Summary of the results – Sub Question 1

The first sub-research question is: What is the company policy with regards to working from home?

5.1.1. INTERNAL ANALYSIS

In order to correctly describe the current situation, we must first understand the internal structure of the organisation, the author will conduct a 7-S analysis (Kenton, 2019) before describing the current situation described by managers and employees.

5.1.1.1. 7-S Model

Strategy: The different entities of ORGANISATION X i.e. ORGANISATION X Services, ORGANISATION X Energy and ORGANISATION X Group have different strategies and visions.

The mission of ORGANISATION X Energy is to be the frontrunner in the transition to sustainability and to take the lead when it comes to making changes. Customers are continuously becoming more aware of their use of energy and ORGANISATION X aims to contribute to that awareness by providing advice, technical solutions, digitalisation and sustainable energy. ORGANISATION X is always looking for innovative solutions and partnerships to make the way we live smarter, safer and more sustainable.

Structure: In an introductory meeting with an HR employee at ORGANISATION X Services, hereafter referred to as respondent 9 (R9), he explained the organisational culture, structure and current situation. The transcript of this meeting can be found in Appendix 8. R9 explained that ORGANISATION X is a large international organisation with a stiff culture and a lot of bureaucracy.

Making decisions an implementing changes take a long time.

Systems: For this particular “S” in the model, not a lot of information was provided by the organisation. It did become clear from the interviews that different departments use different systems and programmes. All employees have access to the company’s intranet and during the last week of interviews in November the systems were having start-up problems. This glitch in the system caused some frustration amongst the employees. One employee (R2) casually joked that the loves working from home, provided that the connection works properly. The transcript of that interview can be found in Appendix 9.

Staff: During a meeting with the HR manager (R6), see Appendix 10 for the transcript, she responded that ORGANISATION X Energy has 386 employees working in the office and approximately 600 employees in total. A number of the employees also work at two power plants.

The population that received the invitation to the questionnaire was 647. Respondent 6 agreed that is the total number of employees at ORGANISATION X Energy.

Skills: The author is unable to elaborate on specific skills within the organisation. However, the questionnaire did yield information regarding the levels of education within the organisation. More than 70% of all employees have a bachelors or master’s degree, the rest of the employees all finished high school or college.

Style: Respondent 9 explained that the organisation at ORGANISATION X Services has a very controlling leadership style. Especially the older generation of managers. In their perspective when you are not visibly working in the office, you are not working at all. Respondent 6 replied that she does agree that this is the case at ORGANISATION X Services. However, managers at ORGANISATION X Energy are much more used to people working from home and know how to lead from a distance. They have noticed some managers having trouble with fulltime distance leadership and are offering additional training to help grow and adapt their leadership style to the current situation.

Shared Values: ORGANISATION X Energy as an organisation wants to be the market leader in sustainable innovations and do everything in their power to preserve the world we live in. With regards to the work environment as described by R6 is that even though it is a large organisation it is very family like and people know and care about each other. This also became very evident in the questionnaire and interviews. The majority of the employees stated that what they miss most about going to the office are their colleagues.

5.1.2. CURRENT SITUATION

The current situation at ORGANISATION X is that there is no policy with regards to working from home and in the past, before COVID-19, employees rarely worked from home. Employees were able to work from home one day per week, if their direct supervisor agreed to this. However, working from home more than once per week was non-negotiable. Respondent 4 explained that he has been working from home one day per week for the past ten years and that it has always been a possibility, but that he doesn’t believe that two or three days were negotiable.

Employees have been expected to work from home since March and they have been wondering why it is taking so long for the organisation to create a policy. The author gave the HR manager the opportunity to respond to this. According to the HR manager, they created a COVID-19 emergency policy that covered all the important aspects to ensure employees have the proper facilities to work from home. The new policy will only take effect once COVID-19 is no longer a threat to public health. The HR manager also claims that the new policy is not that much different than the emergency policy and that they needed the extra time to do a proper benchmark.

In September a “policy workgroup” was created with employees from both Services and Energy to create one policy for both entities. However, the HR manager at Energy soon realised that the organisational cultures are too different and the policy that Services want will never be approved by the business council at Energy. Based on that conclusion the HR manager decided to create a different version of the policy specifically for the ORGANISATION X Energy. According to the HR manager the new policy will not dictate the times that employees must be logged into their computers. In the past they have already been focussing more on a person’s contribution rather than presence. The new policy will be based on mutual trust between employees and managers and will be focussing more on facilitating employees rather than monitoring and controlling employees.

The HR manager explained that once they have a policy in place, working from home is no longer on voluntary basis. Of course, when a person is not able to work from home they can work at the office. However, in the future they are counting on employees to work from home a few days per

week so ORGANISATION X can reduce the number of square meters in their office building, save money and redesign the office spaces.

When working from home is not voluntary the company is automatically responsible for an employee’s workplace at home. Once an employee becomes ill as a result of a poorly furnished home office the organisation is liable. During their own benchmark analysis, they found that only one third of Dutch organisations give employees a monetary working from home compensation.

Most organisations only provide employees with the resources to work from home. Companies are not obligated to do both and ORGANISATION X Energy chose to provide employees with proper resources, so all employees are able to create a safe and healthy workplace. In the case that employees do not have the means to transport equipment from the office to their homes ORGANISATION X is willing to look into the possibility of delivering resources to an employee’s home address.

ORGANISATION X of course needs some form of assurance that home offices do indeed meet the requirements as set by the Working Conditions Act (Ministerie van Sociale Zaken en Werkgelegenheid, n.d.). Therefore, ORGANISATION X has decided to ask employees to install their workplace i.e. height and distance of chair and desk according to the legal specifications and have employees send a photo of their workplace to their manager for approval. If a workplace is rejected an employee will have to make adjustments or work at the office.

The number of days that an employee wishes to work from home in the future will not be added in their employment contract. The HR manager believes that employees and managers are capable of discussing the matter and coming to a solution that works for both parties.

With regards to the office space, the facility manager explained that before COVID-19 they had 580 workplaces, each employee had their own workplace. They expect that hybrid working will become the norm and are therefore changing the layout and use of office space. During COVID-19 they have created more flex workplaces and want to create an office that functions as a meeting place.

They will create more meeting rooms and areas that can be booked by a team to work for a day.

They also expect people to continue having online meetings after COVID-19 and have created several small private rooms in the office where employees can have online meetings without hindering other employees.

Yes