What’s behind the most recent round of post-holiday RTO mandate headlines? Since the calendar flipped to September, I’ve been asked to weigh in on this important topic with CNN This Morning, USA Today, and WorkLife. We have a historic opportunity to be strategic and intentional in reimagining and recalibrating work to meet the needs of the business AND the […]
“How do we do this?” How do we execute a flexible work model that works? Stories help. They can inspire, even if the path chosen wouldn’t work for anyone else, what matters more is the process they followed. Chip Cutter shared a great story in The Wall Street Journal this past weekend. It shows how The J.M. Smucker Co. continues to evolve its […]
As a strategist whose purpose is to support others through the process of transforming into a high performing flexible organization, I’m mostly asked about what we do at the Flex+Strategy Group. I’m rarely asked about how and why we do it. That changed recently when I was interviewed by Michael Zipursky on his Consulting Success Podcast. Michael’s a consultant’s consultant with over 20 years of experience helping “entrepreneurial […]
What makes an effective manager? How do we foster and advance employee engagement? Is flexibility just about young people trying to protect their ability to work remotely in this new post-COVID landscape? I had the opportunity to delve into these important workplace topics and more in a lively discussion on KFNX Phoenix’s The Bill Brady Show. […]
This past week a sentence from a terrific article by Emma Goldberg in the New York Times entitled, “Office Mandates. Pickleball. Beer. What Will Make Hybrid Work Stick?” struck me: “Business leaders are in a phase of trial and error that comes with staggering stakes.” Why “staggering stakes”? Whether or not it’s done with intention, organizations are defining how, when, and […]
NYT opinion writer Jessica Grose penned an outstanding piece, “Remote Work is Here to Stay. Lean In, Employers.” this past weekend following the release of a new working paper — The Covid-19 Baby Bump – from the National Bureau of Economic Research. The paper suggested remote work was among the factors that resulted in the first […]
While there may have been a Labor Day bump in return to office occupancy, rates have remained steady, and a variety of data indicate “where” we work patterns appear to be stabilizing somewhat. Hopefully, we can now move beyond RTO/hybrid limbo and start to answer these important questions: How are team-based decisions about “where” people […]
As oversight of talent and human capital issues become front and center for corporate boards, I joined KPMG Board Leadership Center’s (BLC) Spring Directors Roundtable as a panelist for a discussion about “What workers want – Understanding the new employee/employer dynamic.” We explored the factors driving employees’ needs and expectations—from personal well-being and work-life fit […]
I recently chatted with Digiday‘s WorkLife editor Jessica Davies about asynchronous work and the confusion surrounding this term as part of their “WTF…” series (that title is so apropos for this era of change!) “The confusion is occurring because not everyone has understood that to make it work well, you need to set some guardrails on how it’s […]
With no choice, the pandemic forced us to radically transform the way we work and manage our lives. But now as we move forward, the path is less clear and we’re struggling. Some believe it’s best to “go back” to “normal” while millions are quitting, joining the Great Resignation as they seek money, flexibility, and […]