Keeping tabs on a worldwide workforce

The pandemic may be behind us but employers that quickly adapted to remote work used the experience to refine the tools they use to measure productivity.

As some businesses call their workers back into the office or replenish retail networks, they are now better equipped to hone efficiencies in their operations.

Lincoln Turvey, Flight Centre Travel Group global chief people and culture officer, is overseeing a shift from hybrid arrangements to on-site for the company’s frontline salespeople.

“Most of our people are in sales,” he said. “They need to be in their shop or equivalent to engage with customers, so remote working is not an option.”

Turvey describes three categories of roles at Flight Centre: frontline sales, technology support workers, and “pure” support, such as accounting or procurement, as examples.

Product management engineers work on the tech tools required for sales, with many working remotely around the northern hemisphere and elsewhere. Typical for the tech industry, their performance is measured against a strict objective and key result methodology.

Productivity metric and remote workers

“We’re developing the ability to systemise that, to get performance transparency, where the work of those people is about delivering solutions and products for our salespeople,” said Turvey, who will be speaking on the panel “Powerful productivity measures for a remote workforce” at the HRD HR Summit Brisbane on 13 November.

The jobs that aren’t so easy to directly measure in an objective way, he said, are the “pure support” roles like accountants, people and culture teams or procurement specialists.

 “The ability to set goals and measure performance and delivery against them is dynamic and transcends roles – it doesn’t matter whether a person is in a sales role or support, it’s the work of leadership to foster the culture of performance and delivery,” Turvey said.

There’s a lot to be said for reporting to the office, he said. “The collaboration that comes with that, the real-time feedback and conversation, they make it easier to help people stay on track and give them support they need,” he said. “And also to hold them accountable.”

Office connections strengthen as hybrid unwinds

Flight Centre’s culture is “genuinely built on in-person connection,” he said.

“We want our people in our workplaces, working together, learning from each other, collaborating with each other, challenging each other, celebrating with each other – that’s our expectation. We know we won’t get back to the way it was overnight, but that’s the journey we’re on.”

Employee engagement surveys present “super insightful data”, he said. “We interrogate those results and plan responses, which usually involves further conversations with our people to make sure we’ve understood what they said.”

Something is working. In the Flight Centre brand, turnover has fallen from 35% to 25% in less than one year, “which is extraordinary.”

The group employs about 13,500 staff in 26 countries, with a people and culture team in each region.

Access to healthcare matters: Summit sponsor

The HRD HR Summit Brisbane will be held over two days and includes streams in HR and employment law.

“It’s a fantastic opportunity to engage directly with HR professionals who are shaping the future of employee well-being,” said Midnight Health senior marketing manager Janet Duane, an event sponsor.

Duane said remote and frontline workers are often overlooked when it comes to health services. “In industries like mining, construction and even retail, where workers may not have easy access to healthcare, access to telehealth services can bridge this gap,” she said.

Midnight Health’s hubPass for Business platform eases access to healthcare, she said, “helping employees prioritise their health without compromising their productivity at work.”

Remote productivity at HR Summit Brisbane

At the HRD HR Summit Brisbane on 13 November Turvery will take part in a panel discussion “Powerful productivity measures for a remote workforce” about how organisations are working with increasingly dispersed workforces and tracking their productivity.

The panel will discuss:

• What key data and metrics can be used to track productivity

• Ways to measuring output for roles that cannot be measured quantitatively  

• How people analytics can provide insights into productivity

Register for the HRD HR Summit Brisbane here.