How technological shifts are creating a new era of work (Full Stream 9/19)

[Music] [Music] [Music] I think at Cisco the way in which we talk about skills today is so much more than ever before and there's a level of accountability that we have together with our employees to ensure that our skills evolve as the company evolves and I will tell you we're not there yet it's something that we're working on but I do think that's another critical element of the future of work hello and welcome to Washington Post Live I'm Daniela BR Tech at work writer for the Washington Post today I'm joined by Cisco's chief police excuse me people policy and purpose officer frine kudas you've got quite the title frine um to talk about artificial intelligence and hybrid work and how they're changing the workpl frine welcome to Washington Post Live hey Danielle it's great to be with you I have never been called the chief of police yeah that was a new one for me I was trying to not trip over the 3ps and I threw been police that's a new one but anyways welcome thanks for joining us um you know we want to jump right in I know that Cisco has been working on Bridging the digital divide in this new era of work is the Divide growing and what skills has Cisco noticed are needed most I think the most important thing to say is that it it could get larger if we're not careful I think there's a lot of work that we need to do so that we don't see a bigger divide and when we look around the world um what we see is that there are still about four million people that are are not connected and as a result of that it impacts their ability to access um education or Healthcare and that's a huge issue when we look within companies I think we all believe that the skills that are required are going to continue to evolve and shift and if we're not careful and thoughtful about how we help people get those skills I think you could actually see a digital divide um a skills divide within the workplace and I think this is why we have to solve some of these issues um Beyond the company by company approach I think we have to look at skills I think we have to create taxonomies and just create a completely new way to learn within the workplace as well got it and just curious are there certain skills that are most needed right now I think what we're seeing is that um there are basic skills around how we leverage analytics um that are really important and if you believe that we're going to have access to more and more information um how you use that how that impacts decision making those are incredibly important skills I think what we're also seeing at the moment is that the power of decision making communication is going to be incredibly important because I think we all believe that the content we're receiving is going to get better and better and some of the work that we did to build content will not be required anymore so as a result of that what you do with that content I think is going to be incredibly important and so what we're seeing is a lot of the roles today that have um focus on Research as an example um analytics the how we get that now is not going to be part of someone's job but the what you do with it will got it um you know it seems like every company right now is trying to figure out how to adopt AI or or or bring it into the business but becoming AI Centric as a company it really does require a strategy how has Cisco integrated AI into the way it operates yeah and and I think we have so much more to do um so I think what we saw and it's so interesting Cisco did um a body of research last November where we went out to people around the world to ask where they were as it related to their own AI strategies and what we saw at that time Danielle was that 97% of it leaders felt immense pressure to adopt Ai and at that time and I think it's changed quite a bit only 14% really felt like they had the plan to do that and um what that signaled to me at the time was that there was a lot of pressure top down from an AI perspective and so I think the Approach at Cisco has been to ad both a top down and Bottoms Up approach to AI I think this is really important especially as I think about some of the fear that I've seen um across the across Industries around what AI will mean from a job perspective and so the way that that looks at a company like Cisco is that there are very clear mandates and priorities around the way in which we leverage Ai and use cases that I think more broadly can be leveraged across the company but in addition to that motion what we're trying really hard to do is give our people access to the technology training and then really encouraging our people to play and to experiment um something that we did within my organization was we opened up um a project where people would get AI training and what we asked them to do was then share with us how the technology could change their day-to-day work and um I had hoped at the time that we would have a few hundred people raise their hand um and what we saw was 800 people raise their hand and coming out of that we have hundreds of ideas around how we can help our people be more productive to me that's an example of of Bottoms Up Innovation and I think when you have both um that's where you have the power I think the only other thing that I would add is it's going to require us to be a lot more fluid in how we skill um I think in the past there's been this formality around training and now it's going to have to feel like something that we're doing I think on a weekly basis so I want to move to the AI Consortium um this past spring Cisco and other companies launched the cons Consortium to address ai's impact on workers what was the impetus of this and what has it been up to since it Formed yeah so um we came together with companies like Google Microsoft sap Accenture IBM and what we did together was we identified roles across it um we started with a list of 47 roles that we think represent about 80% of the the tech roles that are out there and for every single role we looked at what are the the tasks what are the skills that are required today and then we looked at as AI really starts to be leveraged more and more what is the impact these 47 roles and what we found was that 92% of the roles had moderate to high impact and um the other thing that we found which I thought was really interesting was here you have companies um in the tech sector with a lot of differences but tremendous alignment on the roles and the impact of AI and um I I think this was probably a first for us that we share this level of information and that we together are starting to talk about what what are the skills what's the taxonomy that we use this work to me is not just important for our employees but I think it serves as a little bit of a a blueprint for companies around the world we've made this report um available so that you can look at roles and start to understand how it's going to change I think Danielle what it also shows us is the learnings that we've had in these 47 Tech roles can be applied more broadly to to every role and as part of this group um Cisco also has a goal of training 25 million people with cyber security and digital skills by 20 uh 20 uh excuse me 2032 how do you plan to achieve this it's quite a goal it is and and we're really fortunate in that over the last 25 years uh we have really put the focus on educ a um and we've recognized that as a company our purpose is to power an inclusive future for all and our belief is that it's it's education that plays a big role in that inclusive future and so today we train students in over 190 countries around the world a lot of our training um provides Learners with some of the basic skills that allow them to get that first role in Tech and then knowing that for many us once we get that first role we're able then to continue to navigate our careers and grow and so um the networking Academy has been just an incredible way for us to have this impact I would share with you that over the last four or five years I think the curriculum that we've had um in the security space has been incredibly meaningful what we know Danielle is today there are about 4 million security roles that are unfilled due to lack of skills or talent and about half of those roles are at the entry level technician layer which means a handful of courses would allow someone to to be able to fill that job and I think we all know right now security is such an amazing space to really build a career and so via our networking Academy we will continue um to train Learners to meet this new goal um we have um focus on bringing theseis to high schools to community colleges we have them in Correctional institutions um we'll continue to really look at how we can provide access to this training which by the way is both in person or remote depending on how the learner wants to learn which I think is another important point at this moment um but that's our plan and I think um together with our partners we can truly have impact um on uh Industries around the world got it I'm going to squeak one more question into AI if we can keep this a little brief because we do want to work um into hybrid I know you have a lot to say there as well but I am curious you know you guys have done a lot of research on how AI is impacting jobs and you know you found that entrylevel and midlevel information and communication technology professionals are at the Forefront of AI transformation I guess I'm curious how these entrylevel jobs are being affected and if workers sort of worries and fears about being replaced by AI are founded based on your research I do think it's fair to say that many of the entry level roles that exist today are going to evolve and I I think there will be a new entry level role um I I last sometimes because I think about the role uh that I entered here at Cisco and that was in the contact center and uh I was answering just very basic first line questions and um I do believe Danielle that that role will not exist um we already are doing so much of this role via Ai and I think what's so amazing is that our our customers um appreciate the quality the response how it's working and so what that means is that um the next level role which is probably that second level question is where a lot of workers will start and what that means to me is that companies are going to have to do a lot more to help onboard people to that new entry level role I think there's always going to be opportunities um but I think it's going to be on companies to ensure that um new hires are prepared for how the work is evolving so not so much maybe replaced but maybe different role I think is what you're saying if I understand that correctly I think that's right I think it's different role I think in some some cases it could be more advanced and as a result of that we just have to understand there's there's a bridge there um because I think if I look back when I entered Cisco I think that entry level role was probably where my capability set was and so if that role isn't there how do I get to that next level and so I think there will be entry level I I think I would tell workers that the entry level workers that the key is probably just in the Cadence of learning the skill building um and being ready because whatever role you come into my sense is and I think all of the data shows this that within a couple of years that R is going to look very different got it I want to move over to an audience question that we received um this is from Hannah in Washington and Hannah asks how is AI impacting hybrid or remote work and employees I think it's a great question Hannah I think we're still learning a ton about this I I think the way that we look at hybrid at Cisco is we look at it more through the lens of flexibility um and uh I would say that via AI what we're seeing is that the data does give us and the insights gives us that flexibility and so I think you're going to see um different impact and and I would say the the way that I assess um how we look at hybrid as a company is via both the work and the team and so there are some roles where it makes a ton of sense for you to work wherever you work because it's very independent there are other roles that are very team based and that back and forth that um ability to build off of ideas and talk through things require some level um of in-person Engagement um and so I I think think the question is a great one I think we're going to learn a ton more about that now I know that um AI is sort of making its way into recruiting efforts uh you could arguably say it's been in recruiting efforts for a while um but it is a bit of a controversial topic uh Cisco has used AI to assist with its recruitment efforts as have a lot of other companies but AI can get really tricky in this area lots of people get a little like freaked out when they hear that people are using AI in recruitment um sort of processes here what are some useful ways it's helping Recruitment and what are some ways that you think sort of cross the line where it could be problematic yeah I think like so many other um use cases Danielle what I would say is you have to start first with these responsible AI principles um that allow you to be clear on what you will do or What You Won't Do um and I'm a big believer that just because the technology can doesn't mean that you should um and so that's where I would start on the recruiting front I actually think that um AI can be used to actually remove some of the bias that exists within the system today um the way that I see it being used today some of the use cases that I think are really interesting um one is the Outreach to candidates and um what we're able to do from an AI perspective is probably just a little bit more customization and so Danielle if we were trying to recruit you I I would look at who you are what you care about maybe an article that you wrote recently and I would say hey love the article that you wrote about uh coaching and AI I think it's great we'd love to talk to you about X and so there's a level of customization and um what I've what I've heard is that many of the emails that are generated um via AI are getting a better response rate versus actual recruiters and so that just tells us something about the fact that I think there's an opportunity to really customize um the other thing that I think it allows us to do um Cisco did something a uh a few years ago called Blind hiring where we removed names we even removed um universities just so that we could look at the core skills of the individual that we were interviewing and in a technology type setting um you can use coding to really assess capabilities as well I think there's an opportunity for us to continue to lean in on the assessment of skills versus some of the other elements of of comfort or what you know candidates that look like you um so I think those are all of the positives um I think that we have to be really careful around uh elements of uh data privacy from a recruiting perspective I think we have to be careful um again with any type of bias that exists in the systems that are created is there an inclusive team working on the way in which we go out to candidates those are some of the gotas that I think we have to watch out for as well well we've just got about a minute left but I do want to get this last question in um as we head into this future of work with everything changing so rapidly I'm curious what is your biggest concern in this new era of tech at work I think my biggest concern is that we have to fundamentally shift the mindset of workers across all Industries um and the shift is basically that we need to continue to evolve our skills we have to make the time um for the investment in that maybe weekly one hour course that we take to further understand um how our role are changing or the technology that's available I think that's a big change I even think Danielle there's a subset of employees that feel like gosh I'm a great employee I'm doing a great job I don't have the time for that and I'm I'm actually rewarded for just focusing on my day job and and I think there's risk there and it goes back to your very first question around the fact that we don't want to see this digital divide within the workplace and I think that's the biggest risk we have and something that we have to work very hard um to help our employees navigate a new way of working and learning well I think we're going to have to leave it there um unfortunately we are out of time so Francine thank you again so much for joining us and for your insights thanks Daniel appreciate it we'll be right back in just a few minutes with our next guest please stay with us we see the future of facilities management as Dynamic we make it possible to optimize operational and Energy Efficiency mitigate risk and ensure compliance and provide a safe seamless and tailored experience for your people partnering with jll means you can intelligently transform your [Music] operations how to best utilize office space is an inescapable topic among today's business Business Leaders joining me to shed light on effectively harnessing the power of data analytics in C is jll's Chief product officer for work Dynamics Robbie Hobbs thank you so much for joining us Robbie thanks Ruth really excited for the opportunity and the discussion as am I first can you explain how data is transforming the way organizations approach real estate decisions absolutely so I mean data is the game Cher but more specifically quality data is the game changer you need data that's trustworthy to move from I think to I know and so that's really what we're on the path to do is to clean up the data at our fingertips to be able to derive those insights more interestingly today is we're able to combine traditional data sets with real-time data sets and get a greater insight into how your real estate is performing how it's being uh leveraged how it's being uh utilized so you can make better decisions across the value chain from portfolio planning to tr transactions and leasing to Capital Works to facility Management on how to get the most out of your real estate the other exciting thing about that digital thread across the value chain is it enables us to break down what of historically being data silos so we can start to solve traditional problems in a more sophisticated manner leveraging more complex data sets and more complex algorithms a great example of this is portfolio strategy where historically portfolio strategists have just tried to solve for cost but in doing so they may unwittingly undermine other corporate objectives like Net Zero carbon so by bringing to together data from across the Spectrum we're able to now solve a portfolio strategy for multiple objectives whether that's cost carbon health and wellness or the war for talent but the the other important thing to note is that in just turning data into insights there is no value creation it's not until you turn those insights into action and measurable impact that value is created so that's why people will always remain Paramount in the commercial real estate industry well let's zoom in on implementation Robby what practical advice do you have for companies that are looking to Leverage The Power of data in C and tackle the challenges of the future of work where do they begin they begin with the problem and that's what I see as the challenge you know I think there's a little bit of shiny object syndrome that goes on in this industry and the question is hey I've got this cool technology what can I do with it what you should really be doing is saying what problem I am I trying to solve therefore what insights do I need to solve for that better faster cheaper than in the past and therefore what data do I need to feed the algorithms to derive those insights then you get very focused on the actual data that matters and then the question becomes how granular do I need the data how much Fidelity do I need and at what frequency do I need it because you need to solve for that data acquisition in the most cost-effective manner possible and we see that a lot with the challenge that our clients are working through with hybrid work where more than ever we want to be able to track occupancy and utilization so we understand how the properties are being leveraged and how to repurpose them for the new purpose of work now the knee- reaction a lot of people have is oh I need to put occupancy senses everywhere that's expensive often if you follow the problem Insight data thought process you may realize that actually existing data that we have in the form of badge swipe data and Wi-Fi data is good enough to be able to start solving that problem so I find that that's a good practical advice process to leverage when when figuring out how to solve these these tough problems in better ways yeah well with that contacts where do you see AI being the most impactful in C and what role do humans play in all of this that mean it's a really exciting time um and we're only just beginning to scratch the surface of how AI can revolutionize CR but at the end of the day it still comes back to my first statement quality data quality data is the game Cher it's still garbage in garbage out uh and AI are going to struggle to create insightful um action s if they're fed poor quality data having said that AI can help create quality data and so that's the really exciting part about it is you know CR struggles with disperate disconnected and incomplete data sets that's why we struggle to do basic benchmarking but AI can help curate those data do the semantic mapping and help us get that solid foundation to then create insights once you've got that solid foundation the starting thing we're already piloting is an AI assistant but this AI assistant has been trained to be a c expert they've been trained on CR data they've been trained to talk CR so now when a CR leader asks a question historically teams of bi analysts would have to disappear for two weeks come back with an answer and then he would have another answer now our AI assistant can answer those questions real time and they can also prompted additional questions that that leader may not have thought of but what I want to close with here is to to reinforce that the way we are thinking about AI is not to replace humans it's to augment humans what we think of AI is automating the mundane so we can free up human beings time to do what they're best at creativity collaboration negotiation stuff that can never be replaced by Ai and so this this industry will always be a people and relationship business so we see AI as supercharging people and relationships and our motto is better jobs not fewer jobs yeah well you're right this is a really exciting time for the industry and a prime opportunity for companies to develop or really simply rethink their AI adoption in C thank you Robbie for your insights and now back to the Washington Post [Music] the ideal post pandemic office is now you come in three days let's say Tuesday Wednesday Thursday all of your meetings presentations team events are in those three days they're kind of exhaustively social at the end of it you're like I want some quiet time but then you push the quiet time to Monday Friday and the evidence from the papers that I've seen and the data is if you get to that kind of cadence that can basically give you about the same level of innovation welcome back for those of you just joining us I'm Daniel bril Tech atw work writer for the Washington Post my next conversation we examine how hybrid work is changing the workplace I'm joined Now by Nick Bloom he's an economics professor at Stanford University whose research focuses on working from home management practices and uncertainty Nick welcome to Washington Post Live thanks very much for having me on absolutely Nick I want to start with some news that happened a couple days ago which I'm sure you've been following closely um Amazon recently told their corporate staffers to return to the office five days a week shocked us a little bit the first big tech company to have such a big roll back on flexible policies um quick disclaimer as I say that Jeff Bezos the founder of Amazon owns the Washington Post but directives like these and various companies are causing many employees to threaten to leave what is your take on the move to go from hybrid to fully in office and why does some of these companies see um seem to struggle with adopting the hybrid model great you look it definitely shocked me too uh you know I uh my phone started going crazy with the announcement and there was all kinds of people saying what in Earth's going on I'll give you three thoughts on this actually so the first is this isn't really the beginning of you know any end of work from home work from home's actually been very stable over the last uh 18 months in North America so I know there's some companies that have been announcing that you know Salesforce Zoom others that apparently hauling people back to the office what's going on is a lot of other companies that say their lease is expiring or they're very happy actually with hybrid and they're increasing their work from home and that through a balancing out to mean work from home levels are pretty static so why did Amazon make that announcement so it's a bit like reading the North Korean uh newspapers are trying to figure out what's actually going on behind what they're the statement so their statement was it's all about productivity but I've seen a lot of data a lot of evidence I even had a paper in nature a couple of months ago that once you're in the office three days a week if it's organized it looks like productivity isn't boosted by having people in for an extra day so I'm kind of skeptical that's the real reason um interestingly enough if you look at the announcement they made they also talked about headcount reduction so I suspect honestly what's driving this is a bit of backd door approach to say look if we uh if we end hybrid and we force people in five days a week we're maybe going to see five 10% of employees quit they're going to run another job they don't like it and that's a cost-effective way to reduce head count I think that's probably what's driving it finally I just end and then Dani I'll go back to you to say it's also not obvious this will come to happen so you know if you looked at the uh memo they talked about work from home is going to end in January 2025 now now Andrew Jesse runs a you know head head cor to Organization for Amazon that has 350,000 people he is sitting on top of an enormous organization it's like 10 layers deep of managers to get to the bottom he has to get them all on board mostly if you look at who these managers are they in their 30s 40s maybe early 50s they have kids they are probably pretty into hybrid too so they're being asked to implement something they don't agree with to make it worse they have performance bonus es promotions you know everything driven on their team performance so look if I'm a manager imagine you come to me and say look you've got to get people in swiping their Banes in five days a week and I have like two or three star employees that are on hybrid I'm not sure I'm going to reinforce it I'm worried that if I force them in five days a week they quit I lose my bonus I don't get promoted so I'm not sure this will ever happen I suspect they get up to like 4.1 days a week on Swipe day to 3.9 and just kind of give up you brought up so many little nuggets in there that I could dig into because we are hearing so much about you know sort of this like backd door way to to lay off without layoffs and we've heard a lot about um also you know that uh I forget there's a term they've they've coined it for you know managers not really implementing it and just sort of um you know pretending we're following the policy um so I I will leave that there because we could spend all day on that topic Alone um you published a study this Summer that found employees who work from home just two days a week are just as productive um likely to get promoted and less likely to quit their jobs but we've also heard some sort of anecdotal concerns that working outside the office could contribute to fewer career advancements and may increase a worker's chance of being part of a layoff um does working from home ultimately contribute or hurt career growth or is there some limit to when it's beneficial and when it starts to you know have some of the negative impacts a great question so let's set aside one group first off which is youngsters so think of people you know my oldest kids are what 19 and 21 and you know I T I teach undergrads every day pretty much and for folks like that early mid 20s if anyone's in that age group listening or you have kids I would probably advise you for your first five years of your career just to go into the office a bunch so I'm thinking four maybe five days a week when I talk to these people they typically want that anyway they're like I want to be so sure I want to get mentored in their Apartments not particularly great you know they're sharing with four housemates and where are you going to work if you're working from home so let's set those guys aside so let's think of the rest of everyone else so we're looking kind of late 20s upwards for those folks there's really two kind of groups group one is you are doing the same as everyone else in your workplace so imagine you're in an office you're coming in two days a week but everyone else is coming in two days a week that doesn't look like it damages your promotion so the boss is in you know on Tuesday Thursday you're in Tuesday Thursday or your other colleagues are in on Tuesday Thursday you're all kind of in the same boat and there's no evidence that promotions and careers held back where there is evidence there a a problem and I have some papers and you know Emma Harrington Natalia Emanuel many other people have papers on this shows that if you come in significantly less days in your colleagues so for example there's a study where a group of people came in five days a week and another group came in one day a week and the second group saw their promotion rates dropped by a half so I think the evidence of you're listing if you really want to work from home and your current employer is not providing enough days it will likely damage your promotion prospects if you cut back and are coming in less than colleagues so really the advice if you can is to change jobs so you know if you love working from home four days a week you don't want it to hold back your career it's probably better to be in an organization where everyone else is working from home 4 days AEK we and then you're kind of on a Level Playing Field that makes a lot of sense you've pointed out that critics of hybrid work often confuse hybrid work with fully remote work um what do you think are some other misconceptions of hybrid work I mean that's definitely the biggest one it kind of drives me mad whereby you hear some you know famous exec I mean I'm going to pick on Elon Musk because he says all kinds of crazy stuff but you know Elon Musk is saying oh I hate remote you know working from home these people they're they're living in caves you don't see them for months and end you're like well that's you know that's you know that's not that's nothing I see nobody lives in caves but even if you're fully remote that's only about one quarter of people that are working from home so most work from home is actually hybrid um you know I could talk about fully remote but I said that as likey is that's at this point a relatively small share of what's going on mostly it's people say working from home two three days a week all of these different policies have and downsides I mean fully remote it can be a struggle on mentoring there can be some struggle in Innovation and kind of building culture but it's incredibly coste effective and I talk to companies I typically say for a fully remote employee they may cost the firm two-thirds as much as somebody comes in every day because you need to briide for office space you know go pay for you know for more lunches it's more expensive hiring people locally often for hybrid you know what are some of the myths I mean the other myth I hear is companies that just mess up the management so you know the things that sends people crazy with hybrid is when it's disorganized so Danielle imagine it's you and me in a team you're in Monday I'm in Tuesday you're in Wednesday I'm in Thursday you're in Friday well whenever we're in you know the other person's at home and so whenever I want to talk to I have to get on Zoom and what that means is I spend a lot of time coming into the office on zoom and I come saying why why am I here why could I just done this at home and so the other you know big thing on hybrid is be organized and make sure at least the teams or even the firm comes in on the same days because the big reason to come into the office to see your colleagues is not you know it's it was not to for the ping pong table or the bagels or you know the beehive on the roof one company has a beehive on the roof and that's great and if you like honey I'm sure that's fantastic but you know I wouldn't drive 40 minutes each way to work and back to look at some bees I would do that you know two three times a week to see my colleagues and meet in person have lunch Etc yeah if the colleagues are going with me to see the bees then that's that's a little bit better exactly we can on it together yes exactly so we know some of the benefits of hybrid work obviously you know lower levels of stress less commuting better work life balance but some hybrid workers actually struggle with turning off work and and the on and off work mode here how has working from home actually affected work productivity I know you kind of alluded to that in in the beginning and do the pros of that hybrid SL partially remote um approach outweigh the cons here great so I I start by saying the big benefit of hybrid the reason it's stuck by the way is it's profitable you know I hate you know I I hate to be too much of a capitalist but in some senses if you like hybrid capitalism is your savior right now because hybrid makes companies money I mean that's the bottom line that's why more than 80% of S&P 500 companies have hybrid for professionals and managers the reason it makes companies money is productivity is about Flats there it's not better it's not worse but the positives is quit rates are down around 20 30% with hybrid and quitting is really expensive for companies you know imagine you're a manager somebody quits on you they're like you know you've got to go out re-advertise rehar re-recruit retrain is very very expensive so you know that that's uh why hybrid sticking here in terms of is it good or bad for employees it's interesting so we are surveying 10,000 Americans a month we doing that for many months one month earlier this year we ask people what how many days a week is best for your mental health and your physical health and it turns out it varies a lot and it really looks like it aligns with what people want so just to give you a sense around 20% of people say they're happiest and their mental health is best that they come into the office every day think of them as maybe extroverts or possibly they live on their own or they don't have great home accommodation they just they want to come and the happiest coming every day there's 30% that have the exact opposite so they say look I really want to be at home every day maybe you know they like the closeness of family and friends they're at home maybe you know they don't find workplace a pleasant environment and then there's the remaining 50% that Express various versions of hybrid I think the bottom line is choice and letting people choose is the critical thing so in 2020 when we're all forced to be fully remote there are a lot of people that are very unhappy and that was quite damaging with with with mental health but in 2019 we all forced to be fully in person that was also not great great for some people now 2024 I feel like it's the best of both worlds if we give employees choice now that may not be choice in your own employer as I mentioned earlier it's kind of difficult to do something that's different from your colleagues so choice I think in the long run may actually mean that different firms offering different prank you know Amazon is claiming it's going to get people back five days a week other Tech firms are letting you like GitHub work fully remote if you're in tax set means moving around so that what keeps you you happiest is what your employers offering so I want to switch over to leadership um you know ineffective and unnecessary meetings are a productivity challenge we've all had them many of our schedules are just filled with back-to-back meetings it's one of my favorite parts of of the job um but Zoom meetings really do remain a a Mainstay after the pandemic what are some of the most effective ways you've seen leaders reimagine meetings so that we don't end up feeling this sort of meeting overload I mean one big thing is actually turning off videos so I actually work with a company called Rome and they they allow you to have audio only meetings they they push it in that direction don't it was funny yesterday I was talking to someone and I was talking to for half an hour on the phone and at the end of it I was said this is so refreshing I don't have to look at the screen and I was actually wandering around I was looking at you know there was somebody Leaf blowing across the road and I was you know nosily watching what was going on so one thing I think is allow more audio meetings that generally only works for very small things one onone one on two um I mean I think the key thing coming back to hybrid is when people are in the office make sure they're in the office together if you have a team of eight people imagine that seven come in and one says I've stayed at home because it's my kids Judo lesson today and I'm not coming in that's really tricky because you're like okay we want to have a meeting I would ideally do it entirely in person I have kind of screens off but now got I don't know Sue or Bob who's at home how are we going to do is we're going to have to go to a conference room we're going to have to get screens out you know etc etc so I think to try and minimize you know meetings a are generally seen as better in person than on video call and be that means therefore when you are in the office it's best to try and get everyone in together and then it also means when you're at home you kind of feel like everyone else is at home you're in the same Cadence as everyone else so we do have a question from the audience that relates to your role as an educator uh Michael from Minnesota asks how do you suggest Educators at the postsecondary level help prepare students for the significant changes in the future workplace great question I actually thought you were GNA ask about online teaching so by the way I'm not a big fan of online teaching I think if you can't you know Reach people in person it is better than nothing but you know my experience is it's not been great I think one of the fascinating things about the history of technology is it continues to change so if you're Preparing People for the very you know far future it's much more important to teach basic thinking skills analytical skills than it is to teach a very concrete task so you know right now I know AI is the hot thing but you know five years 10 years ago it was Cloud before then it was you know web design Etc so if I was to have go and teach a bunch of students right now on C++ or something you discover a few years from now that that's you know longer so valuable another big stylized fact that's come out of the research evidence is interesting is the increasing importance of social and human skills so it turns out AI is increasingly doing you know we heard from frontin more and more stuff one of the things it can't really do I mean there's no physical robots that are particularly good as interact with each other and so human and personal skills are getting increasingly rewarded in in the marketplace in the labor market and to the extent you can develop them in education for example in class is more discussion more interaction among students that's valuable so the transition to hybrid led many companies to reconfigure their physical office spaces with shared desks more open concept layouts and there's been an ongoing evolution of what our office configurations have looked like over the years what is your take on this open space hot desking model and you know in terms of hybrid I know you talked a lot about people like their leases coming up I don't know if that means means that they're downsizing um now that they're in hybrid mode or if they're just completely giving up their leases but H how should we think about configuring a hybrid office great so I I'll give you two things that are out it's like British Top of the pops two things that are you know are falling and two things that are in so the two things that I see out getting kicked out are basically cubicle land so cubicle land is you know tons of those dilba S cubicles next door to each other that's out cuz no one's really coming into the office at you know that much anymore to treat it like a library so they're not coming in to quietly work they're coming in to meet with other people involved in you know presentations training lunches if you're going to quietly do heads down work you know increasingly do it at home so cubicle land is out the other thing that's out is long corridors of individual officers so if you you know if you like the TV series Mad Men that's full of these individual offices those things they're still there for exacts but they're being scaled out so those are going out what's coming in two things we see coming in one was actually in the Amazon announcement was cubicles uh sorry not cubicles like um soundproof kind of telephone box type things with glass walls so people are in the office they want to take a zoom call they are maybe an open plan area but they don't want to you know shout and noise pollute everyone else they have a kind of glass soundproof little box they can go sit in that's coming in I'm seeing a lot of these going in the other thing is more conference rooms so you're in the office say three days a week you're there really to meet people you're not there to quietly type away most of that quiet typing stuff should really be done at home but you therefore need more meeting space so a lot of companies are saying we're ripping out cubicle land we're down getting rid of some of the individual exact offices for Middle managers we're putting in a lot of small medium and large conference rooms and we only have about a minute left but I want to make sure to sneak this question in while I still have you what improvements do you think can be made to the current hybrid model that we have I mean the two things uh one is coordination so it's critical to coordinate the days you come in uh you know people want to come and to see their colleagues to socialize them the other one is slightly you know is slightly harder to explain but the importance of performance review so basically evaluating people on what they do how they perform sales targets you know client targets rather than the hours they work so if I'm in the office then and you're managing me you can probably walk around and see I'm at my desk in away working when you walk by is my screen showing python or Excel or maybe am I you know watching Netflix or Champions League you can kind of watch what I'm act up to it's not great management it's kind of livable if I'm at home you've no idea what I'm doing and surveillance software is horrible so there needs to be a big swivel from basically measuring inputs hours to focusing more on outputs what you perform and Achieve because it lets employees working at home have a bit more flexibility and it makes means managers can more easily manage them that sounds like like a great way to to look after employees instead of watching over their shoulder seeing if they're logging keys or whatever some of these productivity tools do um unfortunately we're out of time Nick so we'll have to leave it there but thank you so much for joining us today and providing your valuable insights here thanks very much for having me on and thanks to all of you for watching for more of these important conversations please sign up for a Washington Post subscription you can get a free trial by visiting washingtonpost.com I'm Daniela bril thanks again for joining us today

2024-09-21 06:24

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