Ready Up: How to Fuel a Future-Ready Workforce in Today’s Remote Culture

Scores of consumer goods companies found themselves thrust into a distributed work environment this spring, with most quickly rising to the challenge to support and protect their employees. But as the pandemic continues and remote work becomes default, companies that want to compete and thrive must put as much emphasis on developing a distributed workforce as they do on product innovation. “Unleashing The Power of People: How To Move To A Distributed Workforce in Consumer Goods,” a webinar hosted by CGT and presented in partnership with Accenture, breaks down the hard numbers surrounding the state of CPG workforce, and digs into best practices that can be implemented today to build future-ready employees. Done properly, a distributed workforce can drive diversity, creativity and profits. An edited transcript of the webinar and the slides, including all of the research, are presented below. Albert Guffanti: Good morning everyone. I'm Albert Guffanti, group publisher of CGT and RIS. And I'm thrilled that you've joined us today for “Unleashing The Power of People: How To Move To A Distributed Workforce in Consumer Goods.” I will be your moderator, and I will introduce our speaker in just one moment. First off, I want to be clear on the purpose of today's webinar. We'll dive deep into the topic of how to optimize your workforce management strategy in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. We'll provide insight into topics like how to address the new workforce challenges that COVID-19 presents, how to balance onsite and remote work to optimize time and space, as well as improve the work experience, how to upskill workers rapidly and at scale, and how are other companies successfully shaping an agile and distributed workforce as we emerged from the pandemic. I want to mention that while the materials in this webinar have been reviewed by our editorial staff, the views of the speakers and their organizations are their own and don't necessarily reflect the opinions of CGT or RIS. I'm excited to get into the topic of discussion for today. The consumer goods industry has always had to navigate a changing and fast-paced landscape. New consumer expectations, emerging trends, and technologies are surfacing constantly, introducing different challenges, yet no one expected the dramatic and unprecedented disruption brought about by COVID-19. Organizations are acting fast to respond to the disruption and come out stronger than ever. Consumer goods leaders are looking for ways to shape a flexible and agile workforce enabled by digital technologies and advanced analytics to unleash the power of people regardless of market circumstances. And that is why we enlisted the help of our extremely knowledgeable and experienced subject matter experts. For today's webinar I am very excited to be speaking with Anne Kotzorek, the managing director at Accenture. She's going to discuss, and we're going to talk about, how you can build the future-ready workforce. Anne is a managing director in Accenture's consumer goods and services industry consulting practice, and she's based in Dusseldorf, Germany. She is leading Accenture's culture and capability transformation practice and CG&S globally, and is specialized in digital workforce transformation in global large scale corporate transformations. She has more than 15 years of consulting experience, primarily in consumer goods and pharma. And before joining Accenture she worked as recruitment consultant and training manager for Lufthansa German Airlines for four years. Anne, I can't think of a better person to provide insight and lead the discussion today. So thank you very much for joining us. Anne Kotzorek: Thank you very much for the introduction Albert. It's great that you're having me for this webinar, and I'm very excited to join your session today and to discuss my perspectives on moving to the distributed workforce in consumer goods with you and also with our audience. Guffanti: I know that Accenture has done a lot of work really understanding the state of the market as it were with managing workforces. And you've actually done a deep dive benchmark survey, and I think you're going to share some insights on that survey with us before we have a conversation. Is that right? Kotzorek: Absolutely. I would like to outline a few of the key findings that we have identified during our consumer research that we have conducted during the course of the COVID-19 situation over three months, in eight weeks. In total, we had 56,000 data points and consumer surveys that we have researched and evaluated. And some of the key findings will be the basis for the discussion later today. Guffanti: Why don't you kick us off with your findings? Kotzorek: Absolutely. So just in light of the times that we are living in that we have gone through over the past month, I would like to start with a quote from Vladimir Lenin who said, "There are decades where nothing happens, and then there are weeks where decades happen." And certainly from our perspective, the global spread of COVID-19 since its first reported outbreak in China in December 2019, and then also the subsequent lockdowns and social distancing measures that we've seen have had a tremendous impact on all of us in our roles as consumers, but also of course, as employees, as family and community members. And in our research we have conducted we actually found that some of these changes will persist over time. So I would like all of us to imagine a world in which over one-third of office workers plan to work from home now regularly, at least once per week. This is one of the key findings of our research. What are some of the implications that this will have on our new ways of working when we spend at least one day per week at home? We've summarized these implications in four key themes on this slide, and I would like to walk you through them starting with the first one on the top left hand side, which is called the Home is The Hub. Now that we're seeing that the home has become the workplace, it's also taking on a new purpose, and it needs to be an inspiring, efficient, and productive environment. And this means that personal convenience and home automation are playing an increasing role and people might even seek larger homes to have more space to work. Moving on to the second theme on the top right hand side: There is No More 9:00-5:00. Employees basically organize their work around their commitments. We're also seeing a decline in on/off peak because the demand on service industries can moderate, and we are seeing broader shifts in values and in mindset as people now use the time that they save for commuting and redirect it into relationship building, hobbies, and some passion projects. But there is definitely a mindset change underway. Over to the third theme on the bottom left hand side. We see that office proximity has become less critical. So people's housing demands will shift from living in cities to moving to more rural areas. It's one of the trends we're seeing. Also, the demand for offices is gradually being replaced with demand for coworking spaces. And this will have an impact on the city centers with all the entertainment and retail. We are seeing that this will get smaller in favor of more localized and virtual hubs. And then closing with a fourth theme on the bottom right hand side, The World is Our Oyster, which is more societal perspective where we are seeing that remote working opportunities increase the workforce participation. It also improved social mobility. It can help to improve the income distribution, and it can also helped revitalize local communities that otherwise would have lost against more urban communities. At the same time, jobs are becoming more competitive because employees compete with an expanded talent pool that could even be global. And we will likely see some nomad workers who no longer follow the traditional ideas of residency, so living where the office is or where your employer is but really working from anywhere in the world or potentially multiple employers at one time, or they may change jobs more frequently because they don't need to move. Guffanti: Very interesting. And I think we're all living through this, right, Anne? And to see it organized this way in the slide certainly resonates. Kotzorek: Yes. We also think that this is actually a great time and a great opportunity for CPG companies to move to a distributed workforce, because there are many benefits associated to that for the individual, for a company, but also for society. Yet what we have seen during COVID is that some new ways of working have emerged based on pressures of course, operational pressures, that we all have experienced. Yet what we are seeing now is that we need to come to a more stable and more sustainable solution. So if we are now moving to the distributed workforce, it is well advised to do this very consciously designed in a human-centric manner really focusing on your employees' needs so that it can really generate the improved employee experience that you desire for, and also of course, leverage benefits in terms of cost reduction for real estate facilities in terms of optimizing the workforce, expanding your talent pool. And then of course, it can also have a greater sustainability contribution. So there are many benefits associated with that. So that's a little bit of the world that we imagine with a distributed workforce. It's a little bit looking into the future, and what I would like to do next is first of all, walk you through the highlights of our consumer research that Albert just also mentioned that we've been conducting during the COVID time between March and July 2020. On the left hand side, you see that we conducted our research in eight weeks, and each was serving between 3,300 and even 8,800 participants. And as mentioned, in total we conducted almost 56,000 consumer surveys across 19 markets on all continents over these three months. And as depicted on the right hand side, the aim of our consumer research was to capture the impact and the implications of COVID-19 across six areas, the future consumer, the return to the new normal, what and how we buy, how we live, and then the sixth one being new ways of working. And in the following, I'd like to outline some key findings in that sixth area, new ways of working, that explain the current shift to the distributed workforce. First of all, we're seeing that the demand from employees to work from home in the future continues to rise as 73% of all employees report that they enjoy the experience. And as the graphic on the right hand side shows the proportion of employees who have never worked from home before the outbreak plan to work from home more often after the pandemic. And that proportion has even increased up to 58% in July 2020. And across all employees, 35% plan to work from home at least once per week in the future, even one-fifth or 20% plan to work from home more than three times a week. So really drastically and fundamentally changing their work schedule. On the right hand side, you see that our research shows that 61% of consumers working at home are more professionally satisfied at home than in the office and I've mentioned 73% agree with this statement that they enjoy working from home once again endorsing the demand of the employees to work from home more often. With that increase in demand employees also seek support for remote work from the employers, but our research has shown that the employers' responses have been limited. On the graphic you see the participants’ answers to our question which top three forms of support would make remote working easier for them, and also which forms of support they actually did receive from their employer. In summary, the top three forms of desired support are new technology hardware indicated by 66% of all interviews as shown on the left hand side. This is followed by coaching and or tools to collaborate from desired by 46%, and new office equipment indicated by 42% of all employees we surveyed. Now, on the right hand side, our findings show that indeed these top three forms of support have been to some extent provided by the employers, but yet there is a discrepancy between desired support, for example, of 66% employees for new technology versus the actual support in new technology that was provided to 47% of employees. I'm conscious that we have also promised to provide you with some best practice examples where companies really have successfully enabled virtual and remote working during COVID-19. And I would like to outline a few of those. A few role-model companies are called out on the right hand side starting first of all with Google. In order to making work from home easier for the employees Google has announced a $1,000 allowance to cover equipment costs. And Salesforce announced an Anywhere app, which is an employee service solution to boost collaboration and communication among the remote workforce. So those are two examples we've seen in terms of hardware and software. Another best practice example for the fourth one of support which is coaching and or tools to manage mental health is Kickstand Communications. That's a public relations company and agency that already provided employees with monthly wellness days for mental physical health. And because of COVID-19, the company has recently also began to provide employees with a more flexible work schedule and three hours per week to step away from the computer and to recharge. So that I think is a great example of supporting mental health. What we have also seen during COVID-19 in terms of the form of support it's at No. 8, reduction in pressure. I'd like to mention here productivity apps that actually have been on the rise since the outbreak as now smart companies that gaining grounds by having employees work from home. For example, Quip, that is a collaborative software suite saw a 40% increase in traffic to the website during the time period from February to May 2020. So productivity apps are certainly one way to actually support your employees in managing their days and also their time off more effectively. And last, but by no means least, we have done a project here in Germany for a financial services institute that speaks to the form of support on the bottom of the page, training on how to support others during this time. We actually work with one services institute to figure out how they can improve or even let's say establish virtual ways of working because they have never been used to working virtually before. And we actually analyzed in seven criteria the satisfaction of the employees with technology … and we implemented some of these recommendations really during COVID-19 within just weeks. And also we had several coaches who supported the leadership in now leading remotely. So those are some of the examples that we wanted to share with you of how some companies have dealt with some aspects of the crisis. Guffanti: Anne, before you move on to the next slide, I have a question. Actually, it was sparked by an audience question, which we'll get to later. But I'm curious about some of these stats in your survey. A lot of our audience is primarily consumer goods manufacturers, which they do have corporate environments, but they also have field workers and folks on the central lines of the manufacturing plant and things like that. I wonder if your survey kind of spanned all those different environments or was it mostly focused on kind of the corporate type environment? Kotzorek: Well, overall we surveyed consumers and just that sixth kind of factor or area that we explored was landing towards their role as an employee. In general, though what we're seeing is that companies are starting to explore remote working opportunities, at least for some manufacturing colleagues, for example production planners, etc. So maybe let's say more planning type roles or roles where you use data, you use analysis to work more remotely. And a very interesting topic certainly is the field sales staff where we see a great shift probably of the roles that will persist in terms of no longer probably going to the retailers as much as they used to but rather seeking platform technology support and data analytics to help them understand the availability of the products for the consumers across the different channels. Of course, I mean here, the rise of the e-commerce and the rise of delivery portals, etc., will certainly accelerate the move to the online channel presence. And I think that's an area where we see a lot of movement. Guffanti: Interesting. Thank you. Kotzorek: Another element that I would like to touch because it is important, it is very unfortunate but it is important, there is a rise of unemployment, unfortunately, that we can see across the market. During the course of 2020, for example, just to name a few for the U.S. there was a predicted increase from 4% of unemployment in 2019 to almost 10% in 2020. For Spain, the predicted increase from 15% in 2019 even goes up to 22% in 2020. And there are unfortunately other countries with the same outlook. What we are seeing from a let's say talent pool perspective is that with that rising unemployment those who are seeking employment are often open to different types for employments. On the left hand side, you can see that half of the unemployed respondents or people who were made redundant as a result of COVID-19 are much more likely to consider remote working for the majority of their time as their type of jobs, and 42% of unemployed respondents consider taking a part-time job, 41% working as a freelance or a contractor, and 36% consider setting up their own business. So there's definitely also a lot of movement and flexibility among the talent pool globally to accommodate the different types of work. It's also somewhat translating to the people with employment. Our research also shows that part of the respondents in employment are exploring new sources of income. And the reason for doing that on the left hand side, one of the key factors is the fear of the impact on personal job security as reported by 71% seeking to sources of income because every considering priorities, 60% are just considering a career change, and 66% indicate that they have more available time now, more free time, and therefore look for new sources of income, which also shows us that there is a fundamental change in also choices, employer choices, that people are making. Also, on the right hand side people who seek now new sources of income are 8% more likely to rank personal accomplishments among their top three priorities, and 9% are more likely to rank financial security among their top 3%. So there is definitely a shift in employee, let's say choices, for employers. At the same time they are becoming much more flexible when it comes to different forms of employment. And yeah, I mean, we have some more insights, of course, also on the impact on the consumer but also on the impact of the employee. But I wanted to just highlight a few before I come to the implications that we're seeing for CPG companies now moving to a distributive workforce. What are some of the key recommendations? First of all, define your long-term virtual working strategy. So as we talked about, there are companies who have adopted very well during COVID-19 who have reacted very quickly, put in great support for remote work and virtual working. But I think now the challenge will be to make this sustainable and long-term and to ensure that employers do justice to the employee's demands to kind of choose flexibly where they will work and also how they will work. So there's a lot of HR practices and policies that may need to be looked at and also overhauled. Second one and I think that's pretty straightforward, redefine your new norms of business travel. That has changed in COVID-19, and quite frankly, I personally think that it will also change permanently to a large extent. And so I think this is also something to be considered. Third and fourth, new pools of talent, new sources of talent is something that we have touched on before. Talent is now no more constrained to a physical location. You can improve your workforce mix and also make it much more flexible by tapping into your ecosystem like some partners, service providers, on demand platforms. You can even consider outsourcing. So there are some great opportunities to expand your talent workforce but in a flexible and agile way. And then of course the fifth one, identify ways be it with technology or be it with cultural aspects to harness the creative innovation talents of your employees. So those are some of the recommendations that we have especially now that we come to more stable time hopefully post COVID. So I think Europe is slowly and gradually opening up and really thinking about those questions, how we can take that long term. I would like to conclude my little input and then I'm happy to take your questions, Albert, or questions from our audience. Guffanti: I think this image right here that we're looking at, the woman on her laptop on her front stoop I think we can all relate to that, right? You talk about a nomadic workforce. Well, I'm nomadic in my own home. Sometimes I'm in the basement, sometimes I'm outside, sometimes I'm in the spare bedroom. So I think we could all sort of relate to that. That really underscores I think the situation at hand. One of the questions that came up in looking at the data and looking at the content is: What do consumer good leaders now have to consider? As we mentioned before, there's a huge variation in terms of the types of workers, the demographic of workers, and so on. So when you're looking at a distributed workforce, why is it not a one-size-fits-all concept? And what do we need to keep in mind? Kotzorek: I think it's a great question. First of all, maybe going back to our definition of distributed workforce, so what do we mean, or what do I mean when I speak about that? It's a workforce that reaches beyond the restrictions of our traditional offices. It means that companies have employees working in different physical locations, so at office locations but also remote. And as you mentioned, I mean, it can be from home, it can be from coworking spaces, from public spaces, or it could even be on the go. So that is of course very compelling in terms of benefits. However, the distributed working has to be designed very flexibly and it should also not mean that employees never meet. So we feel that looking into roles specific requirements is key on the one hand side. So not every role as we mentioned, in manufacturing for example, is fit for a distributed work model. But also it could be an agile project manager or someone engaged in agile projects. It is not possible that you just never meet. So there is a necessity to look at the roles of your employees, and there's also of course a necessity to offer the flexibility for the employees to make a choice based on their personal settings that may over also change over time in terms of their setting at home, the space available, of course the technology available, office equipment available but also the personal situation with regards to children or people to take care of. So that is absolutely critical. I think if you get that right and you allow for that flexibility, you can really improve your employee value proposition and people really acknowledge and value the employers who offer that. But yeah, it's definitely not a one-size-fits-all. I think it's not possible to implement it in the same way across the company. Guffanti: Thank you. And the next question I think really drives to the core of what we're talking about. I know we have a lot of IT executive leadership on the audience member roster today. And we at CGT often talk about CGT as being sort of the nexus where IT, business, and people all come together. So I know that there's a lot of interest in this question: What role does technology play in the distributed workforce? Kotzorek: I would like to answer this with two key points. One is technology as a critical enabler for operations, and then the second one, technology as an enabler for the employee experience. So to point No. 1, technology is of course absolutely critical enabling or an absolutely critical enabler for business continuity. COVID-19 has certainly taught us a lesson that CPG companies who are in the cloud have been more successful in terms of sustaining their operations. And we see it as the next big step or... I mean, of course for many of the companies, it is underway already, but for those who still consider it the journey, cloud is certainly the way to become more agile, to drive innovation, to reinvent business, and to sustain operations. So that is I think one key aspect. Of course, you need to consider big data and IT security. Data must be collected, stored, and processed in a secure manner, even from multiple locations. But certainly the cloud aspect is one very important element as well as data in terms of analytics. And we spoke about the sales workforce earlier. So this real-time insight into the availability of the product for the consumer is absolutely critical for a field sales person who can't physically travel to the retailer to remain operations stable. And then secondly, technology is an enabler for the employee experience I think rather speaks to the necessity to implement virtual collaboration tools, of course Teams, Zoom, etc., but there are also many other great tools that you can use to even do design things, workshops like Miro or Microsoft Whiteboard. There's surveying and polling, for example, by Doodle, SurveyMonkey, Mentimeter that keep the teams engaged and keep the employees engaged in the conversation beyond video conferences that I think we've all gotten used to. So this is a very good way to offer a good and seamless employee experience. Guffanti: I'm sure a lot of our IT leadership are working hand-in-hand with their business counterparts to offer creative solutions that are solved by technology. Ultimately, though, I think this all kind of really has to do with culture, and some of the questions that we have that we've received from the audience relate to this question of what has the impact had on the culture of companies. And we have a question that came in about burnout, like to your slide before. And there's no more 9:00-5:00. So what does that mean? Are we always working? Is there burnout? There was a question also that came in about the fairness factor and some people work from home, some people don't work from home, and is that a developing culture issues? So can you talk a little bit about the impact that this is all having on culture? Kotzorek: Yes, absolutely. And you touched two very relevant points that I would also see under this umbrella of culture. It's super broad and wide. And so I would like to try to focus it on a few key aspects, also including leadership, which is key here. Some of the cultural shifts that we're seeing is actually moving from silos to more cross-functional collaboration and communication, which is absolutely key in order to be successful in these times. That also has something to do with more non-hierarchical working. So the more distributed we become, the flatter the organization can become actually because it's a more democratized way of collaborating, which is a great opportunity. There's also great opportunity to facilitate diversity and inclusion. Definitely there is a better workforce participation regardless of physical location, and that can be a significant enabler for persons with disabilities, for example. And at the same time, as you mentioned, it is crucial that leadership is being equipped and enabled to accompany that cultural shift. Of course, employees need to be equipped as well, but I think the leaders are undergoing a change in their own role. They need to have lots more trust in their employees. It's about a different way of leading. It's more results-based, outcome-based, and performance oriented rather than checking and monitoring all the time. And from a mindset perspective, it also means that leaders will need to take good care of their employees' mental and physical health. So it's rather about having conversations with your employees, coaching, having regular check-ins on how they're doing rather than monitoring or asking them where they stand with regards to performance. If you move to results-based performance management, then the results will certainly give you insight on the performance, but there is a dramatic change where leaders just receive some form of support to be prepared for that. Guffanti: I think that the culture discussion is a big one, and we're living, as you said, in a new world here. I think it's not going to change when things with health crisis ease up. So this is how it's going to be. And it's on a global scale too. Early you mentioned that we're entering a nomadic workforce era. And a question came in that was asking about government. And you'd mentioned that the workers will have more options and even the ability to work worldwide now. And if we don't have the answer for this right now, we can follow up, but it's actually curious. So how does that work with visas and packing regulations and things like that? Do you see those restrictions or those processes sort of easing up? Kotzorek: You actually touched the two points that we're also seeing that this kind of knocks on implications for sure. For example, the Brexit discussions, they're not sparked by COVID-19, but within the EU we've always been quite let's say free to move around as employees that, yeah, I think Brexit discussions, at least in Europe for us, will tell us the way things will be going and will evolve over time. And I would hope that we consider this as a way to really democratize work and the access to work for some people in parts of the world. But yeah, it will have also of course implications on a lot of governmental regulations. Guffanti: Final question before we close things out. It has to do with sort of next steps and priorities. So as a consumer goods executive leader, what are the one or two most important things that you can do or that they can do coming out of this webinar and they go back to their desk? What do you suggest are kind of the priorities for them to really get ahead of this trend? Kotzorek: I think the two key players to be called on first who I would call on is IT and HR. I think to really get it off the ground and to start thinking about sustainable new ways of working IT, as mentioned, is a critical enabler in terms of making sure that we have all the tools, all the data, and the employee experience available and in place no matter where and how we work. And HR I think, as mentioned, would need to revisit HR practices and policies and guidelines to really think how it is possible to make them as flexible as possible to cater for the employee's needs and to ensure at the same time, of course, that mental and physical health are being kept safe, even though we may become more flexible and more autonomous in our choices. Guffanti: Makes sense. It always comes back to the combination of technology and the human factor, right? So it's very interesting. Well, that's pretty much the time we have for today. And thank you so much for providing those great insights. And I want to thank Accenture for really just taking the lead on developing information and content that we can all use to best navigate this crisis. And finally, I'd like to thank all of you, our attendees, for devoting all your valuable time with us today. We hope you found it worthwhile, and we hope it will result in improved business outcomes for you. Be safe and be well.

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