hello everyone and can i just say first and foremost how genuinely fantastic it is to be here i can't see any of you because at the moment my retina is being decimated by this light but can i just ask for everyone just to give evcom a round of applause for actually getting this on today i think it's fantastic it seems like there is an event happening every day of the week at the moment anyway we're here on stage today to talk about workplace practice and culture how it's going to look as we move into this so-called new era and i'm joined by an expert panel who i'm now going to ask to introduce themselves so you know exactly who it is you're taking notes from karen if i could start with you sure karen kaden i'm the co-founder and managing partner of creative agency brands at work thank you jane jane says i'm the global discipline lead for phil mcshell and head of our in-house film team the content engine i'm nicola handley i look after the events team at barclays on the retail bank side and i'm emily i head up our film and animation team at radielda corporate comms agency good stuff now the first thing i think we should talk about is this this idea of working from home and home working now you know traditionally we have our company cultures you come into the office there's a vibe there's a way things are done and that's i guess almost the dna of your of your work community isn't it but of course when you are working in isolation of yourself physically at least that is perhaps not so easy to to maintain certainly it might need a bit more active management so karen tell us a little bit about brands at work and and how your team are working and how they're dealing with the whole home working environment if indeed you allow it i should have asked that first oh no we do um i would say things are starting to evolve a little bit but where we have been for the last 18 months is almost exclusively working from home um there have been benefits to that tom and i were just talking about it's um you know a lot of productivity but i think sometimes it's been productivity at what cost and i think there's been a lot of lost moments of connection um cohesion spontaneous communication found very challenging with onboarding new folks um but overall we've gelled really well as a team working remotely probably because we just had to get on with it and we had a really strong culture that allowed us to do that and moving forward where um definitely not coming back to a five-day office week it's going to be flexibility with responsibility is what we call it which is come in but not for presenteeism not to just show up and be counted for and watched as you work come in for those moments of needing to collaborate and bounce off of others in the in the room we had one of those days in the office where actually there was probably about 50 percent of the office the probably the most number of people who've come in so far i think we're seeing a need for a bit of re-education and reintegration um people aren't just immediately now that we're allowed to come back into work just dropping everything and running back in um i think people are really used to working this way and we'd like to see people come in more um but i think it's going to just be a slow evolution to getting people back in i don't think it's going to happen overnight yeah absolutely jay what's uh what's your general observation i'd like to hear from each of you on on the home working element and how you and your team have kind of coped with that i think we found it incredibly difficult to start with i mean really really tough um some team members weren't in ideal situations i'm lucky i have an office at home some people are working from their bedroom or the kitchen table and a couple of months in we were in a situation where our work plummeted um and so people were working less days they volunteered to work less days um rather than go on furlough so that the whole team could remain but it was particularly tough then we we shook it up we made online social engagements we've we've had painting sessions together virtually and you know and i've tried to get some fun in and you know the fun that we would have had if we were around in person um and and that worked for a while but i think it's i think people have had enough of it now and i it's beginning to get a little bit fractious and and quite difficult again at the moment and i think you know for for us we're actually going to return to the office which we haven't done yet our office hasn't been open but it is now open um and i think a couple of days a week is probably the way that we'll do it in order that you know we can as you said not presenteeism but i think we really need that for cohesion well that's the thing isn't it i've always had if anyone's ever read the four hour work week it's quite fascinating really but that's the thing isn't it i mean you might work nine to five traditionally but one day your boss might come in and say right get it all done and you can go at three so why the hell can't you get it done by three every day and leave at three i mean what are you what are you paying for i don't know uh nichola you're nodding your head there in agreement people are ready to get back are they they are ready to get back i think um when we first went into lockdown again it was the sort of novelty factor uh we were quite an established team we all knew each other quite well so so it worked quite well we spent quite a lot of time on having virtual social drinks quizzes you know you name it which has obviously gone away in the last few months um and i think you can just you can just see and hear from people there's people aren't turning their cameras on there's just that kind of degree of exhaustion so i think we need to get back into the office to sort of rev that up again we haven't been back in the office yet either we've got a phased approach beginning of october is when we'll be back and again it will be a hybrid approach nothing definite about number of days but again it's it's about the collaboration as opposed to the presenteeism and then what's what's your general table yeah pretty much exactly the same you know you started off with lots of energy around oh let's bake cookies next friday and listen you know got to the point people couldn't even be bothered to do that with their like best friends let alone their work colleagues but um it you know it it it was much easier in the in the beginning i think you know as time's gone on it's got much much harder to keep that connection to keep the energy to keep the collaboration um our office reopened in july but with no kind of mandate for people to go back in so people who really felt they needed to be in could go in um but from now we're starting to get people in probably one two three days a week and trying to get people to come in as a team together just to get that energy back and the connection back and interestingly what we've found is before the pandemic working from home was a bit of a treat day that was a day you could stick your washing on before you started work you could you know plow through stuff and get stuff done without being interrupted you know it was a kind of relaxed day whereas now we're almost finding the complete opposite that at home it's so relentless and you're so on and actually to go into the office is the day that you have a bit of a breather and it's your treat day and the day that you sort of re-top-up your energy which is a really weird experience but i think you know true hopefully it will continue to read something on the train and he treats him yeah absolutely do you think you'd uh revert to say arbitrary office hours so to speak because you know because i've got two youngans and you know right one of them's at school is school age and she's back and actually you know before we'd have to pay for breakfast club i'll have to drop her off at 7 45 it's an hour's drive to work i'd get there at 8 45 15 minute walk to the office and it's comes a lot of military precision the whole time if there's traffic it's like tearing your face off in you know on the a3 it's a nightmare horrible situation but now it's like well hang on i'll just drop her off at the normal time because i'll do a couple of emails in the morning and then i'll saunter up to work when i like and you know job done and i'm fine i find myself working just as well yeah yeah i think i mean i think it's all it's all about balance and it's about trust and i think organizations that we've all seen that we can trust people to actually get the job done now i think that conversation is dead like we we're beyond that so it's about you know sort of looking at outputs rather than inputs um so i mean i i don't know we haven't kind of formalized any of our policy we're essentially just leaving it really open to see how it shakes down over six months to see if we need to put any more rules around it but i think on the whole we need to trust people that they're going to do the right thing get the job done and no one's going to be sitting there going oh it's five past nine why aren't you at your desk i think that's that's over for us yeah interesting so let's talk karen i'll come back to you talk about managing a team and you made an interesting observation a few moments ago whereas you know you had an established team you were able to adapt and of course you knew each other therefore perhaps that remote setting that remote environment was easier to to manage but you said it's difficult to onboard people and when you bring in someone you particularly a junior and you know just coming from a journalist perspective here i've got some juniors with me it's all well and good bringing them into the company but they need to be in the same office as me listening to me on the phone how i interview people how i deal with things i cannot leave them on their own to do that i learned in that environment so we have to ensure we have that that balance of bringing people on but in terms of managing a team you've clearly been able to do it successfully any tips or tricks you can give us no gosh it's re that has single-handedly been the biggest challenge um during this time it's the thing that keeps me up at night um is not just worrying about my own kids but but our staff and their well-being and i think we've all talked about this michael i thought your presentation was phenomenal this morning and i have to admit there were quite a few crutches in there that i use i love carbs but definitely do over rely on work and i think we've found that many of our people have done that and so we've actually introduced a traffic light system and we have a people meeting and it's every couple of weeks the the leaders of the business get together and we talk about every single employee um and including some of our freelance family um and we we talk about them and say where would you put this person like how do you think they're doing are they thriving are they pumped are they getting the experiences that um they want to have um from from brands at work from clients so it's also it's about career progression but it's a lot of the time about mental health well-being overworking um just little things that we're picking up on because i think the thing that's missing when we work remotely is the nuance the spontaneity that oh i overheard um the water cooler conversations everything has to be scheduled every second of our day is you know just back-to-back meetings and what's happened to the old where's this on the server thing no you have to schedule that in now to ask somebody and so onboarding new team members i think that cultural integration has been challenging but just um just having to really overcompensate for that i think if you are working remotely or in a hybrid fashion um we're not mandating um like emily was saying we're not mandating you must come in but we're gonna probably start to move towards we'd like to see you in and we're encouraging you to come in and and kind of putting meetings and we're saying well most of us will be there and just to make sure that people are starting to come in and we're seeing that appetite but i think um the whole overall employee experience needs to be looked at more carefully now because i do think um mental health in in the workplace during the last two years has been so strained um we've all just over delivered um and it's been at quite a cost i think yeah i mean certainly it's been people i know who may have perhaps scoffed at the idea of well-being and mental health have turned a corner themselves now i think it really has been under such an intense microscope uh the people are willing to make that change they see the difference i mean it's been a horrendous 18 months for everyone in our sector uh jane you must have had some similar experiences too how have you managed your your team during the the last 18 months and how do you think that will evolve yeah as well i think to be perfectly candid i've managed the team not particularly well i think it's i think um everybody's found it very difficult um sometimes you you don't necessarily know that somebody is particularly stressed you the thing i miss most is i can't see what time they're leaving the office um so we've been in situations where people have you know got to the point where they're pretty burnt out and they've had to flag it and say you know i'm not coping um [Music] and only then do you realize that they've got to that point so um yeah not not not terribly well to be perfectly honest i mean we we've we have tried um but i think this is my kind of desperation to get back into the office now because i think that solves so much you you can't see the raised eyebrow at the end of a conversation you can't hear the raised tone or the slightly angsty tone from somebody you know all of that nuance you miss um so i've i've felt quite separated from the team um and yeah it's caused it it's caused some problems they're turning out some fantastic work um but yeah that's a little bit of cost i think to be honest yeah yeah no incredible very candid of you to say so you know and i think you wouldn't be alone and i think there'd be many people who perhaps haven't had the opportunity i guess to self-reflect i mean it has been very hard and almost unprecedented uh how many people are in your team um 19. in um in my team we've um there's been a number of maternity leaves over um lockdown so um we have three three or four actually on maternity leave at the minute um but quite early on um i'm a single mum i work full-time um and i just said to the team on a call i said you know i'm really struggling i'm trying to homeschool a six and seven-year-old as well as keep on top of work so if i send you an email at 10 o'clock at night it's not because i expect you to be at your desk i just have to take the children to the park at some point or do something and then i'll do some work later and um you know several people came back and said oh that was you know i'm really glad that kind of heard that and it wasn't just yes it's all fine everyone keep going um but i think you know to varying degrees over the over the last 18 months people have have found it you know easier and harder at various times and it's just as you say trying to work out who's feeling a bit low or needs a bit of a you know an umph at the uh at the end of the day it's quite difficult i mean age is just a number but clearly we've seen the generational divide uh have you noticed that in your office i mean the so-called millennials people in their 20s you know who let's not forget many of them would be in flat shares living with three or four other people and their home working experience would be all competing for the dining table so it's not exactly uh an ivory tower i mean what are you hearing from your team yeah i would say i would say the um the sort of more junior colleagues are more excited about being back in the office i think i think across the board it's been the uncertainty it's just if someone has said you know right you're going to be this back on this date you're going to have these three days in the office or whatever it is um and then you can make plans accordingly but i think it's this sort of debating well do you think it'll be this what do you think they'll do if we do x y and zed and actually i think once there's a plan people will sort of calm down about it i think there'll be a much more flexibility certainly within a corporate environment for doing you know coming in earlier leaving earlier you know to to suit whatever it is um that fits with your home life whether it be children or puppies or parents or whatever it is so i think that they'll they'll be that um we've got that we've got some in the team who are just they would they would happily stay at home the whole time and as a leadership team we were saying you know we worry slightly of people who may be a bit more introverted and that it's just a bit easier to kind of hide away and you know they're going to miss out on that experience of of the network and as you say the water cooler moment and just chatting to their colleagues in the office i think that's something to be aware of well that's the thing isn't it sometimes you do introvert or not you have to be forced to socialize you know that's why we all do the team building days you know i don't really want to put a bean bag on my head and run through a big you know slip and slide of guns that's not my idea of fun but sometimes i'm going to be held at gunpoint to do it against my will but at the end of the day that does bring teams together you know we can't all live in silos people aren't going to have to accept that they do need to to come together you know and i think i think the more you the more you are on your own almost the more you want to be on your own it's quite it's quite an easy trap to fall into and having to you know come out and well that's it put something on that it's very easy i'm not going to call home working a bad habit you know i just do a complete mix-up myself but it's very easy to get sucked into a into a past a negative routine you know and it isn't easy i mean you might be the best word in the world open the laptop at 6 30 in the morning and you could find yourself still sitting in the same position and come lunch to the come lunch time you're not walking around the office to go get coffee the little things like that just all do build up don't they yes there is going to have to be a bit of a re-education i think we've all fallen into the trap now of back-to-back meetings or starting our days earlier and finishing later so we're almost doing a sixth day if you think about it you know a little extra hour and a half in the morning an extra hour and a half in the evening i'm i'm finding that with all the will in the world to go into the office there are some days where i'm like well that that would have been the time i would have used to get on the train i can't leave at the crack of dawn i've got kids i don't have child care i have to do nursery drop off or school drop off so i mean at the moment i'm finding that we're gonna have to re-educate ourselves remind ourselves of the fact that there needs to be a little bit of buffer in there for people to get to and from an office um and we've got to stop this over scheduling of of our days and just create more space so you asked for tips earlier that is one of the things i've noticed that if people if you leave a blank spot in your diary people will jam something in it so cut them off at the knees get in there in your outlook and put in thinking time commuting time gym time whatever it is that you need laundry time whatever it is that you need to do anticipate it start early in the week and put that time in otherwise um every second of your day will be sucked up with with meetings especially when you are working remotely it's not being is this being filmed just don't show this to mass media by the way i feel my calendar full of like dummy rogue events but he's not free then really i'm in the pub not really julian not really uh emily let's talk about you know the combating the burnout i mean you know it's very easy to get sucked into that you know how many people do you have working in your team and have you devised any ways to kind of like keep them as fresh as possible yeah i think i mean the burnout has been really real there's um there's about 15 in my team and um it's it's been really hard to spot where people have burnt out i've i've had it myself i think february was my lowest point sort of halfway through the second homes homeschooling stint and just not knowing which way's up and it's for us it's again it's just been about trying to create an environment in which people can just say you know what i'm i need a self-care day i need to do this the other thing we found duver days they don't happen when you're working from home you know those days where you're going oh just i don't i'm not really sick but if i just stayed at home took it a bit easy you know you know that's fine we haven't had that at all so we've actually we had a conversation about whether we should actually you know say to people do you know what there's four duvet days a year just take them that's a lovely yeah know something like that just because actually we you know it's we have seen the pattern of people just reaching that point where they just they can't carry on and i think similarly to jane actually where you're running a team of people who are filmmakers actually so much of the pleasure and the fun of what we do is that coming together on set to collaborate to sort of be part of the magic and see the magic happen and to have that stripped away from us has made work just it stripped a lot of the joy out of why people get into this industry in the first place i think you know managing that combined with the additional pressures that people have been under whether it's because they've got kids whether it's because they've been on furlough and uncertain and anxious whether they've been fighting for the kitchen table fighting rubbish internet whatever that is you know i think and i think this is the other thing that we've seen is we all went into this thinking it was going to be a spirit of the blitz it's a shared experience we're going to all have this experience and you know will unite us but actually my experience of this has been so different to other people in the team's experience of this and the pressures that they've been under have been so different that it's taken quite a while for us to actually see the different pressures that people are under um yeah absolutely and what pressure pressure is the word i just wanted to sort of see if we could hone in a little bit more on uh getting off our intercompany processes in line because like you say when we are working remotely and particularly now we you we all have new hires on the horizon too trying to embed that company culture trying to establish processes where you know it might not be the rudimentary nine to five it's it's it's no no easy thing is it i mean have you got any thoughts on on how that might best be done we're actually in the process of looking at our whole onboarding process because we have found it for want of a better word really clunky during um during lockdown we've had people having to wait um weeks to get face time when i say facetime on screen time with um some of the senior leadership team just because of the over saturation of busyness of having to get into the delivery um so there's a few things we're starting to do we're we're trying to create um a a kind of self-led video module piece which is you know little interviews we've produced some content that people can kind of get to know the organization and we've um we've started to create little team huddles and so erica pugh just joined our organization she's she's having over the series of her first month huddles with different team members you know the creative team the account services team the um finance team and just getting the inner workings so not just the self-led component which is you know do that on your own time but these little touch points and our people consultant kind of hr resource is also really trying to track with the the new employee experience bringing them into the fold but anybody who's come in would would say the same thing it's been great you know you guys are trying so hard but the thing i find the hardest is that little question that you could have just asked over your shoulder if you were in the office what do you do with those um so we've also now created kind of a a teams channel you know um we call it we're called the brands at work heard so we have the herd help line um often filled with memes and banter but the occasional you know there's you know shout outs for helper where do i find this or the i can't log into this does anybody know where i can find and just everybody is able to kind of just get on to that so i would say you know trying to veer off of everything being an email everything being a conference call just trying to find different tools that we can use to just get people engaging with each other and solving problems not just through one person or two people but just across the herd well absolutely you know particularly with the new new starters you really have to perhaps go that extra mile to empower them to give them the confidence and the freedom to be able to feel that they can do their job on their own you know before too long i mean you know it's very when you go into a new position it can be quite intimidating you got to spend a couple of months learning this and learning that working on your own remotely might not be in your best interests you know you need to be able to whisper to someone what's where's this how do i do that it's no it's a small detail when you think about it but actually it's quite it's quite a big one uh i mean jane what's your sort of your view on that then have you got any ways or any ideas on how you might keep your team together and keep that communication flowing um my team is global most of them are based in europe but we also have project managers who are in manila in kuala lumpur in houston in the netherlands um which makes it a little bit more difficult um they they all have colleagues locally as well who are from another from another discipline but with our new starters they are doing an awful lot more shadowing than they would normally have done um so so that's going on i just had a touch yesterday actually two new starters in manila showed up for their first day at work it turns out they know each other perfect they were high school friends who knew so that's great because they've already got that kind of camaraderie built in which is brilliant so i think really for us it's just been a question of much much closer contact with them which means more meetings in the diary but yeah that's really just how we're focusing it it's just much more shadowing and trying to integrate the team as much as possible we do this random coffee morning every friday where everyone in the european team just can show up and you don't know who you're going to be speaking to you just get split off into fours and everyone gets to know each other which is quite a nice thing which actually wouldn't ordinarily have happened because only the london team would know the london team so it's kind of that's actually been quite a beneficial outcome i think for us yeah absolutely nicola what about what about you what processes do you have in place to keep people together well we have a lot of processes full stop at barclays anyway and um we did have quite early on we had we had one new starter and she joined i think it was the second week of the first lockdown um so she she had um we put in one-to-ones with every member of the team talking about a different a different thing and then we had a team meeting and we had a we had a process amnesty so you could come along you could ask any question we wanted no matter how you were supposed to have known that or you should be able to do this um and that brought up quite a lot and people found that really helpful so that created people saying well i know how to do that really easily yeah you know i'll show you how to do this on the other so that worked quite well and we have coffee catch-ups and kind of drop-in sessions um and i did notice that we we have a half an hour weekly team meeting that people were saying i'm sorry i'm too busy i can't i can't make team meeting can't make it and i was like no no this is this is the important time this is when we come together and if somebody's got a question or an idea this is when we're you know the power of the collective this is where we're at our best so we can't miss this and it's only half an hour so i think you can manage to do that and actually it is fine and you know somebody would send out a brief beforehand so you've had a chance to think about it before coming with your suggestions rather than just everyone sitting there blankly thinking oh yeah no not sure so so that seems to have worked quite well interesting emily um yeah we we've had a few new starters one of them i think the one i feel most sorry for was we had one of our producers started the day we all got sent home from the office so she turned up picked up her laptop met you know half a dozen people and then that was it but you know um but i think we one of the things that we underestimated probably was also then the time that managers needed to spend with those new starters which is much more than it would ordinarily be and sort of just being much more available for all of those questions that you know other people would answer if you're all kind of sitting around together which has been has been quite interesting but um yeah i think we had a similar thing that that team meeting about halfway i was only six months in probably just started to sort of drop out and people people wouldn't come and and and it was actually some of the junior people in the team who said actually that's so important for us because we just we haven't got a clue what's going on unless we're all coming together it was a real kind of reminder that actually that was such an important moment in the week so we sort of yeah it's sacred now like essentially unless you're you know absolutely on a sheet or something you've got to be there so last last one then before we open up to the floor i wanted to sort of touch on on salaries what people are expecting i don't know if you're all recruiting i know you always are [Music] have people's salary expectations changed it's bananas um it's a little bit shocking at the moment uh we are seeing a disruption in salary banned expectations by you know not small margins we're talking like 10 15 20 000 pound um gaps and it's it's causing um causing kids we actually are pride ourselves on paying it probably at the top end um sometimes over the brackets and you know we do our research on uh salary surveys and all of that because you know it's it's to us really important to motivate people and and keep them with us and we're proud of our tenure as a result of that that's not the only thing that keeps people there obviously but um i've been having conversations with recruiters first of all there is a massive talent and skill shortage i mean it's been like the nuclear fallout of uh the pandemic specifically i think i know on film but definitely in the events industry it i think was it you published the data there's something of 57 of the 70 billion pounds of our industry was wiped out so so a lot of people have left in their droves um freelancers i mean i've been ringing around trying to find people and you know they've retrained as acupuncturists reiki masters upholsterers these are legit um new vocations and um and so so that shortage has just made some of the folks in the market either just go well now i know my value or i'm gonna over egg my value um and and different things you know we we're all for people flexibility working wherever you are whenever you are you know we have a staff member whose family just got a place in france so she's been working there all summer no problem as long as it doesn't impact your your work but i've been i've been um interviewing folks and i've had people say well i've decided to move to leeds and if you want me to come down you'll have to pay for my commute um my accommodation any staff meetings everything i said you do realize that would you know add another 10 grand to your already over inflated salary so we're just seeing this situation evolve um that's really really quite scary because um already having been kind of really well compensating our folks if we all of a sudden have people coming in that have maybe on par experience or lesser experience in some cases asking for salaries that are 10 to 15 or 20 percent more whatever the case might be we're going to have a real disruption in an unsustainable situation so i'm sort of hoping like the pro property market because i'm also in the market for that that the bubble's going to burst eventually because it's it's not sustainable yeah well absolutely and uh well that's the same thing i mean i'm i'm in the market for a deputy editor for one of my magazines all the flexibility you can imagine bracketed pay fair salary can i find someone i can't email m i don't matter [Laughter] i'll take anything but no it's a it is a severe skills shortage and it's it's alarming and i'd love to see the stats eventually about how many people in the lockdown did actually go out and and retrain online as something else i'm sure we'd all be fascinated uh quickly i'll just get your guys views on that and see if you've got any shared experiences we've had a few key people poached um and competitors have doubled their salaries doubled wow their salaries which is great you can't argue with that you have to bid them farewell and say congratulations that's wonderful but yeah finding it really tough to recruit the right people at the moment at a price that we can afford very much so we're not recruiting um at the minute and we haven't had um i think there's been a couple of people have left from one of the other teams um but i do see as the world opens up again i have a feeling that you know they've all been there for quite a while that they'll be looking for a change um and there hasn't been because nobody's leaving there's no chance of progression within the team so i think we will see people moving externally yeah yeah and emily yeah i mean we've seen both sides but we've seen people um decide to go and just do something completely different you know retrain um uh you know just leave the industry completely i think in terms of uh recruitment i think in the film team perhaps not quite as much but in the wider agency and some of the creative roles and um especially in some of our digital roles there's been real upward pressure on salaries and it's been really really difficult to find the right people um you know and it's it's a it's a it's a problem it's a problem across the whole industry i think fascinating right well i think that will bring our part of the discussion to a conclusion i'd now like to invite the floor to ask a question i can't see any of you because i can say half of my face is on fire i think i think that's either a hand or i'm having some sort of episode hi um oh sorry hi i'm steve garvey from moving edge um just to check on the commute so obviously it's been much vilified over the years people loathe it uh and i've had a couple people say this morning they were on the train and it was actually really busy and they felt quite uncomfortable one of the feedback from the panel is on people's willingness to re-engage with the commute or do they prefer to avoid it whether it's the people in the panel themselves or those who are in their teams would you like to feel that karen as i if i overheard correctly it was community and the willingness to commute commuting commute i heard community there you go get the wax out um commuting funnily enough i've been really surprised by this the people that i expected to like flock back to the office are some of the most reluctant and i'm sorry to stereotype but yes the younger ones is what i'm saying unsubtly um so originally about nine months in there was this lockdown fatigue i'm ready to get back into the office when are you guys going to open up again can we can we come in can we come in and now that they're kind of used to working from home some of those are the folks um that are just now well into their sort of i'm i start the day with my yoga or i i got a lockdown dog or whatever it is and now suddenly commuting's a bit of a mission um and actually some of the folks that i i thought would be least wanting to come in so some of the working parents for example who are thinking oh you know this is actually quite good like you emily your point about the almost reversal of now your your days in the office are like the holidays and the days at home you're absolutely right i hadn't even thought of it that way that is absolutely 100 what's happened so any chance some of us get to be in the office and getting a break from you know the chaos at home are definitely wanting to come in but but i think bit by bit um you know there is this you know at the end of human nature is you will if others do are doing it you'll start to see that positive peer pressure and um we are starting to see people slowly but surely come in i don't think the summer holidays helped but we're starting to see some enthusiasm now does anyone else have any strong observation on that i was thinking as well with with them parents actually one of the things i found most hard about this has been the absolute collision of home and work which in some ways has been really positive because i think we've all acknowledged that we have homes we have children it's chaos like you know whatever my favorite moment of lockdown was when evie came in stark naked while i was presenting to very senior people you know um we've all had those and you know that's been quite a positive thing but i think the the collision of the two is exhausting and actually to have a little bit of separation and some days to be out of that you're at work you're not you haven't got 50 of your brain listening to what chaos is happening around you is actually a huge relief and and in its way the commute whilst it's grueling and i think when you're doing it every day it has its own challenges actually when you're doing it once or twice a week to just have that separation is really really i found very beneficial and so i think it's probably similar to what you've experienced yeah i mean i'm i'm personally loving the commute we're a couple of weeks away from inviting the rest of the team in at the moment but yeah chaos can rain there was a big thump at one point while i was presenting um to a load of people from my kids and then a cry and it was a broken arm yeah so yeah that's i'm glad that's almost behind me yeah well absolutely the government will get you back on those trains to pay those season tickets eventually mark my words do we have another question charlotte hi there um slightly controversial question perhaps um obviously there are different perspectives um around the vaccination program and some people who are still reluctant to have a vaccination so how does that is probably generally directed at either jane or nicola i mean i i don't know um how you if there's an impact on travel in terms of how whether people can travel how that's going to impact people working and what kind of policies you put in place to adapt to that because that's going to be a challenge in the future potentially at the moment we have no policy on on vaccination it's not been mentioned um i'd be surprised if there is a policy that's that comes to be honest um i think with with travel we've all managed rather well without it i mean i think that's going to be something that changes fundamentally um i think there will be an awful lot less travel than we saw before but so far no no no decision on on vaccination i think it'll be interesting what happens in the next few weeks with what comes from central government and what they decide to mandate so i suppose once once that has you know laid its hat down then maybe people i guess businesses will evolve to that tune i guess i think it's going to be quite hard for um businesses i think we need to be supportive of our people and their you know their personal choices i think it's going to be very difficult for us to get into a situation where we start trying to mandate anything um but you know we like everything we've essentially taken a view as a business that we're going to follow government policy pretty much um with with perhaps sometimes an additional layer like we didn't open fully in july which would originally intend to we sort of delayed that a little bit um so but you know i think you know broadly sort of taking a fairly pragmatic view about it is probably going to be the right i think we are out of time so agent round applause for the panel please