How to stay connected in a Hybrid working world?  

One of the big, although possibly not yet seen, challenges of the next 6 months is going to be the move from mainly remote working to hybrid working. I think it is a great move in terms of work life balance and flexibility. A recent survey from Microsoft showed that staff want flexibility and remote working to stay (74%) alongside getting back to the office to work with their colleagues (67%) (the report put together by Microsoft has some interesting advice for leaders dealing with these questions if you want a read).   

All of this makes me wonder how businesses and staff tackle the challenges of a split workforce. How will buildings be setup to support this? How do you make someone feel included when they aren’t in the room? Does being productive whilst remote working mask burnout? Does the lack of impromptu office meetings make businesses more siloed than ever?  

Many of these questions are being debated and discussed by senior managers as we speak whilst they try to find a balance which works for their business and their staff. It is going to be an evolving culture but, in the meantime, I have included some of the points I think staff can consider when helping their move to hybrid working smoother.   

Understand how you work and what makes you productive   

As the option to work in the office opens, this is a good time to re-evaluate when and how you are the most productive. If you are like me, you tend to love being on your own when you are writing, researching or getting stuck into work but you struggle when you can’t bounce ideas off other people. By understanding that, sometimes, I need to see real people to re-energise myself and create my best ideas can help me plan when to stay home and when I may want a day or two in the office.   

Invest in time to socialise and connect to your colleagues   

As sending a quick chat message becomes the norm for getting answers from colleagues, the chats about daily life and sometimes the odd grumble begins to fade out. This isn’t good for mental health or working relationships. It has been found that during the pandemic people’s networks have reduced and they are speaking to less people outside of their close teams than ever before. This can make an organisation more siloed and out of touch with each other.   

I think there is a risk of this getting becoming a problem when people are working in the office or at home and there is nothing worse than feeling like you missed out on a conversation because you weren’t there (a huge case of office FOMO!). Prioritising personal relationships and even just those brief chats with people from other teams is a good way to help this. If you are a team manager, could you consider cross-team monthly meetups? Offer a mix of remote and in person meets with a good supply of biscuit and cakes to encourage attendance.   

Be inclusive no matter where the team is  

This one links nicely to the above and is something we will all need to try to do. It will be far too easy, when in the office, to forget about those who are not there in person, and it will start to feel very isolating for those feeling being left out or possibly feeling judged for being at home when others are in the office. Being mindful of inclusivity in our day-to-day work can really help with this.   

For example,   

• Having an impromptu meeting about something with a colleague? How about seeing if others who may be able to input are available and quickly Teams call them in?  
• Keep comms and all staff meetings online, this will help stop remote workers feeling out of the loop.   
• Have a quick question for someone working remotely? Why not give them a ring and have a quick catch-up as well.   

My final thought is to remember that going back to the office isn’t going to mean reverting to how we worked before, however, technology and working habits have changed to support this and no one is too far away to be contacted when you need them.   

Helen Day-Cocking, Product Manager – Modern Workplace  

Photo by Sigmund on Unsplash 

Location Location Location

We are about to go to market for a new CFO and I’m left thinking about the qualities needed for that role:

1. Must be able to add up better than me (not setting the bar that high)

2. Must be passionate about the public interest sector and helping people do amazing things

3. Must complement our existing senior leadership team, bringing a new voice and new perspective but not breaking the group dynamic

4. Must have the experience and confidence to provide assurance to our stakeholders

5. Must be able to work independently (as I’m not a very good manager) but in a truly collaborative manner, demonstrating high support as well as high challenge with others.

6. Must live locally to HQ?

18 months ago, requirement 6 would have been a must have, but does our enthusiastic adoption of hybrid working change that?

Delt has an objective to deliver sustainable socio-economic development, predominantly targeting the South West. Paying a CFO salary to somebody resident in the South West would help push up our regional gross value add but a good CFO will generate much greater value than their own salary, much of which will be delivered in region, irrespective of where they live. Will they feel more invested in our region if they live here? Possibly, but given I live 90 minutes from HQ (on a good day) I’m not super local myself and just as passionate about what we do and where we do it.

Does it really matter to me if our CFO lives in Totnes, Tunbridge Wells or Toronto?

I really like working from home. I’m more productive, have a better work life balance and don’t spend half my day washing up other people’s coffee cups. I have a better view out of my window than an overfull carpark and find the sound of my sheep and cow neighbours to be more conducive to my sanity than the multitude of open plan conversations that register in my subconscious when sitting in a shared office. However, I really don’t like video meetings for anything strategic. Tactical meetings are OK, even those with numerous participants but the moment you try and move to anything strategic, the technology seems to become a barrier. This might be because I’m Gen X and spent most of my working life sat in a room with others but for me at least, the quality of conversations and debate possible over technology doesn’t compare with being in the same real-world space together.

I really don’t care where our CFO lives. What I care about, is that wherever that is, it doesn’t pose an impediment to our team being able to sit in a room together on a regular basis. That room doesn’t have to be at HQ, it could be anywhere physical. In the gaps, we can exist happily in cyberspace but at least once a month I want to be able to look you in the eye and maybe even buy you a cake. Cake matters. Your home address doesn’t.

Giles Letheren, Chief Executive Officer

Photo by Lucas George Wendt on Unsplash

It Isn’t All About Trees

At a recent interview panel I was sat on, one of the questions asked of the prospective candidates was “Who inspires you and why?” It was an ice breaker of a question (no pun intended) and it made me instantly think of Sir David Attenborough, as he’s my hero.    

Sir David Attenborough has been an inspiration to me since childhood. Science can be complex and the numbers involved with climate change are vast and difficult to appreciate but Attenborough communicates this in understandable terms. I’m delighted to say that at Delt Shared Services, we are now signed up to two schemes endorsed by him. We have contributed to the World Land Trust for over 12 months via one of our paper suppliers Antalis and we have recently signed up to Print Releaf through our small format digital supplier Xerox.   

The World Land Trust protect existing rainforests from deforestation.  With each KG of paper we buy and use, we make a small donation to The World Land Trust and they use these funds to secure areas that are endangered.  We haven’t spent a lot of money but we’ve helped to protect those rainforests and areas of land.   

Print Releaf replant trees based upon sheet usage in your print room.  They measure usage over time and calculate how many trees were harvested and then reforest areas of the World to compensate for that usage.  It is sustainability in the simplest form through reforestation.  It’s likely, given how much we print that we’ll be replanting at least one tree per day through Print Releaf over the next twelve months.   

This isn’t unusual for the print industry. If we look at print as a form of manufacturing (something that I do), it’s one of the most consciously active industries in terms of ecological sustainability. Our customers are essentially ordering things that are made from trees or products that could have a high environmental impact so we need to be responsible for replacing and protecting those trees and sourcing materials with the lowest impact possible. If we didn’t, we’d run out of resources very quickly.  

It isn’t all about trees either as they’re only a part of an overall ecosystem that maintains life on this planet.  In reducing plastic use in our print room, we are also lessening our environmental impact.  We’ve replaced plastic business card boxes with card boxes and now use paper tape to box up our print deliveries.  Very little of what we produce contains plastic and when we do have to use plastic products, we ensure that these are PVC free as you cannot recycle PVC easily. We courier our deliveries ourselves and we are currently looking at shifting to electric vehicle use.   

Like the ecosystems we need to protect, we need to look at our own actions, processes and production as an ecosystem and it’s an inspiring thing to do.  We are a small contributor in comparison to a company like Amazon but as Greta Thunberg (another person that I find inspirational), will tell you, nobody is too small to make a difference.  

This is going to become an ongoing process in Delt Shared Services Print and Mail area, and we’ll continually improve our environmental sustainability.               

Aaron Hartley, Print Services Manager

Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash

Til Death Do Us Part 

In 2019 the US Department of Defence let a 10 year, $10B contract for cloud services to Microsoft.  

Ignoring the fact that Amazon subsequently filed a lawsuit alleging White House (Trump) bias, the DoD have now cancelled the contract citing not the lawsuit but ‘how much the landscape changed during the intervening time’.  

That time is 20 months.  

Despite what must have been thousands of hours of procurement effort to get this deal done, it was apparently out of date before the ink was even dry. 

Technology is always changing but the pace of change seems to be increasing. Annual software updates are almost a thing of the past with quarterly or monthly updates commonplace. Hardware is no better. I’ve just updated my GoPro camera after what feels like a couple of years and found that I was six generations out of date. A flagship mobile phone is good for maybe 2 years. Buying tech now, be it hardware or services and expecting it to last for a decade, is almost inexplicable.  

An organisation I’m familiar with recently signed a 20-year licence deal for a piece of enterprise software. They got a great discount but have locked themselves into an ecosystem which may well not even exist half way through their contract term, let alone still be adequately maintained. Remember Microsoft said Windows 10 would be the last version of Windows back in 2015? I’ve recently had a chance to see the early preview of Windows 11 and we know that Windows 10 will be retired in 2025, at the grand old age of 10. 

I think long term deals like the DoD cloud agreement are going to become more and more rare. They probably need to. This is going to be uncomfortable for the public sector which seems to like lengthy deals, in part because it reduces the costs of procurement. I generally won’t sign deals longer than 3 years though I did sign up to a 5-year deal earlier this year when it transpired it wouldn’t cost any more to exit at year three and do something else if we needed to. 

There is a particular Delt irony in this – we try and do 10-year deals with our shareholders. However, you don’t join a partnership like Delt for short term gain and whilst our services agreements may be drafted for a decade: 

1. The underpinning technologies and systems are expected to change, probably multiple times during the contract term  
2. We have break points where if something isn’t working as planned, either side can exit. Try and find that sort of clause in a software licence deal. 

Long term technology deals using conventional contracting may be a thing of the past and as a buyer, we’ll probably avoid them. Technology changes far too fast. As a seller of long-term partnerships – which are all about people, with divorce available if all else fails, we’ll continue to promote arrangements that can deliver enduring value.  

People don’t change all that fast, as anyone who has ever tried to deliver a major people transformation programme knows. 

Giles Letheren, Chief Executive Officer

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

The Rise Of Third Workspaces & Public Wi-Fi

I think it’s safe to say many of us are now accustomed to working from home. But did you know there are reports of an increase in third workplaces? Third workplaces being neither your office or your home but rather a coffee shop, library or even hotel. As blissful as a change of scenery feels right now; do you consider what you’re connecting to with your phone or laptop?  

Next time you access public Wi-Fi, perhaps stop for a moment and consider this… 

In the last 10 years, access to public Wi-Fi has morphed from a welcome occurrence to an expectation for most people, occurring in a variety of scenarios across coffee shops, restaurants, hotels, trains, and all manner of other places. Unfortunately, this is an area where technology has not necessarily kept pace with changes in how the world works in practice, meaning that risks exist to you and your data when you use these services.  

Open Wireless networks – a glass house 

When you join a new wireless network and it doesn’t ask for a password, that’s what we’d typically call an open wireless network, and they’re super convenient for hooking up to internet on the go. The downside of this is that they’re also unencrypted. Sites like Google and Facebook still encrypt their data when they’re using HTTPS to access the page, but any pages that don’t are exposing you to anyone who chooses to look (this might also include the login portal for the Wi-Fi – just another example of why it’s dangerous to re-use passwords!) 

 So, a network with a password is fine? 

In short – yes and no. A network should use WPA2 to offer you the most protection, older standards have been replaced due to the security flaws associated with them and shouldn’t be trusted for typical use. 

 To check whether you’re using a WPA2 protected network: 

1. Select the Wi-Fi network icon on the right side of the taskbar, then select Properties underneath the Wi-Fi network name.
2. On the Wi-Fi network screen, under Properties, look at the value next to Protocol. This should read something starting with “WPA2” (it may read “WPA2-Personal” on home Wi-Fi, for example). 

I’ve done that so now I’m ready to go, right? 

Well, still no, unfortunately. There are some more technical attacks that can be launched between you and other people on the network which might try to route your traffic via them, or even try to compromise your device outright.  

Then, if everyone using the network is friendly, you must worry about the person running it! The operators of the legitimate network may not be as friendly as they seem, or someone could have given their own network the same name to get access to their customers. 

If at this point, you’re considering a vow never to use Wi-Fi again, I wouldn’t blame you. That you don’t need physical access to it means it’s a technology that’s challenging to use securely, and as ever, you need to consider whether you trust the person/people that will have access to your traffic once it reaches a wire, too. There’s hope though! VPNs are designed for almost exactly this purpose. 

 Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) 

They do what they say on the tin, really. You get a secure encrypted tunnel to the operator of the VPN, and everything you send between your device and the operator is protected – offering you protection as if you were on a private network. Once at the provider, the traffic carries on as normal (so we do see a bit of a trust challenge here again – you need to trust the people operating the VPN with visibility of the traffic you are sending through it). 

In short: 

If you’ve made it all this way and still know what you’re doing, then good work. If you need a notes version here’s the important bits… 

• Be careful as to what you access and do on public Wi-Fi, as someone else may be able to see it. 
• Wherever possible, avoid open networks entirely. 
• If you can use a VPN do so. 
• …and on top of that, do not forget to be aware of who can see over your shoulder! Do not let curious eyes snoop on what you are doing in Costa or train carriage.  

Joseph Smith, IT Security Specialist  

Photo by The Coherent Team on Unsplash

A Veteran in a Civilian World

Tomorrow is Armed Forces Day, when thousands will gather across the country to show their support for the many people who make up the Armed Forces community. This is an opportunity for us all to appreciate and acknowledge serving military personnel, veterans, reserve forces and Service families. As a Royal Navy veteran myself, this is an important moment to reflect, not only on my own Service but to think hard about the important role our Armed Forces play in our society today and how we can all support them.

The end of June is a particularly poignant time for me as 2 years ago it marked my last day of Service after more than 38 years. In June 2019, I was handing back my RN ID card and wondering what next. I wanted to continue working and was convinced I had transferable skills but like many leaving the Armed Forces I was apprehensive about what the future held. I did every bit of training offered, followed all the advice, planned my transition diligently and set about ‘Operation Get a Job’ with all the care dedicated to planning military tasks previously.

After much networking, several false starts and admittedly a few half-hearted applications I found Delt Shared Services advertising for a Chief Projects Officer. My research started with a look at the company’s website, a read through the CEO’s blogs and studying the business plan, I was hooked. I am proud to say that I got the job and for almost 2 years I have worked at Delt. One of the attractions was a values statement akin to what I was used to in the RN, Commitment, Courage, Discipline, Respect, Integrity and Loyalty replaced with Integrity, Transparency, Empowerment, Partnership, Collaboration, Innovation and Creativity.

Delt is based in Plymouth, the home of the largest Naval Base in Western Europe and the City has a strong Royal Marine and Army presence, so it was a delight to find that Delt was committed to supporting the Armed Forces. We are proud holders of an Armed Forces Covenant Silver award; we support reservists with extra leave and even give post-deployment leave to spouses/partners of military personnel when their other half returns home after a period deployed overseas. And around me were other veterans and reservists, so an avenue for regaling each other with tales of our past, each person trying to outdo the other, was still there. My non-military colleagues joined in and I found a feeling of camaraderie from shared experiences that help form Delt’s corporate personality.

The Delt environment was perfect, and certainly military friendly, but what could an old Navy bloke do for a young, shared service provider whose main output is IT? I found that my experience working in many different roles, with people from different backgrounds, across diverse cultures was ideal preparation for Delt. Previous experience delivering complex work to demanding deadlines, having a disciplined approach to work, being prepared to make decisions and see tasks to completion, understanding the balance between risk and benefits and being able to work across our organisation and with partners at all levels has also helped.  Early on in my Naval career I received excellent leadership and management training. One of my early courses started with a challenge, ‘What is the single most important factor in leadership and management?’ The answer was simple, the sailor, in effect people. From that moment on I knew that if you looked after your people, understood their drivers, treated them well, gave clear and concise direction, created a safe space where people could make mistakes and learn without being judged harshly and respected everyone for their unique value then you could build a team that would deliver success. This is the approach I have taken at Delt and it is going well so far.

I am enjoying immensely my new role as a civilian working in an organisation that respects the military. I think many veterans or serving personnel about to leave have doubts about their ability to transition into the civilian workplace, I certainly did. I have learned that these doubts are unfounded. Within our military community we have countless talented people with considerable experience of delivering complex outputs and they can add value to any organisation.

As we approach Armed Forces Day think carefully not just about the past or what our military does for us now but what their people can do for your organisation in the future.

Simply put, be more like Delt.

Gary Pettitt, Chief Project Officer

Photo by Andy Holmes on Unsplash