Hybrid Working: The Big Considerations for SMB’s
Debbie Morrison • April 3, 2022

For the food & beverage and manufacturing industries, the COVID-19 pandemic created widespread challenges —everything from a surge in demand for food and beverage products, the manufacture and supply of packaging, raw materials and ingredients to staffing, distribution and logistics.


Rampant illness resulted in a reduction in workforces for many consumer goods organisations compounded the issues, forcing them to temporarily rely on untrained, unskilled workers or hire temporary help. Of course, this impacts efficiency, quality and potentially, food safety through mistakes in manufacturing or a potential lack of proper process controls, leading to higher risks, especially for food processing or manufacturing.


While close contact in food manufacturing environments is inevitable, social distancing is especially difficult on production lines where workers are typically within inches of each other. Measures like slowed production lines and socially distanced workers, whilst a feasible solution is difficult to maintain when high consumer demand pressures production facilities to operate at full capacity.


Manufacturing challenges aside, dispersed or remote working teams add another layer of difficulty to properly maintaining compliance with regulatory and best practice safety measures. Naturally, this throws up a range of safety, compliance and legal concerns for HR teams and business owners.


It’s been widely publicised and accepted that ‘hybrid’ work is predicted to continue, if not become the new norm. New COVID variants remain an ongoing risk, as such home working may well remain a critical safety measure for FMCG businesses. Moreover, employees increasingly value and expect some degree of working from home or flexible working at the least.


Given the continued pressures on businesses, there are a number of important factors start-ups and scale-up consumer goods companies must heed when making decisions around long-term hybrid-working, especially if they don’t have in-house HR or legal teams. Start-Up & Scale-Up FMCG Leaders need to be across a range of legal and HR regulatory and compliance requirements to successfully manage hybrid working over the long term.

 

The complexities of Industrial instrument restrictions on flexible work

Food & beverage manufacturers need to navigate the many industrial instruments that may restrict when and where work can be performed, when breaks must be taken and what amounts have to be paid to employees for work at different times. This adds a layer of complexity for hybrid working policies, which can make the retention of staff and casual workers challenging for executives and business leaders. Furthermore, attracting new employees can be difficult if restrictions that impact awards such as the Food, Beverage and Tobacco Manufacturing Award are not clearly communicated.

 

Cross-border hybrid work: The risks to compliance and insurance

For Australian FMCG businesses, it’s crucial to work closely with supply chain, distribution and 3PL partners in addition to managing employees working interstate or across jurisdictions since border restrictions create a number of challenges. Cross-border work, especially supply and distribution of goods or raw materials can impact state-based compliance requirements, including, for example, any changes regarding the jurisdictional coverage under discrimination and work health and safety laws and confirming the correct payroll tax and workers compensation arrangements are in place. 


According to a study conducted by Aberdeen Group, 45% of supply chain executives say that they are experiencing increased pressure for regulatory compliance and internal compliance to contracts. To avoid the risk of bad reputation, ethical or compliance issues with suppliers, organisations need to carefully assess their suppliers both new and existing since supply chain risks have a direct impact on the firm’s profitability according to 69% of supply chain executives. In addition, the ability to meet customer demand (54%) and supply disruptions (50%).

 

Avoid Hybrid-Working Prejudice

The flexibility afforded by hybrid working can be considered one way in which employers can meet some employee expectations when it comes to diversity and inclusion. However, Start-Up & Scale-Up consumer goods organisations that employ a mix of office and site-based staff need to navigate hybrid working with care to ensure the pros don’t become cons.


Having learned to live with COVID-19, the sense of a return to normality in recent months could see a swift move by consumer goods companies to mandate a return to the office. Physically present employees will feel like a boon for employers, however, employee attitudes have changed and for many office workers, that will not be welcome news. 

Navigating the tensions resulting from the paradox of low paid, casual staff who have had to work on-premise versus office workers who’ve enjoyed the flexibility of working from home needs careful handling by executives.


The COVID-19 pandemic put these casual workers in the front line, those in manufacturing, food and beverage production and retail were classified as essential. In contrast to office workers who could work from home, in effect protecting themselves from COVID-19 risk, many front-line workers had no choice but to work on site. HR leaders have been challenged to balance the safety and wellbeing of these workers while keeping them motivated and ensuring business continuity. 


Employer responses such as paying bonuses have been band-aid reactions at best. Whilst bonuses may help to motivate workers in the short-term, broader, more considered approaches from HR are required to avoid longer-term problems. For example, base pay has generally not improved for these workers according to a study by Corkery & Mahashwari, 2020). Furthermore, access to sick pay and better health insurance or support for health & wellbeing hasn’t improved, despite employees facing increasing workloads and greater exposure to COVID-19 as consumer demand continued to rise. Needless to say, the mismanagement of this can be costly. Employers should give consideration to how they can help to support employees return to the office rather than implementing blanket policies on a full-time return to the office.

 

Managing Health & Safety Remotely

The benefits of ‘hybrid’ work don’t come without risk. Employers often have much lower visibility and practical control of remote working environments, in addition, the excess work hours, stress, anxiety, isolation or loneliness all need to be considered.


It’s the responsibility of business leaders to proactively take the necessary steps to support employees working remotely, through the regular communication of health and wellbeing messages addressing risks to physical safety and mental health. 
 

Inclusivity and Wellbeing for remote staff

Whilst there are tangible benefits to hybrid-working, there is also the potential for unintended cultural consequences for teams who rarely interact in person. With employees and job seekers alike expecting greater efforts from employers to not only build diverse and inclusive company cultures but to empower and support the health and wellbeing of staff.
Ensuring employees feel connected and engaged has never been so important. Business leaders must proactively work to implement initiatives that bring employees together in ways that are meaningful and enjoyable for them. Setting aside the time and resources for public recognition, regular communication (especially for remote staff) and team building or social activities can help employees to feel included and valued. 


Whilst technology and collaboration tools can certainly be useful to help enable greater communication, the onus is on leaders to ensure the initiatives and practices are established in the first place, ensuring these tools are used effectively. The key to success here is flexibility. Giving employees a role in determining what initiatives are implemented and how they are managed is critical. Organisations should be cognisant of the desires and expectations existing employees and future generations have of workplace culture. Both are increasingly interested and perceptive of what organisations are doing to safeguard health and well being and promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace, especially in light of what has been termed the ‘Great Resignation’ and the current war on talent.


How ELR Can Help

At ELR Executive, we recognise that FMCG Start-ups and Scale-ups may not have the in-house HR and Legal expertise to safely navigate the complicated legal and compliance  regulations to properly manage and safeguard staff and themselves in a hybrid working environment over the longterm. We work closely with our partners to help them identify talent who are skilled in handling the complexities of human capital management for the consumer goods industry. 


If you’re interested in understanding how we can help develop a talent pool of future leaders, you can arrange a confidential discussion with one of our experts today by clicking this link 'chat'.

Your Culture Report Won’t Show You This

By John Elliott • June 6, 2025
On paper, they were fully resourced. No complaints logged. No formal red flags. Delivery metrics holding steady. But behind closed doors, the signs were there. Delays. Fatigue. Silence in meetings where pushback used to live. And a growing sense that key people were leaning out, emotionally, if not yet physically. When the cracks finally showed, the conclusion was predictable: “We need more people.” But that wasn’t the real problem. The problem was trust. And most organisations never see it until it’s too late. The Hidden Cost of Disengagement In Gallup’s 2023 global workplace report , only 23% of employees worldwide reported being actively engaged at work. A staggering 59% identified as “quiet quitting”, psychologically detached, going through the motions, doing only what their job description demands. Source: Gallup Global Workplace Report 2023 Disengagement is expensive. But it’s also quiet. It doesn’t show up on a balance sheet. It doesn’t send a Slack message. Disengagement isn’t new, just silenced. And in executive teams, it looks different. It looks like polite agreement in strategy meetings. It looks like leaders shielding their teams from unrealistic demands, instead of confronting the system causing them. It looks like performance metrics still being met… while people emotionally check out. The issue isn’t always capability. It’s safety. Psychological, political, and professional. Many senior leaders don’t raise concerns, not because the problem isn’t real, but because they don’t believe they’ll be heard, supported, or protected if they do. And this is where the failure begins. The Leadership Lie No One Talks About We talk a lot about leadership capability. About experience, commercial acumen, execution strength. But we don’t talk enough about context. Every leadership hire walks into a culture they didn’t create. They inherit unwritten rules, quiet alliances, and legacy power structures. If those dynamics are broken, or if trust is fractured at the top, no amount of capability will compensate. According to a 2022 Deloitte mid-market survey, 64% of executives said culture was their top strategic priority. But only 27% said they actually measured it in a meaningful way. We say culture matters. But we rarely structure around it. And so new leaders walk in with pressure to perform, but little real insight into what the role will cost them emotionally, politically, or personally. We Don’t Hire for Trust. And It Shows. In executive search, the conversation is often dominated by pedigree and “fit.” But fit is often a euphemism for sameness. And sameness doesn't build trust, it maintains comfort. We rarely ask: Does this leader know how to build trust vertically and horizontally? Can they operate in a low-trust environment without becoming complicit? Will they challenge inherited silence, or unconsciously uphold it? Instead, we hire for confidence and clarity, traits that often mask what’s broken, rather than reveal it. And when those hires fail? We call it a mismatch. Or we cite the usual: “lack of alignment,” “wasn’t the right time,” “they didn’t land well with the team.” But the truth is often uglier: They were never set up to succeed. And no one told them until it was too late. The Cultural Infrastructure Is Missing One of the most damaging myths in leadership hiring is that great leaders will “make it work.” That if they’re tough enough, experienced enough, skilled enough, they’ll overcome any organisational dysfunction. But high-performance isn’t just personal. It’s systemic. It requires psychological safety. A clear mandate. The backing to make hard decisions. The freedom to speak the truth before it becomes a PR problem. When that infrastructure isn’t there, when the real power dynamics are unspoken, good leaders stop speaking too. And the silence spreads. What Trust Breakdown Really Looks Like Often, the signs of a trust breakdown don’t show up in dramatic ways. They surface subtly in patterns of underperformance that are easy to misread or excuse. You start to notice project delays, but no one flags the root cause. Teams keep things moving, quietly compensating for the bottlenecks rather than surfacing them. Not because they’re careless, but because they’ve learned that early honesty doesn’t always earn support. New leaders hesitate to make bold calls. Not because they lack conviction, but because the last time they did, they were left exposed. Board reports look flawless. Metrics track nicely. But spend five minutes on the floor, and the energy tells a different story. These are not resource issues. They’re relationship issues. And the data backs it. According to Gallup’s 2023 State of the Global Workplace report , just 23% of employees worldwide are actively engaged. Worse, around 60% are “quiet quitting.” That’s not just disengagement. It’s people doing only what’s safe, only what’s required, because trust has quietly eroded. Gallup also found that managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement, a staggering figure that reinforces just how pivotal leadership trust is. When people don’t feel psychologically safe, they shut down. Not dramatically. Quietly. Invisibly. What’s breaking isn’t the org chart. It’s the ability to speak plainly and be heard. And by the time it’s visible? The damage is already done, and someone calls for a restructure. “Low engagement is estimated to cost the global economy $8.8 trillion, 9% of global GDP.” Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2023 So What’s the Real Takeaway? If you’re seeing performance issues, before you jump to headcount, ask a different question: Do the leaders in this business feel safe enough to tell the truth? Because if they don’t, the data you’re reading isn’t real. And if they do, but you’re not acting on it, then they’ll stop telling you. Leadership doesn’t fail in obvious ways anymore. It fails in the gap between what people know and what they’re allowed to say. And the price of that silence? Missed opportunity. Reputational damage. Cultural decay. Sometimes, the problem isn’t who you hired. It’s what you’ve made it unsafe to say.

The Energy’s Gone, But Everything Still Looks Fine

By John Elliott • May 27, 2025
Why Culture Decay in FMCG Is a Silent Threat to Performance It doesn’t start with resignations. It starts with something much quieter. A head of operations stops raising small problems in weekly meetings. A sales lead no longer defends a risky new SKU. A team member who used to push ideas now just delivers what they’re asked. Nothing breaks. Nothing explodes. It just... slows. And from the outside, everything still looks fine. The illusion of stability In food and beverage manufacturing, where teams run lean and pressure is constant, performance often becomes the proxy for culture. If products are shipping, if margins are intact, if reviews are clean, the assumption is: we're good. But that assumption is dangerous. According to Gallup's 2023 global workplace report, only 23% of employees worldwide are actively engaged, while a staggering 59% are "quiet quitting ", doing just enough to get by, with no emotional investment. And in Australia? Engagement has declined three years in a row. In a mid-market FMCG business, those numbers rarely show up on dashboards. But they show up in other ways: New ideas stall at the concept phase Team members stop challenging assumptions Execution becomes rigid instead of agile Everyone is "aligned" but no one is energised And by the time the board sees a drop in revenue, the belief that once drove the business is already gone. The emotional cost of cultural silence One thing we don’t talk about enough is what this does to leadership. When energy drains, leaders often become isolated. Not because they want to be, but because the organisation has lost the instinct to challenge, question, or stretch. I’ve seen CEOs second-guessing themselves in rooms full of agreement. Seen GMs miss red flags because nobody wanted to be "the problem". Seen founders mistake quiet delivery for deep buy-in. The emotional toll of unspoken disengagement is real. You’re surrounded by people doing their jobs. But no one’s really in it with you. And eventually, leaders stop stretching too. We train people to disengage without realising it Here’s the contradiction that most organisations won’t admit: We say we want initiative, but we reward obedience. The safest people get promoted The optimists get extra work The truth-tellers get labelled difficult So people learn to conserve energy. They learn not to challenge ideas that won’t land. They learn not to flag risks that won’t be heard. And over time, they stop showing up with their full selves. This isn't resistance. It's protection. And it becomes the default when innovation is punished, risk isn't buffered, and "alignment" becomes code for silence. Boards rarely see it in time Boards don’t ask about belief. They ask about performance. But belief is what drives performance. When culture begins to fade, it doesn't look like chaos. It looks like calm. It looks like compliance. But underneath, the organisation is hollowing out. By the time a board notices the energy is gone, it’s often because the financials have turned, and by then, the people who could've helped reverse the trend have already left. In a 2022 Deloitte study on mid-market leadership, 64% of executives said culture was their top priority, yet only 27% said they measured it with any rigour . If you don’t track it, you won’t protect it. And if you don’t protect it, don’t be surprised when it disappears. The real risk: you might not get it back Here’s what no one likes to admit: Not all cultures recover. You can try rebrands. You can run engagement campaigns. You can roll out leadership frameworks and off-sites and feedback platforms. But if belief has been neglected for too long, the quiet ones you depended on, the culture carriers, the stretchers, the informal leaders, they’re already checked out. Some have left. Some are still there physically but not emotionally. And some have started coaching others to play it safe. Once that happens, you're not rebuilding. You're replacing. So what do you do? Don’t listen for noise. Listen for absence. Absence of challenge. Absence of stretch. Absence of belief. Ask yourself: When was the last time someone in the business pushed back? Not rudely, but bravely? When did someone offer an idea that made others uncomfortable? When did a leader admit they were unsure and ask for help? Those are your indicators. Because healthy culture isn’t silent. It’s alive. It vibrates with tension, disagreement, contribution and care. If everything looks fine, but no one’s really leaning in? That’s your problem. And by the time it shows up in the numbers,t might already be too late.