How A Pandemic Changed the Way We Work: Hybrid Workplaces
Over the past 18 months, many employees got used to working from home during the pandemic. And now we are seeing companies navigate a new frontier, a space between remote work and meeting in person: the hybrid workplace. Rob and Traci explore the different types of hybrid workplaces and how these have evolved into a great option if you can navigate the human-centered challenges they create.
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Announcer:
Welcome to the Overly Human Podcast where we discuss all things human in the workplace. Because it's not just business—it’s personal too.
Traci:
So, Rob, I don't know if you remember—I’m sure you do, but I'll just jog your memory—October 2020, which was a crazy year and it was fall break time and still in kind of a lockdown mode. And I was vacationing lockdown style with family down in Florida, and you were as well. And we were able to get together you and your wife and Tom and I, and hang out on a big patio and have a glass of wine and just sort of talk about what was going on in the world. And we started to make predictions and we started to debate each other.
And it was super fun trying to look into our little individual crystal balls and ask ourselves these questions like, are we going to go back to the way it was? Are people going to go back into offices? Are we going to be fully remote? Is there going to be some sort of mixed version, hybrid version happening here? And I remember we were asking you about your office space and you have such a tight knit team and what was it going to look like?
And I really didn't think that you would give up your office space and go remote like you have. But again, here we are a year later, 2021, around the same time and things... Now the dust hasn't fully settled as we have talked about many times, but we're forever altered. We're not going to go back to the way it was. The United States, the world is altered and people have discovered the benefits of being remote, but we've also noticed the pain of not being together all the time. And so we're trying to manage that world.
So looking back on the last year since we had a glass of wine out on the patio in Florida, what do you think? What are you seeing?
Rob:
It's crazy. I remember that conversation pretty vividly because I think that we were on pretty opposite sides of this issue, but I think the dust hasn't settled yet as you kind of mentioned, but I think that at this point, we all agree that things are different. Things have changed fundamentally, and there's a new normal in front of us that we don't quite know how it's all going to work out yet, but there's starting to be some hints at where things are going and why they're headed that way.
And it's interesting because there's two kinds of changes that happen in the world, right? There's the evolutionary kind of change that happens a little bit at a time and there's revolutionary change that can happen when an outside force or something acts upon us and puts us in a wildly different place. And there's no doubt about it in my mind that what happened in March of 2020 was a revolutionary time and change that forced us in some new patterns that probably alters the direction of how this particular issue of what we do with offices and what we do going forward.
Traci:
Yeah. And I think during that conversation, I remember Tom, who interacts with so many different teams all over the country, he pretty much nailed where exactly we are today. He felt like we were going to see a ton of people go fully remote, and we were going to see a good chunk of people go hybrid, and not a lot of people full time in the office like we were back in 2019. And that's pretty much where we sit today.
And I think when you and I were talking about this issue, we thought it might be a good idea to define some of this. What does this mean? What does full-time in the office mean? What does fully remote mean? What does hybrid mean and look like? And the spaces we operate in and the types of companies that we talk to. How would you define those buckets?
Rob:
Yeah. So doing a little bit of reading about this and kind of seeing what's out there, I kind of broke things up into three categories: in-person only, hybrid companies, and fully remote. And let's go back and talk a little bit about each of these a little bit.
So in person only is everybody to a location, right. I've also heard this called remote hostile, in some of my reading. I really don't like that term, but it came up several times and I can't not mention it. But the real big characteristics of in-person only is there is a physical office space and your hiring is limited to people who are local or those willing to move or relocate to where that office or offices is.
I do think that it's interesting that the in-person only did include in a lot of the things I read people with multiple locations and having worked in one of some of those experiences, I really don't think those are the same because that still forces some interesting tech issues. And some of the things we see below. I’d like at this point a little better to talk about in person only is when we have singular office that we can be at together.
Traci:
Yeah. That makes sense.
Rob:
Yeah. And let's just jump to the other side real quick and talk about fully remote companies. And then, because I think most of the meat and most of the nuance is in that hybrid world that we kind of lives in the middle here. So fully remote companies obviously have no office. They hire from anywhere. Location is completely independent from your job. And there was tons of these companies before the pandemic and they'll continue to be the same. A friend of mine runs one of these and she basically was like, not much changed when the world stopped in 2020, we were all set up for it.
But I think the interesting part is in this middle group of hybrid companies, and I think that there is three different groups that I want to kind of define real quick.
The first is what I'll call remote allowed. Remote is allowed, but it's not seen as the primary employment arrangement, working remotely is the exception, rather than the expectation. In this world, remote work is considered a perk or a privilege, and it's not offered to everybody. And I think that in this group is the remote on a schedule, right? I've heard several different companies coming back and saying, "We're going to be remote on Tuesdays and Thursdays together. And then Monday, Wednesday, Friday will be in the office." Or some other arrangement like that, where it's a remote on a fixed schedule. And those arrangements, what you typically see is they don't collaborate on the days where they're not together. So they're almost taking a break from the collaboration work in the times they're not in the office.
The next group is remote-friendly is that kind of category. And remote-friendly companies allow employees to work remotely at least some of the time, but they have a physical office where generally most of the work gets done. Some of the distinctions for that are key decisions are made in the office. There's often a bias towards people working in the office, that recency bias, that bias of who's in front of you is actually doing most of the work. Usually, synchronous communication is preferred and prioritized. Work from home is to all seen as a perk. And in my opinion and experience, it's easy to feel like there are two different companies or at least two very different employee experiences, those who can be together and those who can't.
And the last group that I'd like to kind of define for this hybrid company types is remote first. A remote-first culture treats working remotely as the default way of working, the equal to an office base in-person arrangements. Remote work is a part of the design of the company. Key decisions are made online where everyone can participate. The ideal is more equal opportunities for all. And asynchronous communication is preferred and prioritized and work from home or work from remote is the default.
Traci:
Okay. That's a very, very good overview. So just to clarify in all three of these: remote-allowed, remote-friendly, remote-first hybrid type companies, if you consider yourself a hybrid company, you have some sort of office space, is that right?
Rob:
It is. I think that is the case. Yeah, I think so.
Traci:
Okay.
Rob:
Yeah. I think that's a safe assumption. To be a hybrid, you got to have some kind of office space.
Traci:
So fully remote, no office space at all, hybrid some sort of office space, varying sizes, but what you're breaking up here is our relationship with how we relate to remote and how we relate to that office space, whatever it is. And then in person only is we're all in the office, that's just the way that it is.
One thing I would say about this, even as I was listening to you describe each and I was thinking about sort of just my own experiences with clients is the number one thing I would say to people listening is if you haven't decided or identified who you are, that's the first thing you should be doing today, is decide what your identity is and communicate it. Because a repeated problem and theme I'm hearing with people is that we haven't landed on who we are. The employees are confused and we know what we say about ambiguity, it's very unkind. And if people don't know who they are and what the expectations are, they will waste a lot of time trying to figure out how they're supposed to act, react, show up, not show up, be, not be.
And we're at a point now where we need to decide at least today, that doesn't mean you can't change your mind in the future, and that's mainly the reason why people aren't deciding is because they feel like they're locking themselves in and they don't want to say this is forever. And they're still feeling uncertain. We're all feeling uncertain, decide who you are today and communicate it to your staff. I would say is step one in this process.
Rob:
Yeah, I would. I think that's absolutely true. And I'll take it a step further, I think being remote-first, if you're going to have employees who are always going to be remote is probably the way things are trending. And it happens to be that more focusing on everybody's experience and you are not remote-first if you're not being intentional about it. At best, you can be remote-friendly or even possibly remote allowed or even hostile remote if you're not being intentional with it. That you can't prioritize everyone's experience without intentionality. And I think that's a really important distinction to make.
Traci:
How did you land on remote first as Sparkbox way to go?
Rob:
Yeah. So for Sparkbox, we started as an in-person only way back in the young year of 2009 at this point where we had a loft office in the creative district here in sunny Dayton, Ohio. And we kind of moved through all of these on the hybrid side of things. We started with people all in one place. We required people to relocate and move and people did. When we started our apprenticeship, that was definitely the case.
And we had a long-time employee who came into my office one day and said, "I love working here, but I don't want to work in Dayton anymore. What options do I have?" And because we didn't want to lose this person, that kind opened the box for us and said, "Well, hey, why don't we try this? Why don't we... We'll try it for six months. Let's have open communication about it.” We already had a relationship. There was already trust. Let's give this a go. And it worked really well. And for a couple years, we had a few people that also made that choice to leave Dayton, but had worked with us in the office. And that was our kind of remote allowed period, right? That we had people that we had trust. They had to have worked in the office first. We weren't onboarding people that were remote.
But then a time came when somebody applied that we knew never worked with before, and that's when we kind of moved to that remote-friendly stages. We started onboarding people remotely, but the center of the culture was always the office. For a couple years, we had this rule of you can live anywhere you want, as long as you are within driving distance of Dayton, Ohio, right? So that our culture could stay intact. And that went on for a couple years like that until eventually, we decided that access to talent was more important than location. And we started moving towards that remote first. And then when the world shut down, that became something really obvious that was what we needed to kind of continue.
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Traci:
So all the different surveys that we looked at as far as what are the problems that we're facing in this remote environment and hybrid environment and the top five that just kept coming up over and over again were tech disruptions, security risk, home network performance—so each individual home network that we're dealing with. And then the final two—that you and I love to talk about—which is relationship building whether that is with teams or clients, and lastly employee motivation and wellbeing.
And so as business owners and leaders, the first three, if you guys have not put resources and time and effort into these then another to do, to add to your list, but working out your technology, investing in good technology, helping your employees to understand what type of technology they need at home and supporting them in setting up good home network is key. And then obviously, security, which I know many in the tech industry are already two steps, if not 12 steps ahead of a lot of other industries.
But the last two come down to what we talk about on Overly Human, which is human connection. And human connection which I know we've talked about before is what people are missing most about being in the office, but it's also the thing that they gained by being remote. So people became more connected to their families and to their community and to their neighbors during the pandemic and not having to commute and working from home. There's just a certain level of, I think I'll go out in the front yard and pull a few weeds and talk to my neighbor before I actually start my day or I get to drive my kids to school now that I don't have to commute.
So the human connection there was just for some people so beautiful and amazing and is why they don't want to let go of working from home. But that being said, we miss our teams, we miss laughing in the office. We miss water cooler talk. We miss recapping our favorite shows with each other. We miss meeting with clients and having lunches and dinners. And that connection is something that if we aren't focused on and intentional about as leaders will be the thing that breaks this remote world for us, it will be the thing that really makes work become transactional only, which is not something any of us want, or at least most of us don't want.
How are you feeling? Having gone through all these stages and having experienced each stage with the human connection piece on your team, how have you wrestled through that? What have you seen? Have you seen an evolution where it started out like, "Whoa, we feel so disconnected, but we're kind of starting to break the code here and we're figuring out how to recreate?" Or, I mean, I know we can't completely recreate the water cooler conversation, but there's some tricks of the trade. So how have you felt going through these stages when it comes to the human element of remote?
Rob:
Yeah, I think it's been an experience and I think that everybody... Different people get different things fulfilled from work than other people. And depending on what your needs were and where those buckets were being filled, what you need in a space where you can't see people in person changed. So what you need is people to show up and say what they're looking for and what they're missing. And that's been something that's been really important for us is to provide space for those connections still to happen and for people to still have that connection.
And I think it really comes down to that whole thing. We keep talking about over and over and over again because it's so core is trust. Is trust happens as a byproduct oftentimes when we can be in-person. We get that self-regulation, we get that sitting in the room, we get some of those things happen, seeing people, the regularity, the consistency that happens in the office as well as good communication, because you can't help but to overhear things and things accidentally happen, or maybe not accidentally, but are byproducts of just being in the same physical space.
And that kind of goes away that all that happy accidents, things you get along for the ride go away. And I think that there's more need to intentionally create those opportunities for trust. There is a more necessity for having more transparency in good communication because ultimately I think there's more room for our brains to create stories when there's a lack of other good feelings and other good information. And we talked about this, a bunch in the past, but when our brains don't have information or all the facts they make up stories, and those stories are often loony tunes.
And when we separate out so far where we can't be in the same room and have that communication and have those quick conversations face to face, then there's more space for those stories to take hold and be repeated and be repeated. So the intentionality has to be leveled up to a place that seems crazy at first,but is absolutely necessary to get everybody back on the same page and to keep them there.
Traci:
Yeah. Intentional is the keywords because in all these scenarios, hybrid's the hardest because we're trying to recreate something or create something new here. Like you said, there have been remote-only companies, pre-pandemic and obviously all in the office. And now we're creating something new here that takes a ton of intentionality.
And I think that leaders need to train, be trained. We obviously have to be educating ourselves and training our managers and directors, how to lead in these environments. And I think the first thing we have to educate ourselves on are what are people feeling and what are the different types of people feeling within our community?
So one is new employees, right? So we're still in a...if you're newly remote or newly hybrid, you most likely have team members who remember when we used to all be in the office together. Well, they have an advantage over new employees you just hired yesterday that don't know, “Oh, that's how Bob just is.” Or, “Oh, that's the facial expression that he makes with it." We have history of being in the workplace together. And one thing that's lost in Zoom calls or remote only is kind of that body language, that on-the-job training that you learn, how the environment goes and really realizing that and then trying to be intentional about how to create and educate the staff fully on that.
So that means that you have to have clearly delineated mentors for people, clearly delineated trainers, clearly delineated buddies, where people can be able to ask somebody, “Okay, is Bob always like that?” And, “What are the expectations?” And I think people have forgotten that too, that the things that we learned as a team when we were in the office like turnaround times, or how we interact with clients, or when does the boss need to come in, not come in or do they like us to stay late or not stay late? Or what type of clothes am I even allowed to wear? Or what background am I allowed to have on? People are forgetting that we need to know what our expectations are. We thrive when we know.
And I know some of those things sounds silly. Like really, you can't figure that on your own? It's really hard to figure that out. If we don't truly know each other and we don't have a history with each other and people can waste a lot of time trying to figure out what's expected of them. And we don't need that waste of time.
So intention is the key here in educating ourselves and understanding how everybody's seeing the world that we've created this remote world, this remote office, how are people experiencing it? What are their needs? Do they understand their expectations?
I mean, I had a client the other day I was talking to and they were saying they were confused. Are we supposed to be working nine to five? Can we work anytime during the week? How is PTO different than it was before? Can I just take a doctor's appointment without asking and just realize that people know I'm just not online then? Am I supposed to be available during certain times? And so all these questions are floating around in employees’ heads, and we have to ask ourselves, have we answered those? Have we answered those questions for our team? Have we had open conversations? Are we having team time where we say, “Okay throw out any question you have, I don't care how silly it might sound.”
But we are operating in a new world. So let you know, we're like explorers that are discovering the wild west. So we need to know how do we pitch our tents and how do we find food like…we all need to together be settling this new territory.
Rob:
Yeah. And I think that, it's interesting, like you mentioned that people with a history, that we’re in the office together, they may have an easier time than people that you onboard are remotely. And it's interesting that sometimes, the opposite is true too, that people that we onboard remotely, they ask all those questions because that's their experience and they know nothing else. So they come in and say like, "Oh, what's this, what's this?" And that's been a really good key for us to make a list of the things we need to communicate to where the questions come up from people that we're onboarding in this new world.
One of the things that we found is people who were in the office, who really liked that experience, almost romanticized what it was like to be in the office. And those were the good old days. And that was what they... They latch onto that because of all the baggage that comes with the current set of events and how we got here, that's what they're looking for. And I think it's really, really important to point out that the thing we just did for the last 18 months, isn't what remote work can be like.
In a former life, I worked remotely in a job pre-pandemic, I think the year was, what, 2008. I was a remote employee. And it's completely different. When you can go out at night and you can go have a social life, and you're not in lockdown. It's easy to confuse remote work with what we just went through, but there's baggage that comes along with having to go through those transitions too.
And what people think was the good old days of a company. And I think it's really, really easy to tell stories and to not create new memories if you've made that transition and let your lore be tied to a place because the people you bring on after that will never have any connection back to it.
We're in our third office now. So we started in a loft apartment that was about 2,000 square feet. And the number of people who worked in that office who work at Sparkbox now is down to less than a single hand. Then we had our other office space for about seven years: 20,000 square feet, really big office. And everybody remembers the first time they were in that space. But we've not been there for what's coming up to two years, we've got rid of it about a year ago. And now we have a sizable part of the team that's never been to that space.
So what you can draw connections back to can be... I guess my point is you can draw connections back to things that can bring some people together but will make people who don't have that common experience isolated. So we have to create new memories, new identities moving forward. And I think that's one of the real key things is where are these come together moments for this new team as it exists today in this working condition?
Traci:
Right. And I think that's the big key is because what people are missing when they talk about the good old days are moments of fun. Spontaneity and bonding and just laughing over something or learning. The whole on-the-job learning thing, I think people have forgotten how much truth is in that. And I can remember back in the 1900s when I started working and being in an office and literally listening in on other people's meetings or asking if I could just sit in, and that's how I learned was watching other people interact or watching somebody pitch a client or watching somebody give a presentation.
And I think we need to remember that we have to recreate fun, which you talked about, and we can list a bunch of ideas for that with team building, but also the on-the-job experience. So when we are having a Zoom presentation with a client or you're having a Zoom brainstorming session, invite some new employees to just sit silently, they don't have to participate. They don't even have to turn on their camera. They can just sit silently and watch and learn and soak in an experience that maybe they would have had, had they were sitting at a desk somewhere behind a computer and been able to soak up the environment and the atmosphere.
So that those sort of non-tangible things we have to honor and say, "Yeah, they did exist." And maybe we romanticize some things, but there are some true things that have been taken away from us that were in the office. And we have to be creative and innovative, recognize those things. Don't be scared of saying, "Okay, what is it that we really miss in the office? What are the things that were so beneficial that we have yet to figure out how to create in a remote environment?” Don't be scared to go there and kind of touch the pain and figure out what you're missing, identify it, and then get innovative and figure out how to recreate it. So saying, "Yes, let's let each new employee sit in on a key meeting or sit in on a client presentation. We'll call them silent sit-ins or whatever, and let them have that, or let's be..."
It sounds funny. And I know at the beginning of the pandemic, there were a lot of forced happy hours and forced things, but how can we create more natural, organic experiences for our team? I think lunch and learn is probably one of the best, doing a team building, learning something new, putting committees on strategic initiatives, like DEI or process improvement, and letting those teams just sort of have super casual meetings throughout the week where they can talk about things but have some human interaction.
And I think if we don't build in some natural connection where people are able to not just have fun, but also learn some of these softer skills, for lack of a better word, where they can see their boss in action or see their director in action and they don't have to participate, but they're able to watch and see how they do things, why they're good at what they do, their body language, get to know how they make jokes. And do they have a dry sense of humor? Are they goofy? We need to give our employees that experience that they're missing, not being in the office and just observing from afar and being a fly on the wall. We have to recreate those moments. And it's all again about intention.
Rob:
Yeah. And I think the other part is people still need time together. Right? So plan those times when people can get together, be it a retreat, be it small groups, whatever the case may be. Right? Being remote-first doesn't mean that you're never ever, ever in person again.
Traci:
Right. No.
Rob:
Because you can't replace meet space.
Traci:
Right.
Rob:
When we can be in the same room, that's still important.
Traci:
Yeah. And I think, and you should talk about too about budget because you said we had 20,000 square feet and we got rid of that and I'm sure to you guys, it was like, "Ooh, bottom line. Yay." But what are you doing with that money to bring your team together? Have you guys decided, do you have a plan? Like when you think about retreats or quarterlies or get-togethers, what's your philosophy on that?
Rob:
Yeah. Looking at the numbers and talking to others is I don't think that going remote-first or even fully remote is an option to save money. You'll spend it differently. You'll spend it on travel, you'll spend it on tooling, you'll spend it on security, connections, people's home network set up, all of those things, all of those hidden pieces, people's home office set up. Like all that money will be spent now, at least at be businesses of our size, right? So small businesses, I think that's the case. I'm sure that there is some scale that maybe there's some savings that is off in the distance that most people who are like Sparkbox will never realize anyway.
But I don't think it's a money-saving thing. I think you have to look at it as this is a benefit. This is a lifestyle, this is an option to allow people flexibility. And this is access to talent, right? Like we are seeing this great, interesting thing happen with salaries and all of this, where if location doesn't matter, then some of the traditional ways we think of how compensation gets divided up by locale starts to change fundamentally.
And I've got some predictions on where that's going, but it's still too early to tell if we're going to see it all average out to a national average more things, which means that some of the low cost of living places are going to see significant increases and some of the high cost of living places, maybe they see even a decrease or things stay, but there's going to be, I believe there's going to be this regression to the mean in that place. So access to talent is a huge part of this based on where that location is.
And I think the last thing that I want to say is not everyone's going to be happy with whatever you choose, right? Everybody's had a taste and knows what it's like to be in this remote-ish world. And there are some people that are going to want to be in an office again, and they're going to chase that feeling. And there's some people who were remote, who got a taste of what it's like for everyone to be remote and be equal footing who will never go back to anything but remote only or at least remote first.
So this is another one of those cases where you kind of got to make a decision, your employee surveys aren't going to answer all of your questions, make a decision and commit.
Traci:
Yeah.
Rob:
And communicate.
Traci:
And communicate about it and then put a whole new set of best practices into gear, which we've talked about so many of them during our time today. And I think that decide who you are, pick an identity, decide who you are today, communicate it and then put some action steps behind it so that you can ensure... Like you said, you're not going to make everybody happy, but you want to ensure that your identity works and that you are putting yourself in the shoes of the people who work with you and for you and making sure that you're meeting them where they are. And then you're just heightening your chances of success. So it takes some intentionality.
So, okay. So maybe we talk about this a year from now. Do you have any predictions?
Rob:
Oh, I think the trend to remote first and remote only continues over the next year. I think there's some really interesting things going on in the world. You see some of the big tech companies buying up a bunch of office space and lease space and you see other ones getting rid of it. And I don't know if that's hedging in their bets or making their predictions, but I think that this is the way of the future, that more remote work is the way things will continue.
What about you? What do you think?
Traci:
I agree. I feel like the pendulum always swings the furthest in the beginning to the other side. I think it will settle somewhere in the middle. My optimistic heart really hopes that this whole remote and hybrid universe where people are realizing talent is all over the United States if not the world, and it's okay to have a team that is scattered everywhere. My hope is that will bring us back together at least a little bit closer together as we learn other people's experiences from where they live and different cultures and more diversity and giving people opportunities to work at great firms that maybe they live in a remote area and they wouldn't have been able to otherwise, or they couldn't move because they're caring for a parent or something.
And my hope is that a lot of good is going to come out of this. That it'll be just another way to bring us closer together, to be more unified, to understand each other more and to enable more people with great skills to work for really good companies. So I think it's a good thing as long as leaders continue to educate themselves and continue to be intentional in how they're running their companies.
Rob:
Yeah. That seems like it's the same no matter what direction we all go. Right?
Traci:
Exactly.
Rob:
If leadership and leading people is a skill, it's something we can always get better at and we can always invest in.
Traci:
Sounds good.
Rob:
All right. Thanks, Traci.
Traci:
Thank you.
Announcer:
The Overly Human podcast is brought to you by Navigate the Journey and Sparkbox. For more information on this podcast, or to get in touch with Traci or Rob, go to overlyhuman.com. If you like what you've heard, subscribe and tell your friends to listen. Thanks.
