- What is the right strategy for your company?
- How do you keep your employees engaged in a remote workforce?
- What is the impact of flexibility on DEI and how does it continue to be a workplace expectation?
Paola Peralta (00:08):
Hello, and thank you so much for joining us at Track two, which is HR and workplace culture in the future of work. My name is Paola Peralta. I am the associate editor over at EBN and I'm joined today by my wonderful panelists. Mark Chen is a Senior Director and Partner on the Executive compensation and board advisory at WTWA leading global advisory brokering and solutions company. And Anitra St. Hiller is the Vice President of People at Three Flow where she focuses on driving organizational effectiveness, the recruiting development, and employee engagement. And today we'll be talking about a topic that I think is incredibly important and will continue to be incredibly important, which is workplace flexibility. And I think to kick us off, if you guys would kind of like to talk about the importance of workplace flexibility in your individual companies or how you guys have experienced it as leaders, I think that would be a great place to start.
Anitra St. Hilaire (01:04):
Sure. Good morning or afternoon at this point. Workplace flexibility has been an important part of my personal journey and the journey of folks at Three Flow. I've been working remotely for about 10 years and three Flow, which hasn't been in business that long, has been remote since the beginning. And our ability to attract great talent from all across the country, our ability to collaborate and get work done through the tools that we use and our ability to really find the right person for the job regardless of where they are, has been incredibly helpful to our growth as a company and our ability to get things done.
Mark Chen (01:40):
I would say as a consultant at a firm, it's very similar where the flexibility allows us to really build out our day, be able to meet the needs of our clients, but then also the flexibility for yourself as a person. So I've been at the firm 19 years now and it's that flexibility that's really been able to keep us around. And I think where it makes sense from a business perspective is during the height of the pandemic, the great resignation was not, we weren't immune to that. We had a lot of people come and go as well, but from a business continuity standpoint, that flexibility and that remote work and being able to work with other colleagues in other offices really let us also thrive in that situation and also meet a lot of the demands that our clients are asking of us. So I do think beyond allowing our people to have more flexibility to plan their day, I do think there's a real business need for some of this new thinking.
Paola Peralta (02:39):
And I think we're really in an interesting place because Anitra, you mentioned that Three Flow has been remote since before remote was normalized and WTW has offices everywhere and was a, I'm assuming fully in person for a long time. And the Pandemic obviously disrupted that in different ways because obviously for people who worked full-time in office, they were sent home. But then I'm curious, and both of you genuinely answer to your experience, how did the pandemic disrupt the workflow for you guys and change the concept of workplace flexibility in the first place?
Mark Chen (03:10):
Yeah, I mean for us, we were largely in person. If you weren't traveling for a client meeting or going somewhere, you were likely in the office working with your colleagues, sort of face-to-face when the pandemic hit and we all sort of went remote. I think the work itself stayed the same. We were still being asked to do much of the same sort of projects and assessments, but how we worked together changed a lot. And it was balancing, I think, calendar management. The beauty of virtual meetings is you can have a meeting anywhere, but what also happens is all of a sudden a calendar looked like a complete solid block of meetings. Yes, you can only do work before work and after work. Anything in between was a meeting. So that's what fundamentally changed. And so I think we had to all come together to think about new, I don't want to call it ground rules, but socially acceptable work behavior in a way, being respectful of people's times and calendar. Do you really want to book something at lunchtime? That's when someone takes a break to eat, right? Do I really want to book back-to-back meetings when I can see that they just got out to our meeting? Maybe they want a bio break, maybe they want to get a cup of coffee. So I think learning to work with each other again in virtual environment was the big shift for us.
Anitra St. Hilaire (04:33):
I love this question and oftentimes people make an assumption that as a remote company, things must not have changed. Obviously things were changing for the world, but at least we were already working remotely. And in some ways that was true. We had the tools, we had less of the calendar blocks because we know people need to eat lunch, et cetera. But what I think we have found the most difficult is basically everyone came into your workplace. So when you're at home, you have your eight hour day or whatever time you're working and you can get your work done and your kind of family life and everything else is outside. But what ended up happening is family invaded the workplace. And so trying to figure out how you were going to homeschool your kids or maybe you're in a studio apartment, I was talking to someone earlier in a studio apartment and her husband were both working out of that same space and you both have calls that you need to be on.
(05:22)
How do you manage that? And even as remote workers, one of the things that the pandemic I think did that was a benefit for us is you were remote, but you still kept the image of work life. And so I was always in work, clothes, blanket wall. If my kids were around, I lock the door, don't say anything. You can't exist while I'm at work because I want people to think that I'm working. And what the pandemic did was sort of tear that fake wall down. My kids still don't show up for my meetings, they're still not supposed to be in my office. But on the occasion where one of them runs in or needs a snack or just wants to wave at me, it become a lot more acceptable to have a personal life in your workspace, which has been really nice.
Paola Peralta (06:03):
And so in the aftermath of the pandemic, what does flexibility look like now? Because I know that you mentioned a lot of people think that remote work is just the most flexible you can be, but there's a lot of different components to workplace flexibility than just working from home. And so what does workplace flexibility look like at WTW Net three flow now that either changed because of the pandemic, changed because of people's needs or because of just the culture of things?
Anitra St. Hilaire (06:28):
It's an interesting question. I think what the pandemic has allowed us to do is be a lot more vocal about the pieces of time when we're working and the blocks of time when we're doing other things. So one thing I really love about Three Flow is regardless of whose calendar you look at, you usually see times for things like focus time or I have a block on my calendar every day in the afternoon to go pick up my kids from school because that's a thing that I do. And I think just being clear here is when I'm available here is when I'm not available. And understanding that some of the time when I'm not available, it's not because I'm not doing anything, just I have things that exist outside of the workplace that are really important and important for me to get done. I also think there's been more of a leveling of what work time means.
(07:13)
A thing that I've been really focusing on and thinking about reflecting on is do we really still have a nine to five? What does the concept of core working hours mean? And as you get global and think about people internationally, it's a much tougher thing to think about. But even as you have folks maybe all in the same time zone, do I need to be working at eight o'clock in the morning? Could I work at six and hop off at three because I want to go do something? And how do we think about what work looks like and how you measure results in an environment like that?
Mark Chen (07:43):
Yeah, , I think you're exactly right. That flexibility is really interesting. I think right now when people think flexibility, they're thinking remote, hybrid work from home situations, but really flexibility comes in all different kinds of ways. And it's just right now, I think I'll almost say globally, we're thinking through it now, right? Because working from home was sort of this fancy thing, pre pandemic. Some companies were in on it, some people were like, well, maybe. And some people said, we don't want to do that. The pandemic forced everyone to do it no matter what. And now the pendulum is swinging back a little bit and we're all trying to figure that out. So I think that's top of mind is how we work together and what is hybrid. But I do think flexibility could be a lot of different things. I think changing your core working hours, whether you get paid a certain rate in different areas, whether you work from home fully, remotely, different city, you're not next to a home office at all, or is it two or three days a week?
(08:45)
I think a lot of organizations are grappling through that. And I think some dust is currently settling. I think it'll probably come down to the ways of working for that organisation. I think there's a philosophy that needs to be set first before we could sort of figure it out. Because looking at what other organizations do probably won't work for you, right? That's right. It might be useful to see, get some ideas, but there needs to be a philosophy set in place on what we're trying to achieve, what type of culture, what kind of experience we want, and then to dictate what that flexibility is.
Paola Peralta (09:16):
And that was the perfect segue because I mean I think a lot of people, there's so many different things now. There's digital nomads, people who work in different countries at different times, and then there's obviously hybrid, remote, normal nine to five, and then there are some companies that are using a mix of all or just staying with one. And so how do you dictate as a leader, as a person in a company, how do you dictate what works best for your company? And is it okay to experiment? So how do you of navigate that?
Mark Chen (09:47):
I think we have to experiment a little bit because I don't think there's going to be a silver bullet. I don't see that for our organization, it's pretty interesting. Our leadership has said we're going to leave it to the teams to sort of figure that out. Some teams want a little bit more in-person team culture. And so maybe that team will say, we expect that everyone goes in a couple of days a week. And that's great because that does facilitate a different type of expense for those employees for that team. So whether it's their personal preference as a team, but also for us, we're a professional services firm, so we have client deliverables and they have expectations too. So if we're going to change working hours or we want a team member that's in Hawaii versus LA versus Texas, well do our hours overlapping enough that we can actually communicate with each other to get the work done.
(10:37)
Because no one really wants to intrude on, can you jump on a call? I know it's 7:00 PM where you are. That doesn't sound fun, but I also don't want to join a call at 5:00 AM either. So what's that balance? So I do think communication and understanding the new work style is going to help with that sort of solving of that problem. And it's going to look a little different from every organization, but that can also be your, I'll call it competitive advantage when you're recruiting or you're attracting employees that can be very enticing for a certain type of workforce or a certain type of person depending on where they are in their life, what their journey is. And so I do think this is a tool that could be used as a competitive advantage, and I think if you can harness it the right way and sort of advertise it that way, I think it's going to be very powerful.
Anitra St. Hilaire (11:25):
I also think you have to think about, and I love this point you were making earlier about the same thing isn't going to work for everyone. And so starting with what are your reasons for thinking about a new model? What are you trying to get out of this? If it is that's what all of my competitors are doing, great. You're going to be following what your competitors are doing. But instead, if you really approach this from a, what do we want to get out of this? Are we trying to find people in hard to reach places? Are we trying to save money? Are we trying to get ahead and use this as a marketing tool? I think the answer to those questions will help you make some of that decision. You have to think about technological implications and communication implications. When you're more remote and you allow people to work different hours, different places, different locations, you have to get much better at knowledge management.
(12:11)
You have to get much better at codifying decisions and information. And that's very different than when you are meeting in person or even on similar time zones. They're legal and compliance implications. So you had mentioned digital nomads, and if you have people moving in different cities, depending on how they might live, how long they live at a certain area, you might be required to pay taxes in that area in a different way. And so really thinking through this isn't just everyone gets to work whenever they want, but there are legal and financial implications. So making the decision based on your strategy, what you want to get out of it, thinking about your communication style and your culture and then figuring out the legal and financial implications for it.
Paola Peralta (12:51):
And I'm really interested in your answer to this next question. Given just the fact that you're fully remote and that you work at hybrid or with a flexible workspace, how do you keep a flexible workforce engaged? I think that's a lot of a question that a lot of companies have. How do we keep people engaged? Is returning to work? The answer is people who are scared of the loss of productivity. And so what are some strategies that you have seen that keeps people working or even just the reality that you've experienced?
Mark Chen (13:24):
It is really interesting because I think you have people, at least for us, you had people who worked at the firm before the pandemic, people who are hired during and people who hired after. And so the people who have been there, they think about the culture that used to be. And then you have people who are like, well, I joined in the middle of it and I don't know what that culture was. And then you have people who join currently and they expect especially new grads, I'm going to go to work, I'm going to meet all these people. How come there's no one in the office? And so you're balancing three different perspectives and that's being simplistic, right? And so what we found is try not to dictate what the culture engagement should be, but put enough energy to allow something to bubble up. And I think culture and engagement has to come naturally. It's very hard to force something.
(14:17)
And so I think encouragement and supporting of ideas I think will help something naturally bubble up. At least for us. Our workspace is a little bit different than most because every office does its own thing and maybe firm wide we do something different. But I think encouraging people to foster their own culture has helped with our engagement. So if your team wants to do happy hours every now and then or invite people over to the house or for my team every Tuesday we do team meetings in person and the second team meeting of the month is virtual, but at least we have some moments where we're spending some time together and we're to see people bond and quick and it's helping with coaching, learning, engagement and all those sort of connections that we sort of miss, but we're not also forcing anyone to sort of say, come in five days a week and we will be friends. That's just not going to work, at least for us.
Anitra St. Hilaire (15:08):
When I think about this question, one of the big first points for me is are you remote friendly or are you remote first? Because those are going to create different sort of cultures. If you're remote friendly, what you're saying is yes, people can be remote, but we are going to base the way that we work on an in-person lifestyle. If you're going to be remote first, I think the first thing you have to realize is remote first is not in-person work at home. They're just different ways of working. And so you do have to think about if we're going to have a meeting and someone is in person, a remote friendly company might say, get onto this call. A remote first company might say, even if you're in office, we want you all on your computers with headphones because we want to make sure that people at home have the same experience, not similar or close to, but we want to lead for the people at home.
(15:53)
I think the second thing is understanding happy hours and going out, that's great, but that's not all. You have to recreate the moments where people aren't having happy hours in the remote culture. And so one thing that we do at Three Flow is our Lightning Learning sessions. What we have there is we have two employees and a half hour session come through and talk about anything that they want. We've had people talk about ultra marathon running black holes is something I went and talked about, but it's just to teach and talk about something that is of interest to you. That's not your typical happy hour. Let's go have drinks. But it's a way to really learn something meaningful about someone else. And I'd say communication is really important. So keeping a remote workforce engaged, you have to give them information, you have to make sure that they know what's going on and that excitement and recognition.
(16:40)
So it's not just communicating about what the company's doing, but communicating about the good things that the company is doing, the good things that the people in the company are doing. We have something called High Fives where we shout out people for how they're living into our core values, which is a channel that's used every day and people want to be seen. And I think my last point is when you think about what keeps people in a remote workforce engaged, it's the same thing that keeps anyone anywhere engaged. You want to be seen, you want to feel respected, you want to feel like you're working towards something. I think just with the remote lens, you have to think about the ways in which you are doing those very core things on a regular basis and have to be much more intentional because you don't have the well, we're close together and you can feel the love. And I can give you a high five because I'm physically in the same space with you.
Mark Chen (17:22):
If I could add to that please, just a couple things. So would you say the Lunch and Learns or Lightning learning, lightning learning? So we do something separately in our compensation practice, but it's very similar. We do occasionally we do virtual speed dating where everyone signs up and if you're in the room and then a moderator will just start randomly assigning, okay, you two are in the room or you two in a virtual room and you just have these moments to connect. Because what I found was interesting during the pandemic was I felt like I was interacting with my colleagues a lot, but really I wasn't. It was super transactional is what it was because we were having all these virtual meetings. So just because I saw you every day, it doesn't mean I actually learned anything about you. It was just so where are we at with that report or did you see that data?
(18:06)
Oh, can we talk about that meeting we're about to have? And so it felt like we were interacting lot, but we weren't. So facilitating these touchpoints, whether it's virtual or in person, somehow just allowing it to happen can do a lot for engagement. I do think part of retention is liking the people you work with love it or hate it. You spend a lot of time with the people you work more than your family and your friends. And so sometimes that can be a really retentive tool when you actually enjoy the people you work with. I think fostering that culture is part of engagement, not just the work.
Paola Peralta (18:36):
And I think a really interesting intersectionality of workplace flexibility is what it's done for DEI, whether that is working moms, whether that is people with disabilities, whether it has really created pathways for different people to be able to work. And so how is it kind of changing the landscape for DEI and companies and how is it kind of facilitating these experiences for people who may not otherwise have been able to engage in the workforce? And what does that kind of mean for the future of work?
Mark Chen (19:02):
From what I've seen when I think we'll talk about from virtual or hybrid work styles, I do think people with the traditional way of work meant you need to go in the office, whatever, eight to five. And so that is very limiting to some folks. And so whether that's you have a disability or you're a single parent or you're a young parent, it can be very challenging. But now with I work from home, I can actually go and pick up my kid from daycare and come back and log back on. There's a lot of flexibility if you're looking for a certain type of demographic and it's not within your local community. Obviously hybrid work allows you to do that. It's interesting. I have some clients that are based in Hawaii and it's a really interesting demographic landscape. There actually is a lot of Asian population there, a lot of ethnically Japanese, Chinese, Filipinos. So when they think about diversity, it's not the APAC, but if they wanted to increase that at all, there's no one there locally. They're literally on an island. It's not like you can easily move there. So I think remote and hybrid work has allowed them to look for different type of people on the mainland to foster some of that DEI. So I think from a hybrid and remote work perspective, I think it's a great tool.
Anitra St. Hilaire (20:23):
I think when you think about the number of different kinds of people that you can find military spouses, these are people who are traveling because military travels and I need to go. I have a wonderful pool of people that I can choose from, people with different various disabilities, agoraphobic, I don't want to leave my house. I cannot leave my house. Very brilliant people who can do great work, they just don't want to leave their house. But again, having that flexibility allows us to dip into those categories of people. When you think about parents, people who are caregiving for maybe someone older in their home, folks who need to go out for some sort of therapy, who have flexible working hours, I know I can be out of my office for two hours every day and I can work that into my work schedule. I think what workplace flexibility has done is really just opened up the workspace to find and attract and retain great people who just don't fit into that traditional, I'm going to go commute to my job, I'm going to do this work at this time, and then I need to come home regardless of the things in my life.
(21:28)
I also say it just attracts people who just want some of that flexibility in their life. I want to coach my kid's soccer team. I often refer back to children because that's my flexibility, but I want to have a business on the side. I want to be able to spend some time learning or growing in a specific skill. And the only way I can do that is my acting class on Mondays at 9.30 in the morning and being flexible again within reason, not every job. And maybe that's the other point I should have made earlier. Not every job and not every company is going to be able to offer flexibility and that's okay. That's okay. But making those attempts where you can and thinking not just about it as are you remote or not, but how do you allow people to have some agency over how they spend their time when they can spend their time I think will really open the pool of people that you can choose from.
Mark Chen (22:15):
Yeah.
Paola Peralta (22:17):
I love that both of you kind of touched on recruiting and new grads and this concept of remote first or remote friendly, and we have this new pool of demographic of people joining the workforce already happening and in the next few months and they have different variations of expectations than what was previously looked for and wanted. And so how do you guys navigate recruiting in your own kind of silos? And so with a company that's looking at hybrid, how do you communicate flexibility through the recruiting process? How do you manage expectation and then you in a remote setting, what kind of demand are you looking at or what kind of, because I feel like younger generations kind of fall into two pools. Either they really want to go into work every day or they're really happy with the ability to just log onto a computer and kind of work flexibly. So what has been kind of your experience and the plan moving forward?
Mark Chen (23:07):
So I don't do a lot of recruiting in my world. Someone in HR handles that and the TA function. But what I will say is we do a study, it's called workforce preferences, and we look at just that thing, what makes you come, what makes you stay? What are the top 10 things within rewards? Not just pay, not just benefits, not just flexibility, rank, all of these things, jobs, stability, and I think in the workforce we have five generations working altogether right now, so it's very complicated. So as we think through. whatever flexibility means, again, I don't think it's just about remote work, hybrid work, I think you can build in flexibility into your total rewards package. The days of PTO, you get the type of benefits, the supplemental benefits you have, all of those things factor in. But I think what organizations would benefit from is first listening to what the employees generally perceive as positive or negative. Because again, I don't think you can do what other people do. There is no silver bullet, but what is your workforce? What are they looking for? What are you recruiting for? Once you've sort of figured out that strategy, that philosophy, I think that can play into your recruiting approach and you know how to target for the type of employee that you're looking for.
Anitra St. Hilaire (24:33):
I love that you used the word expectations. And I think one of the biggest things that leads to communication issues and conflict is a lack of shared expectations. And so one of the things we really try to do when we have new people come on board is explain to them this is how we use Zoom. And no, we do not require you to be on camera all the time, but it's highly encouraged and we love to see you, but also take time for yourself. Here's how we use Slack. People don't check their email as much in our organization as they might typically in another organization, but I can guarantee if it's something you need to know, you're going to look in the company announcements channel because we will put anything you need to know there. And those are just small examples. But I think what I'm trying to get is really being clear with new hires to your company and people who've been around for a while, your expectations around, here's how we're going to communicate, here's what you're going to be rated against from a performance based perspective.
(25:26)
Do you have clear goals? If you don't have goals, that's okay, but what are we working towards? Do we have a shared idea of what is going to be success for you? That is what really makes it easier to engage and have people stay engaged, especially with new hires because a lot of time you just get caught up because you don't know what the rules are. And so being very explicit about the rules and being very explicit about asking questions, it's something we say a lot to new hires when they join. There are no stupid questions. I know if you ask the thing three times, that's okay. Use me, use Jillian, who's our employee experience manager, come to us. If you have these weird questions you feel really uncomfortable about asking someone else and just making sure that that ability to get clarity on expectations between us as HR or your manager or your executive leadership, making sure that people feel okay asking questions and making mistakes because that's going to help clear up a lot of the expectations issues.
Paola Peralta (26:23):
And to kind of close this out, obviously we're dealing, it'd be remiss not to bring up the fact that we're dealing with return to work mandates and all of these things. And so a lot of people are worried that that flexibility is going to go away. And briefly can tend just to end this session on a high note, I hope why that's not going to go away and why this at least maybe it's always going to be hybrid. Maybe it's not always going to be remote, maybe it's not always going to be digital nomad, but this concept of flexibility, why is it here to stay?
Mark Chen (26:54):
From my perspective, we've seen it work and so it's really hard to argue that it doesn't work, right? But I do think it doesn't work the same for every organization. And so I do think as we talk about flexibility and benefits and ability to work where you want to and maybe core hours, I do think there's a lack of communication and expectation setting in general when we see that coming. There's a return to work, but all they've really communicated is our expectation is, Hey, you need to come back. But I think I love what you've been saying this whole session is what are the expectations? What are we solving for? What's the philosophy? Why are we asking people to come in two times a week or whatever it is, it's a reduction of flexibility, but it's still way more flexible than five days a week, nine to five.
(27:42)
And so we have to shift the perception a little bit to say, this is our new reality, here's what it is. And communicate some of those expectations because I think that's what is lacking sometimes is that execution of the communication of why. But having said all that, again, I know this can work. We've seen it work. We've seen productivity either stay the same or increase for certain organizations, so it's hard to argue the reverse and that it's going away. I do think in some form or fashion, this kernel will continue to grow. It might evolve, but I think it's here to stay.
Anitra St. Hilaire (28:17):
I think if you think about something like restaurants and you've got fast food restaurants and then all of a sudden, or maybe you had sit down restaurants and then we develop fast food restaurants. Not every restaurant became fast food. Some of them still stay. You can still have a nice five star dining experience, but fast food and now there's slow food and say you have that kind of restaurant and that's a new thing. And the question is never, well, what restaurant's going to go away? And I think it's the same for these kind of workplace flexibility benefits. We are not cutting out pieces of the pie, we're just making the pie bigger. There are more options. And I think you'll continue to see companies choose on this spectrum where they want to be. And if you're a person who loves to be in the office and wants to be in the office, there will absolutely be places that will do that. If you're a person like myself who never wants to go back into an office again, there are just more options now to be able to do that. And I think ultimately that's what we're looking for is let's get some options on the table and that is ultimately going to create a better place for diverse and inclusive companies.
Mark Chen (29:13):
Yeah.
Paola Peralta (29:13):
Mark and Anitra, thank you so much. This was a wonderful to be biased, wonderful conversation. And thank you everyone for joining.
Anitra St. Hilaire (29:20):
Thank you all.