WFM Unfiltered

Working From Home... Or Not? | Adrian Hawes

• Adrian Hawes • Season 1 • Episode 32

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The battle between remote work, hybrid models, and full office life rages on—and we’re diving straight into the fire. In this episode of WFM Unfiltered, Adrian Hawes joins Irina to dissect the realities, myths, and consequences of remote work in the contact center industry. Is working from home still the productivity dream we thought it was, or has it created bigger problems than we expected?

Adrian shares his expert insights on the evolution of work-from-home policies, the impact on team collaboration and company culture, and why some businesses are forcing employees back to the office. We’ll also explore the generational divide in workplace expectations, the mental health implications of isolation, and the harsh commercial realities that companies have to face when balancing remote flexibility with business needs.

But here’s the kicker—have service levels actually suffered due to remote work, or is that just corporate propaganda? Adrian doesn’t hold back as we dig into the customer experience decline, the training challenges of a distributed workforce, and whether employees are really as productive at home as they claim to be.

This episode is a wake-up call for leaders, employees, and WFM professionals navigating the future of work. Whether you’re a die-hard remote advocate or a return-to-office enforcer, you need to hear this debate. Subscribe now and join the conversation!

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Show Links:

• Adrian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrianhawes/

• RightWFM website: www.rightwfm.com

• Email: Irina@rightwfm.com

• Podcast email: WFMUnfiltered@gmail.com

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• YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/@wfmunfiltered?sub_confirmation=1

Thanks for listening.

If you'd like to contact me about the show, you can email me HERE.

If you have questions about working with me on WFM projects and Consulting, you can find The RightWFM website HERE.

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Irina:

Happy Tuesday everyone. My name is Irina and welcome to WFM Unfiltered. As usual, we're going to the uk, which I think it's recurring theme the last couple of episodes, but for a change, I have no clue how to pronounce the name, where my guest is coming from. So I'm just gonna hand over to my brilliant guest for today, Adrian, how are you doing? Very happy to talk to you today.

Adrian:

Yeah, it's great. Great to be here, Irina. Yeah. So So for the viewers I'm Adian Hawes and I'm a director and consultant that selects Planning Limited, which an independent consultancy specializing in resource planning analytics here in the uk. I'm based in East Anglia a little town called Alton Broad, which is actually on Britain's most easterly Eastly point. So if you imagine the map, look at the map down the east side, there's a little bit of bulges out. That's where I'm at.

Irina:

Okay. I we need to mention that prior to the recording, I think I managed to already offend you, but are people.

Adrian:

There's plenty people. There's plenty of strange people. In fact, and I'm probably one of them!

Irina:

Good to know then, and my knowledge is already corrected, but apologies for that one. So we are about to talk about something that seems to be a very hot topic for the last couple of years, and it is about working from home and whether this is a good idea or not, and when it is a good idea. And recently I went into a discussion with a grand friend of mine that I really respect. Dan. Hey, done. If you're listening to us. So now we are gonna redo that conversation with Adrian and see how do we feel about that topic and how do we make work from home work or should we make it work? So what are your thoughts on the topic, Adrian?

Adrian:

I think this is a fascinating conversation to have because I think you have to step back and remember why so many people are working from home. working from home because they were forced to. Forced to throw through a pandemic. When decided we had to work from home. Interesting. If you go back before that, working from home was seen as a real innovation in where it was done rarely, particularly here in the uk it wasn't done very much. At all. But it was seen where you could do it was a fantastic innovation because it gave you huge amounts of flexibility potentially with what you could do with your people. And actually I think most of the benefits were seen as being to the organization in terms of that operational efficiency through being able to be flexible rather than actually being seen as benefits to the individuals and what they could get from working from home. I think that debate's turned its head. I think the pandemic has absolutely turned. Its on its head now. And actually we, we talk about working from home as being very much around, the benefits to the employee of which clearly for a number of employees there are large benefits actually for another subset of employees, quite a large one. There are some big disadvantages And I think the debate actually gets unbalanced because as soon as you start saying there are. Disadvantages to this. It's not all great. You can very easily be attacked for actually, or you are against flexible working then, or actually you're against neurodiversity and catering for people with situations like that. And actually, no, I'm not, actually in favor is making sure that we're doing the right things for the right people. But actually just having a blanket conversation that says work from home is the best things in sliced bread. Is completely false, I think that the debate has actually raised outta control a little bit. And we need to bring it back into the, into a more real place and have the debate rather than just having a Yes, it's right. No, it's wrong. Yes, it's right. No, it's wrong conversation. Which happens too much on, on social at the moment, in my view.

Irina:

It's an interesting point and the thing that personally annoys me is the fact that we need to choose. It's either or. So either you completely hate work from home or you're completely for working from home. And I don't believe that there is should be universal solution that's working for everyone. And I started working sorry, not working, but thinking about myself as employee. For me, yes, I love working from home to a certain degree, but there is so much more that I can do once I'm on site, even. It's from building a relationship with the people perspective putting a face, a voice, a physical presence so people get to start to trust you and building that kind of relationship. Where you understand that you're a team and not just an avatar on a computer that maybe shows up or maybe the camera isn't working. So let's not turn on the camera.'cause I'm actually in my pajamas right now and I think what you touched on, and I really wanna explore that, is we're talking about advantages for working from home. We never talk about disadvantages, so I want you to talk to me. What can be the disadvantages that you have experienced?

Adrian:

Okay. I think can almost see it through the journey of an employee. I look back when I started work, as you can tell, with the gray hats a very long time ago. and it wasn't, call centers weren't a thing then, to be fair, we were administrative centers, which had

Irina:

Yeah.

Adrian:

And did it all, we'd call it a blended environment now, but it's different. works. It works for this purpose. I can remember turning up as a young 18-year-old going into, in, into work, and I to. If I was having to start off my career from home, I would hate it. I would absolutely hate it from a number of perspectives. One, I've always believed work. Work should have an element of social. Social connection with

Irina:

Yeah.

Adrian:

really important I think, at a young age for people in particularly when they're first getting into work. I think that's really vitally important. I, and I also think it makes you more connected with the organization. Yes, you can connect in a remote world, but I think it's harder. I think it's really tougher, but I think that initial learning piece, I think that is massive. And I'm not necessarily even talking about formal training, classroom training. The ability to be able to sit with people, literally bounce off people. I've got a, I don't quite understand this, what's going on there, or, I've had a tough conversation there. What do you think of that? Laughing it off even with people that, that whole team thing that you alluded to there, I think you, you are, to be able to recreate that in a remote environment is incredibly tough. And I think it really takes its toll. And I think you can really see that in, in certain types of contact center, particularly where they're dealing difficult, vulnerable customers. It's interesting here in the uk, not many, if any of the ambulance services, for example, have their call handlers working at home. I think that tells you something that, that actually, there is a realization there that actually. team environment in those difficult circumstances actually counts for a hell of a lot in terms of keeping people on a level, level playing field, keeping them engaged and positive and able to do the diff job in difficult circumstances. I wouldn't want to be a contact center agent in those type of environments, sitting in a relatively isolated fashion at home on my own because it's because, you never know what you're gonna get on the phone. They're difficult calls. Do you really want to be sat there at the end of a call when you've just been dealing with someone having a heart attack on the phone, for example? Worst case scenario, that's tough. Now I know that's an extreme. that's, that's an extreme thing and not everybody's dealing with life and death on the phone every day. actually there's a whole range of stuff where I think people are left far too isolated from working well from home. And yes, I know we are change, trying to change how team leaders operate and all that kind of stuff to stay more connected. for me, and I'm old school. It's really, I think it's really tough to do that in a fully work from home, working from home basis. clearly you can get into hybrid and you've started the conversation there on, on hybrid and I think there is a kind of happy medium for a lot of people. do think though that the hybrid debate is interesting because I. I've been to a conference where people talk about hybrids and they talk about, oh our strategy is hybrid. Okay. We have a hybrid strategy. Okay. So what does that mean then? Our strategy is that people must come into the office two days a week. Why? Why have you chosen two days a week? We just have why what are they gonna do in those two days per week they've gotta be in the off the office for? You're not mandating which days they are. So you've got no guarantee they're gonna turn up with their own team mates anyway, so it's random. Let's face it, most people will choose the middle of the week, so they'd rather be at home on a Monday and a Friday to extend the week or to extend the weekend, it's still random. What are they gonna do differently when they're in the office compared to when they're not? And there's very rarely an answer. To that. And so it begs the question so we're just saying hybrid then, because we think working from home could be quite nice for people. So we're happy to let them work at home, but we're not happy to let'em work from home all the time. So we're mandating they've gotta come into the office. What does that tell me about you as an organization? Is it saying to me that, trust them to be on their own at home all week. You think actually you need to have them in so you can have a level of control over their performance?'cause that's how you want to manage them. Or what are you saying? And I don't think, I've not seen any organization that's been able to articulate to me why they have a hybrid strategy as it is. That's not, say it's wrong, that you should have a mix. They have a mixture of elements. But the why is still missing for me. And I fear that we've lurched into it because we were forced into working from home because of the pandemic people liked it. We as organizations, we were reluctant to bring them all back in because we knew there'd be a bit of pushback from the agents.'cause they, a lot of'em quite like it. So we've gone for this halfway house approach'cause it's feels like a happy compromise really knowing why. And it's just easier now to let it sit like that, isn't it? Rather than actually really make any other tougher decisions about why you wanna do what you might want to do. And I, and it just feels like it's. just almost a stalemate and a plateau where doing what we're doing, not really knowing why, but it feels intuitively maybe the right thing for a lot of people. But is it, and I and I think it, and it's almost. I think a lot of organizations have moved on from it, just gonna leave it as they are without really getting under the skin of why it's good or why it might not be. And I don't think that's, and I personally don't think that's very healthy. And the final thing I'll say about it is that if you're on the outside looking our world, in the UK and I think in lot of countries, customer service diabolical at the moment. as poor as it's ever been. It's not going anywhere. And there's a number of reasons I think for that. you're an average punter out on the street looking at contact centers and you have a poor view of the service that contact centers give and you know that people are working from home, whether it be hybrid or full-time, it's very easy to point the finger at the contact center industry and say actually one of the reasons delivering poor service is'cause you let people work from home. Now, that's an unfair criticism. Actually, in terms of the perception of our industry, we are doing so poorly, it's very tough to fight back on that argument.

Irina:

It adds up to all the other issues.

Adrian:

Ab, ab, ab, absolutely. And so it's just snowballs, the perception of contact centers in the eyes of the average customer. You are working from home. You're not working very hard, you are not delivering great service. I just think, we just therefore think aren't very good and service is terrible. And so we're we're not doing ourselves any favors right now some of these things. And a lot of that criticism is potentially unfair. But perception's everything in this game, isn't it?

Irina:

Let me break that conversation because you mentioned such great points and we can steer that there that conversation in multiple different directions. But one thing that picked my interest that you mentioned. Is that currently we are assuming that everyone prefers working from home. And I'm not that type of person. I prefer to be around people. Do I prefer to be around people every single day from nine to five? Absolutely not. But I prefer that element when, and we spoke a little bit that before the recording especially for days which are jam packed with meetings. I would much rather be on site where we can focus, we get the job done, rather than my internet died, I'm running late because the delivery is at the door. There is reconstruction and those are things that are actually happening to me all the time as to many other people when you're in an environment that it's not controlled. But the other point is we're not discussing the. The age and the generations that are working in a contact center environment.'cause I can certainly understand maybe parents maybe a little bit. Elderly people that are working in the contact center would prefer to work from home, I would argue, or would be a bit surprised if 18, 19, 20, 22 year olds would opt in to be locked at their homes all the time without any social interaction. And the reality is that a lot of the people that are working in contact centers are youngsters, are millennials, gen Z, gen X, and all gens

Adrian:

all

Irina:

like that. But we are enforcing ways of working on them because the people that are making those decisions maybe prefer to be working from home. It's.

Adrian:

I, I think that's a big point. I I think a lot of the drive for working from home has come from middle to senior managers, a lot of whom are very happy not to have to come into the office because it saves an awful lot of money on commuting. Particularly if I look at the, in the UK here, London allowance people get paid more in London'cause it costs an awful lot more to live there. But actually a lot of people who work in London and take London allowance have historically received higher pave. actually that they're using it essentially to fund their commute and people commute for three, four hours. Three three hours or so on the train. Do you know what I mean? They can't come down from Manchester and all sorts of places on the train to work in London. London every day. They're more than happy not to have to work in an office now because they're saving huge amounts of money So they can actually push for a return to the office. Ab absolutely not. And I think you make a really good point about the different a demographics, although I think as well, I think there are some old, older people, but particularly if the people who live on their own, live on their own. I personally think work from home isn't actually that great for those sorts of people either. I think from a mental health perspective, excuse me. I think That's really bad, and. And I always smile a little bit when I see people talking about, oh, there's the stats around people working from home. And yes, it's gonna reduce attrition. It's gonna reduce absence. It's gonna improve people's mental health, it's gonna improve productivity. I. It is rare you see that genuinely backed up with true data that that proves that. But where I do occasionally see data that proves it I look at it and proves it. Where I see data that tries to prove it. I think the people that are producing that data genuinely have a particular point that they want to prove themselves, not at least they've got. tech solutions, they wanna sell into work from home environments. They actually, that's why they wanted

Irina:

Yep.

Adrian:

to justify while working from home is why working from home is so great. But no, youngsters I think are a clear pool for that because like I say, they, they want social interaction. Most youngsters do. Yes, there are some people who have particular situations, whether it be neurodiversity, stuff like that. We're actually working in a big office environment. Is not great for them and they find it far easier at home. Get that, let's cater for them because they deserve to be there. Genuine situations that, that, that need special situations, special working environments, probably from home where they're much more effective. Other people. I think there's a real, I think there's a real mix out there. I think cost of commuting is a thing. I think that does play in, play into it. And you can't get away from that. The cost of living these days, costs of fuel, train fairs, all that kind of stuff here in the uk. Ridiculous. That does clearly play into people's pockets. And so that's, that is a driver. I think if that wasn't there, I think you'd see far more people wanting to work in officers to be around people, and I do think as well, if you are a youngster on the, trying to make your way an organization now, how do you stand out? How do you make yourself stand out when you're just a, you're just a face behind a screen. I think that's, I think that's really tough and I, again, I go back to my own career, I wouldn't have wanted to be in that si situation because I just think it make it so much more difficult to really stand out and build the relationships that are required to really progress your career, whether that's in the contact center or outside of it, when you're working office area. You have a chance to wander around water cooler conversations are often used as a, as an example of it. that's a fact. You could meet different people from different parts of your organization, get to know them, build a relationship, start to understand what those parts of the organization might do. Understand if actually you'd like to progress your career into those kind of places. Whereas now sat behind the desk as a contact center agent. How do you get that chance to interact more broadly in the organization and actually form a view even? alone a desire, but form a view what might be open to you in terms of opportunities. And what might be suitable for you within that organization in terms of a shift in, in the development of your career? it's very restricting for people or a risk of being very restricting for people in terms of being able to develop their careers within these organizations.'cause let's face it, not many people come into contact centers actually wanting a career, long-term career as a contact center agent. I think. So people who talk about that stuff, but frankly that's absolute bull. There are number of people who sit at the end of their, I don't know, their end of their A levels or their university degree with an aspiration to be a contact center agent is approximately zero. That's not what people aspire to. People aspire to all sorts of other things. People turn up in contact centers because, A, they need a job. B, they dunno what they want to do. C it might just be a stepping stone to do something else. I went to work for an admin center when I was 18. I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted to work for a big corporate organization, a particular one that I went into. I didn't wanna stay an admin all my life. It was a way to get into that organization and a way that I could pick my path through to actually end up doing something that would be a lot more fulfilling. And I genuinely think that's where most contact center agents are now. And so therefore, how do you open their eyes if they're just sitting at home working in a contact center role all day? I think that's really

Irina:

Wow. That's a great perspective because yeah, how do you know what's there if you can't see it, if you're not exposed to it because you made a perfect point. When you're in office, you're exposed, whether in conversation, you overhear something, different people interacting about different topics. And when you're at home is just interaction. Maybe you chat with someone about something, but you keep it very limited

Adrian:

Yes.

Irina:

those type of additional conversations just don't happen. And on top of that I was constantly wondering why while I was hearing you speaking, if I'm a new agent and let's say that my training is on site, and after that on site training with my team lead, they go at their place, I go at my place, and this is how we work. It's so much more difficult for me to gain momentum and to start being proficient in my job if every single time when I need help. My team lead is nowhere. My senior is nowhere because they're on something else and I can't see them. I cannot go to someone else, and I'm just relying on chat. But let's face it, chat is not as effective as it's in person conversations.

Adrian:

No you are. You're Abso absolutely right. I think, I come back to what I said ear earlier on, I think that ability to be able to bounce off colleagues is. Whether it's for technical information, whether it's just to keep you morale up in difficult circumstances, I think that's highly underestimated. That team dynamic, when you're having a bad day, able to see a couple of people sitting opposite, you have a laugh with them for a few minutes, face to face, vastly underestimated. Today and we think we can replicate it with a few comments on a chat. I'm sorry, just is not the same. Like likewise, if it is for learning situations. I can remember when I, again, going back in distant past when I started the number of conversations you'd just have look up for your desk and say, just can't remember what I need to do in this situation. do I do? And you've got someone's literally sitting there, he'll give you the answer just like that. You're not typing out a chat, you're not relying on a team like, like you say. It just makes all the difference to just skill development, but to your confidence as well. Just having that, knowing that person's there straight away, no problems, bang you. I just think you develop at a far faster rate. And I do, I do think we forget that. That, the benefits of that, I would almost, I think, I just think we are scared to talk about it enough in, in, in this world. I think because we think as soon as we start saying, oh, actually this isn't the greatest thing ever. We think the agents is gonna turn on us. I see stuff post on socials. Oh, if we mandate people return to work either on a hybrid or full-time basis, people are gonna leave. They'll go, they'll leave and they'll go and get other jobs. In this climate will they actually, sometimes we forget that actually it's, there aren't 1,000,001 jobs up there for everyone to to go for. And sometimes yes, people will threaten all sorts, but will they move Okay. They won't, will they not be as engaged as they will were before? Will they not perform if we make'em come back into the office? We make that assumption just because we've sent them home, not because we know it to be true.

Irina:

What is strange for me is because we're constantly making assumptions that this is what people want and for the people that actually want working from home. Okay. If the circumstances allows for it, go for it. That there's nothing wrong. But for me, when we're talking about flexibility, for me, the way that I operate as a professional and as individual is to be able. To communicate with people, at least from time to time, whenever it's necessary, whenever I want, even. So for me, it's very strange conversation when we're shutting down one of the perspectives and we're saying, okay, we have proven that this is working during Covid and we should stick to it. Why, and you made another great point, is that for people who are neurodivergent, maybe it's better to work from home. For me, during the pandemic, I was alone at my place and trust me, my mental health was going just like that, like progressed day after day and I was having such a hard time coping that I was. Crying to be in an office around people. So I don't think we should be assuming that either, or it'll be great for people. We should maybe just ask it as a part of our, I don't know company structure or policy. Would you rather be in the office? Would you rather be at home? Like, how can we make it work for everyone rather than shut either or?

Adrian:

There's a very inter, there's a very interesting conversation happening today in the uk Funny there's an announcement today on the welfare state, the benefits system within the uk is Apparently the government's gonna make some cuts in the welfare state or announced some potential cuts in the welfare state today. And one of the thing that's been building up to this has been a lot of stuff coming out in the media. One of the things that's being talked about is the massive increase in mental health issues. In the country in the last few years actually also been happening in the last few years, we've been having people working from home a whole lot more than they ever did before. Mental issues have gone through the roof. Is there direct correlation? I don't know. I'm not saying there is, but there is. There is clearly two things happening there. People are at home on their own, and mental health issues are rising in society now. There's a vast array of reasons why that. Can be the case. I'm not putting, I'm not parking at the door working from home, but there will be a number of people for whom it will play a sig a significant part. And I think we should be absolutely open to that. And I do think the flexibility debate is a really challenging one as well.'cause I mean there's a number of things on flexibility generally, not just working home. Which are troubling because, I was think when people say, oh, I want to work flexibly. And that could mean working, but I wanna work flexibly. Most people who actually say they want to work flexibly, and I'll get shot for this, but hey, what the hell is unfiltered, isn't it? Most people who say I want to work flexibly are actually saying, I want to work inflexibly, and I want my colleagues to cover the bits of the days that I'm not prepared to work. It's very rare in my experience, I've seen people come with flexible working requests that say, actually this is what I can do. No, most people come and say, actually this is what I can't do, or I'm not prepared to do, I'm not able to, can I do it like that? And most organizations, they will do everything they can to try and cater for that. But Who's pick, who's picking up the slack? All the people who aren't on flexible working are having to work potentially more flexibly so that all the people who want to work flexibly can do what they what they wanna do. And I think think sometimes we get confused with what flexibility really is here because I think it's, and it's a. Most people won't like what I'm saying there but it's, but it is the truth. Most people say, oh, do nights, I can't do weekends, I can't do early mornings. I'm taking my children to school. They're all genuine reasons. Don't get me wrong. I absolutely understand why people don't want to be able to or can't, don't want to work at those particular times. And I've got no problem with this as organizations catering for that and working around those people.'cause that's how you get a diverse workforce. And it all needs to hang together. But let's not kid ourselves. Those people are saying they wanna be flexible. There's so they ought to be inflexible. They're being very fixed. Most of those people about when they wanna work. And the same is now true with where they wanna work. I think people are saying the same thing, I want to work here. I want to do this. And we run around and Kate cater for it almost regardless. And remember too, if you go back prior to the pandemic, working from home was seen as an innovation to give you flexibility for the organization. Was for, because you could be much more in innovative with your shift patterns, whether you're into splits or strangely, you could do all sorts of stuff with shifter aims and I went to a number of award gatherings, pre pandemic, and I can remember award winners where the levels of flexibility they got from having people working from home on particular types of specialist shifts, gave them good operational efficiencies. Really positive for the customer in particular. And they were held in high regard for these organizations. What a fantastic thing. You've done. Very innovative, very flexible shift arrangements. I'd like to know, and I dunno the answer to this, but I suspect the answer is pretty near zero. How many organizations have actually changed their shift arrangements now that people are working from home to give them greater flexibilities as an organization? Very few, I suspect is the answer and it's all gone the way of the employee. again, intuitively, you know, keeping your employees engaged. Good thing. we control again? And yeah, and I pose that as a question.'cause each organization will be different in terms of where it's gone. But I think we've lost sight of actually, working from home, flexible, working from a better phrase. There should be a quid pro quo in this for both part, both parties here and I think we've forgotten that actually the organization. Should actually get some benefit from allowing what I think.

Irina:

We are starting to forget that It's two sides of the coin, that we need to balance. And we're constantly saying"Well, we wanna work from home". Yeah. But we also want some work to be done because otherwise the cost, it's not going to be justifying the benefit. And the thing is that I think this is the main driver for people losing them because they feel like if you want people to work from the office, you are basically saying we don't trust them. To be honest, it's much difficult. To work from home in certain aspects. For example, every single time when I'm executing a training or implementation, I cannot tell you the difference in working from a training room with people on site and with cameras shut down and everyone getting distracted because they just received email and they're just naturally distracted. Their focus is going down every single minute they look around. There are certain noises there are. Certain stuff interfering and something that I'm usually doing in a day, I have to do it the whole week. Just because the attention span is

Adrian:

Yeah. Yeah.

Irina:

and we're not talking about these things because we're scared that we're gonna stay. We don't trust people. It's not about just, it is happen in that kind of in controlled environment, it's much easier to just be naturally distracted.

Adrian:

Of course. Yeah, of course it is. I remember a post on the socials a little while ago. It was a debate around, should a contact center be able to put a customer on hold if their doorbell goes? Because they need to collect a parcel. And somebody said, absolutely not. They should. They should not go to the door. They should deal with a customer because that's their job. And they got an absolute pile on. And I thought, this is a nonsense. This is an absolute nonsense. If you were at work in an office, you wouldn't pop home to answer the door. Would you only ring doorbell to to collect a pass? If the doorbell went, you are in the employer of your employer at. Then, no I personally, you're talking to a customer. I personally don't think it is appropriate for you to put the customer on hold and say, excuse me, I just need to collect a parcel at the door. Yeah, no, I'm sorry. That's in again, I'm old school. For me, that's entirely wrong. But for me, when I'm in the employment of my employer, whether that's me as a consultant now or before when I worked at a large corporate, when working. What I'm, that's what I'm doing. I'm not being distracted by the doorbell. I'm not being distracted by having the TV on in the corner. All those kind of things that potentially people can do if they are less than honest about things, I am here to work and I think that we're getting, letting ourselves get run away with some of these things that people are talking about now in terms of giving employees everything, ultimately. We have commercial businesses to run here, commercial businesses, which have to deliver stakeholder value to deliver profit, to be able to retain that business as an ongoing concern. We can't turn everything to the over to the employees and you get a load of these people and say, oh, but actually engage, positive people will drive that business. Yeah. Okay. I buy that to a degree. But you're still a commercial venture and you still have to deliver benefit for your customer. You still have to deliver profit for your shareholders. And if you don't do that, you can't be nice to your people because you won't have any, you won't have a, we won't have a business. So there has to be a balance. You have to balance all those things. I really fear that we are losing sight of what that balance is. And I think, as I said earlier, I can't remember if it was before we, we went on air, but because the perception of customer service is so poor at the moment. All these charges can be thrown at us. Be

Irina:

Yes.

Adrian:

because customers think we're rubbish. That's the truth of it. And so all these things we're doing, letting the employees do whatever they want, letting'em work from where they want, all this kind of stuff, they'll throw those as criticism that at us because our service offering is so poor. service was great. Then it wouldn't matter, would it? Because service is great. And if we're all making money then everyone's happy. You can do what you wanna do with your people. But actually in the environment we're in today we can't change the dial on customers. We haven't been able to change the dial positively on customer service here in the UK for years. And in essence it's getting worse and everything we're doing just seems to make a negative difference to it. So actually, are they the right things to be doing? I will I'll leave you to answer that because I think it's pretty obvious that they can't be something. Something has to fundamentally change to shift the dial on customer service. Now, I'm not saying that's specifically working from home or not, but we have to start looking at things a bit more commercially, a bit more savvy to actually start changing the dial on what we're living for customers.

Irina:

This is a great way to wrap this conversation that I join you in this one. I feel the problem right now is that we're thinking too much as employees and too little with customers and we're all customers. I know myself how annoyed I am when I go somewhere and I. See people chatting and looking at their Facebook messengers and I'm sat there as a customer waiting for them to finish their chat while they're supposed to be working. And actually I will thank you Adrian, for this conversation. It was a brilliant different perspective that I think both of us will get shot down because,

Adrian:

why not? Why not?

Irina:

but I am gonna reach out to my friend Dan, and I wanna do that on a webinar because I think these are important topics that we need to bring forward. And we're definitely not saying that either or is wrong. I think that pretty much depending on bunch of different factors. But I really wanna further that conversation. So please tell me, you'll join me because I really like that.

Adrian:

Happy to do that. I don't mind being shot down. here to be snipers. I'm a sniper's dream. I don't mind.

Irina:

Perfect. Thank you so much for this conversation and chat.

Adrian:

Great stuff. Thanks very much.

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Irina Hollatz (Mateeva)

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