We are excited to announce information about our plans for the Future of Work at Impression.
When it became clear in March 2020 that things would be quite different for the foreseeable future, Impression employees were asked to take their equipment and work from the safety of their homes. Fortunately, we had the flexibility to be able to do this due to the nature of our work but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t without its challenges. With so much uncertainty, not to mention other stresses such as childcare, isolation and worrying about loved ones, it was challenging but we continued to see great outputs from the team.
Our amazingly talented team demonstrated that, despite a global pandemic and a huge amount of change, they were able to adapt, be resilient and support each other through a particularly tough time. Thanks to our people, Impression continued to grow.
As things started to open back up within the UK, a number of team members decided they’d prefer to work back in the office and so we put the necessary precautions in place to make sure we could support this decision and so they could work safely. We understand that for some, working from home is not the preferred choice. Throughout lockdown, we’d also welcomed new hires from various locations across the country, and we knew that for those who are further afield or who are used to remote working, the typical 9-5 office commute might not be their preferred way of working. Varying preferences and new ways of working led us to have a real think about what the future of Impression would look like. These considerations coincided with our first Head of People joining the business.
The world has changed and we have the opportunity to embrace this and change with it. One of our core values is ‘Open to Change’ and we are pleased to say that when given the ultimate test, we lived up to this value. We’ve seen different businesses approach their future of work in different ways, with some announcing set days a week that they wanted their employees to come into the office, but this is an approach that didn’t quite feel right for us. We also saw others announcing a ‘Work from Anywhere’ policy, but after consulting with our team, we realised that approach didn’t quite feel right either. Impression is built on a strong culture and we all agree that we can see the benefits of face to face collaboration and how it can link to increased creativity so it was clear that some in-person time would be needed to be able to sustain that.
Rather than mandate the amount of time an individual needs to come into the office, we will empower our people to work in environments that best suit the activity. We will continue to balance the use of virtual, face to face and hybrid meetings whilst giving all of our staff the freedom to work remotely when needed. This new hybrid approach, outlined in the PDF below, will unlock greater productivity for our people and our business.
View PDF: The Future of Work at Impression
We’ve had lots of internal conversations and listened to our people and our clients to understand what their needs are and this hybrid model suits most situations and circumstances. It treats people with respect, empowers them to manage their own diary and it is truly inclusive. And it’s not set in stone either. We will continue to monitor what we’ve put in place, regularly speaking to our people to see if it’s working and we’ll be open to making changes based on feedback we receive. As ever, we will continue to be flexible, adaptable and open to change!
We don’t think there is one correct answer to how the Future of Work should look, but we’re really excited to explore opportunities and work together to decide how we want it to look.
