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structurally when you've got some people in the office and some people not in the
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office it creates real variation in people's experiences of work and in their ability to work together and
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fundamentally I think there's two big components that are kind of important because they both create power
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differences between people who are in the office and people who are not right and one is people's access to resources
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and the other is visibility right if you're in the office you probably have more visibility to your manager welcome
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to the ripple effect the podcast that takes you on a journey through the minds of work and faculty I'm your host Dan
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Loney and in each episode we'll be diving deep into the inspiration behind the groundbreaking research that Wharton
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professors have conducted and exploring how their findings resonate with the world today well great to be joined
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right now by Martine Haas who is a management professor at the Wharton School and also director of the Lauder
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Institute for management and International Studies Martine great to have you back with us thanks for a few
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moments today thanks it's great to see you Dan so the topic of hybrid work is
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obviously one that I think for most of us going back three or four years really wasn't in our vernacular but now here we
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are the pandemic has you know for the most part come and gone what are your thoughts on kind of the state of hybrid
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work right now in in the moment but also maybe what your expectations are for hybrid work as we move forward
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well it's a great question I guess it's the million dollar question that's on
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everybody's Minds um you know this the state of hybrid work right now in some
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ways looks surprisingly and I don't want to use the word stable but you know it
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looks strong I guess um in the sense of you know even in the last six months only the last year or so
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it feels like a lot of organizations have kind of converged on hybrid work as you know a sweet spot I kind of think of
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it as it's not it's not perfect but it's kind of a good compromise between the
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the tensions and the benefits that we see to workers who might want to be remote more of the time
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um some might want to be in the office but a lot do you want to be remote into managers who might want to be remote but
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a lot of times want their folks in the office and so it's it feels like it's a
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compromise that both sides have kind of come to even the firms that were kind of
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strongly you know we're going to let everyone be remote they've kind of realized wow we're losing some stuff
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maybe we kind of need to do more things together and on the other hand the firms
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that have been you know let's be completely and not uh you know completely in the office of realize that
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work is really like the strong pressures to let people work hybrid at least some
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of the time so it feels like we've settled into something of a routine in many companies where which looks hybrid
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right where people are in the office some days and not others and it's it's
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it's likely given that there are benefits on both sides and reasons to do both so we will this will be the way it
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looks for at least the foreseeable future right now so you mentioned managers and and I
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guess let's start there with because managers in the scope of the operation of a company and and the employees
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certainly have a lot to deal with I guess what is it that we need to know to better understand how managers are going
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to be able to deal with the component of hybrid work in terms of running their their divisions their operations
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well there's a lot to know I guess um but you know I think one really fundamental underlying thing that we
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need to recognize because it affects so much else what happens is that structurally when you've got some people
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in the office and some people not in the office it creates real variation in people's experiences of work and in
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their ability to work together and and fundamentally you know that I think there's there's two big components that
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are kind of important because they both create power differences between people who are in the office and people who are
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not right and one is people's access to resources right the resources are whether it's it's the photocopier or the
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manager's ear or with support of advice from other workers you have more of those resources if you're in the office
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with other people usually than if you're at home this is assuming some people are
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working payments some people are in the office you know at any given point in time and the other is visibility right
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if you're in the office you probably have more visibility to your manager probably your managers in the office too
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but even if they're not other people are seeing it you know hearing your work and
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you know they're more it's more obvious what you're doing and so resources and
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visibility matter because their basis of power in organizations where people who
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have more of them tend to have more power and that tends to mean that we when you you know are in the office more
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you kind of have more access to some other stuff and maybe more power than people who are in the office less
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particularly people who are never in the office but people who are in the office
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there saw a given day or any given week um and so I think managers need to sort of start with that fundamental
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recognition that people are just in different structural positions and as a result
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all is not equal right it's an unequal playing field and that means that we need to develop ways of competencies
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around managing that it doesn't have to be a bad thing and as I mentioned before
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there's lots of advantages to it um but it needs to it needs to be actively managed and people need to have
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you know have recognition and assistance in building the competencies to manage that situation whether they're prepared
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people who are watching about the other people in the office both of them and the managers so does technology as part
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of kind of the the overall mix here does technology make it easier or harder for
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the manager to be able to do a lot of those things and it may be you know it may depend on manager to manager how
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they react to the use of zoom and and and texting and all of these different components that we now use more often
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yeah I think of course technology makes it easier oh we wouldn't be doing it at
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all right and the reason why hybrid work is now so widespread when it really didn't even you know as you say it
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wasn't even part of our vernacular for either four or five years ago um is is because of Technology without
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question right and the fact that Zoom you know came along and not only that it came along but that we all shot up that
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learning curve to a level that everybody even the the least technologically adapt
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managers could basically manage symbols now right and that has enabled this in a
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way that it just wouldn't have happened not nearly so fast otherwise we already
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had a lot of this technology and it wasn't happening so fast so technology makes it all possible but it doesn't
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make it all perfect um and I think there's a tendency to recognize sorry not to recognize that
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some of the imperfections are things that really need attention right and there's all sorts of stuff that happens
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when we rely on technology unthinkingly um that can be pretty dysfunctional actually for our ability to work
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together effectively collaborate things down the best possible way so when you're talking about the the
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idea of hybrid work there are a couple of different components I think that you have to bring up one being this idea of
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of flexible hybrid and the other being kind of a a fixed hybrid if you can't
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take us through both of those and and differentiate the one from the other yeah I mean I think it's it's a pretty
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um simple distinction the fixed hybrid just kind of means that idea that some people are always in the office and you
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know there most of the time and if not all the time whereas some people are always remote right and that's a pretty
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you know extreme version of the situation but we do see that a lot um in many organizations uh whereas the
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flexible hybrid is when you're kind of somebody the same person is in the office some days and out of the office
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other days of the week right and I think the distinction is important just to say
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that the the flexible hybrid I think is less problematic or you you're able to
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work through more of the issues and see more of the issues that come up when you've got people coming in and out of
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the opposite creates a lot of its own you know issues too but at least you're
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not having people who are never there and people who are always there because when you have that situation the fixed
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hybrid some of these sort of um tensions or divisions or potentially potential golfs and understanding and so
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on are much more extreme than when you've got people coming in and out and and I think in the reality is that many
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organizations have seen that and a lot of a lot of companies are using um the flexible hybrid where people are coming
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in and out you know during the weeks or in part because of those reasons does it
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does it bring you into play a component of the the the playing field not being level uh for all individuals because of
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these Dynamics being different from one another yeah so the Plainfield is particularly
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unlevel when you are in this fixed hybrid system where some people never come in and other people are always in
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because there you really you know some people who have consistently more access to resources and visibility to high
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level management than the people that were more remote right and so you know I think there are the sort of issues about
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the the lack of levelness in the playing field are really important to recognize
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um in a hybrid system or in a remote work system where people some people have more of this than others right or
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more access to some of these species of power um and but but it's also the case and
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important to recognize that some people may be worse affected by the same sort of distance as others rather than others
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so if you have people who uh you know so I've written a bit about women right in
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the workplace um who may have a natural disadvantage in some sense in a male dominated
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workplace for example um in terms of whether they speak up as much or listen to as much or give them
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the best assignments or I've meant to as much even when you're working all
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together in the office now when you add that to what we call a remote work penalty right we know that some of these
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issues happen when you work remotely right you're less likely to have access
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to mentoring it may be harder to network it may be harder to get the best assignments it may be harder to speak up
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and you're giving you a couple of those two things together there might be particular people well I just did a
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woman as one example but they're not the only example who are particularly disadvantaged structurally
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um unless we take you know unless we're really aware of this and work hard to
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kind of offset these disadvantages and I want to say it doesn't mean that it's a
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bad idea for women to work remotely or anybody else right I think there's really great reasons why a woman at a
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particular career stage in Canada particular life stage might choose to work remotely but you should recognize
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that you need to recognize and I just need to recognize that and come with what we call a double disadvantage of
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sort of being a little bit disappointed anyway and then you've got the remote
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work penalty on top of it and let me just add again not just women right so it can be underrepresented minorities it
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can be junior folks who you know don't really know their way around the organization very well
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um are relatively new it might be um non-native language speakers who don't feel that comfortable even face to face
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never mind when they're working remotely as well right in dinner in an organizational setting so for all sorts
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of people it's important to recognize that you know remote work has trade-offs
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and have some real benefits again but it can also be disadvantageous in a way that we may or may not recognize that we
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need to recognize that we're not kind of systematically disadvantage those people
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so so there are specific elements to specific challenges I should say uh of of hybrid work remote work because of
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the way that it is set up yeah I think there are you know you've got this kind of the fundamental kind of
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lack of levelness in the playing field and that plays itself out in a lot of different ways right so
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um I have that I've been using this framework a lot with some of the executives I teach um called the five
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C's or the fire that also there are many there are others too but these capture
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some of the most important I think challenges that we see kind of emerging as a result of this lack of levelness of
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the playing field right and so the five seas are around I mean some of these are
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very familiar To Us by at this point communication coordination connection creativity and culture right and so each
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of those um are you know have have the special challenges as a result of being of when
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you work in a hybrid system of course they all have their challenges even when you're not hybrid right but the fact
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that you have some people in the in the workplace in the office and some people not
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um can create particular challenge challenges around each of those five C's but it seems like culture is the one
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that is drawing a lot of attention these days and thinking about kind of the structure of what a company or what a
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manager wants around the office Place fair to say yeah I think that's a that's a really
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interesting conservation and and it's something that I noticed almost two years ago I was at a senior Retreat for
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our top CEOs top Executives and by facilitating a panel discussion which really had nothing to do with remote
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work at all literally two years ago and I was absolutely taken aback by how every single CEO on this panel there
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were three or four of them independently and sort of building on each other raised culture as the issue that they
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were really it was really top of mind and I think from a senior leader perspective I mean single need to do if
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we do it should think a lot about culture um and there's the question that hybrid
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work creates massive challenges for culture right if you just think about sort of traditional
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um you know traditional three aspects of how culture has maintained attraction a
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selection and retention right so culture is really important for attracting people but in order to be distinctive
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you have to have something distinctive about you and if you're sort of you know
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if you don't have a strong culture or a strong entity then what makes your investment Bank any different from any
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other Investment Bank that folks may want to join rain um so that's the attraction piece you
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know um and then who do you select and who chooses to to you know who is really motivated to be there and wants to stay
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there over time right for junior people um culture is really important in helping to understand how things are
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done around here making sure the behaviors all sort of appropriate and are as productive as
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they can possibly be and are ethical for example um but even for gender for senior people
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people have been there a long time right culture is really important for motivating people and keeping them
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excited or interested in coming to work and the less you have that the less kind
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of pool there is of the organization which is where you start getting published attention and people just you
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know being being happy to job hop because they don't see anything special about your organization so culture is
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you know that has all these different ramifications let me also ask you about the the component of connection uh and
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how you see that playing out as well um when you're talking about uh the the
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success I guess it could probably be on a variety of fronts how connection could
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you could end up having an impact right so connection is partly um you know technological connection
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right into the logistical how easy it is for us to do handoffs and stuff like that but of course the big piece that
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we've seen um and increasingly became we were pretty aware of it as soon as it
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happened in the pandemic but it's persisted is social connection right and so the ability to socially connect is an
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enormous part of what happens inside organizations and that has um big advantages it has disadvantages
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sometimes we all know you know some other social connections at work can be pretty you know not really always good
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and sometimes we don't like being face to face with our bosses and sometimes we
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don't want to go for our drinks with our colleagues and all this kind of stuff
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right but there is something about that social connection and belonging that you
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get from interacting with people face to face in a non-worth of sleep is just chanting and corridors that is really
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important to people's mental health and well-being is part of what we've
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discovered right um and like without that you know people can sometimes get you know really lonely
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award or non motivated by their work um so there's there's that piece of it
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but there's also a connection is also really important to kind of connect culture a little bit that way
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um for Innovation right and so one of the things one of the reasons why you know a lot of tech companies care about
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having people in the office is because it's those random connections that people make in the workplace
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um that can lead to new ideas sparking right and it's the fact that I happen to
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get chatting in the elevator to somebody who was wearing a badge from a different
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group and I realized oh you know what do you do when they start chatting and then
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I realize there's a connection right um or maybe it's you know in the cafeteria line and when when everything
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is scheduled and we have to do everything right assume we nearly always are doing it with us the fixed set of
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people right our opportunity to connect with people we don't already know in the
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organization is much lower in a in a zoom or poly remote world than it isn't
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a face-to-face world and so those connections that spark new ideas and Innovations
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um are really much harder to make how do you think then the role of the manager kind of is able to deal with those five
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C's so that they can make the best of what is not a bad situation but it it brings forward kind of more of a tenuous
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situation yeah I think that one of the things that we just we're that we're at a point
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where what managers really need to be doing is is continuing um if they you know hopefully they were already to
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think actively about um what is going on in their hybrid workplace and whether it's as good as it
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can be because I think the the risk of being where we are in this sort of learning curve on hybrid work is that
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we've kind of settled into something many organizations at this point that pretty much works you know
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um and isn't terrible and is probably pretty good and it's very easy to just
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kind of say okay let's get on with this now and do the work and try to normalize
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right and not to realize that we may not be doing as well on one of the five C's
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or something else related to hybrid work that I haven't mentioned like Rewards or
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incentives right that we really need to pay attention to so I think it's very
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important at the stage for managers to be taking the time to evaluate and review where they are for example on the
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five C's right um and you know it can be as simple as going through a checklist to you know
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that's give give ourselves a grade right maybe I do that as a senior manager or I
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have everybody on my team also do that let's see if we agree you right are we
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you know great on you know communication on coordination on connection on creativity and on culture or do we see
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areas where we you know there's room fat treatment and if so we need to take a
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step back brainstorm think about what we can do better and try to implement that
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and then you know review that another six months down the line but sort of settling into a pattern that's
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potentially sub-optimal I think is a big risk of where we are given how exhausting all these transitions have
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been in the last few years and the fact that now things are pretty you know relatively stable and so they stay that
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way and it and it probably makes it a challenge for the manager to try and make the workplace as Fair as possible
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for everybody because of all these Dynamics yeah and so being aware which means it's hard to be aware of
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everything all the time right but at least sort of scheduling in you know every couple of months or every six
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months of this let's review how people are feeling about where they're working
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and whether that's still working for them maybe they want the option to change because we know people's
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circumstances always change throughout their lives but also particularly in the last in the last few years have been
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changing regularly right and then asking people I think you know and observing um and asking managers you know do
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people have the skills they need to be working this way right and so if they and that kind of goes back to this idea
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of hybrid competence right so if you are depending on where you are you know in the office or working remotely or you're
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a manager you kind of have a different set of responsibilities um related to trying to build hybrid
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competence right I think the important Point here is it's not just about the
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person who's working remotely right it's not the burden it's not only on them to
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make sure that they speak up and are heard and I listen to and are representatives are not able to make
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connections and everything else they have for sure responsibility to do that need to recognize that but it's also the
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people who are in the office who need to make sure that they are including the people who are working remotely and
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making space in time for them in the conversations and not leaving them out of importance or even magnet decisions
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which is obviously something we can easily you know we easily do where people are not around right
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um and so it's the people who are working remotely it's people are in the
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office and then it's the manager whether it's of the team or of the organization
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who needs to keep the whole thing in balance and then you know it's short that both sides are doing that and kind
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of intervening is needed um to make sure that you know everybody is kind of where they need to be
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Martine always great to talk to you and get your Insight thanks very much all the best thanks Dan great to talk to you
00:20:15
take care you too as well uh Martine Haas Wharton management professor and also director of the water Institute
00:20:21
thank you for listening to the ripple effect we hope you found this episode informative and engaging don't forget to
00:20:27
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