If you want to get ahead in finance, developing the softer skills side of your capability – your ability to influence, persuade and engage – is critical. Regardless of the job you do, there are many skills that you hone by being around other people – by watching, assimilating, replicating, mirroring. It’s mostly done through face-to-face mimicry and observation, so these are not skills that are easy to learn remotely. 

It also requires more experienced colleagues to evidence and explain why certain things work (or don’t work), or be available to field questions. And that’s just not happening because people aren’t in the office together so much. Flexible working is putting a spanner in the works for those moving up the career ladder, as opportunities for ad hoc learning experiences become increasingly few and far between. 

Impact on promotion rounds

We’re already starting to see the impact of changing working patterns on promotion rounds. It’s becoming clearer that the more junior people being promoted are often those who spend more time in the office. I benefited enormously from being around more senior people in the office early on in my career, watching them work and being able to ask questions in an informal way – without the need to schedule a Teams call.

When I’d been working with the company for about a year, the boss walked out of his office one day, saw me and asked whether I wanted to go along to a meeting. An hour later, I was in my first ever pitch for a CEO job. That just wouldn’t have happened if I’d been working remotely. 

The added value of EQ

In a services-led economy, this is a real problem. The added value that you bring in all of those engagements is emotional intelligence. It’s important that the next generation of finance professionals are given fair opportunities to develop and refine those skills. This isn’t about presenteeism – turning up to the office just for the sake of being there. It’s about managers offering ad hoc opportunities to develop abilities, and ambitious individuals grasping opportunities to develop essential skills.

From a management perspective, there are of course big questions about how you reconcile that with employees’ desires to work flexibly. Nobody wants to be draconian, so the hope is that people work this out and do something about it themselves. If team members aren’t developing as quickly as I’d like them to, I’d make sure that I am trying to teach them as much as I can, and be in more regularly to do that.

Value to being out of the office

I’ll stick my neck out here and say I would never go back to being in the office five days a week. There is enormous value on many different levels to being out of the office – not least, not having to commute to an office, being able to eat a home-cooked lunch rather than an M&S sandwich,and getting stuff done without the distractions of 25 people asking you questions all the time. 

But there’s so much we are losing by not being around colleagues and other more experienced people, all with plenty of expertise to pass on. If you’re not in the office enough, the disadvantage is that those 25 people can’t come and ask you those questions.

Mark Freebairn, Partner and Head of CFO & Board Practices, Odgers Berndtson and ICAEW Board member

The views and opinions expressed by the author are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views, positions, or policies of ICAEW.