Could working from home be the answer to rising fuel prices?

Kia ora, I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is The Front Page, a daily podcast presented by

the New Zealand Herald.

With the word crisis now comes talk about working from home.

As oil prices rise and the cost of petrol surges towards $4 a liter, it's been flagged

as a potential voluntary measure in contingency plans.

There's been no direct government endorsement or mandate for working from home, but it's

been recognised as a possible fuel saving step if the crisis worsens, alongside prioritising

essential sectors.

Today on The Front Page, University of Otago Business School Associate Professor Paula

Okain is with us to take us through different ways of working and what businesses could

do to help out their employees.

Paula, how has the current fuel crisis directly prompted organisations and I suppose the government

agencies to reconsider or expand working from home policies I suppose?

Yes, so I think what's happened is that we've seen fuel go up on price and so that puts

a burden on to people in terms of getting turned from work and also we have a fuel crisis

in terms of we might not actually have enough fuel in the future to be able to service

the basic needs of the country.

So we're seeing a lot of rhetoric around should people be working from home so that they're

not using fuel.

And I guess whenever I started to hear all of that and we saw it coming right, I was like

oh for goodness sake, we had this big conversation after Covid, when Covid happened we saw it as

this big social experiment to see if people could work from home and we proved people

could work from home.

But then over the years since then organisations have retracted, the government's retracted

right and it said, hey, bring people back to Wellington, public sectors, employees need

to be back in their offices.

And now we've hit this other shock and we're asking people potentially or we might start

to ask people potentially to work from home again and so I don't think we thought that

through very well and we haven't really embraced some of the learning from Covid in terms

of what's happening in our environment and how we've actually got to be prepared for

that.

So how society has changed, right?

So we work in much different ways, our lives are quite different, there were complex,

heads of a lot more going on, people have a lot more things happening in their lives

and to be able to have that flexibility to work from home sometimes actually reduces

a lot of stress on people.

Why do you think a lot of companies reverted quite quickly post Covid to the back in the

office agenda?

It's fair to say a lot of companies didn't so there are definitely a lot of companies

that have kept working from home agenda there that have supported their employees to work

from home and have been quite positive about it, but there also have a lot that have

been quite negative about it.

And what I can see is it's a little bit about presenteism so if you're not in the office

and you're not being seen, it's harder to know what you're doing and when we look at the

research into productivity from working from home because I think that's what everybody

gets back to, right?

How productive are people working from home?

Regardless of everything else that that's what it comes down to and we see the organisations

say well we don't have the innovation because people aren't together and they aren't making

the social connections, actually there's not a lot of evidence out there to support any

of that.

Any of the evidence or the research that certainly I've seen has been supportive of working

from home.

We're looking about two-thirds of people in most surveys say that they're actually more

productive when they're working from home because they've got time to concentrate and

a lot of this isn't working from home five days a week, this is one or two days a week,

this is enabling people to have that concentrated time.

So I think those productivity arguments are not backed up in the research and there's

only one study that I have seen that has used objective measures of productivity so actual

outcome or output based measures and that one has seen an increase in productivity for

the people who are working from home a number of days a week.

The other measures are quite subjective so there is self-report and so harder to sort of

clarify what they're like but also that leaders find it hard to work from home so it's

a bit of research can might just in the last few weeks in the New Zealand context and

because leaders find it harder because they've got a lot of communication in their day-to-day

job they want to connect with people they have to connect with people to get their job done

then they see it from that point of view and so want people in the office to make their

jobs easier or because they think that they're being less productive when they're working from home.

What examples have you seen I suppose of businesses in New Zealand doing it well or businesses

not doing it so well from what I have seen a lot of businesses do do well that you need to be

having those conversations with your employee so it's not as one size fits all model and if

I'd say it's also not just about working from home it's about flexible work it's about

where people work so that could be at home it could be in hubs closer to home so they don't have

to travel so much but they still get social connection it's about the times that people work

they are is that people work and and also the tasks that people do so if you are wanting to work

a little bit more from home say for example you're a teacher right oh it's you're on the front line

students but if you look at what you could do you have planning days you have times that you

need to take to do other parts of your job and if you enable some of that to work from home then people

do get that concentrated time so sometimes we need to think much more creatively through what we're

doing to enable people to have some of that flexibility built into their lives a lot of the

tech companies are pretty good at it and they're quite aware of the technology that is used

and able working from home and they have and they often have those bigger budgets so they kind of

much more immersive work spaces where whenever you're in a different venue you can actually connect

in much better with people rather than you and I on Zoom right they could be inside a more interactive

rooms with more interactive technology if we need to do that have that collaboration space

I decided to reach out to a whole bunch of companies in New Zealand right so big businesses

from New Zealand's insurance telecom and banking sectors those are the ones I focused on 13 of them

11 actually have come back to me by by recording of this all of them cited working from home

or flexible working arrangements so they've obviously got different policies for different

employees you know some of the ANZ banking staff for example are customer facing so they can't

work from home but they're they're sounds like they're not reworking any of their policies or

mandating anything they're all keeping an eye on things keeping an eye on what the government says

when when companies talk about flexible working arrangements do you think that it's become a bit

of a buzz phrase in this day and age and the real you know realistically if an employee goes to

their manager and asks them about flexible working arrangements what is the likelihood of them

actually being able to fulfill that prophecy so I think it is more likely than you would think

because when you think about flexible work it is a much bigger picture right so we've got the

time flexibility the place flexibility and even the task flexibility so actually different tasks

that you might do that might allow you to your job in a different way I think the challenge in

all of it is having a manager who can think beyond the obvious who can look at how we can reorganize

work to make it work using the technology so there's technology out there that can help scheduling

but we can allow people to self-schedule particularly when you look at front line rules if you look at

hospitality you look at health you look at teaching you could actually empower people to work

together to roster so that people get the flexibility that they need to actually support their life

so I don't think it's a buzz word I think it is an absolute necessity in the world that we live in

night I think that complexity of the world that we live in the fact that families have to

parents who go out to work often we don't have the village around us anymore we don't have that

network of people that can help us we're also a much higher expectation of things that we

should be doing with our children we have caring responsibilities you look at the younger generation

they want to be able to go out surfing if the if the surface good and maybe we can work flexibility

around that their expectations are really high I I think we need a full skill actual change

in culture that it becomes a real norm rather than that it is something that we offer as an extra

yeah interesting actually enough two degrees response was a standout to me actually a spokesperson

said that employees have alternatives to driving through something called work ride and extraordinary

so work ride lets you buy an e-bike a bike or a scooter with no upfront cost then pay it off

through pre-tax payroll deductions and then extraordinary lets you take pre-tax income to pay

for your commute across New Zealand's public transport networks have you heard of these initiatives

not those specifically by certainly know those types of initiatives so they've been a bite in

other countries for years and years particularly the bike to work schemes where the companies

can clean back both the GST and you pay it before tax your bike gets to half your price so that's

encouraging people to use that form of transport we've talked about happiness budgets in the past

allowing people to use a certain amount of money for things that will make their life easier which

has a good impact on their job so these are the technological solutions to those and so those

are certainly things that can help with people's well-being they're things that people value whenever

they are working and for the organizations they're really targeted to make life easier for people

so they're absolutely fantastic and I think a bit more government support around things like that

to really have them embedded across New Zealand organizations rather than be these standout

examples right so two degrees absolutely I was actually before you I was looking at it yesterday

anyway in relation to something else and they have a lot of just small parts around the flexible

work policy which are really interesting and they've got long weekend policies that they try to

enable people to leave at 2 p.m. on a Friday if it's a long weekend where possible they've got

summer working time it's a little bit shorter and those are quite quite cool things to do and they

do attract people but I think we can think a little bit more creatively away from this

traditional workplace the traditional workplace came away in the sort of the turn of the 19th

into the 20th century life has changed horrendously since that particularly in the last sort of 10-15

years but even whenever we saw a lot more females entering the workplace but that but offices and

work were designed around man right imagine if they're actually designed around families it would

be quite a different organization of work and I think that's where we're really lacking need to

organize work different ways yeah how do we I suppose if it's not government mandated or

or government subsidized how do we get to a place in a culture where these examples are not

seen as going above and beyond for your employee so but if they become the norm then that actually

has everybody doing it a little bit of government and mandating it and I'm a bit scared of using

that word but perhaps maybe it's not mandating but it is incentivizing so things that organizations

can do that can make work a life better for everyone by incentivizing things like the bike to

work scheme where you get your bike before tax right that's an incentive to get a bike and hopefully

also to use your bike in return so I think that incentivizing those good behaviors and

incentivizing organizations to undertake those and also really to do a little bit more research into

the impacts of those for those organizations and to compare them against potentially organizations

that aren't offering such things and you could see really where where where where the impact was

and when they do get normalized say when maybe if I don't know what you feel like when

no let's say when when they do get normalized then I think we can end up with a much better working

environment for everybody and then that has low on effects right to the wider society if we have

people and working environments that are more positive yeah I saw also a genesis came back to me

it said it subsidizes public transport costs by 50% for employees in their Auckland and Hamilton

offices are through Auckland transport and Waikato transport that's something that that's

that they can do as well have you heard of any other initiatives that might work well here because

like you said everywhere around the world it has been doing this for I don't know decades now

haven't they yeah absolutely I mean we've certainly seen those bike for work schemes and the

public transport those are quite common germany very much so huge amounts of public transport

subsidization for people we've also seen things like the government actually trying to support rural

communities so we've seen this in Ireland where they are really supporting working from homes

so that we rejuvenate your rural communities and that say the hospitality businesses so that

retail businesses get a bit more of the pie there that self-organization of work has talked about

an awful lot and whenever we empower people and give them more of that autonomy and more of that

control over their day-to-day work that those are seen worldwide as holidays of high quality jobs

so really giving people options to do things like that

working from home would you rule that out because it screws the cafes in the cities isn't it when

we do this well it's not up to me um actually employers around the country will decide what works

for them and their workforces and employees will negotiate with their own bosses about what suits

them I've heard anecdotally that many employers are already being pretty pragmatic about it

working with their workers to say well actually okay if you work from home a little bit more

that's okay with me I've had to read through the government's phase system again and nowhere

does it mention working from home or mandating anything for that matter do you think that that

is intentional do we have some PTSD COVID situation going potentially I mean I sort of read level

to that that sort of insinuate status of possibility but certainly isn't mandated as necessary

I think it will be difficult to mandate unless you're actually going to the the lockdown

scenario because is it one day is it two days you actually need to encourage organizations to think

about it and potentially reward the behavior that does it rather than mandate it because if you

mandate it you have to start to put parameters around it and those parameters could be really really

tricky to work out how can organizations adopt a kind of more balanced forward thinking workforce

plan to kind of handle this instability like fuel shortages or a pandemic or geopolitical tensions

things like that because they're going to be popping up more and more often in future yeah I mean

we've got to create that resilient workforce that can jump and it probably is a little bit

around working from home and making sure that the technology is in place that we look at people's

health and safety when they're working from home there's certainly a push around that to make sure

that that's in place but also we've got to build the workplace culture so you know at that

Covid lockdown we picked up our desks and our chairs and we went home with them you know it was

quite a different scenario now we've actually learned well we should have learned from that but by

taking away some of those working from home opportunities over the last few years we're losing

that organizational learning so we actually need to enable people to work in different places and

to have the setups to do it have the technology to do it have the culture to do it have the

organization to do it leaders need to be really skilled in communicating that comes up hugely in

the research that we've done but they've also got to be sort of think about how they measure

productivity and move it away from that input based productivity so if you're in the office working

the ours then you're seen to be productive but actually you and I could work the CMRs and you

could do 10 times as much as me and we could be sitting beside each other so it's not a real

measure of productivity a measure of productivity is actually what you achieve but what we see is

the managers find it really hard to set good output based goals which we can then measure people

against so addressing some of that culture addressing some of those leadership skills that people

have some of that goal setting or KPI setting or whatever we call it in different organizations

so that as we shift between some of these shocks that we get and we have to potentially work

from one where we have to organize ourselves differently that we have those tools in place to be

able to do it we were having this discussion in the newsroom right and prepping for for this

episode and my producer cannot believe that companies aren't proactively implementing work from home

type of scenarios in order to alleviate pressure on employees but also the country as a whole

I'm more cynical asking you know and saying why would they if there's no direct benefit to

themselves or shareholders where do you sit oh so I'm probably with your producer I think we need

to be getting ready for it I think it could happen even if we're not mandated to work from home we

might be told we are only got a certain amount of fuel we can't actually get to work so that in

itself we're not a mandate if you can't get to work you can't get to work so you've got to be

prepared for it I was listening to a story about teachers in rural Northland I think it was

where they just kind of forward to drive the big distances to work so the skills have already had

to reorganize so that potentially they only have to come in three or four days a week because

feels too expensive for them and that's not going to help their own personal situation so this is

already we have to be prepared it's and I don't personally think it's going to get any better

in the next little while so which I think organisations are mad at them and it not to be prepared

for getting and having people at home a day or two a week in order for them to actually keep

functioning she's going to be incredibly happy with that answer we're going to have to cut that

unfortunately do you think that there is I suppose I'm going back to this mandating situation but

do you think that there is actually any chance that the government will mandate working from home

given it's the parameters it's going to be incredibly difficult and be the the COVID response

and how hard this government went on the last government over everything it did during the pandemic

I mean can it I don't I don't think we haven't seen the detail of level three and four as far

as I'm aware but I would imagine if you're getting to whatever level four is there is probably

going to be a mandate around non-essential jobs that can't be worked from home should be worked

but up until that point I think you've got to put the onus and the employers to think about the

good of the society in order to encourage their employees to work from home to reduce that fuel

consumption and I understand the reluctance to mandate it because I don't think it's a clean mandate

like it previously was with COVID it was a pretty clear and to some extent it covered pretty much

everybody those who weren't covered were pretty clear to see in terms of our retail and in terms

of our health workers and that's a different conversation about the fairness of all of that I

understand but until we're at those really really high levels where there literally isn't fuel

and in which case you probably don't need to mandate it then anyway because we can literally get

to work right yeah yeah exactly I suppose for HR leaders or CEOs that might be listening to this

episode what are kind of some immediate steps that you would suggest that they can take in terms of

perhaps working from home policies or making sure that employees are resilient in future kind of

scenarios yeah so I think we've got to really get their readiness into this so that readiness involves

I'm sitting down what getting teams to sit down and look at what can work for each individual team

so if we were forced into a position where we had to have a day or two working for more even

back to full working from home how would that operate within us how would we have our communication

what technologies do we have on this what you set up a home like what support do you need from

the organization what technology do you need how can we work together we saw a lot of social

activities during COVID happening online so what do we need to do to create that cohesion and there's

not a one size fits all for that you've got lots of different types of teams out there operating

in lots of different ways some will already be doing working from home a few days a week and so

they will be much more prepared others will not and they need to think about how they can keep up

that interaction and that communication which we do know is essential but it can actually be achieved

through the technological tools that we have right there I tell you what it's going to be difficult

getting this desk and these screens into my small flat but I will try thank you so much for joining us

Paula thank you

that's it for this episode of the front page you can read more about today's stories and extensive

news coverage at nzherald.co.nz the front page is hosted and produced by me Chelsea Daniels

Kane Dickie is our studio operator Richard Martin our producer and editor and our executive

producer is Jane Yee below the front page on the iHeart app or wherever you get your podcasts

and join us next time for another look beyond the headlines