Rory Sutherland on why humans must think irrationally during a time of great change

“When I work from home and I am stuck on something I go and empty the dishwasher. Either the change in behaviour helps you solve the problem or it doesn’t. And if it doesn’t well at least you have emptied the dishwasher.”

Rory Sutherland, vice chairman, Ogilvy UK and author of Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense, was the keynote speaker at REBA's Employee Wellbeing Congress 2021. He believes people instinctively know how to be productive, and open plan offices don’t always enable that, especially in creative work which needs lots of uninterrupted time.

Now that the pandemic and the growth of network technology have enabled the widespread take-up of flexible working, and – much like the ability to pause and rewind live TV – there is no going back to how things were before.

“I think people value the flexibility of ‘when’ [they can work] just as much as they value flexibility of free time,” he said.

REBA’s Employee Wellbeing Congress will be back later this year. To be the first to know the details, register your interest to get ahead of the game.