Reward and Benefits | Insights
Matt Frost , Organisational Wellbeing Director
28 Jul, 2021 · 4 -minute read

Imagine giving your people the freedom to choose how they work, to make their own decisions about their benefits and help shape the employee lifecycle for generations to come.

That’s exactly what global cybersecurity leaders Palo Alto Networks are doing with FLEXWORK – a new way of working focused on personalisation and employee choice. Plus, through the FLEXWORK Coalition, they’re teaming up with Box, Splunk, Uber and Zoom to empower other organisations to follow the same path.

Matt Frost, Organisational Wellbeing Director at GBS UK, caught up with Palo Alto Networks’ Chief of Staff Lindsey Sanford to talk flexibility, trust and post-pandemic people power…

MF: So, tell me Lindsey – how does it feel to start a revolution?

LS: I remember talking to our Chief People Officer, Liane Hornsey, when the pandemic first started and saying: ‘This is a movement. This is when employees will force the question of remote working for the rest of the foreseeable future. It’s not about the pandemic, we’re going to use this as an excuse to kickstart a revolution.’

Eighteen months ago, FLEXWORK wasn’t there. We had inclusion and diversity, we had corporate responsibility, we had performance evaluation, we had operational efficiency – but we didn’t have FLEXWORK.

It has been fascinating to see the transformation in our executives. They get to tell employees that their voices matter and hear people talk about what remote working has given to them; things like ‘nice dinners with my family’ or – and this is a real story – ‘I get to take my daughter, who has cancer, to the doctor.’

Because we have this level of flexibility and trust now, these are moments that people get – without guilt. It’s a reorientation of the work environment to focus on us, as individuals.

MF: FLEXWORK is all about putting the employee and their needs at the centre of everything, but where does it stop and start? What is it?

LS: At its core, FLEXWORK is about moving from employer choice to employee choice.

We’d moved from an employer choice space, a very headquarters-driven one – drawing people in and making demands; telling employees that they needed to prove themselves and adhere to this unspoken rule of how people contribute, whether that was through presence or productivity in the office.

It’s like there was a nomenclature of working from 8am to 7pm and always being available; and when it came to benefits, you’d have two options and it was very much: ‘This is what you get, pick and choose based on that.’

That’s where we were. Where we want to be is employee choice in every capacity – it’s about asking: ‘How can we give the autonomy and the control back to the employees so they can make their own choices?’ They know what’s best for themselves.

And that will emerge in every aspect of the employee lifecycle – from recruiting: ‘Can this position be remote? Do they have to be in the office?’; to onboarding: ‘Do they want access to pre-boarding? Do they want to attend an on-site onboarding day or welcome day? Do they want to do it virtually?’

And when it goes into benefits support, it’s about looking at how we can flex benefits to the degree that we can. Of course, so much of it is regulated across countries and tax regulations, but can we re-examine the benefits model to say that two options is not enough?

Ultimately, FLEXWORK is about re-examining every step of the employee lifecycle and saying: ‘How can we put the power back into the hands of the employees?’ – and then asking ourselves: ‘How can we enable those choices as an employer? How do we provide that flexibility? How can we give the power back to employees in a highly regulated environment?’

MF: Talk to me about the FLEXWORK coalition. I find it fascinating. It’s like ‘this is our secret sauce, but we want the world to know about it. And we want the world to help shape it…’

LS: I do firmly believe that the revolutionary aspect of FLEXWORK is that we’re redefining work of the future – but we’re doing it for more than just Palo Alto Networks, because we want other companies to join in.

And so the coalition is there to help other companies have these conversations; understanding that they’re facing the same challenges, the same biases, the same resistance, the same difficulties, the same concerns and insecurities that bring them together.

I think we have about 200 chief people officers on board at this point. They come together when they can and we bring in guest speakers like David Rock, Dave Ulrich and Liz Wiseman.

We also have general breakout sessions, where we bring CPOs together to have conversations with that security, with that authenticity, enabling people to say: ‘Hey, I’m really struggling to convince my CEO that this is the right path. Can you help me? Do you have data? What have you seen? What is your approach?’

It’s about creating a very safe place for CPOs to have these conversations about what’s happening within their own organisation, and how they can address it.

And then, of course, we’re doing this from a leadership perspective too. Palo Alto Networks has already done some of this and we’re seeing benefits and business results, so we’re sharing that at the same time to help other people make the transition.

This is about really challenging those fundamental biases in our minds of what productivity looks like.

Lindsey Sanford

Chief of Staff, Palo Alto Networks

MF: You’ve been doing a lot of work around challenging biases. Talk us through some of the resistance that you’ve felt in the last 12-18 months…

LS: On the internal side, there was resistance. There was fear and insecurity – in fact, there was a lot of insecurity. I think people were scared. And that makes sense. This is all new and we’re overturning decades of bias perpetuated by companies that we respect – the Amazons and Googles of the world, companies that are amazingly successful.

I remember a conversation we had early on with the CPOs in our coalition, and someone asked the question: ‘How are you measuring wasted time at home? How are you measuring that for your employees?’

And someone else spoke up and said: ‘Were you measuring that when they were in the office? Did you measure how people wasted time when they were in the office? Did you know how often they went to the bathroom?’

That person immediately sat back and said: ‘No, we didn't measure that...’

This is a great example of resistance and bias. FLEXWORK is about really challenging those fundamental biases in our minds of what productivity looks like – and asking ‘what were we doing with that before the pandemic?’

MF: A constant recurring theme in our annual State of the Sector report is the importance of line managers in the comms and culture space. Good corporate initiative typically lives or dies in how managers embrace it, adopt it or resist it – so how does FLEXWORK play into this?

LS: People can be insecure – and I don’t say that in a negative or judgmental way. Insecurity is a real thing. It’s a human condition. And I think that when we’re insecure, we tend to go towards micromanagement and control; that is a natural response.

We will have people who’ll revert. We’ll have managers who say one thing but do another – we’ll have manager bad behaviour. But it comes back to the main core message of our values construct, our USP, what’s important to us.

And as long as we continue this drumbeat of what’s important, I think the people that fall back into those bad behaviours will ultimately leave, they’ll opt out. Because maybe this doesn’t align with their values. But it is core to ours. Some people might just decide that it’s not right for them – and that’s okay. But we’re focused on providing an individual experience that centres on each and every unique person.

MF: Thinking about the future, how far can this go? Where do you see FLEXWORK in a year, two years, three years time?

LS: Right now, it’s at the validation point – it’s about change management, it’s making sure that people are making decisions on their own behalf and not being influenced by their managers.

We were talking about this in a FLEXWORK off-site meeting, asking: ‘What does the next 12 to 18 months look like?’

Some of it is about the realisation that we have this core, this fundamental aspect, of FLEXWORK which is all about the individual. We need to make the next 12 months matter, so that the individual knows that that is true; that it’s genuine. And part of it is about helping individuals realise the potential for themselves.

But it didn’t necessarily come out in the form of new programmes, new policies, new things; it was more about that consistent drumbeat of ‘you matter, your voice matters, you are influential, you have the right to decide and make these choices for yourself – no one else can influence you to do so.’

So I think that’s a big component of the next 12 months. As we return to normal, it’s about overcoming those insecurities, making sure the individuals realise the power that they have.

It’s that constant reminder of: ‘You have the choice and you have the control.’

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