i'm going to give it just a few minutes
and we'll get started in the next minute
want to thank everybody for joining us
today
all right we'll we'll go ahead and get
started um wanted to thank everybody for
joining us today uh this lunch and learn
to discuss uh a really big topic that i
believe a lot of us are all dealing with
today how to thrive in this new normal
work environment and today we're we're
really uh blessed to have one of our uh
subject matter experts frank rupin with
us today talking about you know really
the essential guide to success um in the
hybrid work economy that we're living in
today and
you're going to learn a lot in this hour
we're going to be talking about
topics along the lines of labor market
issues facts about general about hybrid
work how employees feel about working
from home
how burnout is on the rise how remote
work is impacting all of us
um the challenges that we need to manage
in the hybrid work model and
what sort of needs to be implemented to
continue um moving in this in this new
model forward and uh frank
comes to us as an organization and
process transformation specialist he has
had incredible experience um you know
starting off coming up graduating from
harvard business school working um at
png uh he's worked at
mckinsey and co sterling brands and
consumer dynamics and he's lived around
the world and he really is an asset to
venture expert advisors and we're we're
thrilled to introduce him today and i
believe everybody's going to learn a
tremendous amount so thank you again for
taking the time and i'll go ahead now
and turn it over to our guest speaker
frank uh to to take it from here so
welcome frank and uh
hi guys thanks so much for taking uh
your time out today hopefully um
you're all safe and cool uh versus where
we are
the interesting thing about this
environment is how quickly it's changing
uh i did a webinar about 18 months ago
on this very subject and if we looked at
what were the main topics of the in that
conversation it was about vaccines
vaccine mandates cdc guidelines and
office safety that was the big
overarching concern of businesses but
fast forward 18 20 months later and now
it's all about the great renegotiation
with the amount of people that have left
the labor force left their jobs and
coming back in
developing a smart
employee-based hybrid work model is
going to actually be critical to
retaining
hiring
uh new talent
and that pretty much cuts across all uh
generations and i think the interesting
thing is that every day there's new
information coming out there's actually
study released today that i'm going to
be referencing during our talk
um that i think is is going to again
keep you up to date and informed so as
you think about how to
uh you know develop a hybrid work model
that's going to work for your company
and your culture
i i think it it's going to help you do
just that i'm a big believer in making
things factual pragmatic
uh and actionable and hopefully at the
end of the day we finish up with our
things you can do tomorrow uh those are
things that you can look to
bring to your management or to bring to
your own team to be able to develop a
really smart motivating and productive
way of developing a hybrid work model
and i think with that um there's a
couple questions we'd like you to um
to ask uh to
complete beforehand and i'm gonna ask
angela to launch that and then we're
gonna get started

so i did launch that are you seeing
those questions pop up attendees

if so comment in the chat
if you see that

okay
while i i'm not i'm going to get started
on this
have we found out anything angelique so
far oh yeah
not yet it looks like we haven't had
anybody vote yet
okay
but
we'll
we'll relaunch it and see if we can get
some votes
okay well i'm going to get started then
um
i think as we look at these quotes
the issue of hybrid work is in
developing that as the ceo microsoft
said
everything becomes more complex not less
complex
um it does require dedicated planning
and because of the mixture of work from
home work from office it creates an
incredible opportunity for businesses
and managers to recreate reinforce
and uh their own corporate culture which
is very much at risk when employees
don't spend time physically together so
it's something that needs to be
proactively managed
so let's just talk about the current
state
we've all heard about the unemployment
rate there's a lot of job openings
people are leaving jobs four and a half
to four and a half million jobs a month
the interesting thing is that according
to some recent studies
nearly a majority of people have no
interest in returning to a traditional
work model uh model and a lot of people
simply don't want to work full-time
and now part of this is because you know
and a good
part is that we've seen the rise of the
entrepreneurial class
2021 saw the biggest rise in new
businesses new business startups uh in
the history of the united states
uh on the downside when we look at why
there is not more
people working it is largely driven by
women and that is working women um if
you look at the participation rate
we're down about three million jobs
versus the all-time high with women in
the workforce so if women simply
participated back to their historical
rate
there would be three more million people
in the workforce and a lot of this
frankly is driven by the lack of
affordable child care
only 11 of us firms subsidize child care
and so people are doing the math you
know it cost me this much amount of
money to
pay for a child um every week versus
what i'm making it's simply not worth
the the the effort to do so
um so why are people leaving they can
it's easier to switch more information
is available
resume gaps are not important and we
just talked about cost they're upset
we're going to get into that much in
much more depth later in this
presentation uncaring boss
in a national quantitative study was the
top reason people are leaving money was
not even in the top five
uh people are exhausted mental health
and burnout issues increasing
and the thing is it's not just about the
workers
parents
um
are increasingly facing that issue with
their own children um
44 of teens are persistently sad or
depressed and as a parent
that takes effort and time it's a
priority and so you're going to be
focused on that as well
the tough thing about hybrid work models
is the amount of information that is out
there is absolutely staggering if you
would google hybrid work model
retaining talent best practices working
from home this is the amount of data
that comes up
and the other thing to remember is that
for most people hybrid work is something
new it's not something they've been
trained to do it's not something they've
been trained to manage
um and that only adds to
the difficulty of trying to implement a
really good hybrid work model um and
maintaining work or productivity and and
happiness with their jobs
so if there's any questions
i'll i'll take them now before we move
in move on to the next section and um
has anything come up on julie or i'll
just keep going yeah just keep going
okay
i think it's important that we start
with the facts we look at the attitudes
that are shaping work and that trends
that we see moving forward
flexible work is here to stay
and the interesting thing is nobody
really
there's very very few people that want
to work
full-time from home
but there are very very few people that
want to 100 work from the office as well
leaders are out of touch there was a
study that came out i just read about
today
and the interesting thing is that
84 of executives
say their workers
are thriving from a mental health
perspective perspective let that sink in
84
yet
when you ask the employees it's only 59
of them said their mental health is
excellent or good there is a big chasm
between how executives and the c-suite
and managers feel their workers are
doing versus what the workers feel
they're doing
high productivity is masking and
exhausted workforce
gen z is at particular risk
60 percent say they are struggling and a
lot of this is because many of them are
going into their first jobs and they're
not having that face-to-face time with
mentors with managers and it's making it
very very difficult they also have not
had the benefit of experiencing the
corporate culture and
being remote all the time
doesn't really allow them to do that
shrinking networks endanger innovation
one of the big findings from all the
research that's been done since this
remote from uh remote has started is
that
people used to
interact with a lot much broader team
different departments but what's
happening is that they have tended to
focus just on their own direct team
members and so innovation um and
interdepartmental cooperation is down
but the good thing is that
work has become more human
because we tend to share things from our
own space
we have more time on the phone we are
talking about ourselves more personally
and also talent is everywhere but it's
really critical that you define
flexibility and a lot of companies have
got this wrong like facebook for example
said you could be remote but we're not
gonna we're gonna pay you based upon
local local cost of living and there's
been all these reversals and and that's
been very very confusing so it's
important that you define what you mean
by flexibility especially when you're
training
uh you're in recruiting
uh where we work has a revocably changed
only six percent of companies now have
no remote work
and we have to manage the big difference
in expectations uh managers want
work people to come back to the office
but yet it's
less than a third of the employees feel
the same way
plan on hiring as we've seen
66 percent of employees were initially
furloughed during pandemic don't plan to
return to their uh job sector
a lot of them are going back to school
and again we talked about that
entrepreneurial
renaissance 18 plan to start their own
company and one in four women plan to
lessen hours or leave the workforce
why we like it you save money real
estate um if you're doing what meadow is
doing in terms of different salaries
from different cities
it cuts relocation
it increases productivity
uh because you're not commuting
protoscore just did a massive study that
actually was able to measure uh and
determined that productive has actually
improved about five percent
based on remote work
um
employees feel more empowered because
they're more independent and
self-directed and it's more
environmentally mentally friendly with
fewer cards on the road and let's be
honest with gas where it is
employees are more than happy not to be
driving into the office
uh
it improves employee satisfaction
in fact more people would take work from
home as a perk over a pay raise
it's a powerful recruiting tool and
people that work remotely or in a hybrid
model are generally much happier
interesting too is that
unscheduled absences go down so again
it's about this is why you're having
higher productivity an ama study said 78
of employees who call in sick really
aren't
um
and those unscheduled absences are
expensive
it does expand the talent pool as most
people know and this remote or ability
to work from home
has gone from being a nice perk or
recruitment tool to almost
a non-negotiable
for people that are are moving jobs
and work from home pretty much spans
across all income groups i'm not going
to go through those numbers but as you
can see as you look at this chart almost
there's very very little difference
in terms of income level or
demographic uh target group
however
where people are noticing major issues
is in
transparency collaboration communication
engagement those are the percent of
people saying this has declined since we
started to work from home
people are the most important
reason employees want to return to the
office
that is not unexpected
um and people is what they miss
so again it gets back to
nobody there are very few people that
really want to do 100 work from home
and in fact there's actually kind of
agreement most recent study
managers
and employees felt that two two and a
half days a week was was a fair and a
welcome level of the number of days to
be in the office so both sides are open
and both sides want to work in the
office to a large degree it's what we're
really debating here is
how often and how do you plan for those
days
uh we talked about this before
managers and employees are not on the
same page and the way to read this is
for example extending benefits for child
care the employer gave the differential
between
the percent of employers saying that
versus employees 36 points higher with
employers
so as you read down this list
what you're seeing again is that major
difference between what management
thinks and what their employees think
another uh
data point that just came out today
is 91 of execs saw themselves as caring
leaders
but only 56 percent of employees say
their bosses care
that's a big difference
and this is part of what needs to get
managed and when you develop your hybrid
work model the way you gather your
information determine your principles
communicate and execute the plan the
amount of involvement your employees
have goes a long way
to making sure these differentials are
are lower
but
one i do want to point out something
that's critical this was an issue
20 months ago it's an issue today
providing manager training to lead teams
in work from home
this is something that most people most
managers are never trained on have never
experienced
so they are at a loss as to how to
motivate treat
provide feedback in a virtual world
and very few companies provide actual
training on how to do that
i would imagine the third one supporting
employees mental health has only gotten
worse because the most recent numbers
have shown about a 10 to 15 increase in
the number of workers say they're
experiencing uh burnout
um so as you can see as you look through
this list
there is a lot
that employers can do to help their
employees

and as a way of measuring what's going
on microsoft did this
huge study where they looked at every
company that was involved with microsoft
teams
time spent in meetings is up two and a
half times
the average meeting is now 10 minutes
longer
45 more texts and messages 42 more chats

so it's tough to maintain that
productivity
when people are bombarded
with all this request for their
attention now a lot of this has to do
with the fact that we've lost our
five-minute water cooler chats you know
that five-minute watercolor chat is now
a 30-minute
zoom meeting
um and and that needs to be actively
managed and there are some very clear
best practices in all of these methods
of communication that companies really
should adapt
um but one thing we have seen and has
been measured is burnout is deadly and
expensive
they're saying job-related stress 120
000 people died last year due to
job-related stress and it's costing
companies 190 billion dollars
so with companies it's kind of avoid
you know taking this on at your own
at your own peril and at the peril of
your own employees
burnout is widespread with wide impact
more than a half
of employees say they're experiencing
burnout
most of it due to working longer hours
they say stress is high
and the vast majority say it obviously
is impacting the mental health
and the thing is when you ask employees
why they're experiencing burnout
it's very very few factors increased
workload the work life is out of balance
and lack of feedback
again this is something a company can
easily address
but
when you have almost 80 percent of your
workers feeling they can't talk to
anybody in the company about these
issues
and that 36 of companies are doing
nothing about it
this is a clear problem but it is easily
addressed if companies are only willing
to take on
some of the responsibilities and
implement some of the the easier steps
to help reduce burnout
and where we're seeing a lot of this
impact is predominantly on women
whether we like to admit it or not women
are still the primary caregiver
um they are still responsible for
doing a lot of the work in the home
while they continue to work and what
we're seeing is a huge impact
on women their mental health and how
that impacts their willingness to work
they're less optimistic about their
career they majority plan to leave their
job
um
61 say company support has been
insufficient
um so we're seeing again companies say
they're addressing it but employees are
are clearly saying that companies are
not doing that
so i just want to see are there any
questions any thoughts anybody wants to
um
ask before we move on to the next
section
we do have a couple questions frank and
if anybody else has questions please
feel free to drop those in the chat box
and we'll get those addressed
but here's a good question how can
leaders and managers
eliminate barriers associated with
drastic changes in the work environment
um
can you repeat that one more time okay i
see this how committed
yeah so how can leaders and managers
eliminate barriers associated with
drastic changes in the world
i i think that one of the things i like
to point out to managers i'm actually
doing with this company i'm talking to
you right now and the management has
been very very resistant to to go to
hybrid work model in in the uh
at their headquarters and and one of the
things i talk to them about is
if you really look at your company
you are
implementing a hybrid work model if you
have a sales force
if you have i.t people that are
scattered about you know how to do this
you know how to eliminate barriers
um and i think that if you develop a
smart hybrid work policy where you bring
people in for the right reasons that
interaction that people side of business
is is going to help
i think the other thing too is
how you manage your meetings and your
interactions with zoom um in terms of
trying to develop some of that personal
side of things some companies had great
success
with doing things more socially um
so i i think that one look to what
you're already doing well
or doing similarly in other parts of
your organization
um
and
find out
how your employees are feeling where
their pain points are and then develop
plans to address those
many of the mistakes that companies have
made has have been because they've been
top-down dictates look at the issues
with chase um tesla um

meta they they kind of dictated
proclamations about talking to their
staff and i think when you look at what
your staff needs or wants if you have
that dialogue you can find common
solutions and that's where most of the
companies are having success with hybrid
work models
are
are are getting there because there is
an active and ongoing dialogue with with
their staff and i think that's probably
the first thing you do to to identify
potential solutions
perfect um and then another question was
what can be done to avoid company
culture
dilution with many employees working
from home
well again i think it does tie back to
as long as people have some time in the
office
you can't address that
um i think it's if you're smart about
when people come in the office for what
reasons
um
you can continue
um
to to build on that culture
i think that whenever when you have 100
work from home it creates more of an
issue
so
i think you need to look at how
technology can help bring together
people more socially and not deal with
just work related issues
it's interesting like one company we
actually did a
cooking class
weird online
and everybody participated and it was a
great way again to
provide more of a social situation where
people could
you know develop a more personal uh
experience and relationship with people
because the company was actively finding
ways to have people engage
and it says and the type of event that
the company pick
you know reinforces their culture
perfect so we just had another great one
come in
it says some employees are too proud or
fearful to say they feel burnt out or
uncared for how can you create the
environment where they come forward
before it builds up
it's a great question and whether you're
developing a hybrid work model
initially or it's ongoing
having
that dialogue with the employees on a
consistent basis is critical and so
normally what i have done with my
clients in this space
is we do
anonymous surveys
um and then you remove the stigma of
having to come forward
i think the other thing as a company is
you just got to admit it exists
and so
why do you need to wait for your
employees to come forward
you should be putting programs in place
you should be analyzing the amount of
time people are spending and coming up
with solutions proactively before it
becomes a huge problem
so if you can get that anonymous
information from your employees on these
very difficult subjects
you are pro and as a company you're
proactively doing things
to help with burnout
and sometimes they can be very very
prescriptive i've got one company that
basically says no emails after seven
o'clock
so if you do want to work flexibly and
you want to work at night it goes into
your out box but doesn't get sent until
eight o'clock the next morning so you
can be very very prescriptive to try to
manage workloads and burnout but it's
got to come from the bottom and it's got
to come from the top

perfect i think we can move on now
okay great questions guys
moving forward um
here are the biggest challenges in
managing a hybrid work model unconscious
bias and i think this gets to some of
the issues we just talked about
um
it's interesting
that when you look at the majority of
people who work 100 remote they don't
recommend it
they want that time in the office
and
i think to some degree that chases that
traces to the fact that remote workers
believe
that they are at a disadvantage
uh and so transparency um in terms of
raises um promotions um
evaluations it's very very important
that
when you provide that kind of feedback
it is rooted in
the corporate
uh
programs or responses to kind of counter
their feelings that they're being
singled out they want to work from home
but they don't want to be at a
disadvantage because of it we've talked
about the delicious dilution of culture
and to the the question before
it is difficult to
to reinforce a culture
uh when most of the employees are are
our work from home but i think as you
move to a hybrid work model you will be
given plentiful opportunities to
reinforce and build that culture
technology is absolutely critical
uh most companies uh have invested in
this but it's one of the first things
you need to look at you know
reliable internet access
um
spyware malware uh
our employees fully trained on how to
use the bear uh use the technology so
that they can be more productive
um transparency when you're not together
to talk and have those discussions
around the water cooler
companies must place more emphasis on
transparency
people need to understand the why
[Music]
and
again one reason why you want to bring
people in is those close working
relationships are absolutely critical i
i thought this was fascinating one of
the studies that if people feel their
best friends at work
the engagement level is seven times
higher and so that's another reason why
you do want to bring people into the
office um and we have talked about this
this whole issue of
employee well-building uh well-being
work-life balance
burnout how you can reduce stress is
absolutely critical and as i said you
can't wait for that to come from the
employees given its sensitivity and
people's perception if i bring this up
i'm gonna they're weak
companies should just assume that this
that these problems exist and develop
very concrete steps to address this and
provide tools to their staff
so what can you do tomorrow
as leaders i tell them what are the
three things that you're going to do and
be held accountable for you got to walk
the walk you know when you see these big
differences between
um
you know executives or managers saying
we take care of our employees while
building we are providing
resources for child care
no that's one thing to claim it
but your employees aren't seeing
um
and so that's
it's got to be driven from the top in
terms of of walking the walk if your
staff doesn't believe you're doing it if
you create a rule that says
no emails after seven and you're still
sending them you have completely undone
everything you've been trying to do
begin your learning plan
um one of the things that i always tell
my clients to do is talk to your key
partners vendors and clients and see how
they work because if you're a service
driven industry for example
your business model and operating model
should mirror
the way your clients want to do business
and if there's a disconnect
that's creating tension and stress and
so if you understand that
uh you can learn how to adapt
you've got to have in consistent
employee check-ins whether that's
surveys whether that's bringing in um
like this is something i've done for my
uh some of my clients is i will come in
every two to three months and i will do
town hall meetings with no managers
usually by department
and they are not taped
and i get pure unsolicited feedback
you have to learn from the bottom up not
just the top down don't do what apple
and chase and a lot of these big
companies have done and reverse course
because they didn't talk to their
employees
you've got to create a talent
development plan i was worth working
with a client
and we were looking at
the skills that were needed
to have people succeed in a hybrid work
model
every c-suite manager said i need more
critical thinking
and yet
when
i ask them
did they recruit for it
do they evaluate it evaluate performance
for it do they reward for it not a
single hand was raised and so i asked
the top question well how do you how can
you expect
the company to have critical thinkers
if you're not doing any of this stuff
and this has to
so this type of of thinking has to go
down into the training development plan
and one of the biggest issues is
most managers do not know how to manage
hybrid teams
and they can be coached and there are
clear best practices to help them do
that that takes a ton of stress off your
middle managers
here is one of the biggest reasons
why remote work
has been
less successful than it needs to be
and this is clean
33
of managers don't trust their employees
when they work from home
they don't measure for outcome they
measure for steps
and the thing is
employees know when they're not trusted
so one of the key things in training
managers
is
how to have them manage their teams
so they can feel more confident
that their folks are working and being
productive
the tough thing is
you know there's always going to be
people that take advantage of the system
so as a company you have to decide
do i manage for the greater good or do i
manage for the exception and do i put
plans in place
to manage that way
and
i would say you manage for the greater
good
but you create
tracking measurement tools training for
those people you have concerns about
and i will tell you with some of the
clients we've gotten extremely granular
for example one client
because there was a significant number
of employees that refused to be on
camera during zoom meetings we actually
had to create a law
a rule that said on zoo meetings you
must be on camera
because they were afraid that these
employees were doing grocery shopping or
whatever
even though they may not have been
but by having that in place managers
could start developing their trust
factor
and the other thing too is that
employees can be trained on how to work
from home more effectively as
well this is such a critical point
number four
where most companies have got it wrong
is their remote work policy their hybrid
policy starts with tactics everybody
must be in the office three days a week
everybody will be in the office monday
wednesday and friday
those types of hybrid work models are
doomed to failure
because they're not built off of
principles and people
react to that say well wait a minute
that department's only working two days
why why do i have to be in the office
three people take it very very personal
and they translate that into is that
policy fair or not
what i do with the clients is we develop
the principles
so we may say something like
spending time together is critical
therefore we want people to be in the
office um
as much as
uh
you know as much as two days a week
people but if you buy into the
principles then it's difficult to
dismiss the tactic and so we were kind
of compiling all of the policies in this
one company with multiple offices and we
looked for inconsistencies i stopped
trying to negotiate the tactics so we
said let's look at the principles so one
of the other things we talked about was
if a zoo meeting is going to be more
than three hours it will be done in
person
why is that
we care about the health of our
employees and i'm not sure if you guys
are aware of this
but too much time looking at the screen
causes eye strain eye problems and so
they could talk about it from a health
perspective so not only were they
helping to build the culture
not only were they helping to improve
employees health and remove eye strain
and headaches they were also providing a
collaborative work environment when
multiple disciplinary teams needed to be
together
it is critical that you look at your
current job descriptions and employ
suitability
unfortunately some people just aren't
made for working from home and you need
to understand who those people are you
can either train them or you're going to
need to replace them
but it's critical that when you hire and
when you evaluate you build in
effectiveness of working from home into
those job descriptions
and how you evaluate them
the other thing too is you've got to
ensure strong i.t support
believe it or not uh you know it used to
be easy you'd put in a ticket if you're
in the office the guy would come up or
girl would come up and they'd they'd fix
your computer um now it's all done
remotely and
so you really need to look at how you
staff
how easy it is for people to now do be
the hands of their tech group because
that person's not there um so ensuring
strong i.t support is absolutely
critical
and
just some final thoughts i'll open up
some questions
what we talked about the great
resignation has become the great
renegotiation
employees
now it's kind of a buyers and sellers
market and
um
you know when you think about real
estate and sometimes that momentum
shifts that shift is now more in with
employees than employers
and as four to four and a half million
people leave their jobs every month and
those that tends to accumulate
you know there is going to be a lot of
people still leaving their jobs
the other thing to remember is it's a
dial not a switch
i mean
some of these companies thought that
here's our policy and they were never
going to change
but as we've seen in the 20 months we
went from a safety driven
remote policy
to a talent
driven
policy
that that's going to change
so you need to constantly be aware of
how your employees are feeling higher
management's feeling and make changes
make appropriate changes um as it goes
along and the critical thing is if
you've established the right principles
the principles will not necessarily
change but the tactics will and that
dials will
will send you
information
that about which you know what tactics
need to change
the other thing too is nobody wants to
admit that they got it wrong but accept
that you will not get it right the first
time or even the second
when i've dealt with my clients in terms
of how they want to communicate their
new hybrid work policy i actually tell
them to say this out loud
to their employees
because the employees will say look okay
they're going to stay on top of this
they're going to listen to us every two
months we're going to give them feedback
and they'll change it appropriately
and this is really really important for
that notion that my company cares about
me as a human being
and again the last point is with all the
new information
we talked about that before with over
two almost two and a half billion
um
data points on
best practices and work from home it's
okay to admit that you don't know
everything it's not okay to do anything
and unfortunately i think this is where
a lot of companies are right now
they're just kind of
let's see where it plays out
and given what's happened with talent
that is a very dangerous and risk
avoidance
move
which is something i would never suggest
because
once your employees start to leave
it's too late
because it's very rare that you're going
to catch that at the tip of the iceberg
so with that
um
that's that's the end of this
um hopefully you have gotten a lot of
help out of this uh you've learned some
things it's stimulated some thoughts and
i'm going to open this up to any last
questions um that we can follow up in in
the uh in the time that we have
anjali is there anything uh
yeah there's a couple questions and
again if anybody else has additional
questions please feel free to chat those
in the chat box
one question was with increased reliance
on it
how can managers ensure their it
department does not experience frequent
frequent burnout

i always say that
information is power especially if you
use it correctly
and i think that
one of the
key things you must do is to understand
the frequency duration and the types of
issues that your i.t staff is is facing
it creates a little bit of extra work
for them to kind of retain all this
um
and and you know fill in that
information but you need to know if
they're experiencing frequent burnout
why is it what are the issues that
people are facing because if you do that
you can determine perhaps where training
is needed for the employees
you know how can the employees take on
more of the
uh
i.t help because if it's
there are some things that we've learned
we can do ourselves and if we understand
what those problems are uh there could
be training the second thing to do is
some clients are actually outsourcing
secondary backup
um
so that if your id department uh doesn't
have the bandwidth there is a backup
group to do that the other thing too is
that
if you if an employee chooses to work
you know from midnight to 3 a.m
part of it is that there they need to
probably have that expectation
that there will not be any i.t help
during certain hours
because that's your choice to do that
um but you have to make sure that
employee choices
do not negatively impact
other staff
um
and that would be you know including i.t
so i think one it's very clear as to
the rules of engagement hours of
engagement and ensuring that you
understand where the problems are
occurring so that you can find ways to
go in and address that
awesome and then with this talk of the
unconscious bias
how can managers effectively communicate
that there is no penalty for electing to
work from home
well obviously the first thing is
you have to say that
but secondly the proof is going to be
when when people work from home
and there are promotions
there are pay raises
because employees will still talk
amongst each other so it gets back to
leaders walking the walk
you can say it all you want
but
if you are transparent if you celebrate
the positive
reinforcement
that working home employees are getting
um and then i think it it also depends
again back to what is your model if
there is a combination
of work from home and work from office
um
i think there are ways to reinforce that
with the way you celebrate and
uh
congratulate people
i think that kind of positive
reinforcement is critical so again it
gets back to what is your model do you
have a hundred percent work from home
but above all if you do have employees
like that walk the walk
and when they are promoted uh celebrate
that so that people see wait a minute
this person's working from home
and
it doesn't seem to have held them back
wonderful all right and then another
good question
when employees are dealing with serious
mental health issues how does a manager
go about addressing the problem while
respecting personal boundaries
this is a really really tough question
because
that you're right you may be getting
into some medical issues
um you know uh they may be suffering
from depression uh
it it's very very difficult
i don't think in my opinion i don't
think the average manager is trained or
can be trained to deal with
serious mental health issues
um
i will be honest i had an employee
that
you know back in the days my
pre-consulting days
that had developed you know some serious
alcohol problems
um
i was not equipped
nor should i think my company would
expect me to be equipped to handle that
kind of a problem
um and so i think it's important
that you define
explicitly
the types of questions
that a manager can get involved in but
more importantly arm them with
resources that that manager
can give to that employee beyond just
handing them a brochure
um
you know
you can be creative you know you can you
can bring someone into the office and
have people schedule time with them but
it's but you've got to be be very
clear not to have the expectation that
managers are therapists
uh nor are they social workers
um so
i think you need to very clearly define
where and how to get involved and
training is required because you don't
want to overstep
um
and get them into some very very uh
personal and serious areas that they are
frankly just not equipped and never
should be and never will be equipped to
manage
okay great are there any other last
minute questions be sure to drop those
in the chat now as well

there was one question before it said
how can we help ease the transition into
the new normal hybrid work
and
i
great plans require great execution
and i think what's happened with a lot
of companies that have got it wrong
is they haven't done the pre-work
and if you have a hybrid work model that
is rooted
in principles that reflects
what employees are thinking and feeling
as well as what managers are thinking or
feeling and you develop a very smart
communication plan
with
you know
the
comment that it's a dialed on a switch
and this will probably change in the
next three months
it does create something that is easier
to transition into
so i'm gonna go keep going back to that
chase model back in march chase said i
fully expect
that
half of the workforce will be in the
office five days a week by the end of
june
huge negative employee backlash
nothing will
complicate
lengthen
and
make the process
so much less easy
than
victims
and the lack of pre-planning and the
lack of communicating with your
employees to see how they feel so
if you want to ease into it
do the homework up front
you know um
and i think the
you know i know this this may sound like
kind of
pushing
you know outside help but i think the
thing to remember
is that most companies this is new to
them
you know for those of us that have gone
to business school or have you know
taken business classes or managed for 20
years this is all new to us
and so to somehow expect
that people that have never been trained
for this job or have never had to do
this job are suddenly going to be able
to develop these hybrid work models
on their own and get it mostly right
i think is is fallacious thinking
and
so hopefully one of the things you'll
take away from this
is planning is needed listening is
needed
a well thought communication plan is
absolutely critical but online ongoing
monitoring
of the situation and as work evolves is
again absolutely critical
you can't you know talk to employees in
september and then
not talk to them for six to nine months
because things will have changed
dramatically
so
if if you are smart
if you consistently learn
um
it will be much much easier uh than if
you just do corporate dictates because
then you spend most your time trying to
clean up uh the aftershock of uh of the
announcement
perfect and then how can managers help
ensure that remote workers
are as engaged as in-person employees

well
i think that gets back to again the
principles
um of
when people need to engage
and i think that making sure that
they are invited to participate in the
uh
you know in the right meetings for the
right amount of time is critical um i
also think that
part of the training of the managers is
you know i always encourage people if
you have remote workers do a little
separate check-in
um and see how they're doing
and uh again
do something a little bit social every
once in a while
so that
excuse me it's not just always it's not
just always about work but again i think
a lot of this is driven by the model if
you already know unless you're 100 work
from home
the person is going to be coming into
the office occasionally and as a manager
you've got to maximize that time that's
in there to help them with culture
to help them with social interaction and
to spend some face-to-face time with
them
so
the answer to that i think really is
going to be driven by
the policy that you develop
for your company
or your team

looks like that was all of the questions
unless there are any more you're welcome
to drop those in the chat now
i
did we actually i'm just curious did we
actually see like how many people are
working remotely or back in the office
or
i don't i didn't see any results from
the polls i'm not sure okay
well i'm a big believer and one of the
ways you stay productive is to try to
end meetings a little bit early
so um rather than fill the airwaves um
let's uh give you guys back
eight more minutes unless there are any
last-minute questions and i do encourage
you that if you think of anything
um
i know that you have a way of reaching
out to emily and uh she can forward them
on to me and i will be more than happy
to uh respond
if you have any any more questions but
hopefully this has been thought
provoking it has given you some thoughts
to take back to your teams and your
companies um
because as i said
during this talk
uh to ignore it and let it evolve
haphazardly is is something to be done
at your peril given
given what's going on with the great
renegotiation so thank you so much for
sharing your lunch with me uh stay cool
because i can imagine there are probably
no cool places
outside right now in the u.s and thank
you for your time and your um
your attention
frank i just wanted to thank you for uh
your time and really talking about a
topic that i think resonates with all
companies today and
the the
data that you provided
the up-to-date information and research
that you've done to put this together um
was really really incredible and we
really appreciate it just wanted to
thank everybody for taking the time to
join us today uh for the lunch and learn
and um you know as far as venture
experts goes um you know we are a grow
strategy consulting company helping um
companies with all sorts of bottlenecks
and issues and helping you reach
milestones as along with actually taking
the feedback from what we heard today um
dealing with the these real issues of
remote work working uh hybrid work
models um et cetera and mental health
and how that plays into the workforce
and employees and teams and uh we've
actually developed now a program
called peakability where we're able to
address these issues and work with teams
directly on uh helping everybody be as
product productive as possible and
helping the teams to bridge that gap um
and so if anybody is interested in
learning more about uh our program and
how we're working with mental health
side of folks and teams feel free to
reach out to me um and um would love to
have that conversation and talk to you a
little bit more about the data points
that we've been seeing that have been
really truly remarkable uh but thank you
again everybody for joining and uh this
will be available uh as well as a
recording so if anybody would like to
see that um again and have all this
resource um in your back pocket uh we'd
be happy to provide that for you but uh
just like frank said let's make it as
efficient and possible give you a few
moments uh to one
and uh thank you again have a good day
everybody take care