How Treasury Teams are Adapting to Remote Working with Kemi Bolarin & Anthony Mercer

I think it's going to be a blend. I think certain institutions are already saying quite vocally in the market that they want their teams back in the office and they don't. They don't want to support remote working. And I can see benefits of that. I can also see, you know, some weaknesses to that in that, you know, it might be that they're less attractive to certain types of future employees. And I just, I mean, my personal view is that businesses need to evolve with the workforce, and part of that workforce need is going to be a want to focus a little bit on work life balance. I think we'd already seen that pre pandemic. I think when you talk to a lot of millennials and Gen Z, you know, there's a lot of what they're looking for in terms of reward, in terms of recuperation and the whole package and how they want to live their lives is very different to how I wanted them to live my life when I was 22, 23, straight out of uni. And I think we just need to acknowledge, think part of that as leaders in any industry, is going to be listening to your workforce and getting the balance right between the direction you want to take your business in and how you want to optimize the workforce to facilitate that.

The novelty of working from home. It took me about two weeks to then suddenly realize that, oh yeah, I needed to put structure in place. And that was really needed because the first two weeks we were busy trying to replicate our work life, you know, making sure that we had everything going. Also my mindset was a mindset of visibility. I wanted my leaders to feel like, oh yeah, I was there, I was present. But then by the end of two weeks, I needed to change that round because I just did that structure. I knew something was missing. Getting up in the morning, driving to work, coming back was a bit of structure and I needed to replicate that. So then what did I do was clear. Creating very clear space around work, creating very clear space around life. And also I took on walking as well. So I would. As soon as it's 5pm, if there's nothing to do, there's nothing urgent to do, I would go out for a very long walk. And that brought sanity back. And it's the same thing with my family for kids. I've got two kids, 16 and 18. And again, it was a different way of working for them, also ensuring that they had a safe space for their homeschooling. So it was pretty much adapting to new ways of working, making sure that the mindset is nourished, making sure that the mental well being is nurtured. Staying organized, staying in control. My personal experience was the fact that, oh, I could save two hours of commuting to work. It would usually take me about 2 hours to 2 hours fro. So for me that was a benefit and I was excited about that. But as we continued into the pandemic and it looked like it wasn't going to be a month, it wasn't going to be three months, it wasn't going to be half a year, it was going to be a year. Then the novelty of it started to wear out. And that was where I started to observe the sort of the blurred line between life and work. For me, it was just coming downstairs and my working hours became longer and longer. What I then found out personally is the fact that I had to personally reset. We had to also reset within the group, ensuring that we had a sort of regular interaction with our colleagues, touching base, ensuring that they won't be too many hours. I mean, if I logged on and found that my direct report was still on, I was immediately getting on the phone to her to say, you need to really shut it down. What are we doing? I mean, for me, I must say that enjoyed is not the right word to use. But in a way, I think the transition was a welcome transition, A transition that enabled us actually come to the conclusion that actually you can work remotely and be efficient, you can work remotely and still and still achieve your goals.