Episode 1: Managing Bias in the New Hybrid Workplace

How should leaders navigate the new hybrid workplace -- from determining whether and when to bring employees back to the office to employee concerns that "out of sight" means "out of mind" and even to new harassment or discrimination concerns?

   Transcript

Chris Riback: I'm Chris Riback. This is Call In with Dr. Alexandria White. We discuss business leadership in our time of social change when to call in, when to call out, and how to build sustainable business value today.

Today's topic, managing bias in the new hybrid workplace. Before our conversation though, an ask from us to you. We hope you like these Call In conversations. And if so, we'd appreciate if you take a moment, go to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen, and if you're so moved, leave a five-star review. The ratings really matter. They go a long way to helping other people find the podcast.

Dr. Alexandria White: Our show is brought to you by Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, which is committed to a more diverse and inclusive future. Let's call in.

Chris Riback: Hi, Dr. White. Great to see you.

Dr. Alexandria White: Hi, Chris. How are you?

Chris Riback: I am doing fine, and I am anxious to talk about the hybrid workplace. Let's start with the overview. What's the current landscape of the hybrid and remote workplace? What are the differences between them?

Dr. Alexandria White: Well, as you can understand there, that is a hot topic between going back into the office or staying at home. We know remote work is that complete autonomy to do all your professional duties in the comfort of your home. And now hybrid workplaces. What days of the week do you go into the office? How many PTO days can you take? And your assignment. What kind of assignments are you able to do in the hybrid workplace?

It's that balance that many companies and employees are looking for, how many days in a week, and what are going to be my duties as I navigate this hybrid workplace?

Chris Riback: Duties and issues and concerns and tensions and everything that one would expect from a transitioning work environment where we're reading so much about it. I'd love to go through some of the challenges with you right now and then, of course, end up with Dr. White's wisdom. You'll give us some tips and resources on how to move forward. Let's start with just the main question, should employers "force" employees back to the workplace? Should they encourage employees back to the workplace? Do our employees need to be in the office?

Dr. Alexandria White: The word force is so strong, Chris.

Chris Riback: Yes, and I did put it in quotes. We're on a podcast. You might not have seen the air quotes. Encourage as well.

Dr. Alexandria White: Yes. I think it's not a one size fits all. CEOs, business leaders, you know your environment. You know your company culture. Do you necessarily need everyone back in the office? And I think that's just not a one person's decision. You hire and you believe in and you trust your circle. When CEOs or business leaders have to understand and navigate this new normal, the hybrid workplace, you've got to get other insights and opinions and feedback.

If you want to motivate or encourage employees back to the workplace, make sure you get different opinions and the overall sentiment of people that you trust in your inner circle. I think it's important for CEOs and business leaders to get the opinion and the pulse of people that they work with before they force hybrid workplace or in office or overall remote working.

Chris Riback: Let's assume that all of these CEOs have taken your advice. They have kind of asked around and gotten feedback from their heads of HR, from various employees, from various line managers. We have seen on the one side some of them Wall Street banks that have said, "Wall Street culture, we need you in the office. You need to be in the..." One CEO you may have seen said, "If you can go to a restaurant, well, then you can come into the office."

On the other hand, we've seen the technology companies, not exclusively, but a lot of the technology companies, Google, Facebook, Apple has made changes that are opening up to hybrid. Google, apparently around 10,000 employees, I saw this reported recently, around 10,000 employees at Google recently applied to work remotely or transfer to a different location and the company approved 85% of the requests.

A total dichotomy between how some of our leading technology firms are acting versus how some of our leading financial services firms are acting, and there are all sorts of sectors in between there. I understand your advice is ask around, get guidance. But why are we then seeing such a split in how to move forward?

Dr. Alexandria White: One thing that I know for sure as we continue to navigate this global pandemic, nothing is for certain. We're dealing with this Delta variant. And then, of course, the Delta plus that was just entered into this as well. What I tell CEOs and business leaders is, what we do is things are uncertain.

You are going to have to navigate uncertainty and be that empathetic leader in any decision that you make. Also, attrition, retaining employees. We know that 26% of workers in the United States are already preparing to leave their job based on what their CEOs and their business leaders are saying about hybrid, remote, or in-person workplaces. While it is up to the CEO to make the final decision, we want to make sure that they're cognizant of the ramifications of that, which is people saying, "I don't want to work for your company."

I've heard a couple of CEOs say, "Let's get back to work," but we know that we all have been working tirelessly to keep our jobs, to keep our family, and to keep our health intact. Let's rephrase that to getting back to work. It's more like getting back to the office. As we navigate this remote and hybrid workplace, let's be empathetic to everyone in their need to make a living and be impactful in their communities, in their organization.            

 While it is up to the CEO, he or she has to navigate, will I lose workers? And in this uncertain climate, how can I make sure that my clients, my employees, my stakeholders, they stay tied to my company? That's my outlook on that particular question.

Chris Riback: Your emphasis on remaining flexible, being aware, that things change, what's particularly interesting to me about that is that's a business truth. In a supply chain, things change. In customer desires, things change. You're framing at that really in the way that a CEO must think about business in the first place, which I imagine is extremely helpful. Tell me, who is taking the hybrid option? What does that demographic look like?

Dr. Alexandria White: I talked to men, women, students, new people looking for new jobs and to reinvent themselves. There's different demographics, let's just be honest, that are taking the hybrid option. And one of those demographic applies to people who look like me, and that's women. Nicholas Bloom, a professor of economics at Stanford, conducted monthly surveys about remote work since last year in May, and this is what he found. Women want to work from home full-time, around 50% more than men. Why is that? Is it the autonomy? Is it the ability to work whenever?

Come downstairs, wait until the kids get home or leave for school. That allows people, especially women, to want that ability to have that hybrid option. More women have applied for remote jobs than man. A lot of people are leaving companies and going to companies that offer remote work. And again, I mentioned parenthood, aging parents taking care of your family, they are all important for people who want that hybrid work experience.

Race. Disproportionately black and Latinx people are using the remote hybrid option. For instance, black women. There is a report, a recent study, that said black women actually like the hybrid workplace model because it allows them to have a decrease, once again, a decrease in microaggressions going into the office. That propels the black women, minority women to say, "I would rather work remote." And then let's talk about generational. I am a millennial. I work with a lot of millennials. I'm kind of an older millennial, but I'm in there.

Chris Riback: Okay. Well, you're bragging now, even an older millennial. Now you're just bragging. That's a big flex right there.

Dr. Alexandria White: Generation Z. They are looking for that autonomy. They're looking for companies that say, "Hey, we want you, but we want to work around what's important to you." LinkedIn, Google, just some of the ones that come to mind that, hey, we want to work around you. You can come into the office. You can have unlimited PTO. We just want you to be employed here and be happier because we see you, and we want you to have a sense of belonging.

Chris Riback: You just stated something. There's pushback that I have read against the millennials on one of the exact points that you just said, we will work around you. There is a sense that I have read among and the previous generation, who might be in leadership, who might be in a CEO role, who will say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. We're not working around you. Sure, we'll work around you somewhat. We don't want to create a terrible workplace, but it's a workplace. There's a reason that this is called work. Working around you isn't why we're in business, Madam Millennial."

Dr. Alexandria White: Yes. Oh, I hear that all the time. This should not be tailored to a generation. This is a place of work. As I mentioned and as I constantly say, this is an equitable position for a company, so that you can be the company that attracts the new generation of leaders. You have to change your thinking in this workplace. The pandemic did not care what you thought about the change in workplace. It happened. It happened fast.

To keep up with those changes, you have to change some of that archaic thinking and understand that people want the tailored work experience. They want to be able to work at their time and be productive. Let's interject productivity into the conversation. There is data that productivity has grown five to 8%. You can't say that the job's not getting done, because we know that people are more productive in this hybrid workplace.

Chris Riback: Employees who must work or choose to work, have the opportunity to work a greater percentage of the time from home, are they hurting their chance for impact and promotion? Is out of sight, in fact, out of mind?

Dr. Alexandria White: So just recently in The New York Times, there was a Stanford study that randomly assigned employees at a travel agency to nine months of mostly working at home. The at home staffers were about half as likely as their in office counterparts to get a promotion. That was true, even though the remote workers were 13% more productive. So that goes back to, if I see someone sitting in their office, they must be productive. They deserve that promotion.

Chris Riback: She's at work all the time. She's always in the office.

Dr. Alexandria White: She's always in the office. Whereas their colleague X, oh, I only see them on Zoom. It is about your bias. It's about your awareness. There's something called a distance bias. The distance bias is something that has happened in our virtual world. And because we've all been reduced down to these square boxes, seeing someone on the Zoom allows you to think, okay, there's a little bit of connectivity, but what is this person doing in their free time? Are they focused on their job?

There's another experiment that talked about collaboration. Are you more likely to collaborate with someone that you can physically see versus someone in the virtual world? We know that being a team player, collaborating, group projects are often indicators of ways that people are promoted. There might be a tier system that happens. But what are companies and organizations going to do to combat that two-tier system bias? 

Chris Riback: One other issue, concern that I've seen come up about remote work or hybrid work, which is workplace harassment and/or discrimination. Now, at first glance, one might think that having employees work remotely would surely reduce the ability for and instances of harassment in the workplace, but it turns out that's not the case, is it?

Dr. Alexandria White: I was completely blindsided by the recent studies and articles about this. I was thinking, we're not in the office. You're not seeing people. You're not in their physical presence. Less Title IX complaints, workplace harassment, sexual discrimination. It's mind-boggling that because people think they're in the virtual world and they've got a little bit of keyboard courage, that I like to say, that this has become a thing.

Employees have to be made aware that their voices should be heard whether they're sitting in their living room or they're sitting in the office. Ongoing labor and employment attorneys have seen an increase in this. It's incumbent upon business leaders, CEOs, CHROs to make sure that instances of harassment in the workplace, virtual or in-person, is taken care of.

Having a roadmap for digital harassment, social media harassment to understand the importance that just because we're not in the office, we still hold true to our mission, values and goals to make sure that everyone feels accepted in the company. But I was very taken aback by recent studies regarding this.

Chris Riback: It strikes me. You're describing there's perhaps an all new avenue of workplace training that is going to have to occur. A whole other area to get smart on, which leads me to want to talk about what I like to call Dr. White's wisdom. We've been talking about the realities of the changing workplace. We have been talking about the challenges that come with those realities.

Dr. White, Alex, what are your tips or resources for empathetic leadership in the hybrid workplace?

Dr. Alexandria White: I'm so happy you mentioned empathy. In this day and age, in such uncertain times, empathy is a characteristic that leaders must have. It is essential. It is timely, and it is needed. To the CEOs and the business leaders and the decision makers, it is very important to practice empathetic leadership in whatever you decide for your company or organization. You have to build those connections with employees, doing regular check-ins.

Vulnerability and allowing people to show up is an aspect of empathetic leadership. Practice transparency. As I mentioned before, Delta variant has made things uncertain again.

I think of all of the emails and the statements that CEO and business leaders have to hurriedly create because things aren't certain. Practice transparency and say, "This is what we are doing, why we are doing it, and how it's going to impact you." Being creative, flexible, and fluid and understanding that people are more than their titles. Outside applications, caring for older parents, in-laws.  

Making meetings a little bit later so that people can understand and get to the office. Monitoring promotion and pay. It goes back to, is it out of sight, out of mind, and that two-tier bias that could show up. Changing work norms. A lot of companies, hey, as long as you get it done, that's all we're looking for. And rethinking meetings. There is a company that has pictures of its employees that are not in the office. They are in the office conference room.

When meetings happen, the pictures of the employees that decided to work remote are actually in the office with the employees who decided to come into the office. While it might seem kind of a small thing, it has helped with overall morale. Rethinking meetings. And then, of course, create virtual FaceTime for everyone just to get to know each other and understand that virtual work environments are the wave of the future and are currently needed during this pandemic time.

When I think about empathetic leadership, those are just some of the things that come to mind to empower business leaders to make sure that they keep their employees, they understand their employees, and they balance the need to have hybrid workplaces.

Chris Riback: The balance is such an important concept for sure. If I hear you, I heard one, build that connection with employees. Do those check-ins. Two, practice transparency in your behavior. Three, be creative. Be flexible. Be cognizant of outside obligations, and then what I love is some real tangible tactics. How to bring that to life, monitoring promotion and pay data, changing work norms, rethinking meetings, creating virtual FaceTime, those are great tips. Those are great resources. Anything else, Alex, that we should know?

Dr. Alexandria White: No. I think that this conversation is needed and it is going to continue to change. Because once again, we know the next class of employees are looking for that. This conversation will continue. It is ever changing, and it is very important.

Chris Riback: I look forward to it continuing, and, of course, I am grateful as well for that last tip that you gave, avoid archaic thinking. I will work hard on that one. Alex, thank you. Talk to you soon.

Dr. Alexandria White: Thank you, Chris.