1 Business Case Scenario – Assessment 2 Managing Culture and Change 21926, SPRING 2021 Ozfone is an Australian telecommunications and technology company, which markets voice, mobile, internet access, pay television and other services. The company has more than 5,000 employees and has been selling services to businesses, households and individuals for over 45 years. With COVID-19 vaccinations now underway, countries are beginning to map out their roadmap out of lockdown. For companies, it creates important challenges and opportunities as to how they choose to return to work. That presents an interesting new dynamic for both the employer and the employee. In 2020, Ozfone was forced to transition its employees from being physically present in their offices to working remotely. However, at the beginning of 2021, the company implemented the hybrid working model – allowing employees to work both remotely and in the office. This was supported by the CEO of the company who is aware that even if a vaccine or effective treatment will open the possibility of a safe return to the traditional workplace, remote work will take a permanent place in the employment mix. Hybrid working models, done right, (1) allow organisations to better achieve innovation and attract talent, (2) lead to higher job satisfaction and autonomy of employees, and (3) define a future of work that is more flexible, people-oriented and sustainable. However, the way how the company approached the hybrid working model has been causing some serious problems. One of them is that the managers hold an unconscious bias that because remote workers are not seen in the office they work less as those seen in the office. There is P h o to b y s n ap co m m s. co m 2 also the belief that showing up to work, having good attendance and putting in long hours is more important than the results. Managers feel that they cannot trust that their working-from- home employees are actually doing the work and as a result, the employees are feeling micromanaged. The management by results (supporting employee autonomy on when, where and how they do their work) in the company has been clearly not embraced by the managers. Moreover, the conditions in the office space are not designed for a hybrid form of collaboration due to insufficient technological support. Not all meeting rooms are connected to the video conferencing software which causes remote workers to miss out on important information because it was communicated in person. The other problem is that the way how meetings are run has not changed from the pre-Covid version. For example, although most meetings are now attended by both remote and in-person team members, activities such as brainstorming are done on a traditional flipchart with paper post-it notes. This leaves remote workers feeling like they are not part of the team. Apart from that, the physical separation of staff in the ...