How to Build a High-Performing Hybrid Workforce
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we speak with Liam Reese, Head of People at ClickOut Media, about how HR leaders can navigate the complexities of remote, hybrid, and in-office work.
Liam shares practical insights on balancing performance with flexibility, building strong cultures in remote-first companies, and aligning executive vision with employee expectations. He also busts common myths about hybrid work and explains why your work model might be your most powerful talent attraction tool.
🎓 In this episode, Liam discusses:
Busting myths about remote, hybrid, and office setups
Using your work model as a strategic brand and talent tool
Aligning executive and employee expectations in model decisions
How to build culture and performance in a remote-first environment
Why there’s no “best” work model, and what HR’s role should really be
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Liam Reese 0:00
Suppose to say one underrated thing about remote work is how retentive it is. It would typically take people getting offers of 40% more to change to a different working model, even to go in a couple of days a week and sometimes asking people maybe have a bit of anxiety, you know, whether, you know, a little bit on the agoraphobic edge or whatever like that. You know, definitely attracts people like that. But that makes it really retentive that you can, you know, contribute to society, you know, you're still valued. You know, you still have that home and work persona. It is incredibly retentive once you've got people through the door. One thing we've really focused on is being able to be very straight with people about that, that, you know, yeah, okay, go there and work for more money, go into the office five days a week or bluntly, but your ideas up and deliver more, you know? Because, you know, we're giving you a pretty good benefit because, because, again, there's a lot of chat about it, but I still would be surprised to see the numbers are as high as you would imagine by looking on LinkedIn, about how many companies are actually fully remote. It's still rarer than you think. You
Chris Rainey 1:31
Hey, Liam, welcome to the show. How are you? My friend? I'm very well. Chris, thanks. No, have you been enjoying the little bit of heat we've had? Oh, now it's gone, actually, but
Liam Reese 1:39
no, it's still really nice down here. So, yeah, I will be down at the beach for the dog later. We're lucky. We live on the Isle of Wight, so very, very close to the beach. Nice.
Chris Rainey 1:49
Every time we speak. You just make me more jealous to go out on that must have you just gotten used to it. Or can you still really appreciate it? Because I
Liam Reese 2:00
still really, I still really appreciate it. Yeah, so, so nice. Yeah, and just send the kids off down the beach. It's super nice. Where were you before we moved here from London?
Chris Rainey 2:13
That's a change, amazing change. It was a big change.
Liam Reese 2:16
But my wife grew up here, so yeah, so we were, like, close to family and stuff here, but yeah, it was a pretty big change.
Chris Rainey 2:22
Yeah, my, um, one of my employees, parents live there, and he always travels back there, and he's just like, such an escape from all of the noise and chaos of London. I'm not quite kind of where you are, but I just moved out to Kent recently from London. And even that's just so nice, like getting taking a break, especially after the pandemic. Being stuck in a small apartment during that time, you kind of start to appreciate it a bit more Absolutely.
Liam Reese 2:47
Yeah, yeah. And the fact that it's in Ireland, it just makes it a little bit different. Obviously, gets much busier in the summer and stuff.
Chris Rainey 2:54
I bet you're like, Oh, someone's coming. They're all coming.
Liam Reese 2:58
I quite like it gives, gives it gives, gives it a bit of life.
Chris Rainey 3:03
Yeah, before we jump in, tell everyone a little bit about your background, and then sort of the journey to the role that you're in now. Sure.
Liam Reese 3:11
So, yeah. So my current role, I'm like head of HR for media agency, click out media. You know, my background in HR, I joined as a recruitment agent. So I did that for a number of years, and ended up moving to do in house recruitment, mainly in in startups. And then as those businesses grew, my role got a bit broader, not just doing, you know, talent acquisition, but other parts of HR. So I moved into a more generalist HR leadership role, and now, yeah, run HR for the business I'm with with today. So, you know, my journey is probably not a traditional one. You know, my sort of background has much more been around, like, you know, recruitment systems, data, rather than that traditional business partnering. So, you know, that's as I've sort of changed my role, that they're the bits that I'm still learning, you know, still learning today. But I think, you know, that's sort of been good for me, is just bringing that relentless focus on having the right person in the job, like, you know that everything else sort of stems from that, really,
Chris Rainey 4:22
yeah, what is the bit that you spent most of your career doing?
Liam Reese 4:27
Yeah, probably like 5050, now, but yeah, you sort of don't really lose that buzz of recruitment, really. I don't, I don't think, yeah, even though I'm not so involved with it today,
Chris Rainey 4:36
some people, you either love it or hate it. A lot of my friends grew up in in when the booming days of recruitment, when they first when we when we graduated, like everyone went into recruiting, and some people completely thrived in that environment. Others were like, it's just too intense to do that, but the skills that you learn and the resilience and during recruitment is so. Important for so many other aspects of your role. And I have the same background in terms of being in sales for 10 years, I attribute all of our success for those skills that I learned early on in my career. Interestingly, need for you, though, like many leaders, once they go into the startup space, they find it really challenging. Not many survive. What would you say is it about the startup culture and companies that you work for that's kept you really engaged over the years?
Liam Reese 5:29
I think, I think I've worked, I've worked for a couple of sort of, like pretty, like, bootstrap startups. I spent a little bit of time at Siemens, so totally the opposite end of the scale. And then, you know, the company I was at previous to this kindred group, I think when I was there, we grew from like 550 up to around two and a half 1000 people over the 10 years I was there. So you sort of see, like, all of that energy of startup, like, you know how you grow, you know how you take on new challenges, new markets, you know, deliver new products for customers, you know. So you still get that energy, but as a HR function, you've got to deliver scalability. And I really enjoy that delivering of scalability and constantly being able to think what's next. So how do we, you know, we're at Stage A today, but I need to be ready. I need to make the business ready for Stage B, right, you know, whenever we get bigger, you know, we need to be able to deliver the right reports, the right costs. Work with the finance team, work the tech teams like, you know, deliver that scalability and that that I really enjoy. And I think you don't get that unless you sort of seen all of those different sizes and stages of growth. Yeah, I really enjoy that. There
Chris Rainey 6:51
is, there is a thing about the larger organization, the harder it is to be as close to the business, right? Like you just said, You're right now, working hand in hand with very function every day, right? You're very close to it, whereas you kind of lose a little bit of that. You know, it's not impossible, obviously, but it just gets more challenging to do that and move quickly in a larger business as well. But on the other side, in your role, from speaking to your colleagues in saying you're fully hands on in every aspect which is which is also different. And that's not for everyone. I've seen CHROs go from very large multinationals to startups and jump on a call with me and be like, Chris, I can't do this. This is just insane. I'm like, doing everything. And I was like, What did you expect? You just joined the star. You just joined the star. You're not going to have all of the resources? Yeah, have you is that? Was that been a challenge for you? Yes,
Liam Reese 7:46
it certainly. I think, you know, like we, I mean, we've been through paid spaces, phases of absolute hyper growth. You know, when I first joined, you know, we'd more than doubled in size over the previous 18 months, and we've more than doubled in size in the 18 months I've been here. So everything, everything we did and designed, has been broken already. So yeah, I mean, it's really about everything you know, from designing payroll pay changes, processes that work at scale, hiring at scale, you know, through to now, more developing, some of the more, you know, inclusion, engagement, benefit stuff to go alongside it, as as we get, as we getting bigger. But yeah, I think more or less everything you know we do, you know, me and the team have to, you know, dive in and really work out exactly what we want to do and how we want to do it.
Chris Rainey 8:43
Yeah, one of the things I'm interested in talk to you about is we're still having this big debate and conversation around, you know, remote versus hybrid versus in office. What? Why do you think we're so obsessed with picking a model? You know, it seems to be everyone's focus on, what is the exact model we're kind of like, we're going to fall full circle back to a one size fits all.
Liam Reese 9:05
Yeah. I mean, I think, for me, I think the role of HR isn't in deciding necessarily what that is. We should be a stakeholder in that conversation. But there isn't a best by you know that I genuinely think different organizations have different cultures and different needs. So I really think, you know, I mean, we're fully remote like and that I first time I've done that, I found it challenging to start with, but I see what benefits you get out of that as an organization. I don't think it's better or worse than doing it a different way, but you know, what I really see my role is, is executing on that decision to make sure we're designing an organization. All of our processes, all of our culture, all of our messaging needs to be. Around maximizing that decision to work remotely, so we can do things other businesses can't like. We can hire people anywhere in the world at a moment's notice, because we've set up to do that. So that means we can access talent pools really, really quickly, and that because that's what our business wants, right? So I think that's the role that HR needs to play in. This is to, you know, formulate, help formulate that decision, and then execute and maximize that on on what you want.
Chris Rainey 10:34
Yeah, how do you one of the big challenges I hear is the challenge of, like, how do you maintain or build that sense of belonging in a in a hybrid environment or remote environment, and also, when people join that, they can feel, what does it mean to work here in terms of your culture, the values, and that they feel connected to the business? Yeah,
Liam Reese 10:57
I mean, and I think that's a challenge we really see. I mean, we're not the type of business that wants to, you know, what? We don't have any walls. But if we did, we wouldn't plaster our values all over them, like we're really around, like, you know, getting stuff done and making a difference. That would be how we would sort of, you know, define what we want from people. So we made that that clear to them. And we're not kind of, we're not here promising, you know, all of the fluff that you might get with some other organizations in an in house environment, because, because we can't do that like, there's no, you know, the way we see that, we don't see it as value LED. So for us, it's really about making sure people have super clear expectations on what good looks like for them, making it super clear to them that they have got a huge degree of freedom around how they work when they work. By, you know, we're not going to be saying that you have to be at your desk. Have to be, you know, doing things in a particular way, and really focus on the output of individuals and teams. And when we can see that output isn't there, you know that, that that's a question, then you know, we need to bring up with relevant people, but really that, you know, the culture that we create and the value that we bring is we want people to feel independent and not, you know, not absolutely tied to a nine to five. You know, they can work around, you know, the other things that they want to do in their life, be that you know other, you know other entrepreneurial ventures they're involved in, be that family, be that exercise, be that whatever it is, you know, we don't, we don't really mind.
Chris Rainey 12:45
Yeah, now I'm with you on that. You know, if you're hiring people and then telling them what to do, do you kind of defeat the point, like if I'm hiring people so they tell me what to do, because they bring in a set of skills, and you're leading with trust from the very beginning, which is, which is, which is great, but at the same time, how do you then measure productivity and results to hold them accountable? What
Liam Reese 13:08
does that look like? So that that is, that is what our leadership teams are. You know, it led to do you know we are? You know, very results, very metrics, led business. So be it, you know, the amount of content we want teams to do, be it the traffic they want to drive, be it the revenue that we want to see from particular teams. You know, we are on those numbers, or our leadership teams are on those numbers. So we can highlight fairly quickly when things are not looking as we would want them to. You know, obviously, there can be a myriad of factors that input that Not, not, you know, just in individual performances, but yeah, and I think time to the other point you made there about, you know, the fact that we're remote. You know, one of the challenges that comes with remote work. Is how you train people, you know, like that is a really difficult thing to do. So if I, if I was, you know, leading and, you know, and fully in house office business, you know, I would be really focused around, you know, my apprenticeship scheme, hiring lots of graduates and making sure that my, you know, my managers are super good mentors, trainers of people, and then you can access, again, a different type of talent pool that that we struggle with. You know, we do have apprentices, you know, we do, you know, try and bring people in at early stage, but it's a much lower percentage than I think we could do, because it's really hard to train people from scratch if you're remote, you know, it's much easier to sit next to somebody and show them how to do something they've never done before. So I think getting back to that like being very results driven in the way we want to be, you know, it also that is partly driven by the fact that. We typically recruit people who have already done the job that we're paying them for, like they're at that level already. They've got a bit of space to grow. But we're not looking for people on a really high career trajectory all the time in all of our roles. We want people who have got the skills experience and can bring that to bear, because then it's much easier to say to somebody, you understand this role. You've done it before. This is the output we want to see, because they understand the context of that really, really well.
Chris Rainey 15:32
Yeah. The challenge of that, though, is that you're, I suppose you've kind of got a positive and negative one is that's great because they're bringing in skills, but the other is, you're probably having to pay a premium for that to be able to do that. But I get your other side that it can be. It's not obviously impossible, of course, but it is more challenging, like in my day, right? You learn by by by doing, and by being in the office and mirroring and shadowing and seeing the work get done sitting next to someone while to show you it. You know, is it is a bit more challenging. But then, of course, we've seen with the recent data and surveys that are out there that people are one of the main drivers is their personal development. So how are you managing that to ensure that, okay, yes, you have the skills, but that person still needs to evolve, especially as skills become more and more out of date every every day,
Liam Reese 16:23
correct? So we're, so we're, you know, building a Academy around the sort of skills that we think are really critical to our business. So we've got a few streams of that, so we have a management stream. And then, you know, content and SEO are two really important parts of our business. So we've got learning streams around that that we're working on, trying to build those courses ourselves. So it's very much about how we do things, as opposed to just pure, you know, pure off the shelf technical ability, you know. But and, you know, this is the whole point that I think is really important to make, is, you know, we are not going to be as good at that as other companies would be in an in office, in office or hybrid environment. You know, learning and development will be naturally harder for us, and that's that's where, you know, I think it's really important as a HR function to understand that we have constraints and limitations by this choice of work model, and therefore it's about maximizing what you do, understanding the compromises. Because, yes, you're right. We often recruit people pretty senior to do jobs that maybe you could get a bit more flex about. I mean, I think we're lucky in that we can recruit anywhere in the world, which helps with that, but it is understanding that all of these things are a trade off, and you can't be based on your work model, the best at absolutely all of these things. And you can't cherry pick it, and I think that's where sometimes HR functions go wrong in terms of, they want to be the best at something, but the work model that they're dictated by, like, if you're trying to sell work life balance as your number one thing, but you're asking people to be in central London five days a week, and you not really, you know, it's frowned on if you leave the office before seven o'clock, you know, fine, that's great. I expect those companies pay pretty well by, you know, you would hope they would. And that's, again, it's just another example of that trade off and how you maximize, you know the output that you want to see from your business? Yeah,
Chris Rainey 18:44
no, I see that. And you're those companies are definitely paying a lot more than now, because people, people understand they have options elsewhere, right? They have that. How do you balance the high performance that you're striving for with the flexibility without burning people out?
Liam Reese 19:05
Yeah, I think the sort of burnout in particularly in a remote environment, is difficult. Like we were having a conversation about this yesterday, about, you know, you just see, you know, when you just see somebody's Game face, you know, maybe they're not on calls particularly often, you know, like, you know, maybe, maybe you only see them for half an hour a week or whatever. So that is difficult to see what's behind that screen, like, if there's anything invisible going on to you. So it comes down to a measuring results, seeing if there's any like impact in that. And I think B just making sure you have a pretty open mindset around that. I mean, you know, you see, you see when people are sending messages, you see when people are replying to stuff, you know, I. And you know that that's a difficult thing that came up in our latest survey around like the, you know, inability for some people to be able to switch off. And you know, we're trying to give really clear messaging to people we can't stop slack pinging 24 hours a day, because your team might contain somebody in Japan, somebody in the States, you know, people in Europe, like they're working around the sun, right? So you're, you know, you're never going to be able somebody will be writing to you at some point in the day. So we can't turn those messages off. You can control what you see. You can control what you do. And just making really clear on our expectations to people that we're not expecting them to work hard, not expecting them to count their hours, and we're not, you know, it's not about, you know, that sort of, you know, being visibly working, you know, 18 hours a day. You know, you have to turn the measure off on that and make sure you're not sort of rewarding that behavior and really focusing on, you know, the results of the individual
Chris Rainey 21:06
and how well they do, I think that just comes back to setting boundaries, though, right? Like, I've got team members all over the world and clients that we serve all over the world, but even something small, as like, I've seen simple things, like people putting in their email signature that these the hours that I'm working and are not and like, you know, I'll get back to you during those just setting an expectation, similar with the with our with our Slack groups and stuff like that, is the same thing in a lot of those apps now have built in mechanisms to say that This person's like, you can set it like the offline, etc, but, but that needs to be communicated by leadership and management, because you can, you can have that, but people still feel that pressure to reply like naturally, to just even though they know they shouldn't. They just do because you know. So that needs to be clearly communicated by the business business and as part of your culture as well.
Liam Reese 22:04
And again, like I referred to earlier, for us, it's really about like, you know, having flexibility, you know, like I'm the sort of person I'm, you know, if I'm awake and I see a message on, you know, that I want to read, I can read it, and it doesn't take me out of what I'm doing. It doesn't, doesn't particularly impact me. And I don't mind working early morning. I don't mind working late at night, and I don't mind walking the dog on the beach at lunchtime. You know, I'm comfortable to do that, and that's a good balance for me as an individual, and that's a good that's the way I like to role model it with my team. Try not to send people messages at seven o'clock in the morning, especially, asking people to do something, rather than just saying, well done on something. But yeah, that's, you know, that's what we have to try and role model as leadership, in terms of, like, understanding that, you know, just because it suits just just because it suits me, it doesn't mean it suits somebody else. Everybody's got their own flavor on, on what suits them, yeah,
Chris Rainey 23:13
how have your your lead? One of the challenges that I have, and this is, you know, a personal challenge, and I'll tell your thoughts on, like, how do you manage working with your leaders about how they're checking in with employees when they may have people on their team working in different time zones, in terms of how they're checking in with them, whether it's their one to ones or just checking in on performance. Like, how do you manage that when you've got people working on different time zones and hours, etc,
Liam Reese 23:41
yeah. So we, you know, we've tried to roll out a framework for this with sort of, you know, monthly check ins, quarterly reviews. You know, we're a business that, you know, generally, I would say fairly anti bureaucracy. Tends to come with a this is what we recommend. But you you might want to do it in a different way,
Chris Rainey 24:08
leaving up to the managers and the teams to make a decision correct.
Liam Reese 24:11
We get, we give a guidance in a framework. But you know that everybody will have an example of where that guidance and framework doesn't work. So if I, I've worked with this person for the last five years. You know, we're perfectly happy just to chat to each other on Slack. We haven't seen each other on a video call for three years, but everything's working fine, right? I don't need to tell that person to do something differently if it's working, right? You know that that that's that's fine, but I think the new joiners, new managers, like with Max keener. You know, here's a framework. Adopt that, and most people are pretty receptive to that, and see and appreciate the benefit of doing it that way. Yeah.
Chris Rainey 24:54
What would you say is, like one myth that you commonly hear about remote work, that
Liam Reese 24:59
every. Body is naturally more productive. I don't think that that is a fact. If you go on LinkedIn, you know, probably the second or third post you see every day is like, you know, some Diary of a remote worker versus the diary of, you know, a commuting worker, and I used to commute. I've done big commutes in jobs before. I was used to work on my commute, you know. So probably, you know, find that productive. And, you know, sometimes you can get distracted at home. Sometimes you can lose yourself in the wrong priority. Like, I think that is a common remote working challenge. And I think if you're not feeling it, it's a bit easier to not do very much. Yeah, I think you probably have more lull days working remotely than you do in the office. Obviously, you have the ability for more focus time, you know, like and being able to get through read, write, you know, do a solid, you know, one or two hours work pretty undisturbed. But yeah, I don't think that naturally, everybody who works remotely is, you know, more effective and productive. I think you probably would find most office workers are probably a bit more productive, but it's the trade off in other areas that I think balances that out. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 26:36
for me, it's like, it depends. So it's the type of work that I'm doing. So I prefer being in the office. So my team comes in every Monday, but the rest of the week, they can work, you know how they want. But I enjoy being in the office with the team, sort of the collaboration, the creation, the challenging each other back and forth, and then, actually, to your point, just sitting together around the table and getting the job done, something to be said about that, like we can all talk about it and go away remotely, but all being sitting at a table just getting the job done together is super fun. But at the same time, if I then want to focus on sending a ton of emails or doing some deep work, then actually I'm way more productive at home doing that, because I don't get I don't get distracted every second by someone in the office coming to grab to me for something. So to me, it's more around the type of work that I'm doing as opposed to where I am when I'm doing it. Yeah, as well. So I'm with you on that I do feel as a misconception. And again, if you want people to be in the office, I think that's where it comes down to being more intentional about, why are people coming in? Because, if they come because, if they're coming in to do coding or sit on the laptop to send emails, then why are they there? You know, it's like, that's the bit I think people get frustrated with, yeah. I
Liam Reese 27:59
mean, we had my last company, we had a huge dilemma. Of like, we went, obviously, like everybody did, we went fully remote in a instant during COVID. And, you know, we were pretty flexible, like, you know, I, you know, most people were in the office probably four days a week. I was in two or three, just because I had a long commute, but we were a very international business, so you would tend to find, you know, my team when we came back in the office were mainly abroad. So I would come into the office and then spend half my day in a zoom, course, yeah, in a meeting, like even the calls you could sort of take on the floor, like we're sitting there droning on about some system implementation that no one else wants to listen to or care about. So yeah, so you just then spend like, four hours in a room half the size of this, with a, you know, two hour commute either way, and then, you know the idea that you're, like, catching up with people, collaborating on other stuff, like, it didn't always happen that way. So I agree. I was chatting to chapno here, and he thinks his business have got it really well, they're like, Monday, Tuesday. They're in the office, Monday's team building, Tuesday's project work like, you know, you're told where you're sitting. Like, you know, you get given a desk number, so you're mixing up and that, you know, it's super, like, focused around, you know, you need to work with this team this week, because that's the biggest project you're working on. Non negotiable. Everybody knows the rules. And then rest of the week they don't care. Like, you know,
Chris Rainey 29:50
yeah, it's a good balance, yeah,
Liam Reese 29:52
but it's like, you say it is. He is super clear why he needs to be in the office. It's, you know, and. And he gets it. Obviously, some days you'd rather not
Chris Rainey 30:04
that comes at a territory. I mean, we've come a long way from when I went out when we were younger, where there was no choice, correct? Yeah, but now, I'm sure you're probably hearing this in people that you're you're recruiting, is kind of like a the one of the first questions, if not the first question, you know, it's not about salary or is more around, you know, what are the ways of working? How do we work? Is that the first question, before they even come through the door, right? Yeah, as well. So
Liam Reese 30:35
and, and that's, and that's a, you know, again, I think one underrated, I was to say one underrated thing about remote work is how retentive it is, right? So if you you know realistically, you know like we pay well anyway, but you know, it would typically take people getting, you know, offers of 40% more to change to a different working model, even to go in a couple of days a week. And sometimes, actually, people maybe have a bit of, you know, anxiety, you know, whether you know, sort of on the, you know, a little bit on the agoraphobic edge, or whatever like that, you know, definitely attracts people like that, but that makes it really retentive that you can, you know, work contribute to society like you know you're not, sort of, you know you're still valued. You know, you still have that, you know, home and work persona. But, yeah, it is incredibly retentive once you've got people through the door and there. And I think that is a really, you know, a positive. One thing we've really focused on is being able to be very straight with people about that, that, you know, yeah, okay, go there and work for more money. Go into the office five days a week. Or, you know, bluntly, but your ideas up and deliver more, you know, because, you know, we're giving you a pretty good benefit, because, because, again, you know there's a lot of chat about it, but I still would be surprised to see, you know that the numbers are as high as you would imagine, by looking on LinkedIn, about how many companies are actually fully remote. It's still, you know, rare, rarer than rarer than you think,
Chris Rainey 32:28
is less than, yeah, and most, a lot of companies now are reversing, saying, we need you back in another day, another day, to the point where it's going to be five days, and we're just back to kind of where we started
Liam Reese 32:42
as well, and I don't mind that. Like, again, you know, like looking at the sort of stuff that everyone posts on LinkedIn, I know, just get it clear. No, Elon Musk AI here, but you know, those emails that he sent out about remote work here, like, you know, I agree with that philosophy for how he wants to run that business. Right? We're building stuff in a factory like you know, the people who are building stuff in a factory, they are here. If you're the software engineer who's coding that, if you're the HR business partner who's supporting that group, your support function to the people building the product, get in, work with them, see what they're doing, you know, don't just be, you know, at home or on on the beach and and you know that, to me, is exactly what we're saying. It's intentional. It's joined up. It's got a cohesive foundation to it. And you can either buy into that or not, you know, I think that's, you know that that that's where it's about make that choice and then absolutely drive it through everything you do and make the best of it. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 33:47
no, I agree. Again, it's not, it's not saying it's not for everyone, and he understands that, and everyone else does. And same way the remotes not for everyone as well. I think, as we said, we come kind of full circle to there is no longer a one size fits all right, though, those people, including me, that now have that flexibility to pick up my daughter from nursery, because I, because I can, and to be more present as a dad, and then I used to be when I was commuting back and forth. A lot, a lot of people found that and changed their entire lives and the way, the way they operated, just as a family during COVID, didn't want to go back, yeah? And they're like, wait, wait, I don't want to give this up anymore. I enjoy, I enjoy this. And there will be companies out there that can provide that for them, and vice versa. There's others that actually I don't want to be at home, because maybe I'm, maybe I, maybe I live at home alone, and that's very lonely, right? And I want that, and my only social interaction is work. And I've got friends like that that became very depressed and anxious when they're and isolated, and they love going to work. They can't, can't wait, because that's their way that they get energy from socializing as well
Liam Reese 34:58
and having the right sort of. Set up an environment at home, like when we, you know, when, when we moved to my last place, to being fully remote and COVID. Like, one of our big learnings straight away was, you know, we had a big customer service team in Malta, and all of these guys were living in shared, basically, yeah, and just, you know, and they, you know, and they're coming back and telling us about, you know, they've got, you know, some person they don't really know, who's living in the flat, who's then, just like, you know, out at 5am with all their stuff out in the kitchen table, and they've got nowhere to work, you know, they're literally, like, kneeling laptop on the bed. And you're like that, you know, that that was a real learning for us. And, you know, we spent a lot of money on cabs, shipping desks and chairs out of the office to people so that they could have some way of working at home. And, you know, it's very, you know, yeah, some of us lucky, you know, I've got a dedicated space to work. You know, if I didn't, I would find it extremely stressful. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 36:07
Liam, I let you go. What parting advice would you give to people that are on this journey that's still trying to find that balance?
Liam Reese 36:16
So I think that the most important thing for, as I've said, for any HR function, I don't think it is to remake that decision, or to try and cherry pick, like, you know, different good things from different models. You've got a model, you stick to it. You've got some rules around that. So then it's just really looking at, you know, what is the best solution to each of those problems, and don't bring, you know, your legacy office policy process to the remote work. You can completely rethink it. And equally, don't try and breathe. You know, if you're in the office, you know, it's pretty difficult to bring in. You know, some of the more remote type stuff into that. So it's really just understand the decision, focus on that, maximize the best out of it.
Chris Rainey 37:09
Amazing. Well, listen, I appreciate you coming on the show. I know you're probably going to be going for your nice, long walk along the beach now, which I'm always jealous of. And I wish all the best until next week, but thanks for taking the time out to join us. Great.
Liam Reese 37:22
All right. Thanks very much. Chris, thank you. Cheers. Bye.
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Dina Yorke, VP Learning Excellence at Schneider Electric.