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Hybrid Workplace

Why Hybrid Work Works

Business LeadershipTechnology and Innovation by Featured Contributor on

[Today’s guest contribution was written by Tim Minahan, EVP Strategy and Chief Marketing Officer at Citrix.]

Employees given the flexibility to work both in an office and at home report higher levels of engagement, productivity and well-being.

Whether businesses like it or not, hybrid work is here to stay, and employees like it. And whether they believe it or not, the model is working. Research shows that hybrid workers – those who work partly in an office and partly remote – are more productive and engaged than employees who are entirely office-based or fully remote. They also report better well-being – both physical and mental – and feel more positive about their organization.

Despite the evidence and clear benefits that hybrid work can deliver, many companies are still grappling with whether and how to implement it. Some business leaders feel that real work can’t get done outside the office. But if implemented properly, flexible work models can lead to a more productive, healthy workforce.

More Productive

As revealed by Work Rebalanced, a poll of 900 business leaders and 1,800 knowledge workers around the world conducted by Citrix, 69 percent of hybrid workers feel productive, compared to 64 percent of remote workers and 59 percent of in-office employees. Further,

  • 69 percent of hybrid workers feel engaged, compared to 56 percent of remote workers and 51 percent of in-office employees.
  • 73 percent of hybrid workers are positive about their personal performance, as compared to 69 percent of remote workers and 65 percent of in-office employees.

More Connected

Hybrid workers also view their jobs and employers more favorably than their peers.

  • 71 percent of hybrid workers surveyed say they have a strong emotional connection to their team and immediate colleagues which motivates them to work harder, compared to 63 percent of in-office employees and 60 percent of remote workers.
  • 70 percent of hybrid workers say they have a strong emotional connection to their organization and leadership team, compared to 60 percent of remote workers and 58 percent of in-office employees.
  • 69 percent of hybrid workers would recommend their employer, compared to 60 percent of remote workers and 56 percent of in-office employees.

More Balanced

The pandemic has upended the way people work and driven stress to record levels. But one thing is universal: when employees experience a state of well-being at work, they can unlock their potential, work purposefully and creatively, and make meaningful contributions to the success of the entire organization. Hybrid workers lead the way here too, with 70 percent of those who participated in Work Rebalanced reporting good well-being, compared to 61 percent of remote workers and 60 percent of in-office employees.

Empowered by Technology

When it comes to enabling hybrid work, technology is a key driver of success. Employees want access to tools that allow them to work where they want and how they need to be their most productive. And they expect their employers to deliver it.

Of critical importance is removing the noise and distractions from work that technology can create. As uncovered by Work Rebalanced, the average employee spends around 54 minutes a day dealing with technology challenges. The typical employee, for instance, needs to navigate four or more applications just to execute a single business process, and accessing them requires remembering multiple passwords and navigating a host of different interfaces.

It’s frustrating and slowing them down. But with the right solutions, IT leaders can simplify and streamline work technology to ensure that employees have the space for ‘deep work’ and focus.

The Hybrid Work Stack

Many organizations are already making efforts to do so, leveraging digital workspace solutions that allow them to:

  • Unify work – Whether at home, on plane or in an office, employees have consistent and reliable access to all the resources they need to be productive across any work channel, device or location.
  • Secure work – Contextual access and app security, ensure applications and information remain secure—no matter where work happens.
  • Simplify work – Intelligence capabilities like machine learning, virtual assistants and simplified workflows personalize, guide, and automate the work experience so employees can work free from noise and perform at their best.

IT departments are now much more focused on really understanding and meeting employee needs with the work technology that they provide and are taking more of an employee-led, design thinking approach when it comes to work tech infrastructure.

And the move is paying off, especially among hybrid workers. According to Work Rebalanced, hybrid workers feel more empowered by their work technology, with 68 percent saying that their work technology enables them to perform effectively, compared to 65 percent of remote workers and 60 percent of in-office employees.

The Future of Work

Hybrid work is the Future of Work. And as Work Rebalanced makes clear, it can create significant, positive outcomes for employees and employers alike. If given the flexibility, trust, and power to choose where and how they work best, employees will thrive. And companies that grant it will accelerate their innovation and growth.

Tim Minahan is the executive vice president, business strategy and chief marketing officer at Citrix, a leading provider of digital workspace solutions.

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We’re Still Having This Conversation, Aren’t We?

Business Leadership by Christopher J. Dwyer on

From a great article at Business Insider:

Despite doing “everything” to get employees to return to the office, Starbucks’ CEO said, they’re not returning “at the level” he wants. Speaking at The New York Times’ DealBook policy forum in Washington, DC, on Thursday, Howard Schultz  — who returned as interim CEO in April after Kevin Johnson stepped down from the role — said swaying staffers away from remote work and back to the office hasn’t been productive.

“I have been unsuccessful, despite everything I’ve tried to do, to get our people back to work,” Schultz, 69, said. “I’ve pleaded with them. I said I’ll get on my knees. I’ll do push-ups. Whatever you want. Come back.”

He continued: “No, they are not coming back at the level I want them to. And, you know, we’re a very collaborative, creative group. I realize I’m an old-school person, and this is a different generation.”

So, they’re not coming back at the level he wants them to. Re-read that sentence again above: “…they are not coming back at the level I want them to.” There is no need for every employee to return to an office setting full-time ever again, Howard, and not when the only reasons are 1) misguided conceptions regarding creativity, 2) your age and generational perspectives, and 3) the fact that you want them to, but don’t need them to.

We’re not going down the road of “let’s read why the Future of Work Exchange believes remote work has so many benefits.” We’ve done it before…many times. By now, we know the deal. Flexibility, agility, and scalability are all valuable components of remote and hybrid work, as well as the very concept of talent acquisition now requiring to offer hybrid options for new positions to truly attract candidates (h/t to last week’s FOWX Live panel on remote work and the great insights of JLL’s Caitlin Klezmer and WorkLLama’s Kevin Leete, and a wonderful phrase from the audience: “The office should be a magnet, not a mandate.”).

We chat so much about the “next normal” and the “new world of work” that the very innerworkings of remote and hybrid work are just a formally-accepted reality for the vast, vast majority of workers today. “Working from home” is no longer a foreign concept, nor is the idea that millions upon millions of workers now require flexibility in how they address their roles. It’s worth mentioning that remote and hybrid work aren’t just “safety reactions” to a pandemic, but rather types of working that finally became commonplace and are now driving the biggest exodus of workers from traditional roles.

When the Exchange writes about the “Talent Revolution,” we discuss the reasons why the “Great Resignation” is happening: workers want flexibility and control over their schedules and work structures whilst also desiring purposeful worker and better working conditions. We just wrote recently that if businesses are truly on the fence regarding how to deal with “return-to-office” plans, they should use this time to experiment with various models to see what works…and what doesn’t.

Decisions regarding how workers work should not be based on archaic thinking, nor should they follow a very outdated mindset that professionals cannot be creative unless they are face-to-face with their peers. Elon Musk believes that Tesla will benefit from a return-to-office mandate. Howard Shultz claims he’s “pleaded” with his workers to come back. These types of executives should just realize that:

Remote and hybrid work are the foundation of the Future of Work. The businesses that cannot adopt or adapt to new work models are the ones that will fail to thrive in these dynamic times.

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Elon Musk’s Calculated Gamble on Eliminating Remote Work is “Anti-Future of Work”

Business Leadership by Christopher J. Dwyer on

As reported by Bloomberg, Elon Musk sent an internal memo to his workforce on Tuesday with this fireball of a quote:

“Everyone at Tesla is required to spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office per week,” Musk wrote in an email titled “To be super clear.” “Moreover, the office must be where your actual colleagues are located, not some remote pseudo-office. If you don’t show up, we will assume you have resigned.”

And, oh, it gets better:

In recent weeks, Musk has praised Tesla China employees for “burning the 3am oil” while saying that Americans are “trying to avoid going to work at all.”

What a way to instill confidence in your staff, Elon. Musk has been both lauded and criticized for his business approaches over the years, and, in recent months, has been on a tear in his quest to acquire social media giant Twitter. As the CEO of Tesla (and founder/CEO of SpaceX), he has transcended the limits of what it is be a well-known (and incredibly wealthy) technology executive; Musk is more celebrity than hardline CEO at this point.

Upcoming FOWX Live keynote speaker John Healy sparked an interesting discussion on LinkedIn this week about the fallout and ramifications of Musk’s mandate. The phrase “challenger brand” was brought up in the comments, and this is surely one of the many reasons why he is going large with his proclamations: it’s in his nature to be like this, and, it’s something he intends on sticking to no matter the criticism he receives from the business world. Musk has made it part of his public persona to challenge things in a rough-edged manner.

Here’s the thing, though: we’re not talking about Musk’s unprofessional criticisms of stay-at-home orders or his public ventures for control of Twitter. Musk is actively shaking up the Future of Work movement is a very negative manner for the sake of valorization of burnout and rigidity. Simply lauding the poor working conditions of Tesla’s overseas factory staff is bad enough (there are numerous reports of illnesses, injuries, and less-than-ideal conditions at these facilities over the past few years); to say that Americans, who have embraced flexible working models in the wake of a global health crisis and consequently reaped the many rewards of doing so, are “trying to avoid work” is even worse (and incredibly, incredibly untrue).

White-collar workers, who are typically enabled with the ability to work from home or inject hybrid days into their work-week, have been revolting against return-to-office plans that wreak of the pre-pandemic world. The Future of Work Exchange, since its launched last year, has been a progressive proponent of flexibility in the workplace, evangelizing the benefits of hybrid workplaces during an era in which a “Talent Revolution” is occurring because workers crave that flexibility.

The other aspect here that needs to be discussed is the calculated risk Musk is taking in proclaiming that remote work isn’t viable. Tesla is sure to lose staff in the wake of his new mandate, and, more critically, it will lose its status as a hotbed of talent in the eyes of candidates now and in the future. Working at Tesla surely has some panache, however, if the environment and culture reflect Musk’s ignorant vision, workers are risking burnout and an extreme lack of flexibility.

The Future of Work revolves around the notions of worker empowerment, flexibility, empathy, and a better alignment between workplace and worker. Elon Musk and Tesla’s approach to remote work is a backwards move that erases the progress the business world has made over the past two years.

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Flexibility Is a Catalyst for the Next Great Iteration of the Workplace

Business Leadership by Christopher J. Dwyer on

There’s enough discussion around the technological component of the Future of Work movement: artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, digital staffing, etc. While “innovation” in and of itself is one of the three major foundational legs of the Future of Work (the other two being “the evolution of talent” and “the transformation of business thinking”), there’s so much more to the very notion of work optimization than just automation and new technology.

As we’ve learned over the past two-plus years, the workplace itself has become a living, breathing entity that has the power to determine the overall productivity of a business, and, more importantly, how emotionally tethered the workforce is to the greater organization. For the record, it’s not just a matter if or when a business offers remote or hybrid work options, but rather how deeply rooted flexibility truly is within all facets of how work is done and how the workforce is ultimately managed.

Now would be the best time to bring up the annoying factor in every business-related conversation: “The Great Resignation” continues unabated, sparked by a veritable “Talent Revolution” that has restructured the way workers perceive their jobs, roles, and career paths. The very concept of flexibility is not just a “perk” for talent; it’s become a determining factor in whether or not a professional chooses to remain with an enterprise or search for greener pastures.

From here, flexibility is catalyst for the next great iteration of the workplace. There are undeniable roots from the larger idea of flexibility, including empathy-led leadership (more flexibility in how leaders lead), leveraging new models to get work done (distributed teams, new functional collaboration, etc.), more humanity within the fabric of the workplace, and, of course, more malleability in where workers work (remote work, hybrid workplace, etc.).

And, when we bring up this idea of “flexibility,” it doesn’t just translate into specific aspects of the workplace, but rather all of them. That’s right: the next iteration of the workplace centers on how work is done rather than on archaic principles of control and authority, including:

  • Promoting an inclusive workplace that welcomes and values all voices, no matter their differences, disabilities, etc.
  • Relying on empathy-led and conscious leadership that takes into account worker emotions and perceptions.
  • Offering various outlets of paid leave (maternity, paternity, wellness, etc.).
  • Embracing flexible work models, including fresh takes on shift-based work, four-day work-weeks, collaborative-led schedules, etc.
  • Supporting remote and hybrid work options (including offering proper hardware, software, leadership support, etc.).
  • Augmenting these remote and hybrid models with digital workspaces.
  • Measuring both employee engagement and productivity, and;
  • Detailing flexible work options within new job requisitions (to attract talent).

Interested in learning more about the critical role of flexibility in today’s transformative world of work? Join the Future of Work Exchange at its inaugural in-person, roundtable-styled conference on June 14 in Boston:

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Once Again, Businesses Have an Opportunity to Experiment with Workplace Strategy

Business Leadership by Christopher J. Dwyer on

Although it seems as if many regions (and individuals) around the world are acting as if the pandemic is over, the hard truth is that we’re still not close to the finish line. Last week, when pandemic expert and longtime virologist Dr. Anthony Fauci clarified previous remarks and stated that the United States was out of the “acute phase” of the pandemic, it meant that businesses, professionals, and us as people were in an odd gray zone; case counts are rising, but hospitalizations are falling. We’re returning to many of the events and situations that weren’t possible last year, however, we’re still remaining cautious in specific instances.

We know what this means for us as individuals; we can make calculated risks based on our comfort levels, where we are physically within the country (local transmission levels), and our personal networks (i.e., opportunities for infect at-risk family members or friends). However, what does this mean for the typical enterprise?

Well, the Future of Work Exchange believes that this is another opportunity to experiment with how they want to operate from a workplace structure perspective. Although we’ve heard (over and over and over again) that return-to-office plans were in place, there are still tens of thousands of organizations that have still not finalized their strategy regarding how they want their work. And, those that have opened their doors to workers should hopefully be viewing the past several months as the greatest opportunity to see what works, and what doesn’t, in regards to hybrid models.

The remote vs. hybrid vs. all in-person debates have been raging since the summer of 2020, a time when both professionals and people tired of four or five months’ worth of stress, anxiety, loneliness, fear, and frustration. While there was a political storm brewing over when to ease lockdowns, business leaders faced yet another critical quandary in how they were continuing to operate in evolving, previously-unknown conditions.

Last year, I suggested that enterprise utilize their time to experiment with various workplace structures, management methods, and technology-led collaboration to see what made the most sense for when the business world ultimately called for a return to workers getting back to “normal.” While we now know that there is no normal, nor should there be, some organizations tooled with hybrid schedules, fully-remote options for specific functions, and core in-person work for roles that demanded it. There was a massive payoff to this: business leaders were able to glean the productivity benefits, flexibility, and overall worker engagement that resulted from these endeavors. Too, these organizations were also able to determine how to move forward during those uncertain times, all in preparation for when the pandemic would be at a more controllable phase.

While it’s way too early to say that the COVID-19 crisis is nearing its resolution, it is safe to assume that we have entered a more controllable state, one in which vaccines are aplenty, there are antiviral options that can have a tremendous effect on high-risk individuals, and the fact that immunity may be at its highest point. While the specter of another immunity-dodging variant looms, as does a fall and early winter surge, now is the perfect time for those organizations that haven’t experimented with new work models to do so.

What does that entail?

  • Determine which functional groups require in-person collaboration and the frequency of such coordination, then build a hybrid schedule around these meetings. Workers that crave a hybrid workplace model will be much more productive if they know that their in-office days are centered around the meetings they require, rather than wasting time at desks and cubicles on tasks and projects that can be effectively supported remotely.
  • Gauge the overall culture of the workplace and consider what needs to be done to positively engage workers. Culture is a foundational element of the Future of Work, as well as one of several crucial attributes that play vital roles in talent attraction and talent retainment. Does the organization’s culture reflect rigidity and an unwillingness to be flexible? Is this depleting morale? If so, now is the ideal time to experiment with hybrid and remote models, and, measure their effectiveness on the overall mood of the workplace.
  • Create a “beyond perks” program that is attractive to both in-office and remote workers. Some businesses are offering meal plans to those who commute to the workplace everyday, while supporting fully-remote workers with financial support for home office hardware. These small tokens may seem trivial in the greater vacuum of business, however, they can go a long way in helping workers feel like they are appreciated.
  • Understand that “safety-first” plans may still be required for at-risk individuals. While many of us have been enjoying some pre-pandemic activities, such as restaurants and concerts, there are many of us who are at-risk for severe virus outcomes (immunocomprised persons, for example). Forcing workers to appear in-person when they are at this risk of severe illness is not only irresponsible, it’s one way to lose an employee’s engagement with the workplace. Smaller and mid-sized organizations can handle these situations with specific remote or hybrid plans, while enterprise-sized companies can put together blanket guidelines that work for all at-risk workers.
  • Use this time to harness the power of digital workspace technology. Digital workspaces have become a necessity in today’s flexible working world. As remote workers continue to require access to systems, data, and intelligence, businesses will need to enhance their workspace technology to ensure that professionals can tap into the power of a more secure, more flexible, and, most importantly, a more agile, hybrid cloud infrastructure no matter where they are located.

These are just a handful of recommendations for experimenting with new workplace models. If businesses can take advantage of these next few months, they will be better equipped to pivot if required in the event of a fall or winter surge. In addition, experimenting with flexible arrangements will result in several fantastic by-products, such as an improved workplace culture and better worker engagement.

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Another Potential COVID Wave Should Permanently End Hybrid Work Hesitation

Business Leadership by Christopher J. Dwyer on

I know, I know; we don’t want to hear it, especially after so many restrictions were loosened over the past several weeks. The more transmissible Omicron subvariant, called BA.2, has been causing a bit of havoc in China, the UK, and other areas that had (even recently) experienced a dramatic down-tick in virus caseloads over the past month or two.

The hard truth here is that, by utilizing wastewater analysis, we can detect increased COVID caseloads before they actually occur…and, as reported in The Wall Street Journal, things aren’t looking so rosy for the United States regarding another Omicron wave.

“The last few days have been a little worrisome,” Larry Madoff, medical director of the bureau of infectious disease and laboratory sciences at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, said late last week. “It certainly bears careful watching.”

Wastewater sampling here and at hundreds of sites nationwide is once more drawing closer scrutiny from epidemiologists worried the spread of what appears to be a yet-more-contagious version of Omicron, known as BA.2, and rising cases in Europe could soon spoil the latest U.S. recovery. The number of wastewater sites indicating virus increases on a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention dashboard has risen in recent weeks, though the majority of sites still show declining levels.

In Boston and beyond, these systems during the Omicron wave helped quickly detect virus-concentration surges, declines and circulating variants, often before testing and case data. Health authorities believe it will become an increasingly important early-warning tool that can help guide public messaging and other responses, like marshaling resources to surging areas.”

There’s a lot to unpack there: the data shows declining levels, however, there’s more than enough concern to believe that rising cases across the pond predict the same here in America (historically, what happens in the UK is a crystal ball of what will occur in the United States three weeks or so later). “Still, the bottom line is that BA.2 is chiefly dangerous to those people who are not well-protected against the Omicron variant already. If you can’t be personally well-protected, then it is also important to be surrounded by large numbers of people who are. You need to evaluate local protective levels as well as personal immunity and decide on the precautions you want to be taking,” says Dr. John Skylar in his latest “COVID Transmissions” article, which is a must read.

Google and Apple are planning a return to the office early next month (in hybrid form, at least). Dozens of Fortune 500 organizations are doing the same. And then there’s Goldman Sachs, whose CEO David Solomon last year called remote work an “aberration” that needed “to be corrected as quickly as possible.”

I completely understand that business leaders crave normalcy (whatever that is today) and desire some form of in-person collaboration between themselves and their workforce, their workers and each other, etc. However, aren’t we past the back-and-forth now? Haven’t we reached a point when we can firmly say that remote and hybrid work are not only beneficial, productive, and flexible models, but should also be permanent fixtures of the contemporary enterprise?

There are millions of workers that cannot perform their jobs remotely and we need to respect that. However, there are millions more that can, and can do so effectively. We’ve gone through two years of this, particularly the discourse around return-to-office planning, whether it’s actually safe to do so, and how the workforce will react to a switch back to operating in-person.

Solomon said that remote work “is not ideal for us, and it’s not a new normal” at a finance industry conference in February 2021. What Solomon obviously has wrong here is that remote and hybrid work is the new normal, and, any conversations regarding full return-to-office plans are going to be spoiled by a virus that has not yet reached an endemic state. It would be foolhardy, and, to be honest, embarrassing, to mandate workers to return to the office five days a week (as Solomon recently mandated) and then have to re-pivot back to a hybrid model due to a rise in BA.2 cases.

We’re just so past these discussions by now and any CEO, executive leader, etc. that believes returning to the office five days a week is the best path forward is making an absolute miscalculation. The workforce wants to operate remotely. Top-tier candidates crave flexibility and the agility that are ingrained in remote and hybrid work. The Great Resignation, may we reiterate, is happening because workers are leaving jobs that don’t offer these flexible options. In a hyper-competitive, increasingly-globalized, tech-focused candidate market, do business leaders really want to miss out on talent because of their archaic, ignorant thinking?

We don’t know if the Omicron subvariant will cause a similar wave to what we experienced as a country from the 2021 holidays up until just a few weeks ago. What we do know is that even the slightest threat of another surge right now should be a wake-up call that any hesitation around hybrid work should be silenced…permanently.

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Two Years Later…

Business Leadership by Christopher J. Dwyer on

In some regards, it feels like it was just yesterday. To some of us, it feels like forever ago. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 pandemic and began what was (and continues to be) a tumultuous disruption on all things related to both our personal and professional lives.

Do you remember that week? I’m sure you do. The rampant confusion, the anxiety, and the uncertainty? Do you recall the moment it “hit” for you? Was it that week, or was it when your company instituted an immediate work-from-home policy? Was it the moment that your kids were forced to stay home from school?

We all have our own stark reminders and memories of the earliest days of the pandemic. I remember picking up my son’s ride-on truck at a local fix-it shop; the owner, a retired industrial mechanic, asked me to keep a distance and had a surgical mask in his fleece pocket. “I’m closing down the shop for at least the next 30 days,” he told me as I was leaving.

There was a haze over our family that Friday, when the country began to panic-buy items at stores (we certainly remember this, right?). My wife and mother-in-law went to our local Target and came back with $400 in various household staples. The moment it really sunk in, however, was reacting to a robocall from the town’s school superintendent, who stated that the following week’s classes were canceled in lieu of the emerging health crisis. It was only a matter of days before my kids began their first days of remote learning, not to return to a classroom for nearly nine months. And it was only a little a month from then when my uncle, a person whom is ingrained in many of my childhood memories, succumbed to COVID in April 2020. I look back, too, on the day of his funeral, an overcast morning in which limited members of my family would be masked and several feet apart around his grave site, something I know so many of you experienced, as well.

No matter where you were on March 11, 2020, there is no doubt that the pandemic touched your life in some profound manner. When we look back on two years of disruption, transformation, uncertainty, and trauma, there are various ways that we, as humans, have been changed. I’ve often said (many times on the Future of Work Exchange Podcast), that it’s incredibly tough to point to a “silver lining” during a pandemic that has killed over 6 million people across the world. I’d rather think of it this way: we were forced into change, both personally and professionally, and from that, our world was transformed. Think about how many facets of everyday work life have been altered; think of the Future of Work tenets that were rapidly accelerated over the past two years:

  • Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) becoming the preeminent, non-technological components of the Future of Work coming to bear.
  • Remote and hybrid workplaces not only serving as lifelines for business continuity, but dramatically transforming the way enterprises think about how they get work done.
  • The extended workforce not only rising in size and prominence, but also in strategic value: 82% of businesses in Future of Work Exchange research stated that the non-employee workforce served as a means of flexibility and agility during the most trying times of the past two years.
  • The criticality of “flexibility” in all of its forms permeating throughout the symbiotic world of talent and work.
  • The rise of empathy-led leadership and business leaders integrating more “human” elements into how they manage their workforce.
  • More emphasis on the overall experiences of both candidates and hiring managers as they traverse both a “Great Resignation” and a “Talent Revolution.”
  • The continued importance of digital transformation, especially as the events of 2020 forced businesses to operate without traditional in-person processes in place.
  • “Recruit from anywhere” becoming a viable, trusted, and powerful way for businesses to leverage talent marketplaces, digital staffing, direct sourcing, and enhanced candidate outreach to find, engage, and source top-tier talent.
  • Direct sourcing emerging as perhaps the most innovative, talent-led strategy within the talent acquisition spectrum.
  • Purposeful work becoming a foundation of how workers and professionals plan the next steps of their careers.

In totality, the past two years have been a time of trauma, disruption, and loss. They’ve also sparked a revolution of talent, a reimagining of how work gets done, and new applications for technology and innovation.

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Yet Another Phase of the Pandemic Sparks More Hybrid Work Debate

Business Leadership by Christopher J. Dwyer on

It’s actually quite incredible when you really think about it: over the past several months, we’ve gone through several phases of the COVID-19 pandemic:

  • A Delta variant-led wave of cases and hospitalizations that rivaled last winter’s surge.
  • A brief lull, in which the Thanksgiving holiday kicked off what should have been a time for families to kickstart holiday plans that looked much different than 2020.
  • An Omicron variant-fueled surge that saw double and, at times, triple the amount of caseloads of the worst of the previous winter’s wave.

And now, we’re heading into the spring months (in the Northern Hemisphere) with yet another state of optimism that is actively guiding our personal and professional lives. The CDC has new facial covering recommendations based on risk levels predicated on county-level hospitalization rates and caseloads per 100,000 citizens.

If you watched the State of the Union address last week, you may have noticed that very few individuals in the room wore facial coverings during the event. As someone who routinely masks up in grocery stores and other indoor venues (even after three Moderna doses and while living in a heavily vaccinated state), this was something that I figured could bother some people…however, it’s clear that the greater direction of this pandemic is heading into a phase that promotes less restrictions and mandates.

And, speaking of the SOTU address: President Biden did at one point during his speech mention the much-vaunted “return-to-office” plans, stating, “It’s time for America to get back to work and fill our great downtowns again with people. People working from home can feel safe and begin to return to their offices. We’re doing that here in the federal government. The vast majority of federal workers will once again work in person.”

While the President was obviously ecstatic about the direction of the pandemic and wanted to capture this moment in front of a gigantic live audience, I fear that many business leaders will take this as a sign that it’s okay to rush workers back to offices without actually thinking of the flexibility and productivity gains that their talent has experienced over the past two years.

The conversations were due, especially from the moment that the first signs of the Omicron surge were beginning to slow just a few weeks ago. And now, business leaders face an existential question: how do they balance the need for in-person collaboration with the specter of talent retention risk hanging overhead? Is there a fine line between a return-to-office mandate and a softer approach, such as recommended office days? Will a too-quick, sudden “return to the days of old” alienate the workforce?

Future of Work Exchange research found that, on average, upwards of 43% of the typical enterprise’s total workforce operated in a remote or hybrid capacity heading into 2022. That number is probably much higher considering where we are today after the Omicron surge. Asking such a wide swath of the workforce to make such a critical call about their workstyle at this point in the game is, to be very, very blunt, asking too much.

While we don’t need to rehash the benefits, all of the signs are clear: workers enjoy flexibility, they enjoy the enhanced work-life integration, and they are fruitful in how productive they can be when they’re not wasting hours of each day on a commute. Business leaders cannot, and should not, expect total adherence and a willingness to leave what has been working so well over the past two years.

These articles, even though they are optimistic at heart, aren’t helping the situation. What we sometimes forget is that there’s a stark difference between feeling safer in a movie theater or restaurant now versus up and abandoning a workplace structure that has become the norm for the past 24 months. I wasn’t joking last week when I stated that, for real, we weren’t going back.

Being optimistic about the current state of the pandemic is one thing. Transforming that optimism into a reason to bring millions upon millions of workers back into the office when the remote and hybrid infrastructure has revolutionized how work is done? That is something much, much different. The move to remote and hybrid work was a reactive measure when it was first needed in March 2020. Two years later, it’s become a permanent fabric of the Future of Work.

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Remote and Hybrid Work May Have Issues, But They’re Undeniably Powerful Future of Work Attributes

Business Leadership by Christopher J. Dwyer on

I’ve long devoured news and analysis related to the concept of remote and hybrid work…and not just during these crazy pandemic times. I’ve been a hybrid worker for the entirety of my career these past 16 years, and, particularly over the past decade, more “remote” than “hybrid.” I’ve stepped into an office only a handful of times since March 2020. Besides my own experiences with the hybrid work, the Future of Work Exchange is committed to helping businesses and workers better understand the implications of such a model, the benefits, how to structure a hybrid infrastructure, and, of course, how the hybrid workplace factors into the digitization of work.

A recent New York Times article by Elizabeth Spiers, former editor in chief of The New York Observer and the founding editor of Gawker, argues that we, as both leaders and workers, have lost some semblance of “work” with it becoming “too casual” over the past two years. “What We Lose When Work Gets Too Casual” highlights that:

“There are trade-offs, though. The loss of workplace formalities like fixed start and stop times, managerial hierarchies with clear pathways for advancement and professional norms that create boundaries between personal and professionally acceptable behavior only hurt workers. Though the pandemic-era transformation of white-collar work seems empowering at first, we should not be deceived: Many of these changes mostly benefit employers.”

Spiers further writes that employers can take advantage of an environment in which the lack of shift formality means that workers will pump extra hours into their work and projects without the extra pay (for salaried employees, of course). This is, in fact, a common drawback to the hybrid model, in which workers cannot seemingly “unplug” from their work and suffer burnout, anxiety, and stress.

It’s often too easy for those work remotely to get caught up in work, to subconsciously allow personal and professional worlds to collide, and to let “casual work culture” become the foundation of a remote working environment. The office becomes home, and the home becomes the offices, Spiers writes. She’s not wrong, as for those white-collar employees that have been working remotely for a lengthy period of time, there is very little crossover between the personal and professional arenas. We stare at our phones checking email, keep our laptops within reach, and spend late nights toiling away. Working at 11pm is just as common as dialing into a video call at 11am.

Spiers’ points are made with good intentions, and she focuses on the fact that this setup mainly benefits the employers. What she is missing, however, is the inherent flexibility that is baked into the hybrid work model. This is what workers crave, it’s what they desire. They want to be able to do the things they want to do without having the pressure of in-person work, long commutes, and endless in-person meetings.

However, there is one idea, above all else, that needs to be taken into consideration. It’s the one driving factor that separates remote work in 2022 vs. remote work in the early months of the pandemic. Businesses must enable their employees with the necessary strategies, solutions, and tools to succeed. Working remotely (or in a hybrid model) does just that, and it’s the most critical argument here. Too much of a “casual” feel to work doesn’t mean that work is being negatively impacted nor does it mean that all remote workers will succumb to burnout (as Spiers writes: “Their personal needs don’t get met because work has so invaded their personal lives that there is no dedicated time for non-work life.”).

Remote work burnout is an issue, for sure. We’ve written about it here on the Future of Work Exchange (rather recently, too!). And I won’t be a hypocrite here: there are many weeks that I’m hitting 70 or 80 hours (or more), as are many of you reading this article. There are times when I sacrifice my personal or family time for work. However, the flexibility will always outweigh whatever imbalances pop up from time-to-time. The fact that I can make breakfast for my kids in the morning or say hi to them in the afternoon instead of being locked in an office? I would gladly take some of those late nights and long weeks for the ability to do these things. It’s a beneficial trade-off, as is the fact that I gain two hours not spending on commutes everyday; I can take the dog for a walk if I have an hour break, or schedule a doctor’s appointment without having to take an entire day off.

The other big point Spiers made in her article is that employers have the ability to “punt” on advancement conversations due to the “informal” environment of remote and hybrid workplaces. She argues that junior and less experienced employees may take on additional work without a clear path to promotions and advancement. While this may be the case in some organizations, I can confidently say that not all business leaders think this way.

The most glaring omission in Spiers’ article is this: she doesn’t mention the “Talent Revolution” happening today, nor the fact that the so-called “Great Resignation” is occurring because of a lack of flexibility within the workplace. Tens of millions of workers have left their roles because of lack of these dynamic benefits, so much so that business leaders are actively trying to configure new ways to find, engage, and source talent based on the overall culture and flexibility of the enterprise itself.

Work may be becoming more casual, but that’s not a bad thing.

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Building the Hybrid Workplace is 2022’s Best Path Towards Digital Transformation

Business LeadershipTechnology and Innovation by Christopher J. Dwyer on

As far back as four or five years ago, you couldn’t escape the greater business discussion of “digital transformation.” The discourse around digital transformation was quite simple and straightforward: enhance organizational efficiency, operations, and functional value through the adoption of automated solutions and digital technology. Now, the conversation may be much more stripped down than the concept itself, however, as implementing enough systems, connecting them via intricate architecture, and driving real solution adoption are all much more difficult, of course.

The other side of digital transformation (particularly business agility), too, is the fact that the “digital enterprise” harnesses the power of digitization to boost internal and external experiences (candidate, supplier, user, etc.) and end-to-end business processes. When this is taken into consideration, the goal of becoming a truly digital enterprise is that much harder, given the interconnections required to achieve these technology-led and business goals.

An enterprise’s best path towards digital transformation today is to capitalize on something that had been organically growing since before the pandemic while becoming a standardized way of operating during disruptive times: remote and hybrid work. The “hybrid workplace” requires many of the same measures that end-to-end digital transformation does, up to and including executive buy-in, the necessary software, and the cultural attributes needed to drive adoption and value.

  • Developing the next great hybrid workplace requires investments and resources akin to a full-scale digital transformation. No one said it was going to be easy, however, if a business had been long willing to invest time, money, and energy into digital transformation, why shy away now? Consider the stakes at hand: the so-called “Great Resignation” is largely occurring because employees desire flexibility, agility, and other aspects not related to compensation. The hybrid workplace is not just a “nice to have” at this juncture but rather a pure business investment that will pay incredible dividends in terms of productivity, engagement, and worker experience. Back in 2016 and 2017, digital transformation was the hottest business topic; let’s take that level of passion for digitization and apply it towards building the next great hybrid workplace.
  • Removing redundancies means a smoother, end-to-end experience for both traditional and remote workers (as well as other key stakeholders, partners, and suppliers). Digitally transforming the workplace to account for a hybrid infrastructure doesn’t just benefit those that primarily work from home. The digital enterprise is founded on a seamless user experience that allows all stakeholders and employees to access data, automation, intelligence, content, etc. in an on-demand manner. By shoring up technology gaps, removing redundancies for access (i.e., too many access points for stakeholders and workers), and providing a near-limitless experience, the greater business benefits from these digital enhancements.
  • An operational hybrid workplace translates into a superior employee/worker experience. While it’s true (and stated above) that workers crave flexibility, they also desire an overall “work experience” that allows them to be productive, happy, and collaborative. During the early days of the pandemic, the shift to remote work was borne of necessity, leaving little room to account for hybrid workplace nuances. Today, businesses have had time to plan and implement the best-fit hybrid work infrastructure and can truly develop a digital workspace that not only is operational and efficient, but also enables workers with a more positive overall experience. Most importantly: they will have the tools they need to be productive and effective in their roles…a surefire factor in keeping them from taking their talents to another organization.
  • Hybrid work technology represents the best of what digitization has to offer, allowing enterprises to set the stage for digital transformation. The simplest reason why developing a hybrid workplace is the easiest pathway to digital transformation? The technology in use is current, modern, and is connected to the core components of the Future of Work movement: it creates accessibility, drives intelligence, and boosts interconnectivity between humans and systems. Digital workspace technology is collaborative in nature and enables communication between functional units, as well as automated, on-demand sharing of data and content. The original foundations of digital transformation, even several years ago, revolved around the concept of real-time connections and superior interconnectivity between workers, leaders, customers, and suppliers. The hybrid workplace of today represents all of the aspects…and more.
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