Welcome back to Cheddar News Future Forum is a research
consortium backed by business communication platform slack. The group
just released the News Global survey that shows Hybrid has
become the dominant work model for knowledge workers. Knowledge
workers are those like engineers, doctors and programmers.
It also found there's a growing risk that inequities could
emerge between in office and remote, remote workers as
more people go back to the office. So joining
us now to discuss the findings is Sheela Subramanian VP
of Future Forum. And let me ask you,
tell us about this report and what were the key
takeaways and how our employees feeling today? Yes,
thank you for having me. So we released our
fifth wave of quarterly research earlier this week of over
10,000 knowledge workers. And what we're seeing from the
data is that we're now officially in the hybrid era
of work. Hybrid is a work model where people
can come into the office as well as work remotely
and what we're seeing is that the majority of knowledge
workers are now in this arrangement and that number is
set to grow. What we're seeing is that over
two thirds of employees say that their that hybrid is
their preferred model for work moving forward. So this
is good news. In many ways there's a huge
benefit from hybrid work based on our research employee experience
scores are rising across all elements of our index,
but there's also a challenge with hybrid work and that's
called proximity bias or favoritism of people who are in
the office or nearby. So what we're seeing from
the research is that certain employee groups, executives,
men, white employees as well as non parents are
actually opting into in purpose in person office work at
higher rates than women employees of color as well as
working parents. And so proximity bias is actually outpaced
other challenges To become executives.# one concern about
flexible work. So how does someone combat proximity bias
say you want to work from home but you don't
want to miss out because we have, I feel
that sentiment that people feel that they're not in the
building, they're not going to know what's going on
and they're not going to be privy to maybe decisions
being made. So how do executives and employees make
sure that there's a level playing field? So there's
three things that executives should think about bringing in their
own companies. The first is actually setting the tone
from the top. If you're saying that you're imposing
a flexible work model on your organization, but you
as an executive are coming into the office every single
day. What you'll see is that your middle managers
will follow. So leaders need to set their principles
set behavioral guard girls and also make sure that they're
following them. In addition, most managers have not
necessarily been trained to lead distributed teams. So this
requires a sustained effort on the, on the behalf
of middle managers to ensure that they're trained to become
empathetic coaches rather than measuring people's hours or their response
time to messages. Um they need to really think
about the outcomes that their employees are driving and the
value that they're creating and last but not least,
it doesn't mean that the office is dead. The
office now has a different purpose. And what we're
seeing from the research is that employees want to come
into the office to build camaraderie foster connections as well
as collaborate. And so leaders can take this as
an opportunity to redesign their offices to foster that level
of connection. But they also have to make sure
that they're aware of the inequities, that proximity bias
confessors. So when it comes to this hybrid work
model, a lot of folks feel that it was
just something that would stick around for the pandemic,
but it obviously seems like it's embedded in our workforce
when you're an employer about to get a job.
Do you have to mention I'd prefer to work in
person than at home and if you do do you
so you actually lose points if you're going to get
that job or not. So what's interesting about the
data is what we're seeing is that 72% of employees
who are dissatisfied with the level of flexibility in the
workplace are open to looking for new opportunities in the
next year. So flexibility is now an expectation,
it's table stakes and it's not just about where you
work, it's also when you work, 95% of
the knowledge workers that we have surveyed want flexibility in
when they work, meaning the hours every single day
. So flexibility is a core expectation that employers need
to ensure that they're communicating about transparently to prospective employees
Would have been the biggest surprises you found in this
survey that if I were to show somebody 20 years
ago, they would jump out of their chair.
Oh, where do I start? I think I
think in general just the level of expectation for flexibility
, the level of expectation for hybrid, it's only
been growing um quarter over quarter. And what we've
also been seeing is that employee engagement, their happiness
has grown alongside with that. And so we're talking
a lot about the great resignation and I like to
think about it as the great rethink people are considering
the role of work in their lives and they feel
more confident in terms of asking for what they want
and making their expectations clear. My last and very
quick question because we talked about executives having to take
different training when it comes to where their staff is
, but if say I'm a I'm a worker,
how can identify that? I am a victim of
proximity bias. What are some signs that say that
definitely feels like proximity bias? So an impact of
proximity bias is that people who are close by here
in the office get access to new opportunities, They're
seeing increased promotion rates as well as they're getting direct
access to mentorship, networking and development and so if
you feel like you're not necessarily getting considered for that
stretch project because you're working flexibly, it's time to
make sure that you flag that to your employer.
If you feel like when you come into the office
you don't necessarily have access to the mentorship that you're
looking for, um that's something that also is important
to flag. So I think it's really important for
our leaders to be aware of those biases and ensure
that they're setting the appropriate guardrails to make sure that
they don't happen. Alright, I appreciate it.
And this is some interesting findings. Sheela Subramanian VP
of slack's Future Forum. Sheila, thank you so
much for being on our show and sharing this that
I'm sure you at home probably went through at one
point in your life now that you're working at home --> .