Erika
Last year, leaders threw their playbook into the fire. And as so many industries changed, they kept the business going-- all the while on the edge of their seats. Today, this is the new normal for the workplace. So, are we ever going back to the office? And if so, why? Welcome back to The Catalyst by Softchoice, and our first episode of season two. I'm Erika Van Noort. The idea of the hybrid workplace isn't new. It's been floating through conversations of thought leaders since the early '80s. Now that hindsight really is 2020, it's a little odd to me that this digital workplace environment has only come to widescale global adoption because of the pandemic. My home office and seeing colleagues through webcams is so normal to me now, and so much more accessible and forgiving. It all just feels kind of obvious. Despite how much I love working in my Lulus, it's clear that today's hybrid workplace is lacking in things that the physical office provided. Things like informal collaboration, company culture, and routine. Is working from home all it's cracked up to be? What is the workplace of the future, and how do we get there? Joining me on the podcast is Jeff Reis, Senior Vice President of Information and Technology here at Softchoice, and Stephen Harrington, Director at Deloitte, and a longtime thought leader in the conversation about the future of work. Together, they're going to help me unpack the hybrid workplace-- where it started, and where it's headed. And the difference between doing it right and doing it wrong.
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Erika
I'm so excited today, to have both Jeff and Stephen join me on the call. I've had an opportunity to do some work with Stephen from Deloitte. Jeff, with leading our own future of work, looking at how we as an organization went remote instantaneously. So how we pivot and what that means. So, I'm just excited to have both of you here today.
Stephen
Thanks for having me.
Jeff
Yeah. Thanks, Erika, it's a pleasure.
Erika
So, Stephen, you've been writing and thinking about this long before it was a hot topic. Here we are today. What did you get right? And what totally surprised you?
Stephen
Well, we knew all along that this was the fourth industrial revolution. So, we knew it was going to be about automation. You know, if I think about the early days, what people were writing about was largely, how big is the disruption going to be? And we saw some really scary predictions. I remember one in 2014, that said, you know, 50% of jobs would be disrupted by 2020. Phew, that didn't come true. But we still are on this journey of technology that is in some cases, substituting human work, and in other cases, augmenting human work. That's the main puzzle. But it comes with a lot of baggage, doesn't it? And COVID really proved that. Suddenly, one of the vectors of the future of work, we call new ways of working, which before COVID was largely about agile ways of working, and digital ways of working, suddenly became about remote ways of working. That gives you a little sense of the predictable in the unpredictable in this game of trying to get ahead of the future of work topic.
Erika
So why do you think it took a pandemic for us to, like, really have this conversation about how we work?
Stephen
Well, you wish it wouldn't, right? But what we're dealing with are really entrenched ideas, orthodoxies that bake into our way of thinking so fundamentally that we don't even see them. They're invisible. You know, one of my favorite orthodoxies to pick on is the job itself. I-- you know, if we're going to be really bold, I wonder if it's time to rethink that concept, altogether. The idea that we can write down on a piece of paper, and have last for a decade or two, an idea of what a job needs to be that we can codify. It stands in the way of many of our stated corporate goals of being more agile, of having more mobility, and flexibility. One of the ideas we've been playing with is when you step back and you look at your organizational strategy, is it a time for you to maintain fixed goals? Or should you move to dynamic outcomes? And I'll give you an example of what I mean. A lot of automakers are making the shift right now, going from what was a fixed goal of how can we produce more cars and sell more cars within as many jurisdictions around the world as possible, to now setting goals like we would like to be a carbon neutral company by 2035. That's a dynamic goal because nobody knows how to get there. And more and more employees within those businesses are being released to dynamic goals. Therefore, goodbye fixed processes, and a need for a lot more flexibility in almost a flow of work concept. These are some of the sort of underlying structural changes I think we need to see. And also, an answer, Erika, to why it's-- why it is taking COVID to sort of reveal these challenges to us.
Erika
Great examples and I-- you know, I like when you talk about the fixed goals versus dynamic outcomes, because it plays into you as an organization. Like, what is your competitive advantage? Or what can your competitive advantage be moving forward? So, Jeff, over to you. We all know that 2020 was crazy. I was there watching it live as a Softchoice employee. What's the story now for us, for 2021?
Jeff
Well, I wish I knew I had all the answers. But I try not to compartmentalize between 2020 and 2021. I forget where I heard it, but somebody said 2021-- I think was a comedian on Netflix, but 2021 is just a new year to complain about. Which is a horrible way to look at things. But you know, the exciting part is, it is a continuum. It is a journey. And we learn things, we make some assumptions, we learn a bit more, we adjust. And it really is a lot of iterations. When I think about what Stephen mentioned about this dynamic environment that we're in, they're trying to-- we're trying to manage through, you know, I'd love to say, "Hey, here's what 2021's gonna hold. And I think what 2021's gonna hold is ongoing change, a lot of new discoveries. You know, a bit of ongoing uncertainties. And I think, as organizations have prepared themselves to embrace, you know, this uncertainty and this change, it's incumbent on these organizations to really make the right adjustments that meets us where we think we're going to be in the next 30 days to 60 days. But at the same time, really helps us meet where we think we'll be, where we want to be if you fast forward 12 to 18 months. I think we all see-- I don't want to call it an end game, but there is going to be a something else. We don't know what that's something else looks like. As we get closer to that something else, it becomes clearer and clearer. And during that journey, whether it's 2020, or 2021, we're making those adjustments to meet that head on.
Stephen
I'd love to add, you know, if 2020 was a revolution, it was a revolution in a bell jar. And what I worry about is that that's going to get lifted, and we're gonna be back to normal, whatever the hell that means. And we're gonna find out how people are going to behave. Both leaders, managers at scale, and employees when this is over. In what Jeff was saying, it reminded me of this concept that we keep talking about, horizon one and horizon two. Horizon one's the one we can see right in front of us, and it's about COVID. It's about what we're living through. What I love about what Jeff's doing, and not enough organizations are doing it, by the way, is thinking about horizon two, which is when this is over, how do we want to compose ourselves? Thinking across HR, IT, real estate, to codify and sustain a new way of working that's going to be to our advantage. It's tough, but not having a plan seems a greater risk.
Erika
It's interesting for me with my daily role with talent acquisition and HR here at Softchoice, one of the first questions that most candidates ask us now is "What is our stance on an office? What-- where will you expect me to work? How many days a week would you expect me to come into an office once you reopen your offices? What would that look like?" So, it's a very different discussion. And it's going to be limiting for us as to what type of talent we can attract as a result. So, with that, want to get a little bit philosophical with each of you. And that is, what's the point of a physical office now, and how work is evolving overall? So, Stephen, let's go to you first.
Stephen
So, when I'm feeling, like, being controversial-- I'm feeling it right now-- I've often said, and this isn't for isn't everyone, some have been better than others. But if you look at the aggregate workplace experience in the 20th century, and you wanted to paint a metaphor, it would be as a prison. And by that, I mean a place that we housed people to make sure they were there. And we didn't want to let those folks escape during the business hours. I think there's an opportunity for workplaces to become much more cafes, war rooms, libraries. In other words, the persona of the workplace can change. You know, a lot of organizations are facing big policy questions like you hinted at, Erika. Like, do we tell people when they need to come in? Is it two days a week? Is it three days a week? Is it different for different segments? And my preferred strategy, where it works, and it doesn't work in every segment, is to say, "Let's see if we can be policy light. Let's see if we can create guardrails for what's acceptable behavior and then make the employee accountable for making the right decision about where they need to be based on the work that they're doing." But the companion to that is, if that's our strategy, then we need to build workplaces that generate a fear of missing out. That's where the cool kids are. That's where the great conversations are happening. That's where the innovation is happening, that's where the best tools are. That way, the workplace becomes a magnet that draws people in, versus that 20th century model we were just talking about throwing out.
Jeff
You know, I couldn't agree more. I think we really have to better define the purpose of a workplace. The type of work you do in any given day should define where you do it, and how you want to get it done. And some of that might be at the workplace, some of that might be focused work, could be at home. And not to go as far as policies, but kind of the rules of engagement, if you will. And what I mean by that is, I think about a meeting or a collaborative experience. And, you know, in a past life, my head office was in Chicago, I was based in Toronto. And so, I would be in Chicago once a week, I'd be in Toronto the other week, and there would be meetings happening in Chicago, and I knew that there were great conversations happening in between the meetings. The meetings after the meetings. And sometimes you get a lot more nuggets out of those sidebar conversations than you do by being in the physical meeting itself. And so, I think we need to be mindful and shift our thinking about how we're conscious about the surroundings, not just the physical, but the virtual. Who is around us, what conversations, you know, should they-- should we be contributing back to that individual if they can be, you know, in the physical workplace? The other thing that I wanted to share-- you know, it's interesting, because while I do have IT in my, you know, as part of my portfolio, I also have workplace and facilities. And so, one of the things-- and it's a great marriage. And we're thinking about how do we bring the physical and the digital space together? And we're partnering with organizations that think through that. And so yesterday, we were on a call and somebody said, you know, "The-- positioning this as the idea of an employee as a consumer, and the utilization of a workplace as a metric." That just resonated with me so much, just because most people are metric driven, and how do you measure success of anything? You know, measuring the success of a physical workplace and the utilization of that workplace, it's more than just the CSAT score, or how somebody felt about it. It is about people wanting to be there, as Stephen said. It's about people feeling the need to be part of that connected workplace because it brings that added level of value that you couldn't get by not being there.
Erika
Yeah, it goes back to the FOMO piece, right? "I'm missing out on something, and what is that?" It's got to be purposeful. And I've heard you and your team talk about purpose of place. I've heard Stephen talk about, you know-- so what is it that you're trying to accomplish? What are you trying to generate by bringing these people together? I mean, if I were to make a trip into the office in the future to find out that all the people I'm meeting with are on Teams, I could have just stayed in my home office and done that. So, it's kind of, how do you find that balance moving forward?
Stephen
You know, and I would just-- you know, I loved Jeff's point about knowing the meetings are going on in Chicago and the conversations afterwards, I'll often say that we're entering a period of just a legion of design challenges. Like, calling all design thinkers, right? Because I think we need to design our way out of challenges like that. So, there's a couple of things that makes me think, do we design our meetings differently so that the hallway conversation actually has a place in the meeting itself? Or do you build technologies that allow for breakouts following a meeting, so there can actually be virtual hallway conversations? There's a-- there might be, you know, diversity and inclusion challenges with that, but you see what I mean? Like, you can take any of these issues facing us and recognize their whitespace and-- and really think about it differently.
Erika
Or spend the first five minutes while everybody's trying to figure out the technology and that's part of our hallway conversation before we get it going. [laughs]
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Erika
In my typical fashion, I sought at the opinions of my peers here at Softchoice. Here's what they're thinking about work, and the workplace today, and tomorrow.
Ryan
I've actually been in a unique position where I've worked from home quite a bit. So, I'm Ryan Demelo, I'm Solution Marketing Manager for our Cloud Portfolio. So, transitioning into working from home all the time for me was not too difficult of a transition. The one thing that I do miss is the-- just the interaction with everybody in the office when I do need to collaborate on specific aspects of my role in my projects.
Rebecca
I'll be honest, it was a huge-- not just physical, but emotional shift. Hi, I'm Rebecca Martinez. I'm the Senior Enterprise Account Leader. I've always been the person that never even used the option to work from home days. Like, loved being in the office, was there hyper interactive with my team. I've always led a really large team. And the shift of virtual work all the time was a blow, it was a massive adjustment. I came to realize the benefits quite quickly in the elimination of my monster commute and how much that helps my productivity. [laughter] So I found advantages in it much more quickly than I expected to. I think the thing that has challenged me the most with it has been the blurring of the lines. Even just managing stress levels, and managing emotional balance is so much more challenging because there is no even physical separation between the two.
Erika
And as you say that Rebecca, because we have video on this call, as well, I'm noticing the basket of balls behind you, as well. So, there's play time, mixed with work time, all together.
Rebecca
Literally working in the playroom, yeah.
Erika
Fantastic, I love it. Chris?
Christopher
Christopher Payne, Territory Sales Leader. I think that it was a drastic change for me because I am one that collaborates very well. And when you're seeking that collaboration, you're looking for that human-to-human experience, right? And that's what I look to drive more efficient and productive type of work from my team, as well as myself. I usually seek isolation when I want focus. So, you have to be agile, you have to be resilient, you have to be adaptable, because that change has now shifted into the norm.
Erika
No, that's a great point. So how are each of you seeing, like, the difference in the definition of workplace? What does workplace now mean to you?
Rebecca
It's interesting, I don't really think about workplace. It's just work time, and not work time. [chuckles] Like, the workplace, like I was saying, geographically just seems the same. For me, the workplace is more-- almost the network, or the virtual world. Like when I'm in the hub with the rest of my teammates, when we're in group chats, when I'm in my team meeting, like that is the workplace. Out in the interwebs of my device. [laughs]
Christopher
Agreed. I think, compared to yesteryear, workplace meant Softchoice, Norcross, Georgia. And now I think of workplace as mobile. Where can I be productive? You know, whether that is in the house, whether that is actually in an office, if that's at a Starbucks, if that's in a hotel, if that's on the road. So, I think workplace is a little bit more amorphous and malleable.
Ryan
To me, it's, it's more of the work that I do and the workflow that I execute through with various different people. So, an example of that is some other peers of mine in Solution Marketing, we do daily stand ups, and where we're synching up on to-dos for the day, to-dos for the rest of the week, just to keep us being collaborative, and just focusing our priorities. And so, for me, I look at it for more of the workflow that we do, not so much the destination that I'm sitting in. I can get work done wherever I am.
Erika
No, I find the same for myself. Work is not a place, it's an activity. It's why we always talk about, you know, when people were talking at the beginning of the pandemic about, "When are we returning to work?" And I'd say, "Well, nobody actually stopped working." [laughter] So we're not returning to work, we may be returning to a workplace or a destination in some cases with some offices, but most of us are steady on, if not doing more.
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Erika
Who would have ever thought IT would need to get so philosophical about our daily working lives? I mean, I'm not ruffled by it. But here's what I really need to know: just how on earth are today's CIOs operating with no playbook in hand? How do they create a workplace that feels just as normal as the last? And what happens if they fail?
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Erika
So, Jeff, I'd love for us to get focused on solutions, the CIO perspective. So, what are you looking at in 2021 to support hybrid environments? So, tack practical, you know, hybrid is language that we just naturally use all the time, digital workspace, that sort of thing. What are you're looking at for 2021?
Jeff
Whew, it's a great question. I think, in 2020, you know, a lot of what we enabled was really a response to business continuity. It was about, how do we make sure the trains keep running? Let's be candid, that's what pretty much every organization in the world did. But, you know, a ton of online collaboration has been effectively enabled, and people continue to operate day to day. I think in some cases, some organizations have done a better job of securing their organizations as a part of that. What I mean by that is, you know, you kind of take some things for granted when you're in the physical space. You assume certain things are being managed a certain way. But you really got to kind of, you know, double click on that to make sure that not only do you have those secure protocols in place, but you have redundancies in place. How are you measuring those things more frequently than you would historically? How do you measure compliance around things that are not necessarily technology based, but that you rely on people to do, day in and day out? So, I think a continued focus on our security posture and how we continue to protect the organization is something we'd focused on in 2020 and will continue with in 2021. The next piece is listening to the business. You know, a lot of successful CIOs that have positioned themselves as a strategic partner to the business as they should. And that is more important now than ever. What are the business problems that the organization is faced with today? And it's easy to kind of get down that rabbit hole of the solution. If you've got me this tool, I could be able to do these three things. The challenge is really helping business leaders take a step back and say, "What are the two or three really big business problems that is really impeding you from being successful?" Let's assume we're going to operate in this mode for the next two years. What are the things that gonna drive the biggest impact your business, and how are we going to really measure that impact? Let the IT group, let the technology team take that away in collaboration with a business to really focus on here's the solution that I think is going to get you where you need to go. And by the way, this is people, process, and technology, it's not just a tool. So how are we supporting your team? How are you supporting your team through that change? It's kind of a long-winded way of answer the question, Erika. But I think it's dangerous to say, "Here's the four tools that are going to enable an organization," I think it really is about asking the organization where they have the biggest impediments today, where they feel the biggest pain points, and then helping that business stakeholder through that change, not just through technology, but preparing their people for that change, prepare it and make sure that the process we have in place align with the new technologies, and really enabling the organization in a very real way, in a business impact way.
Erika
That's great. I-- you know, you bring up the point, it's really easy to just focus on a solution, like so many do, without really understanding it's a very different form of listening today than it was 14 months ago. By going remote, one of the things we've heard from so many of our, you know, different customers, is that how easy it was to actually drive things forward so quickly to enable the organization to carry on. A lot of companies didn't miss a beat. It was those that weren't sort of in that space of hybrid technology thinking, hybrid business thinking, that we're the ones that were caught a little more back footed.
Jeff
You know, as I said, I think standing up a team's instances-- that's not a lot of work. It's not a lot of effort. It happens every day. But it's everything else that surrounds that, it's the ecosystem around it that really supports the employee beyond jumping on a video call and collaborating on some documents.
Erika
So, Stephen, as a futurist in this space I'd love to hear from you. Flash forward to, say, 2022. What did the most successful companies get right?
Stephen
I don't know if I put it in terms of right and wrong. But I wonder how many organizations are going to seize the whole strategic opportunity. So, we've been talking a lot so far about new ways of working, and that's really important to get it right. But the other couple of things that I think about-- one is future skills. The World Economic Forum came out earlier this year and said somewhere around 42% of core skills will need to be reconsidered or changed in the next two years. That's crazy. I mean, I almost fell out of my chair when I read that, and it deserves attention. Who can afford that kind of massive skill change in that short timeframe? Organizations need to do a few things. They need to think about exactly what future skills do we need? And I'm not a big fan of all these Top 10 Future Skill lists out there that are being turned out, it seems every week I actually mean, what's our strategy? You know, department by department. Therefore, what skills do we need? Exactly who needs to learn them? And what are our build, buy, borrow strategies to acquire them? We can no longer afford to think that everything is trainable, because we can't run that many training courses. A lot more of learning has to be in the flow of work. Like, just look at people who've been working for a long time in IT architecture, where hardware is their main domain specialization. Well, what's happening? All that hardware is moving to the cloud. So, talk about a workforce transition challenge. The other thing I think organizations will get right is sort of the masterclass in future of work, which is what we call the re-architecture of work. Imagine taking the time to take a look at some of the critical roles in your business, and putting them on a canvas, and asking yourself if we redesign this role from scratch, in particular, to take out the dull, the expensive, or even the dangerous tasks, and we also recomposed it so that that role would better-- be more oriented towards customers, or citizens, depending on the kind of business you're in. You get that on paper. And then you work backwards to say, what process, and structure, and technology changes do we need to make that role true? We've gone through a long period where we kind of do it the other way around. We start with technology, and then we try and figure out how to get humans on board. I think, you know, it's time for us to get as disciplined about human architecture and human integration as we are about technology architecture and technology integration.
Jeff
I couldn't agree more. It's true. It I mean, I'm seeing it-- I'm seeing in front of my eyes. And Softchoice, we've gone through a bit of a transformation the last couple of years where, you know, we were married to legacy technologies that was kind of homegrown and built from the ground up. And there's a place for that. You get to a point where that model doesn't scale. And so, you need to do-- you need to do something different. You know, on my own team, I see the struggles every day. And some people are eager to make that change, to make that leap. There are a lot of people in technology who crave that next big thing. Doesn't matter what discipline you're in-- not everybody's in early adopter. Not everyone is even, you know, on that end of the curve. Like, "I like to come in at 8 o'clock, I like to see things the same way, and I want to go home at 5," you know, kind of the quote unquote. They like that routine. And any disruption to that routine can affect people in different ways. You know, I love the idea of bringing it back to the kind of build, buy, and borrow those skills. Like, how do you help your team through those transitions, and be honest with yourself and with them on what's best for everyone? And sometimes they're tough conversations, but if they're positioned the right way, I think there's just some incredible outcomes that can happen out of all this, and you see incredible surprises all the time.
Stephen
If we fast forward to your point, Erika, to 2022, 2023, will we have a Canadian market where the rural, the remote, and the hard to employ have an easier time getting a job because there are opportunities to work remotely and connect to work that way? Or the contingent workforce is growing, and employers become more comfortable using that workforce that doesn't want a full-time job to disrupt some of the tasks that we were talking about earlier, that could be designed out of our core roles. There are so many opportunities, I think the biggest challenge for employers right now is, how do we find the capacity to figure out what our plan is and start to go after it?
Erika
Well, and it also ties in, Stephen with your asking about like, "Who's going to embrace this from a strategic point of view, and what does that look like?" It's what opportunities can we provide to people, what other sources can we tap into from a skills perspective. If 42% of those skills need to be changing in the next few years, there's people that you know, might be living up in Moose Jaw that have the skills that we want, and they just thought, "Well, I'm never going to move to Toronto." So now the job is coming to me, as opposed to I'm going to the job. So, it's pretty cool.
Stephen
By the way, there's a way to link those two ideas. One of one of our friends out of the Center for the Edge in the US has one of the main learning strategies in the future is going to be building teams. Building teams of people who are cross functional, have different expertise, lift them out of transactional work and give them problems to solve.
Erika
So, when we think about the dynamics that are playing here, and you talk about scale, and those sorts of things, I think about burnout. Burnout is something that has become so much more used as a term in the last 14 months. People are overworking. When we talk about hybrid, when you talk about there's people that are early adopters, some of those early adopters have got so much gas in the tank that they don't realize when they're overexerting. How do we manage that burnout piece? Like, how do we address it? Or is there some thoughts, or some advice from either of you?
Stephen
Well, I mean, my first impulse is to tell somebody if anybody's got the best answer in the world to please write me, and have I got a job for them. This is one of those whitespace areas I was talking about where I think we really need to go back to first principles and redesign work. A lot of the tactics that are out there are good. You know, we see some clients saying, let's set 20- and 50-minute meetings so that people have time to be a human being in between. [chuckles] You know, we have others that are looking at some of the fundamental challenges with the core technology. Now, I'll pick on one. Microsoft Office Outlook, unintended consequence of having a system that allows you to book somebody for 30 minutes, pretty much on demand. It made a lot of sense a year or two go. But now is it driving really bad behaviors? You know, fundamentally what we need to do is look at wellness as a sustainability strategy. But we need to think of wellness not as a series of benefits that we optionally provide to employees, but something foundational to the way we design the work itself, so that our top talent can stay with us, and stay healthy, and remain productive. That's a big mindset shift. And I'm gonna be frank with you, I haven't seen anybody really nail it yet.
Erika
Now you bring up a good point when you talk about that sustainability strategy, as opposed to looking at it as in how many mental health days do we provide somebody a year. You know, what are your vacation day strategy, those sorts of things. And it's true. I think we all started with the ideal of the 20-minute and the 50-minute meeting on the hour, and I think that when-- that now if a reminder comes up and tells me I'm 5 minutes away from the end of my meeting and nobody notices, everybody just keeps talking.
Stephen
Unfortunately, a lot of those tactics have-- like, there's good intent. But I do worry about organizations that are putting that forward as, like, their strategy. There's going to be a lot of cynicism in the system when people realize those tactics aren't really working.
Jeff
[Sighs] I mean, I'm with Stephen, and I don't know that there's a ...I think just about everyone suffers from a certain level of burnout at some point. Again, I haven't seen or heard a tactic that works. I think people need to be more self-aware than they ever have been in the past. You know, I've used the term myself, I've heard other people use the term, but you kind of hit that wall before you know the wall's even coming. You know, I'm gonna go a little bit against what I said earlier that it's not about 2020 and 2021. In this case it is, because there's that natural break where, at least personally, I had that-- I had about a week, a week and a half off in between just to-- just unplug. And just to think. And one of the things I was thinking about was, "Why am I so tired, and what is different?" I'm not commuting, I don't have that. I'm not getting up-- I don't have to get up as early in the morning as I need to. I should have more time with my family in the evening. But I'm still finding myself getting up early, and I'm still finding myself with less time in my family. So, what's-- you know what's changed? And I think it's just trying to consciously insert a bit of, kind of sane moments back in your day. You know, one of the things that I've tried to do is schedule a meeting with myself two or three times a week. It's just time for me to think. And I think little things like that help. But I also think that they're not silver bullets. I think they're tactics. I think they help along the way. But it becomes very, very easy to slide back into some of those habits that we got into early on during-- you know, during remote work. And I think it's just the constant self-awareness of what's going on around you. How do you feel? Even more importantly, the folks around you, just taking stock about people's behavior. And when I say behavior, not in a negative way, just people you know, people you work with, you know, just trying to be aware of the cues, and giving people that comfort and that permission to be open about kind of what's going on. And being honest with them about things that you're going through, bringing that human element back into what we do day in and day out.
Stephen
One thing I'd add-- and it's a tough sell. But we-- you know, what gets measured, gets done is fundamentally true. If you apply that to the conversation we were just having, I wonder if we need fundamentally some metrics relief for people in some contexts in order to find time for wellness. Our private organizations, in particular, are very good at taking an improvement and metric and saying, that was great. Now, next month's, do even better. And we just may have to look at that more closely.
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Erika
So, what changes have you noticed in your own teams and as leaders, compared to this time last year?
Rebecca
From a team's perspective, I will say one massive benefit has been a leveling of the playing field. I am in a position where I manage an org that's all across North America, and there were certain parts of my team who were so much closer than others just because geographically they were in the same office and could get to know each other. And they had team members that they knew their names, and they would be on our team meetings, but they never really built a relationship. So, one thing I did as soon as we went virtual just to try and create this kind of faux office environment is we just had these all-day Teams bridges that anyone could pop into at any point in time, and we're all collaborating on, nonstop. And that is the one glowing piece of positive feedback that came out of 2020 is resounding, my entire team said they felt so much closer to each other than they ever had before. They felt like they got to know each other better. There's now, like, BFFs across the border between our Atlanta and Toronto office. So that was amazing. And I love getting that feedback that in, you know, all the chaos and all the change we actually built a stronger, more cohesive team because of how we changed our level of collaboration. If anything, I think it's forced us as organizations, as corporations to move more quickly to the point of humanizing how we are leading our people.
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Erika
Like most things these days, it doesn't come as a surprise to me that planning for a bold hybrid workplace of the future also means wading through a whole lot of gray area and mystery. But the good news is, that is the playbook for tech leaders. Preparing for the unknown is the work. And the only way to do that is to have trust, transparency and flexibility be a priority in your hybrid workplace culture. Will we ever go back to the office? Probably in some capacity. I know a lot of people are craving that environment, but the office won't be used like it was before. Because if we've learned anything in this conversation, it's that a successful workforce will focus on what, how, and why-- not where.
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Erika
Thanks for listening to the first episode of season two. Please rate, or better yet, review the podcast on your listening platform of choice and let us know what you think. If you love this episode, on the next one I'm breaking down the workplace even further. Two data and workplace experts, including Microsoft Canada's GM of Modern Workplace devices join me to look at how management is using employee data to create the workplace culture of the future. How will data soothe some of our work from home isolation sorrow-- or can it? I'm Erika Van Noort. See you in two weeks for another episode of The Catalyst.
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Last year, leaders threw their playbook into the fire. And as so many industries changed, they kept the business going-- all the while on the edge of their seats. Today, this is the new normal for the workplace. So, are we ever going back to the office? And if so, why? Welcome back to The Catalyst by Softchoice, and our first episode of season two. I'm Erika Van Noort. The idea of the hybrid workplace isn't new. It's been floating through conversations of thought leaders since the early '80s. Now that hindsight really is 2020, it's a little odd to me that this digital workplace environment has only come to widescale global adoption because of the pandemic. My home office and seeing colleagues through webcams is so normal to me now, and so much more accessible and forgiving. It all just feels kind of obvious. Despite how much I love working in my Lulus, it's clear that today's hybrid workplace is lacking in things that the physical office provided. Things like informal collaboration, company culture, and routine. Is working from home all it's cracked up to be? What is the workplace of the future, and how do we get there? Joining me on the podcast is Jeff Reis, Senior Vice President of Information and Technology here at Softchoice, and Stephen Harrington, Director at Deloitte, and a longtime thought leader in the conversation about the future of work. Together, they're going to help me unpack the hybrid workplace-- where it started, and where it's headed. And the difference between doing it right and doing it wrong.
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Erika
I'm so excited today, to have both Jeff and Stephen join me on the call. I've had an opportunity to do some work with Stephen from Deloitte. Jeff, with leading our own future of work, looking at how we as an organization went remote instantaneously. So how we pivot and what that means. So, I'm just excited to have both of you here today.
Stephen
Thanks for having me.
Jeff
Yeah. Thanks, Erika, it's a pleasure.
Erika
So, Stephen, you've been writing and thinking about this long before it was a hot topic. Here we are today. What did you get right? And what totally surprised you?
Stephen
Well, we knew all along that this was the fourth industrial revolution. So, we knew it was going to be about automation. You know, if I think about the early days, what people were writing about was largely, how big is the disruption going to be? And we saw some really scary predictions. I remember one in 2014, that said, you know, 50% of jobs would be disrupted by 2020. Phew, that didn't come true. But we still are on this journey of technology that is in some cases, substituting human work, and in other cases, augmenting human work. That's the main puzzle. But it comes with a lot of baggage, doesn't it? And COVID really proved that. Suddenly, one of the vectors of the future of work, we call new ways of working, which before COVID was largely about agile ways of working, and digital ways of working, suddenly became about remote ways of working. That gives you a little sense of the predictable in the unpredictable in this game of trying to get ahead of the future of work topic.
Erika
So why do you think it took a pandemic for us to, like, really have this conversation about how we work?
Stephen
Well, you wish it wouldn't, right? But what we're dealing with are really entrenched ideas, orthodoxies that bake into our way of thinking so fundamentally that we don't even see them. They're invisible. You know, one of my favorite orthodoxies to pick on is the job itself. I-- you know, if we're going to be really bold, I wonder if it's time to rethink that concept, altogether. The idea that we can write down on a piece of paper, and have last for a decade or two, an idea of what a job needs to be that we can codify. It stands in the way of many of our stated corporate goals of being more agile, of having more mobility, and flexibility. One of the ideas we've been playing with is when you step back and you look at your organizational strategy, is it a time for you to maintain fixed goals? Or should you move to dynamic outcomes? And I'll give you an example of what I mean. A lot of automakers are making the shift right now, going from what was a fixed goal of how can we produce more cars and sell more cars within as many jurisdictions around the world as possible, to now setting goals like we would like to be a carbon neutral company by 2035. That's a dynamic goal because nobody knows how to get there. And more and more employees within those businesses are being released to dynamic goals. Therefore, goodbye fixed processes, and a need for a lot more flexibility in almost a flow of work concept. These are some of the sort of underlying structural changes I think we need to see. And also, an answer, Erika, to why it's-- why it is taking COVID to sort of reveal these challenges to us.
Erika
Great examples and I-- you know, I like when you talk about the fixed goals versus dynamic outcomes, because it plays into you as an organization. Like, what is your competitive advantage? Or what can your competitive advantage be moving forward? So, Jeff, over to you. We all know that 2020 was crazy. I was there watching it live as a Softchoice employee. What's the story now for us, for 2021?
Jeff
Well, I wish I knew I had all the answers. But I try not to compartmentalize between 2020 and 2021. I forget where I heard it, but somebody said 2021-- I think was a comedian on Netflix, but 2021 is just a new year to complain about. Which is a horrible way to look at things. But you know, the exciting part is, it is a continuum. It is a journey. And we learn things, we make some assumptions, we learn a bit more, we adjust. And it really is a lot of iterations. When I think about what Stephen mentioned about this dynamic environment that we're in, they're trying to-- we're trying to manage through, you know, I'd love to say, "Hey, here's what 2021's gonna hold. And I think what 2021's gonna hold is ongoing change, a lot of new discoveries. You know, a bit of ongoing uncertainties. And I think, as organizations have prepared themselves to embrace, you know, this uncertainty and this change, it's incumbent on these organizations to really make the right adjustments that meets us where we think we're going to be in the next 30 days to 60 days. But at the same time, really helps us meet where we think we'll be, where we want to be if you fast forward 12 to 18 months. I think we all see-- I don't want to call it an end game, but there is going to be a something else. We don't know what that's something else looks like. As we get closer to that something else, it becomes clearer and clearer. And during that journey, whether it's 2020, or 2021, we're making those adjustments to meet that head on.
Stephen
I'd love to add, you know, if 2020 was a revolution, it was a revolution in a bell jar. And what I worry about is that that's going to get lifted, and we're gonna be back to normal, whatever the hell that means. And we're gonna find out how people are going to behave. Both leaders, managers at scale, and employees when this is over. In what Jeff was saying, it reminded me of this concept that we keep talking about, horizon one and horizon two. Horizon one's the one we can see right in front of us, and it's about COVID. It's about what we're living through. What I love about what Jeff's doing, and not enough organizations are doing it, by the way, is thinking about horizon two, which is when this is over, how do we want to compose ourselves? Thinking across HR, IT, real estate, to codify and sustain a new way of working that's going to be to our advantage. It's tough, but not having a plan seems a greater risk.
Erika
It's interesting for me with my daily role with talent acquisition and HR here at Softchoice, one of the first questions that most candidates ask us now is "What is our stance on an office? What-- where will you expect me to work? How many days a week would you expect me to come into an office once you reopen your offices? What would that look like?" So, it's a very different discussion. And it's going to be limiting for us as to what type of talent we can attract as a result. So, with that, want to get a little bit philosophical with each of you. And that is, what's the point of a physical office now, and how work is evolving overall? So, Stephen, let's go to you first.
Stephen
So, when I'm feeling, like, being controversial-- I'm feeling it right now-- I've often said, and this isn't for isn't everyone, some have been better than others. But if you look at the aggregate workplace experience in the 20th century, and you wanted to paint a metaphor, it would be as a prison. And by that, I mean a place that we housed people to make sure they were there. And we didn't want to let those folks escape during the business hours. I think there's an opportunity for workplaces to become much more cafes, war rooms, libraries. In other words, the persona of the workplace can change. You know, a lot of organizations are facing big policy questions like you hinted at, Erika. Like, do we tell people when they need to come in? Is it two days a week? Is it three days a week? Is it different for different segments? And my preferred strategy, where it works, and it doesn't work in every segment, is to say, "Let's see if we can be policy light. Let's see if we can create guardrails for what's acceptable behavior and then make the employee accountable for making the right decision about where they need to be based on the work that they're doing." But the companion to that is, if that's our strategy, then we need to build workplaces that generate a fear of missing out. That's where the cool kids are. That's where the great conversations are happening. That's where the innovation is happening, that's where the best tools are. That way, the workplace becomes a magnet that draws people in, versus that 20th century model we were just talking about throwing out.
Jeff
You know, I couldn't agree more. I think we really have to better define the purpose of a workplace. The type of work you do in any given day should define where you do it, and how you want to get it done. And some of that might be at the workplace, some of that might be focused work, could be at home. And not to go as far as policies, but kind of the rules of engagement, if you will. And what I mean by that is, I think about a meeting or a collaborative experience. And, you know, in a past life, my head office was in Chicago, I was based in Toronto. And so, I would be in Chicago once a week, I'd be in Toronto the other week, and there would be meetings happening in Chicago, and I knew that there were great conversations happening in between the meetings. The meetings after the meetings. And sometimes you get a lot more nuggets out of those sidebar conversations than you do by being in the physical meeting itself. And so, I think we need to be mindful and shift our thinking about how we're conscious about the surroundings, not just the physical, but the virtual. Who is around us, what conversations, you know, should they-- should we be contributing back to that individual if they can be, you know, in the physical workplace? The other thing that I wanted to share-- you know, it's interesting, because while I do have IT in my, you know, as part of my portfolio, I also have workplace and facilities. And so, one of the things-- and it's a great marriage. And we're thinking about how do we bring the physical and the digital space together? And we're partnering with organizations that think through that. And so yesterday, we were on a call and somebody said, you know, "The-- positioning this as the idea of an employee as a consumer, and the utilization of a workplace as a metric." That just resonated with me so much, just because most people are metric driven, and how do you measure success of anything? You know, measuring the success of a physical workplace and the utilization of that workplace, it's more than just the CSAT score, or how somebody felt about it. It is about people wanting to be there, as Stephen said. It's about people feeling the need to be part of that connected workplace because it brings that added level of value that you couldn't get by not being there.
Erika
Yeah, it goes back to the FOMO piece, right? "I'm missing out on something, and what is that?" It's got to be purposeful. And I've heard you and your team talk about purpose of place. I've heard Stephen talk about, you know-- so what is it that you're trying to accomplish? What are you trying to generate by bringing these people together? I mean, if I were to make a trip into the office in the future to find out that all the people I'm meeting with are on Teams, I could have just stayed in my home office and done that. So, it's kind of, how do you find that balance moving forward?
Stephen
You know, and I would just-- you know, I loved Jeff's point about knowing the meetings are going on in Chicago and the conversations afterwards, I'll often say that we're entering a period of just a legion of design challenges. Like, calling all design thinkers, right? Because I think we need to design our way out of challenges like that. So, there's a couple of things that makes me think, do we design our meetings differently so that the hallway conversation actually has a place in the meeting itself? Or do you build technologies that allow for breakouts following a meeting, so there can actually be virtual hallway conversations? There's a-- there might be, you know, diversity and inclusion challenges with that, but you see what I mean? Like, you can take any of these issues facing us and recognize their whitespace and-- and really think about it differently.
Erika
Or spend the first five minutes while everybody's trying to figure out the technology and that's part of our hallway conversation before we get it going. [laughs]
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Erika
In my typical fashion, I sought at the opinions of my peers here at Softchoice. Here's what they're thinking about work, and the workplace today, and tomorrow.
Ryan
I've actually been in a unique position where I've worked from home quite a bit. So, I'm Ryan Demelo, I'm Solution Marketing Manager for our Cloud Portfolio. So, transitioning into working from home all the time for me was not too difficult of a transition. The one thing that I do miss is the-- just the interaction with everybody in the office when I do need to collaborate on specific aspects of my role in my projects.
Rebecca
I'll be honest, it was a huge-- not just physical, but emotional shift. Hi, I'm Rebecca Martinez. I'm the Senior Enterprise Account Leader. I've always been the person that never even used the option to work from home days. Like, loved being in the office, was there hyper interactive with my team. I've always led a really large team. And the shift of virtual work all the time was a blow, it was a massive adjustment. I came to realize the benefits quite quickly in the elimination of my monster commute and how much that helps my productivity. [laughter] So I found advantages in it much more quickly than I expected to. I think the thing that has challenged me the most with it has been the blurring of the lines. Even just managing stress levels, and managing emotional balance is so much more challenging because there is no even physical separation between the two.
Erika
And as you say that Rebecca, because we have video on this call, as well, I'm noticing the basket of balls behind you, as well. So, there's play time, mixed with work time, all together.
Rebecca
Literally working in the playroom, yeah.
Erika
Fantastic, I love it. Chris?
Christopher
Christopher Payne, Territory Sales Leader. I think that it was a drastic change for me because I am one that collaborates very well. And when you're seeking that collaboration, you're looking for that human-to-human experience, right? And that's what I look to drive more efficient and productive type of work from my team, as well as myself. I usually seek isolation when I want focus. So, you have to be agile, you have to be resilient, you have to be adaptable, because that change has now shifted into the norm.
Erika
No, that's a great point. So how are each of you seeing, like, the difference in the definition of workplace? What does workplace now mean to you?
Rebecca
It's interesting, I don't really think about workplace. It's just work time, and not work time. [chuckles] Like, the workplace, like I was saying, geographically just seems the same. For me, the workplace is more-- almost the network, or the virtual world. Like when I'm in the hub with the rest of my teammates, when we're in group chats, when I'm in my team meeting, like that is the workplace. Out in the interwebs of my device. [laughs]
Christopher
Agreed. I think, compared to yesteryear, workplace meant Softchoice, Norcross, Georgia. And now I think of workplace as mobile. Where can I be productive? You know, whether that is in the house, whether that is actually in an office, if that's at a Starbucks, if that's in a hotel, if that's on the road. So, I think workplace is a little bit more amorphous and malleable.
Ryan
To me, it's, it's more of the work that I do and the workflow that I execute through with various different people. So, an example of that is some other peers of mine in Solution Marketing, we do daily stand ups, and where we're synching up on to-dos for the day, to-dos for the rest of the week, just to keep us being collaborative, and just focusing our priorities. And so, for me, I look at it for more of the workflow that we do, not so much the destination that I'm sitting in. I can get work done wherever I am.
Erika
No, I find the same for myself. Work is not a place, it's an activity. It's why we always talk about, you know, when people were talking at the beginning of the pandemic about, "When are we returning to work?" And I'd say, "Well, nobody actually stopped working." [laughter] So we're not returning to work, we may be returning to a workplace or a destination in some cases with some offices, but most of us are steady on, if not doing more.
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Erika
Who would have ever thought IT would need to get so philosophical about our daily working lives? I mean, I'm not ruffled by it. But here's what I really need to know: just how on earth are today's CIOs operating with no playbook in hand? How do they create a workplace that feels just as normal as the last? And what happens if they fail?
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Erika
So, Jeff, I'd love for us to get focused on solutions, the CIO perspective. So, what are you looking at in 2021 to support hybrid environments? So, tack practical, you know, hybrid is language that we just naturally use all the time, digital workspace, that sort of thing. What are you're looking at for 2021?
Jeff
Whew, it's a great question. I think, in 2020, you know, a lot of what we enabled was really a response to business continuity. It was about, how do we make sure the trains keep running? Let's be candid, that's what pretty much every organization in the world did. But, you know, a ton of online collaboration has been effectively enabled, and people continue to operate day to day. I think in some cases, some organizations have done a better job of securing their organizations as a part of that. What I mean by that is, you know, you kind of take some things for granted when you're in the physical space. You assume certain things are being managed a certain way. But you really got to kind of, you know, double click on that to make sure that not only do you have those secure protocols in place, but you have redundancies in place. How are you measuring those things more frequently than you would historically? How do you measure compliance around things that are not necessarily technology based, but that you rely on people to do, day in and day out? So, I think a continued focus on our security posture and how we continue to protect the organization is something we'd focused on in 2020 and will continue with in 2021. The next piece is listening to the business. You know, a lot of successful CIOs that have positioned themselves as a strategic partner to the business as they should. And that is more important now than ever. What are the business problems that the organization is faced with today? And it's easy to kind of get down that rabbit hole of the solution. If you've got me this tool, I could be able to do these three things. The challenge is really helping business leaders take a step back and say, "What are the two or three really big business problems that is really impeding you from being successful?" Let's assume we're going to operate in this mode for the next two years. What are the things that gonna drive the biggest impact your business, and how are we going to really measure that impact? Let the IT group, let the technology team take that away in collaboration with a business to really focus on here's the solution that I think is going to get you where you need to go. And by the way, this is people, process, and technology, it's not just a tool. So how are we supporting your team? How are you supporting your team through that change? It's kind of a long-winded way of answer the question, Erika. But I think it's dangerous to say, "Here's the four tools that are going to enable an organization," I think it really is about asking the organization where they have the biggest impediments today, where they feel the biggest pain points, and then helping that business stakeholder through that change, not just through technology, but preparing their people for that change, prepare it and make sure that the process we have in place align with the new technologies, and really enabling the organization in a very real way, in a business impact way.
Erika
That's great. I-- you know, you bring up the point, it's really easy to just focus on a solution, like so many do, without really understanding it's a very different form of listening today than it was 14 months ago. By going remote, one of the things we've heard from so many of our, you know, different customers, is that how easy it was to actually drive things forward so quickly to enable the organization to carry on. A lot of companies didn't miss a beat. It was those that weren't sort of in that space of hybrid technology thinking, hybrid business thinking, that we're the ones that were caught a little more back footed.
Jeff
You know, as I said, I think standing up a team's instances-- that's not a lot of work. It's not a lot of effort. It happens every day. But it's everything else that surrounds that, it's the ecosystem around it that really supports the employee beyond jumping on a video call and collaborating on some documents.
Erika
So, Stephen, as a futurist in this space I'd love to hear from you. Flash forward to, say, 2022. What did the most successful companies get right?
Stephen
I don't know if I put it in terms of right and wrong. But I wonder how many organizations are going to seize the whole strategic opportunity. So, we've been talking a lot so far about new ways of working, and that's really important to get it right. But the other couple of things that I think about-- one is future skills. The World Economic Forum came out earlier this year and said somewhere around 42% of core skills will need to be reconsidered or changed in the next two years. That's crazy. I mean, I almost fell out of my chair when I read that, and it deserves attention. Who can afford that kind of massive skill change in that short timeframe? Organizations need to do a few things. They need to think about exactly what future skills do we need? And I'm not a big fan of all these Top 10 Future Skill lists out there that are being turned out, it seems every week I actually mean, what's our strategy? You know, department by department. Therefore, what skills do we need? Exactly who needs to learn them? And what are our build, buy, borrow strategies to acquire them? We can no longer afford to think that everything is trainable, because we can't run that many training courses. A lot more of learning has to be in the flow of work. Like, just look at people who've been working for a long time in IT architecture, where hardware is their main domain specialization. Well, what's happening? All that hardware is moving to the cloud. So, talk about a workforce transition challenge. The other thing I think organizations will get right is sort of the masterclass in future of work, which is what we call the re-architecture of work. Imagine taking the time to take a look at some of the critical roles in your business, and putting them on a canvas, and asking yourself if we redesign this role from scratch, in particular, to take out the dull, the expensive, or even the dangerous tasks, and we also recomposed it so that that role would better-- be more oriented towards customers, or citizens, depending on the kind of business you're in. You get that on paper. And then you work backwards to say, what process, and structure, and technology changes do we need to make that role true? We've gone through a long period where we kind of do it the other way around. We start with technology, and then we try and figure out how to get humans on board. I think, you know, it's time for us to get as disciplined about human architecture and human integration as we are about technology architecture and technology integration.
Jeff
I couldn't agree more. It's true. It I mean, I'm seeing it-- I'm seeing in front of my eyes. And Softchoice, we've gone through a bit of a transformation the last couple of years where, you know, we were married to legacy technologies that was kind of homegrown and built from the ground up. And there's a place for that. You get to a point where that model doesn't scale. And so, you need to do-- you need to do something different. You know, on my own team, I see the struggles every day. And some people are eager to make that change, to make that leap. There are a lot of people in technology who crave that next big thing. Doesn't matter what discipline you're in-- not everybody's in early adopter. Not everyone is even, you know, on that end of the curve. Like, "I like to come in at 8 o'clock, I like to see things the same way, and I want to go home at 5," you know, kind of the quote unquote. They like that routine. And any disruption to that routine can affect people in different ways. You know, I love the idea of bringing it back to the kind of build, buy, and borrow those skills. Like, how do you help your team through those transitions, and be honest with yourself and with them on what's best for everyone? And sometimes they're tough conversations, but if they're positioned the right way, I think there's just some incredible outcomes that can happen out of all this, and you see incredible surprises all the time.
Stephen
If we fast forward to your point, Erika, to 2022, 2023, will we have a Canadian market where the rural, the remote, and the hard to employ have an easier time getting a job because there are opportunities to work remotely and connect to work that way? Or the contingent workforce is growing, and employers become more comfortable using that workforce that doesn't want a full-time job to disrupt some of the tasks that we were talking about earlier, that could be designed out of our core roles. There are so many opportunities, I think the biggest challenge for employers right now is, how do we find the capacity to figure out what our plan is and start to go after it?
Erika
Well, and it also ties in, Stephen with your asking about like, "Who's going to embrace this from a strategic point of view, and what does that look like?" It's what opportunities can we provide to people, what other sources can we tap into from a skills perspective. If 42% of those skills need to be changing in the next few years, there's people that you know, might be living up in Moose Jaw that have the skills that we want, and they just thought, "Well, I'm never going to move to Toronto." So now the job is coming to me, as opposed to I'm going to the job. So, it's pretty cool.
Stephen
By the way, there's a way to link those two ideas. One of one of our friends out of the Center for the Edge in the US has one of the main learning strategies in the future is going to be building teams. Building teams of people who are cross functional, have different expertise, lift them out of transactional work and give them problems to solve.
Erika
So, when we think about the dynamics that are playing here, and you talk about scale, and those sorts of things, I think about burnout. Burnout is something that has become so much more used as a term in the last 14 months. People are overworking. When we talk about hybrid, when you talk about there's people that are early adopters, some of those early adopters have got so much gas in the tank that they don't realize when they're overexerting. How do we manage that burnout piece? Like, how do we address it? Or is there some thoughts, or some advice from either of you?
Stephen
Well, I mean, my first impulse is to tell somebody if anybody's got the best answer in the world to please write me, and have I got a job for them. This is one of those whitespace areas I was talking about where I think we really need to go back to first principles and redesign work. A lot of the tactics that are out there are good. You know, we see some clients saying, let's set 20- and 50-minute meetings so that people have time to be a human being in between. [chuckles] You know, we have others that are looking at some of the fundamental challenges with the core technology. Now, I'll pick on one. Microsoft Office Outlook, unintended consequence of having a system that allows you to book somebody for 30 minutes, pretty much on demand. It made a lot of sense a year or two go. But now is it driving really bad behaviors? You know, fundamentally what we need to do is look at wellness as a sustainability strategy. But we need to think of wellness not as a series of benefits that we optionally provide to employees, but something foundational to the way we design the work itself, so that our top talent can stay with us, and stay healthy, and remain productive. That's a big mindset shift. And I'm gonna be frank with you, I haven't seen anybody really nail it yet.
Erika
Now you bring up a good point when you talk about that sustainability strategy, as opposed to looking at it as in how many mental health days do we provide somebody a year. You know, what are your vacation day strategy, those sorts of things. And it's true. I think we all started with the ideal of the 20-minute and the 50-minute meeting on the hour, and I think that when-- that now if a reminder comes up and tells me I'm 5 minutes away from the end of my meeting and nobody notices, everybody just keeps talking.
Stephen
Unfortunately, a lot of those tactics have-- like, there's good intent. But I do worry about organizations that are putting that forward as, like, their strategy. There's going to be a lot of cynicism in the system when people realize those tactics aren't really working.
Jeff
[Sighs] I mean, I'm with Stephen, and I don't know that there's a ...I think just about everyone suffers from a certain level of burnout at some point. Again, I haven't seen or heard a tactic that works. I think people need to be more self-aware than they ever have been in the past. You know, I've used the term myself, I've heard other people use the term, but you kind of hit that wall before you know the wall's even coming. You know, I'm gonna go a little bit against what I said earlier that it's not about 2020 and 2021. In this case it is, because there's that natural break where, at least personally, I had that-- I had about a week, a week and a half off in between just to-- just unplug. And just to think. And one of the things I was thinking about was, "Why am I so tired, and what is different?" I'm not commuting, I don't have that. I'm not getting up-- I don't have to get up as early in the morning as I need to. I should have more time with my family in the evening. But I'm still finding myself getting up early, and I'm still finding myself with less time in my family. So, what's-- you know what's changed? And I think it's just trying to consciously insert a bit of, kind of sane moments back in your day. You know, one of the things that I've tried to do is schedule a meeting with myself two or three times a week. It's just time for me to think. And I think little things like that help. But I also think that they're not silver bullets. I think they're tactics. I think they help along the way. But it becomes very, very easy to slide back into some of those habits that we got into early on during-- you know, during remote work. And I think it's just the constant self-awareness of what's going on around you. How do you feel? Even more importantly, the folks around you, just taking stock about people's behavior. And when I say behavior, not in a negative way, just people you know, people you work with, you know, just trying to be aware of the cues, and giving people that comfort and that permission to be open about kind of what's going on. And being honest with them about things that you're going through, bringing that human element back into what we do day in and day out.
Stephen
One thing I'd add-- and it's a tough sell. But we-- you know, what gets measured, gets done is fundamentally true. If you apply that to the conversation we were just having, I wonder if we need fundamentally some metrics relief for people in some contexts in order to find time for wellness. Our private organizations, in particular, are very good at taking an improvement and metric and saying, that was great. Now, next month's, do even better. And we just may have to look at that more closely.
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Erika
So, what changes have you noticed in your own teams and as leaders, compared to this time last year?
Rebecca
From a team's perspective, I will say one massive benefit has been a leveling of the playing field. I am in a position where I manage an org that's all across North America, and there were certain parts of my team who were so much closer than others just because geographically they were in the same office and could get to know each other. And they had team members that they knew their names, and they would be on our team meetings, but they never really built a relationship. So, one thing I did as soon as we went virtual just to try and create this kind of faux office environment is we just had these all-day Teams bridges that anyone could pop into at any point in time, and we're all collaborating on, nonstop. And that is the one glowing piece of positive feedback that came out of 2020 is resounding, my entire team said they felt so much closer to each other than they ever had before. They felt like they got to know each other better. There's now, like, BFFs across the border between our Atlanta and Toronto office. So that was amazing. And I love getting that feedback that in, you know, all the chaos and all the change we actually built a stronger, more cohesive team because of how we changed our level of collaboration. If anything, I think it's forced us as organizations, as corporations to move more quickly to the point of humanizing how we are leading our people.
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Erika
Like most things these days, it doesn't come as a surprise to me that planning for a bold hybrid workplace of the future also means wading through a whole lot of gray area and mystery. But the good news is, that is the playbook for tech leaders. Preparing for the unknown is the work. And the only way to do that is to have trust, transparency and flexibility be a priority in your hybrid workplace culture. Will we ever go back to the office? Probably in some capacity. I know a lot of people are craving that environment, but the office won't be used like it was before. Because if we've learned anything in this conversation, it's that a successful workforce will focus on what, how, and why-- not where.
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Erika
Thanks for listening to the first episode of season two. Please rate, or better yet, review the podcast on your listening platform of choice and let us know what you think. If you love this episode, on the next one I'm breaking down the workplace even further. Two data and workplace experts, including Microsoft Canada's GM of Modern Workplace devices join me to look at how management is using employee data to create the workplace culture of the future. How will data soothe some of our work from home isolation sorrow-- or can it? I'm Erika Van Noort. See you in two weeks for another episode of The Catalyst.
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