Strategic HR HS2 expansion
I don’t
Remote working
Advancements in and the
proliferation of remote work pose
arguments both for and against HS2.
According to ONS figures from
2018, more than 32.5 million people
in the UK said they mainly work
from home as part of their job.
In AirBnb’s 2019 Future of Work
report 77% of UK workers said
they feel companies should provide
more remote working options to
attract talent.
In areas that benefit from better
and faster connections to company
headquarters employees could
have more of a case for working
remotely given employers would
know that, when needed, their people
can be in-situ for a face-to-face meeting
much quicker.
Journey times from London to
Birmingham are expected to be cut from
one hour 24 minutes to 49 minutes. In
another example, the journey from
Manchester Piccadilly
to Birmingham would take just 37
minutes, rather than the one hour 46
think HS2 is
a commuter
line. I see
HS2 as a
connector
line
minutes it currently takes.
Melanie Steel, HR
transformation consultant and
founder of People Change
Expertise, supports the HS2
programme and recognises that
more transport infrastructure is
needed across the country.
She says: “We want in parallel
to make it as easy as possible for
people to be able to commute,
and for people to be able to
work wherever.”
But it’s not just from a business
perspective that Steel sees the potential of
such a project.
“I think we need to think about
infrastructure in terms of – yes there is a
big push for it in business, but there’s also
a big part of it socially. People choose to
live where they live, and don’t
necessarily want to move. That goes
within their personal relationships as
well as in their work relationships. So I
think there’s a bigger piece in terms of
wellbeing.”
But with more people able to work
remotely some argue HS2 may be an
HS2 in the 2020 Budget
The UK’s 2020 Budget announced record spending on the country’s
infrastructure. Train lines, other public transport and the nation’s roads up and
down the country have been collectively granted more than £600 billion for
improvement.
Announcements in this year’s Budget that could affect or contribute to the
development of HS2 and the impact it will have on future jobs include:
£20 million of funding to develop the Midlands Rail Hub.
A £4.2 billion contribution to the Transforming Cities Fund, which will help give
eight Mayoral Combined Authorities north of London the opportunity to invest
more in their local infrastructure.
A review of the Green Book, which sets out how decisions on major
investment programmes are appraised in order to make sure that
government investment spreads opportunity across the UK.
A National Infrastructure Strategy scheduled for publication later in the Spring.
A Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), due for completion in July that will
give detailed spending plans for public services and investment, covering
resource budgets for three years from 2021-22 to 2023-24 and capital
budgets up to 2024-25.
Priorities for the Comprehensive Spending Review include:
1 ‘Levelling up economic opportunity across all nations and regions of the
country by investing in infrastructure, innovation and people, to drive
productivity and spread opportunity’.
2 ‘Reducing carbon emissions and improving the natural environment’.
unnecessary spend. The modern workforce
has more digital tools at its disposal than
ever. Emails, video meetings, online calls,
telepresence – all have become or stand to
become common office practice, and they are
typically more cost effective than a highspeed
ticket to Birmingham.
Guy Pink, a self-employed portfolio
careerist in HR, argues the money for HS2
could be better spent elsewhere.
“By the time the whole network is actually
finished are we going to be getting on a train
and commuting down to London? Will we be
much more likely to be working in some local
hub?” he questions.
Time spent travelling, Pink points out, is
actually “dead time” in which little to no work
gets done.
Yet moving to a wholly-digital way of
working comes with its own challenges for
HR, for example how to replicate ‘water
cooler moments’. Group chats for teams
through apps such as WhatsApp or
Slack are often being used to replicate
such environments.
Fiona Mullan, chief people officer at
mobile top-up platform Ding, argues that
this digital social connection is much more
natural for younger workers.
“A new generation is used to connecting
through social media with friends and contacts
on a more distributed and online basis, so
their experience is online from the get-go. And
therefore they bring that into the workplace,”
she says.
She believes digital communication
platforms can benefit everyone in
an organisation.
“Generally when you put it at the heart of
the workplace it tends to give everybody more,
and those who haven’t been considered remote
workers before tend to equally benefit from it,
at least in my experience,” she adds.
But will technology take over entirely and
make connections like HS2 redundant?
No matter how technology progresses, Steel
argues that a sense of community always wins.
“There is no substitute sometimes for
people that just need to meet face to face.
Technology supplements a lot of that but it
cannot replace it in totality,” she says.
For Mullan, successfully cultivating
personal relationships between remote and
site-based workers takes two things. First, there
must be an awareness that the needs of remote
workers and those based at HQ are different.
Second, we need to be aware that “some
aspects of face-to-face engagement can be
extraordinarily helpful”.
24 HR April 2020 hrmagazine.co.uk
/hrmagazine.co.uk