HR BESTIES - HR Besties: Remote Doesn't Mean Flexible Anymore

Starting point is 00:00:00 In HR, we like to say, do not do inappropriate things at work. Yeah. Advice to live by. It's true. But I think there's some fine print you can put right below that that says, especially do not use company email systems to conduct inappropriate behavior at work. Yes, God, yes. Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 00:00:25 Don't recommend it. Because I had heard a story. from someone that I used to work with and these people, you know, being in HR, hear all the stories, now having an HR podcast or otherwise you hear a lot of stories. You'll never believe this. Like, I probably will. Sad but true. But there was somebody at their workplace. And this person was known as a, like, Lothario would be the probably, is that how you pronounce it? Like the sleeping around with lots of people at work, lots and lots and lots of people at work. And always kind of going for the new crowd. Like you kind of imagine.

Starting point is 00:01:00 what he was probably like in college, like waiting for freshman orientation type. Oh, you know, the Matthew McConaughey-esque kind of, kind of, okay. All right, all right. The girls get younger, but I stay the same age and kind of like, oh, yeah, growth. Apparently, you know, not well-kept secret. Like sometimes we've talked about stories of like, oh, my God, people found out about this long after the fact. People kind of knew that this was happening. Thankfully, he didn't manage anybody.

Starting point is 00:01:27 But eventually, he was terminated. from employment for inappropriate behavior at work. Apparently, there were a lot of things that could have happened beforehand. Comments, off-end comments, all of these things. But what did him in was Microsoft Outlook? Because in addition to hitting on, like, the new employees and doing this thing, he sent one a meeting invite. And that meeting invite was very vague.

Starting point is 00:01:53 It was titled, BJ in the bathroom. At 10 o'clock, let's say 10 o'clock. I'm not sure the exact time. And it didn't say BJ. I understand. It said the whole thing. Wow. Through the company's email system.

Starting point is 00:02:10 Oh, my God. Wow. Wait, did the other person accept it? I think they screenshoted it. They printed it. It showed it immediately to the manager. And I think that was it. And I understand, pretty shortly thereafter, escorted out from the premises.

Starting point is 00:02:27 Oh, my gosh. And I think the defense to that likely was, as I understand it, like, oh, it was just a joke. It wasn't. That's not a defense that works. Like, people think it might be after the fact. But anyway, so just take that lesson. Don't do inappropriate things at work, but definitely don't send a meeting invite. Oh, my gosh.

Starting point is 00:02:46 What could you have called that? I may have just said, like, head time. I don't know. Well, hit the head was our crinched corporate speak from season two, I want to say. Yeah. Oh, man. Touch base. Yeah, touch base.

Starting point is 00:02:59 I'm getting fired. Send the meeting invite for that 10 a.m. at 10.01, and I'm getting fired at 10.01, except that one is, yep. That really did stand out to me of something. I did have a hard time believing, but I did, and totally. Wow. Ain't that something? Sadly, it's not actually surprising. The surprising part is that, is that they were dumb enough to put it in a meeting invite on their work computer.

Starting point is 00:03:21 Yeah. Think about all the activity that happened to that point to get to the more where they felt comfortable enough doing that. And it happens. It does happen. Again, this goes back to something we've talked about multiple times on this podcast is it's amazing the things that people put into their work email. And HR will tell you, you can never be surprised. There's a reason we don't monitor people's emails like people I think we do. We don't have time. Number one. Oh, yeah. We don't have time to do that shit. But also, like, you do not

Starting point is 00:03:48 want to go into those cesspools sometimes. Well, on that note, the hot topic of today is all about remote work. Let's do a quick run-through of the agenda, shall we? First up, cringe, speak. And I am handling that one today. And then we will shift into our hot topic of today's meeting, which is all things remote work and have remote work. Boy, it really doesn't mean flexibility so much, does it?

Starting point is 00:04:22 Not anymore. Not anymore. Gosh, they pitched it as free. and flexibility, but it's turned into some surveillance and some bullshit. So we're going to turn that inside out. And then, as always, before that hard stop, we will have some questions and comments at the end. Cringe corporate speak. I'm up at bat for that one today. And today I have getting granular. Let's get granular. Now, guilty as charged. I love some fucking granularity at work. I love putting it in all the tenses.

Starting point is 00:04:57 I mean, I love granular. Let's get granular. Let's go granular. I mean, I need some granularity on this. All the things, you know? All I'm saying, though, is I need some freaking detail. Okay. We need to get in the weeds on this one right here.

Starting point is 00:05:14 Like, I mean, ooh, you know, but I just, something about it. I love the way it feels in my mouth when I say it, I guess. That is what she said. I actually don't think that that's cringe, granular is cringe, because I do think it's one of those things that you can say, and it sounds really smart. And so sometimes we say, say it in a meeting. Sometimes we say, do not say this word in a meeting. It's a bad thing that needs to go away. I think granular sounds better than in the weeds. Well, in the weeds is like busy or you're like going to into the muck. Granular is like those pretty like, I think like the 30A.

Starting point is 00:05:52 You know, Jamie, like, nice pieces of sand. Lee hasn't been to 30A yet. Most beautiful beaches in the world. But fancy sugar. Yeah, like the fancy sugar, like good sugar. Yes, not the cheap shit. No. Yeah, love the granularity.

Starting point is 00:06:07 Do you ever say it, Jamie? No, but I've used stuff similar, like microscope. Microscope. Yeah, like we need to look at this under a microscope. Like, like, really get into the data or, you know, because I am a data nerd. So you know what that reminds me of the microscope? Because I recently, too recently, got my kids, who is like a teenager and a tween, a microscope to like learn about science. And let me tell you who was most excited about that, me. So you bought it for yourself? Yeah, because I thought,

Starting point is 00:06:35 oh my God, I haven't looked at a microscope in forever. That's fun. They are cool. But I don't know if this is how it was for you. And I love the Louisville Zoo. Love the Louisville. I love zoos. I love the Louisville Zoo growing up, all those things. Sydney Zoo, fantastic. But in the zoo growing up, when you went on field trips, you'd go to this room that had microscopes to look into, and it always had a smell to it. Like, it smelled like, not like the elephant, not that kind of smell. It just had this, like, even in like the 80s and 90s, it smelled like the 1970s. Like musty?

Starting point is 00:07:06 Yeah. Yeah. Like a dirty Bunsen burner. Oh, yes. You know, it's that like burnt, toxic smell mixed with mold. Yes. So when I got this microscope, that was my thought because, you know, they say the sense of smell is the strongest one and it carries across years. But it didn't smell like that.

Starting point is 00:07:25 But when I looked at it, I could smell that again. And I put it away pretty quickly. I'm going to buy a microscope, do some science. Send you mine. Right? Shit. It's all dusty somewhere. Oh, dusty and musty.

Starting point is 00:07:39 It's like perfume all over. I was just trying to make it smell good. Oh, shit. All right. Well, the hot topic. of today. Remote does it mean flexible anymore, does it, ladies? Sadly. I know. What does it mean? What is happening with remote work? Is it bullshit? Is it a fallacy? Is it foe? I saw a meme actually just yesterday where it said, how did we fumble the bag on remote work so bad? And the comment

Starting point is 00:08:09 underneath it was like, because all y'all got on the internet making videos about how you were doing anything but work. And I'm like, oh, that's kind of true. You've made some of those. Have you made some of those videos? Yes, I have definitely made some of those. Oh, we ruined it. Of course. You know, what's funnier is I usually made those on weekends, too. And I would, I would like put it in the caption, typically because it got back to work that I was making videos. And I was like, I swear to God, I didn't. Like, I actually don't have time to make videos at work. But, But, you know. Some of our friends, our friends on social media that we're actually friends with, some of them have made those videos that probably unintentionally hurt the cause a little bit. Oh, yeah. And more and more, right? We see organizations because we fucked it up. Pulling remote work. And we have the RTO, right? Everyone's returning to office with a workplace and big trend there. So, yeah, we did screw that up, didn't we? Just a little bit.

Starting point is 00:09:13 How was it when you first started working remote and how did you see that change? I started working remotely with COVID, right? Because literally we were pushed out of the workplace. And it was an adjustment for a lot of people, more so for leadership. Because, of course, a big part of leadership is being with your people and seeing your people. And at that point in time, people had only really done that role traditionally with an in-person, at least in-person, an in-person crowd. You know, so it was kind of like, okay, how do I do this? You know, so, but yeah, that's when I started working remotely.

Starting point is 00:09:47 And because it was COVID, when COVID first hit, I had some 24-hour days. I remember taking calls at 2 a.m., 4 a.m. I mean, we were really trying to figure out how to keep the doors open for our customers, the community, globally, you know, I mean, all the things. And so for our employees, our livelihoods, for ourselves, I mean, because everything just stopped. I mean, recall, you know, it was recall back to that time. It was pretty dark and scary. But we were behind the scenes doing that. So a remote started for me as something that was not flexible.

Starting point is 00:10:28 That was torture. It was work constant, weekend, everything, nights. So starting there and then trying to reel it back, that was hard. So I didn't have a lot of flexibility with my remote experience until I actually got a job that was remote on purpose. Did they talk about that when you had that job? What were the differences? And how were those discussed? Were you setting boundaries or were there things that the employer side did or other leaders did to help to support that?

Starting point is 00:10:54 What was the difference when you were in that like intentional remote job? There was just no reload at the time. It was still kind of in the COVID years. I mean, you know, it took a while, right? kind of years there to get to normal. We're not even there. I don't know. You know, it's tough, right? But, yeah, just everyone was dispersed because of the effects post-COVID. There was no definition of anything. It was like people in that organization, different organization, were still working as intensely, remotely as they were in person, because it was a startup. Deb, which is often remote for different reasons. Again, not flexibility doesn't tend to be the number one. The devil couldn't reach me, so I worked at a startup. Like, it was terrible. What about you, Jamie? I actually didn't work remote until 2022, and it was the job that I was just let go from. Because during COVID, I worked for a nonprofit, and we were a health care clinic. And so we were all still on site during that time.

Starting point is 00:11:59 So that was my first. And same thing. It was a startup. And everyone was pretty much remote. My role was a little bit different as in the company was headquartered in Nashville. So I would go to the office at least one to two days a week. I will say that died off even for a while, because our office used to actually have like 30 or 40 people who would go in a couple days a week. And it was actually nice to go in because it was like, you know, that's where my turtles. They were turtles at the office and I would feed my turtles. and I actually enjoyed going in. But I don't know now, though, when I go back to corporate, it's got to be remote, honey. I don't think I can do it again. Like, the drive alone, the commute part, was the worst part of all of it. It's sitting in your car for two hours

Starting point is 00:12:48 and then doing it all over again that night just to go home and for what. And I think that's why I've enjoyed remote so much. It's like even something silly, like having to take off a half day of PTO because I'm having a couch delivered or I have a plumber coming. Remember those days? And now working remote, I don't have to do that. I will say there was flexibility in that aspect for me, but I never had the chance to truly, quote, unquote, abuse it. My day was just back-to-back meetings. I wasn't able to go shopping and bring my laptop and, you know,

Starting point is 00:13:25 move my little mouse around, unfortunately. You know, I mean, like, I think. There was proven facts that productivity was actually better from those that were working remote. I think, unfortunately, is then you have all these return to office and you had all these leadership teams deciding to turn on things like, you know, statuses, and people got mouse jigglers. And like, there's just this whole flip now. And maybe some of it's because of social media. And maybe it's just a control thing for companies. And I saw something interesting the other day, and I apologize.

Starting point is 00:14:03 I don't remember where I saw it. Maybe Morning Brew. But they showed that Gen Z actually wants to work a hybrid schedule. More than any other generation, that Gen Z wants to work hybrid. They want to have some time in the office. And I'm like, I get that because they probably want to be close to their manager for, you know, that maybe they're new to their career. They need the face time? Yeah, they need that face time.

Starting point is 00:14:30 I think it's social engagement too. I mean, it's... Yeah. Isolating. Yeah, like, I mean, I work at home. Now, my husband is our chief customer officer for manager method. We are on two different floors. And, like, we can go hours and we don't see or talk to each other.

Starting point is 00:14:43 And so I do that. You know, I work remotely for running the business. And I miss that. Like, I've gone to co-working spaces and things like that just to be around other people. Because I do think there's a lot of convenience to it, but there's also a lot of psychological impacts to it. The commute aspect made me chuckle a bit, Jamie, because I was talking to someone recently, and at their work, they were debating whether to go back to the office, to go, you know, to do remote, to do hybrid. And they ended up with a largely remote structure. But part of what

Starting point is 00:15:13 they were all asked to do, I'm not kidding you, was to map out their commute of what their commute was if they were going to go back to the office. And an ask that they spend, I think it was like half their commute time working. So, like, we're going to give you the time back. But this is, and I remember the friend was like, how did that go? She's like, exactly as you would think. Like, people are like, what do you mean? Like, I'm getting, so what, I'm going to buy a PO box right next to the office and be like, that's where I live, I live in this little space. But I do think in organizations, if you think about remote work as a benefit, which it can be, but in thinking about, okay, how can we support people in working remotely and come from that ends as opposed to flipping it and saying like, okay, well,

Starting point is 00:15:55 because you're doing this, you know, right, like, you should be, you should be available more and you should be accessible in all hours. And managers, the big question I get is, how do we measure our team's productivity? If I can't get a hold of my team member, like in the past, I can put my head around the corner and they're, you know, they're right there. And often I'll say, like, yeah, sure, but also sometimes they may be in the middle of something. And all of a sudden, like those quick pop-ins, which it's not just you as their manager, it's all sorts of people. And that can end up in person a lot, but lower productivity as well. And so it's one of the reasons that having carved out times for your team is, in my opinion, an absolute must at all

Starting point is 00:16:32 times, but including when you're working remotely, because a lot of those questions about measuring productivity or, you know, how do I have engagement? There's ways that you can address that, but if you just flip your lens to say, how is remote work talked about at the senior levels of leadership, but the people that have the most influence. And are we talking about it is something that we don't trust people? Or is it talking about something that we need to support people in? And I do think the winning organizations are in the latter aspect. Do you ever wish that you had an HR legal bestie in your pocket? $6.50 is just that. Your trusted, always available ally for your employment law questions, minus the hefty price tag

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Starting point is 00:18:34 You said something interesting. You said in some organizations, remote work is seen as a benefit. Who is it really benefiting? I think it mostly benefits the organization. Like Jamie is referencing research about remote workers being more productive because I do think there is, with remote work, this like illusion of flexibility.

Starting point is 00:18:57 And what I've experienced at least with remote work is that the majority of people make themselves constantly accessible. like there is no defined work day anymore. Work can be any time now. That's why boundaries so important. Because really, you're paying an employee, I'm just going to say for eight hours a day, right? Let me just make a generalization. It's eight hours, no matter where it is, you know? And I think some people instantly think, ah, well, because, you know, they get to wear pajama pants, I should have nine hours or 10 hours, or if I'm still working as a leader at 7 p.m., I should be able to ping them and get to them because, you know, it's just casual.

Starting point is 00:19:43 Like we're just home. Like we lost almost the formality of work because of remote work. And, you know, it's rampant introduction and now use, you know, a lot more than before anyway. And it's just, I don't know, that part just fascinating to me that like kind of, it's just blurred. We're almost just like animals now with it, you know? Like, why did those boundaries leave? Why did those boundaries go away? Why are they no longer respected as much as they were before?

Starting point is 00:20:12 Because it's less effort now to get ready for work and to drive to work. And I don't know. I just swirl with that sometimes. You know, I just think about that. Like, God. Yeah. Because I don't have to spend money on gas now. Like, so you can call me at eight.

Starting point is 00:20:27 Like, what? You know what I mean? Like, it's... The question of benefit, I think, is... is it can be both. It can and should be to both. I do think it's a benefit to the company of you're not spending money on real estate, which is often the number one driver that you want people back because you're locked into long-term leases. But then the second is for employees, you can have flexibility, productivity, like not having that commute time, not having that,

Starting point is 00:20:49 but you have to make it really support those things because I do think there's this expectation of if it's on a device or you have a laptop with technology, people are able to. And so it's a little bit like out of sight, out of mind. If you're working in person, when people are gone, then you're not, you're used to being in the office thinking about them. So, you know, you're not thinking about them. But when all of your interactions are through a screen, then you think about that person. I'm thinking about them as available throughout the workday. And I think leaders oftentimes do think, I'm working, you know, so should they. And there is just this mistrust of like, I don't even know what they're doing during the day. And so,

Starting point is 00:21:23 you know, I'll reach out at this time. I've seen leaders who like try to have a reach out with a ping at like 6.45 p.m. while someone's making dinner. And that employee's frustrated. That leader is frustrated. And so I think just think a lot of times just setting up dedicated time can do away with a lot of those last minute things. I think it's important too. Like as a leader as a business recognizing that this isn't going to fix your culture. Remote work. It may not even fit in your culture. I mean, honestly, you know, but if you're burning people out in person, like that burnout just relocates. It's just they're going to be burned out at home, too, working remote. You've got bigger problems, you know. Oh, gosh, it's definitely not a cure-all, that's for sure.

Starting point is 00:22:11 Well, because we do have a hard stop. Any questions or comments? I think remote work really all boils down to trust these days, right? And so it's, do you trust your employees? Is the work getting done? And is it only getting done in an eight-hour day? Like, I don't know. When I was a manager in the remote work setting, I was never obsessed with my employee's status, like if it was red, green, or yellow. Like, I never, I would still ping you, like, if it was during the work day, but I never looked at it, I never cared about it.

Starting point is 00:22:46 It just wasn't important to me. But I had leaders that would, right? That would be like, hey, well, she's been on yellow. I'm like, okay, well, like, God forbid she go to the bathroom or go for a mental health walk or, you know, so I think as leaders, we need to trust that our employees are doing what they're supposed to do until, you know, until it becomes an issue. And then we got to get your annular. Ooh, I like it. I like it. Ashley, anything? I'll say one remote situation that I had that was really beneficial and worked out really nicely is when I had my second child, we had, actually the company had literally just instituted paid maternity leave, paid parental leave, like literally a month before I had my son.

Starting point is 00:23:33 Nice. Yeah, it was great. And it was like six weeks. And so combining that with, you know, paid time off and the short term disability, you know, cobbling everything together that we have to cobble in the U.S. I basically got like two and a half months off, basically. But my co-worker, who was senior to me, she had previously done this where she took two months off, fully off. And then the last month, she worked half days from home and had a laptop and just did half days from home.

Starting point is 00:23:58 And so she had told me about this. And she's like, we can totally set this up. And so for your last month, if you want, like you can do whatever you want. But I did this. And so I can funnel you work that I know, well, because we basically, she was senior to me, but shared a job. And she's like, I can funnel you work so you won't have to get on any calls. And you can just do this work for hours a day. You know, it doesn't matter when the baby's sleeping.

Starting point is 00:24:19 And so you can have an extra, you can have that extra month at home. And it was so helpful. You know, things like that. It's a high trust environment. Like that single example shows so much in addition to like the lack of paid parental leave in the U.S. But from a payment perspective, all of this allowed, you know, I ended up getting basically full pay throughout maternity leave, which meant a lot to us financially. But also I was able to, okay, get my head back in the game, work on things a bit.

Starting point is 00:24:44 it helped me to ease back in. But having a colleague like that that sets up that system, makes it a system, and then you do it. So in organizations, if you've never thought about structures like that, again, you have to have the conversation of like, you know, take all the leave you want, do what you want. But if you can think about some of those creative solutions and do that and have colleagues that trust each other and send that, I mean, that made such a difference to me. And I still tout that. I mean, that was 11 years ago. Love that. Why can't we be creative in that way? We can. Well, not a question for me, but just a quick comment.

Starting point is 00:25:20 I truly believe that remote work isn't broken, but the way we manage it is. And that's because we, collectively, as a workforce, our leadership or management styles and expectations haven't caught up to the different ways our employees work now. you know so there's still really the the easy button of management of visibility like seeing people instead of really connecting with them and talking to them that was always the pushback from leaders of mine that I supported on remote work well I can't see them you know so definitely this control thing but just that the optics the visibility literally the visual of people and my coaching was always, well, why can't you shift your style to something that can accommodate everybody and every type of worker? You know what I mean? So I think we still have a long ways to go there,

Starting point is 00:26:19 but I think that's what it is, is that you can't tell your people, oh, you can work from anywhere and then expect full accessibility. You need to flex as a manager or a leader and just adopt a different way of managing and employees lean in right make sure you are responsive you know and make sure you aren't just ghosting with your 10 other jobs you're doing and your mouse jiggler well thank you best days i'm glad we could get granular on this topic today i love the granularity Thank you. Thank you.

HR BESTIES - HR Besties: Remote Doesn't Mean Flexible Anymore

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