
Every year John Lewis releases an emotive Christmas advert with a serious moral.
This year’s ‘The Man on the Moon’ is about a little girl who uses her telescope to discover a lonely old man sitting on the moon. But unfortunately he is completely unaware of her.
The girl then makes multiple attempts to contact him to show that he is not alone; from making a paper aeroplane to firing a make-shift arrow in to the sky. We won’t spoil the ending, but the moral is that no one should be alone at Christmas.
And it is an HR Grapevine tradition to embrace the spirit of the iconic adverts and translate the moral into an HR-related issue. This year addresses remote working – after all you can’t get more remote than the Moon!
And with flexible working becoming more common among employers, it is important to be aware of the different impacts this way of working can have. While advancements in technology mean that staff don’t need to resort to paper aeroplanes in order to communicate, there is a danger of them being ‘left out’.
We recently hosted a roundtable discussion, in partnership with Cisco, that focused on the issues of remote working. These included cultivating the right culture, promoting those that aren’t present, and managing employees’ expectations when emailing. To read more click here.
El Cavanagh-Lomas, Senior Director of HR EMEA & Russia at Cisco, is an advocate of flexible working and believes that when it is done right, it works really well.
She says: “At Cisco, our employees are empowered to work anywhere, anytime, making use of our collaboration technology. A flexible working environment and a culture designed to flourish and thrive in such an environment has delivered us far more than just a ‘perk’ for employees.
“With our flexible workforce, we see lower voluntary attrition, higher employee satisfaction and increased productivity – all of which helps to drive collaboration and innovation.”
For a reminder of last year’s Christmas advert and which issues it raised for HR click here.
And don’t forget 2013’s ‘The Bear & The Hare’ and its emphasis on inclusion.