When leaders neglect the social and psychological contracts between employer and employee, forget that people choose to be governed, or interpret the role of leader as the shepherd of compliant but essentially stupid sheep, Chester Barnard would warn that events are likely to go badly.

It speaks to a disturbing lack of imagination among senior government and business leaders, who seem unable to grasp that the pandemic caused a seismic shift in the workplace and that there is no going back.

Why would we expect the people we work with daily to behave less diligently when they work remotely?  

Why do we work the way we do? Is there a way to make the experience of work more ‘human’?

Hybrid and remote working challenge us to think more deeply about work, workplaces, and culture.

While some people grapple with the 'how-to' of flexible work, others in the contingent workforce wonder what tomorrow holds.

If we want the benefits of a flexible workforce, we must question how work could be packaged differently.

Flexible working should be a positive career choice for the individual and a benefit to the organisation.

Implementing workplace flexibility can be challenging. It requires us to think about flexible work not as a slimmed-down version of full-time employment but as a form of work that offers a different packaging of workforce capacity and capability.

It requires us to think closely and creatively about workplace processes and relationships grounded in the assumption of a full-time workforce.

Where once organisations might have made allowance for flexible work to ‘show willing’ in appeasing employee requests, today, not offering flexible work is to be left behind in the race to recruit and retain talent.