How to fix your hybrid work mess

Hello and welcome to Working It.

Last week I walked into a large room full of people. . . and I realized that I didn’t know anyone. Absolute social fear 😰.

This was a drinks party for the graduates of my college (St Catherine’s, Oxford), and while I found some close contemporaries who were charming, I also got to talk to new people.

I accepted a friendly stranger, Alice Sheldon. And then got into an engaging, as opposed to superficial, networking conversation about her groundbreaking work. I will write more about it in a future newsletter. Sometimes, the scary unknown can bring peaceful connections 🍀.

Read on for the latest on the future of hybrid and flexible work from a subject matter expert – ie. not me—and at Office Therapy I counsel someone with a low-energy team member.

Flex your hybrid: what’s the latest thinking for work?

Last week’s newsletter about the need for a “4+2+2” balance in our workdays (four hours of focus time + two collaboration times + two rest and connection times) prompted me to dig deeper into how and where we work . Specifically: what is the state of play in the RTO/hybrid/WFH debate? What trends are close? (And will there ever be an end to these acronyms? 🤷‍♀️)

I spent some time at the FT Women in Business Summit this week to ask one of our speakers about all this. Brian Elliott, formerly of Slack and Google, is now a management consultant and best-selling co-author How the future works: Leading flexible teams to do the best work of their lives. I asked him to describe the most common workplace problem he sees with clients, and more generally in the US labor scene (he’s based in San Francisco).

“People take the ‘one size fits all’ approach,” he told me where and when staff work. By this, Brian means the very common practice of employers requiring staff to be in the office on certain days, usually Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays 📆: a pattern that has come to define hybrid work. “It takes a lot of resistance,” he continued. Instead, Brian urges leaders to get beyond their annoyance at the inconsistency of people who stay away—and look deeper. “Let’s not focus on the possible solution as getting people back to the office more often. We’ve already seen that this makes people react negatively to you. Instead, let’s look at what the underlying business problem is that we’re trying to solve.”

So, if your business is facing inconsistency in office attendance, one answer may be to distract senior management from observing the lack of occupancy and worrying about people at home spending “four hours a day walking the dog. 🐕” (a real concern).

Instead, you might suggest refining and setting clear outcome and performance goals for everyone, at the individual and team levels, as well as for the entire organization. “Faith is not a one-way street. It only works if you hold people accountable for performance and you need to know what your performance standards are. You all need to know what the top three priorities are as an organization.”

This does not mean that we do not need to spend time with colleagues. Far from it. The next phase of the hybrid is already underway: some companies are spending money internally to hire (and this is my definition, not Brian’s) corporate party planners 🎊. He cites the example of US online real estate agency Zillow, which has cut the number of its offices so more people work remotely in more dispersed locations. But now it “funds meetings for teams on a minimum quarterly basis. They have a central team that helps organize these things.”

In this scenario, Zillow will bring together different teams—the finance and people departments, for example—and provide them with a three-day agenda with a mix of separate and joint sessions. “It really builds a deeper sense of belonging,” Brian said.

Did you screw up the hybrid job? Email me: isabel.berwick@ft.com.

This week on the Working It podcast

If you’re overwhelmed by AI, we’ve got the answer: Work There’s a mini-series exploring different aspects of generative AI at work and how it’s likely to affect us. This week’s episode is the first of three on the topic, and we start by talking about something that’s already happening: digital assistants. Have you ever wanted to be the two of you doing your own thing?

Some people are programming themselves into a digital twin that can answer emails, go to meetings and remember all the data you’ll ever need. I speak with Iliana Oris Valiente, Accenture’s managing director for Canada, and her digital twin, Laila. I then speak to the FT’s AI editor Madhumita Murgia about some of the general questions and concerns.

Office therapy

The problem: What to do with a colleague who is competent but has zero energy and doesn’t really interact? They’ve been with the organization for years, and always have been – we just had a reshuffle and they ended up with our team. While they are not miserable or pessimistic, they operate in a weak bubble. We end up finishing their sentences 🥱. Their point of view affects us all.

Isabella’s tip: This is such a nuanced issue because you say their performance is good, so you have nothing concrete to address. At your next meeting, mention that you’ve noticed they’ve been quiet.

No one should be forced to reveal personal details – and if this team member doesn’t want to, I’ll put this down to “everyone has something going on” and be clear that you’re always available for a conversation, highlight the resources your employer provides for confidential support, etc.

Then focus on building morale. It’s Summer: How about an event, like a walking tour, outdoor theater/concert, or cooking class? Preferably something where there is a clear focus on activity, rather than just socializing – which favors boisterous extroverts. Organized entertainment can be difficult and alienating, but as long as you practice inclusion—in the real sense of the word, which means to include all – then you have made a positive intervention.

Five top stories from the world of work

1. Silent holidays are rarely as peaceful as bosses hope: PwC asked employees who accepted a buyout to use approved wording in emails announcing their departures — and it backfired. Andrew Hill examines better ways.

2. Meetings in the Metaverse: new technology attracts workers to virtual offices: The metaverse hype has died down, but as Hannah Murphy points out, there’s still a lot of virtual workplace activity going on out there. Don’t write it down.

3. If staff no longer want to work, leaders must step up: Staff are frustrated and disengaged. Stefan Stern describes some of the ways in which business leaders and managers can get it right.

4. The Faint Lure of Foreign Mail: Working abroad used to be a much-coveted adventure—but, as Pilita Clark points out, the rise of dual-career couples and technology that makes it easy to work with global teams has put demand for these jobs on the decline.

5. Employers seeking to ease the pressure of fertility treatment on staff: It used to be very difficult to take time off for IVF and other fertility appointments – that’s changing fast, as employers start introducing more flexibility and employee benefits, writes Emily Herbert.

One more thing

Have you seen the FT’s video series on democracy? He was authorized for 2024, this strange year when almost half the world goes to the polls. (France has just joined us 🇫🇷.)

In the video, four famous women—including Margaret Atwood, the novelist, and (my favorite) Aditi Mittal, an Indian comedian and actor—address the importance of democracy and the threats it faces. The project, created by the FT’s head of new formats Juliet Riddell, has taken on a life of its own: it inspired a fantastic live event last week, part of the London International Theater Festival (LIFT). And there is also a book: Eleven Writers and Leaders on Democracy: What it is and why it matters.

And finally. . .

I met many readers at the FT Live Women in Business Summit in London, where a lively panel about flexible working (and its potential downsides for women) included insights from Microsoft’s Colette Stallbaumer. She is co-founder of the company’s WorkLab and general manager of Copilot, its AI chatbot, and reminded us that generative AI will transform everything about knowledge work, flexible or otherwise. (I take this opportunity to mention once again this useful Microsoft and LinkedIn research that describes the current state of AI affairs.)

It occurred to me that AI could also reshape the focus of every panel and keynote that happens at workplace events like the FT summit. We will probably have very different looking conferences in the future. (Sorry, conference planners). I don’t think bots will replace the actual panelists though 🤖. Feel free to disagree: isabel.berwick@ft.com.