What does it mean to future-proof your business? And is that even possible in a post-pandemic world? In this episode of the Transform Your Workplace podcast, learn about potential blind spots, the value of employee perspectives, and talent retention strategy from Gleb Tsipursky, author of Returning to the Office and Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams. He and host Brandon Laws talk about how executives can make strategic, sustainable decisions for the good of their employees and, ultimately, the future of their companies.
GUEST AT A GLANCE
Gleb Tsipursky is a disaster avoidance expert — a consultant, coach, and trainer for the forward-thinking executive who wishes to “future-proof” their business. With over 20 years of experience, a Ph.D. from Chapel Hill and an M.A. from Harvard, Gleb is a published author and thought leader in strategic planning and leadership.
A QUICK GLIMPSE INTO OUR PODCAST
🔊 Podcast: Transform Your Workplace, Sponsored by Xenium HR
🎙️ Host: Brandon Laws
📋 In his own words: “The Transform Your Workplace podcast is your go-to source for the latest workplace trends, big ideas, and time-tested methods straight from the mouths of industry experts and respected thought-leaders.”
COMPILING THE DATA
To write his latest book, Returning to the Office and Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams: A Manual on Benchmarking to Best Practices for Competitive Advantage, Gleb Tsipursky interviewed 61 leaders, 14 senior leaders, and 47 mid-level managers from 12 organizations. With a background in future-proofing, his overarching question for executives was “how do we make good decisions in an increasingly disruptive future?”
And what he found was intriguing, to say the least. Some executives were in tune with the pulse of their employees — their fears, their needs, and their desires. But many were not. So, what does it take to future-proof a business during a global pandemic? It takes a real look at the data and a willingness to make a change.
PODCAST EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
Staying Flexible
“The crucial thing about the return-to-the-office strategy is flexibility. And it’s adapted for long-tail risks, which are lower likelihood scenarios but ones that can have a significant impact down the road. One that was pretty obvious from the early part of the pandemic was the risk of serious COVID-19 variants. If you remember, we had a variant that made up the third wave sometime in April and May. Fortunately, we had enough vaccination that it was mostly tamped down. Obviously, when I was working with the leaders to make a strategic plan, this was the possibility, so we made sure to set up hybrid models with some remote options.”
Working Together
“The only reason to come to the office — when you look at the research — is to do collaborative tasks. People are much, much more productive on their individual tasks at home. That’s why overall productivity rose 10-14% during the switch to lockdown.
Since the only reason you should be in the office is collaboration, that’s how team leaders need to make decisions about returning to work.”
Making Assumptions
“As part of our work, we surveyed the executives of these smaller and mid-sized companies. And we asked them whether they surveyed their people’s preferences for returning to the office. What we found is that only 44% of them did surveys on employee preferences. That’s ridiculous. That’s a dangerous judgment error. So I talk in the book a lot about these cognitive biases: the dangerous judgment errors we fall into because of how our brain is wired. And this one is called the False Consensus Effect. We tend to feel that other people will share the same opinions that we do, and so we don’t ask them about their opinions.”
Boosting Diversity
“Some of my clients are looking to boost their diversity and inclusion, and that’s natural for them. […] By hiring remote workers, they don’t have to be limited to the Bay Area or New York City or Chicago, or wherever they’re based. They can be hiring people from anywhere.”
Employees Value Flexibility
“I can guarantee you that the ones who are forcing their employees back to the workplace are at a competitive disadvantage now and that competitive disadvantage will grow. Why is that? Because top employees have options and they really value their flexible schedules. […] And during the pandemic, people realize that their time is worth somewhat more than money.”
Executive Blind Spots
“For many months, Google was saying, ‘We’ll have to get all our employees back to the office, back to the office, back to the office.’ But when people figured out that they can work fine remotely and they can accomplish their tasks, they started leaving. And so eventually, on May 5th, Google announced that they were now going to allow up to 20% of their workforce to work remotely full-time and that the rest can come in on a hybrid schedule and have flexibility about which offices they come to. They clearly screwed up. They lost many billions of dollars because they had to change their plans.”
LEARN MORE
Check out Gleb’s book, Returning to the Office and Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams: A Manual on Benchmarking to Best Practices for Competitive Advantage, on Amazon or wherever books are sold. You can also find some valuable resources on his website, www.disasteravoidanceexperts.com.