HSM Advisory founder Professor Lynda Gratton recently spoke to People Management about how organisations can maintain the momentum built towards redesigning work as we emerge into a post-pandemic world.

While it would be easy to slip back into old habits, Lynda’s view is that it’s important not to lose the benefit of our new learnings.

Key to this is ensuring the focus is on productivity and performance – which means taking an intentional approach to designing work and measuring outcomes. It also means opening up the job of designing work to voices outside the HR function – strategists, facilities teams, HR and on the ground employees should also have a core role in defining what work will look like in the future. A solid and well thought out implementation process is also key. Lynda breaks this down into three phases:

Co-creation. Ensuring employees feel they are listened to and empowered to design the jobs they want.

Evolving managers. Expanding their role to include job design as well as people management.

Leadership and purpose. These must be aligned with how work is designed in order for new job structures and ways of working to become successful and embedded.

Prioritising fairness from the outset is also vital when making any changes. Part of the co-creation process should involve talking to employees about their needs and aspirations and creating a “menu” of choices that allows people to feel they have a degree of flexibility even if the nature of their role means they can’t work from home.

Finally, few people have been trained in maintaining boundaries at work – because they were already built in. HR teams must provide guidance on setting and respecting boundaries to ensure that hybrid working models lead to sustainable performance rather than burnout.

You can read more of Lynda’s views on this topic in her interview with People Management.