Another fall season brought another set of return to office deadlines. The headlines earlier this month were everywhere — “Enough Bosses Say,” “The Office’s Last Stand” and “Will Return to Office Get Serious in September?” were just a few. Sure, there’s been an uptick in office occupancy this month, but as one recent headline […]
Morra Aarons-Mele’s The Anxious Achiever podcast explores the intersection of mental health and work, and how we can all do both better. I joined Morra (who also happens to be one of my favorite people) and Amelia Ransom, SPHR, VP of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Smartsheet, during a recent episode to answer listener questions about how to […]
In today’s USA Today Opinion, I share why “As we teeter on the brink of a possible recession, business leaders have a make-or-break choice. Use this moment to threaten or plan layoffs while mandating employees return to the office. Or double down on flexible ways of working and make flexibility a core part of their operating model. “Will they revert to […]
I recently appeared on CareerCast, a University of Chicago Booth School of Business podcast. Host Anita Brick, Director, Career Advancement Programs, and I talked about an important topic: how to build community in a flexible, dynamic organization. We talked about the five steps an organization can follow, as a community, to answer the foundational question “what […]
How do employers begin to prepare for a Post-Roe vs. Wade workplace? Texas offers insight into the challenges to come. Many employers have announced abortion-related benefits. https://lnkd.in/gPEu8V_V. However, as the researcher in this article points out, “Assuming just 10 percent of women aren’t able to secure an abortion, that’s a massive rise in fertility.” That means […]
This update of a popular corporate finance textbook reinforces the role strategies like work flexibility will play in the operational, cultural, and financial success of organizations: “We’ve devoted an entire new chapter to Responsible Business. But, it’s not just something pigeon-holed into a single chapter; it pervades the book. Out of the five principles that […]
Elon Musk’s recent return to office or resign mandate has generated much debate. I spoke with Forbes’ Jena McGregor, senior editor, Careers & Leadership, for her story about how his memo didn’t just demand a return to office, it promoted overwork. “The issue, say workplace experts: Employees today don’t just want flexibility about where they […]
Why “hybrid” is not working: –It leads with the wrong question “how many days in the office,” instead of “what do we need to do?” and THEN thinking through “where” that work is done best. –But “what do we need to do” can’t just focus on the core tasks of people’s jobs because in many […]
The New York Times recently published a story that provided great examples of how people are flexibly fitting work and life together outside of the traditional 9-to-5 workday, as the pandemic upended the last of what remained between our work and life boundaries. Many of us, me included, have had to rethink how, when, and where we […]
I can define high performance flexibility a hundred times, “It’s a flexible, dynamic way of operating across place, space, and time that achieves high level of performance and well-being by answering the question: what do we need to do, and how, when and where do we do it best?” But nothing beats hearing it described […]