process in phase 1, which uncovers the organizational goals and ideal form that the company wants to achieve through the work style project. During this process, we hold user groups to understand and organize the employees' thoughts, and we usually ask members of management to participate in these meetings to greet the employees at the start of the project and to make comments to liven up the atmosphere. However, in most cases, management members are of course busy and are unable to attend.

However, at UTS College, all members of the management team attended the first meeting. The general manager explained in his own words the importance of the project and the reasons for starting it, and conveyed his desire for employees to think deeply about it. This shows their total commitment to the project and their strong desire to make it a success. He sincerely conveyed his desire to give permission for various things to be verified, experimented, and attempted, and to embrace all kinds of ways of thinking.

The idea that something had to change as an organization was a common understanding shared throughout the company, and once the desired vision was solidified, there was no confusion even if someone raised objections to the work style or workplace strategy as the project progressed. The desired vision that had been built over time was now almost incorporated into the thinking of the organization.

Eoin： There is an expression in Western culture that says "Don't let perfection be the enemy of the good." It means that if you try to aim for perfection, you will never reach it. We are still suffering from the aftereffects of the pandemic, and no one knows what direction work styles and workplaces will go in the future. So, if you try to get the perfect design and the perfect office that will be applicable to the future, you will not get it after all.

Ultimately, I think this depends on how you view work styles, workplace strategies, and projects. Those who only focus on the office and see it as a real estate product will of course want to get the perfect product. However, if you can link the office to the organization's vision and the work style you want to achieve, you can see the office as part of the process and take essential action toward the organization's original goals. It is impossible to achieve 100% in a constantly changing way of working. It is also important to recognize this reality.

Eoin：Today we talked about the importance of clarifying the ideal working style and the ideal image of the organization, but sometimes it can be difficult to find a working style that suits you. In such cases, we recommend using data.

Many companies today tend to place emphasis on quantitative data to understand their own work patterns. V+C also supports companies in collecting appropriate data and using it to build strategies, but we handle data from two perspectives in particular. One is to collect large-scale quantitative data and grasp the overall trends of work patterns from a bird's-eye view. For example, data obtained from work style surveys provided by V+C, office utilization data, and login data to online business tools provide a bird's-eye view of what is happening. (Bird view = bird/top-down perspective).

Another method is to use qualitative data to understand "why" a particular trend is occurring when it is discovered through quantitative data (Worm view = worm/bottom-up perspective). Although this method is not suitable for understanding the overall trend, it is a method for obtaining rich information on important details. Folkloric research is recommended for collecting information from a worm's eye view, and our ethnographic surveys and focus groups are examples of this.