Why Remote Work Doesn’t Have to Feel Disconnected

By Jeremy Campbell, people and business transformation expert, and CEO of Black Isle Group

Most of us will never go back to the way we worked before the pandemic. Now flexibility rules. However, across the banking and finance sector many leaders are fretting over how sustainable this is in their results-driven world.

Before Covid-19, our focus was on how to make the office an inspiring environment our people. Now, the challenge is how to lead a remote workforce while juggling employee engagement, wellbeing and connection. The elephant in the Zoom is the worry that productivity is heading for a fall.

We know low engagement costs millions of pounds across the financial services sector – especially when the talent war is fiercer than ever, with attraction and retention the lightning rods in the corporate storm. But it doesn’t need to be like that as we move from 20th Century stability to 21st Century agility.

At Black Isle Group, during the pandemic, we were approached by clients seeking help to find their way through this maze of complex issues. No one knew the answers.

We enlisted the help of Sarah Broadhead, a psychologist to many elite athletes, including the double Olympic gold medallist in taekwondo, Jade Jones. She told us their key had been to focus on the process and not the end goal – by focusing on the everyday actions, you remove the anxiety of the daunting end goal.

In 2012, with the London Olympics in sight, Sarah and Jade would compile a weekly list, covering what the teenage athlete would need to action to move towards her dream of gold. It meant around a dozen specific actions each week, which translated into 50+ small steps per month, over 500 every year and 2,000-3,000 across an Olympic cycle.

At the end of each week, athlete and coach would review their progress and agree the small steps for the following week. On this eight-year journey to double Olympic gold they were constantly being distracted by things which could push them off course or break the new habits they were embedding. But the everyday actions brought them back on task.

At Black Isle Group, we’ve taken the methodology of Olympic athletes and supported it with an innovative, easy to use technology called nudge®. It sits on the smartphones and PCs of our clients and their teams. Through the tech, we encourage team members to carry out the everyday actions which will bring them closer to their end goal. We blend this with 10-week focused sprints and give everyone in the team a dedicated coach. We also use the tech and the coach to connect people, and through a highly sophisticated reporting suite we bring comfort to the bosses giving them a real time view of what’s happening out there in the crescents and cul de sacs of the hybrid workplace. Hey presto, their world changes and performance soars!

For example, following an acquisition, the managed IT and solutions provider VCG were faced with the challenges of bringing together two teams and two cultures while coming out of the COVID pandemic. They wanted to accelerate sales, increase employee engagement, and achieve several behavioural changes across the business. So, we brought the VCG team together to establish clear goals, and to motivate and inspire them for their 10-week sprint. We worked with them to help create the right ‘everyday actions’ and we coached senior leaders, helping them peer coach their colleagues across the business.

We rolled out our nudge® technology so that the team received daily reminders to keep them on track. The tech brought visibility – especially in the remote world – and enabled them to maintain focus and connection.

The results were incredible. They put a stretch target on attracting new business into their sales pipeline and over-achieved by 360%. And employee engagement went through the roof, as they had created a performance coaching culture, like Sarah Broadhurst and Jade Jones.

Group head of sales at VCG, Jeff Wheeldon, commented, “The numbers were superb. But the standout for me is seeing the inter-team coaching and support. That’s what makes a team succeed together. There is no doubt this approach achieved much more togetherness.”

Remote working doesn’t have to feel disconnected. A new mindset blending a coaching culture and technology can make our new world of work a better place for everyone.