Unlocking the Power of Flexible Work

Sachs is giving unlimited vacations to senior employees. And then just today, a few hours ago, we learned from Mark German that Apple is delaying it's three day per week return to office plant as a result to an uptick in COVID cases. Somebody who spends a lot of time thinking about all of this the future of work is Sheila supermanny In. She's co founder and vice president of the Future Forum. It's a research consortium founded by Slack

that focuses on the future of work. She's also the co author of the new book How the Future Works, leading flexible teams to do the best work of their lives. Sheila, It's good to have you. How are you. Thank you for having me. I am doing great. The first thing I noticed you're joining us via zoom is that it looks like you're joining us from a home office rather than from a corporate office. Is that right? Yes? This this background, This is not a I'm calling in for

my basement. Okay, So how does how does one and how does an executive lead a team in an environment like this, in a world like this to perform the best when they're so distributed? Yes? So one thing I just want to set the context on is so much of the conversation about flexibility is about location. It's about where people But what people find more important is actually when they work. What we're seeing from our research a Future Forum is that employees want flexibility in their schedules

as well. And so the last couple of years, I've really marked a shift in terms of what people's expectations for work truly are. And also to your question, how executives can lead in this new world? Um, A big piece of advice I give executives is that you need

to lead with trust. So much a performance measurement prior to the pandemic was this person the first in and the last to lead so they're worthy of a promotion, and there often wasn't conversation about the results, the outcomes, the impact that that person was making on the organization.

And so this has been a massive shift for leaders to think more about how do you lead a distributed team, how do you lead with trust, and ultimately, how do you make work work for all types of people rather than the select few who benefited prior to the pandemic. I love that you brought up the trust factor because one of the inventions of the pandemic. I have to say, a friend of mine actually introduces to me tim Um

and Sheila, you'll find this funny as well. But the software that like moves your mouth for you if you're ever away from your desk, no idea what you're talking about. Oh my gosh, Sheila, have you heard about this? Yes,

And we write about this in the book. It's it's monitoring software to ensure that your employees are working when they say that they're when you're saying working in air quotes right now, yeah, I am saying, but just you know, it's just to show that your your online while you're actually you know, getting a bite to eat or whatever. And basically just moves your cursor for you, so your online for for for a hot second. Um. A friend of mine told me this and she's like, I'll share

it with you. And I was like, well, no need, I'm in the office there, they'll see if I'm if I'm not there, But sheilla, I have to ask you. You talk about trust so outside of the mouth software apparently, Um, how do you build that kind of trust in an environment where so many people are saying the only way to learn is shoulder to shoulder, face to face. M Yeah, there there are many outdated ways of working that leaders

have been increasingly relying on. It's being shoulder to shoulder, face to face, working between the hours of nine to five, being in the office five days a week, and so much of the shift that that leaders need to make is yes, trust and trusting people to do their work on their terms. And one key way to leaders can do that is actually by focusing on the outcomes, the results that people are producing, rather than this person responded to my email in five seconds, so I know that

they are dedicated employee. We've seen a lot of CEO say that people who don't want to come into the office they lack hustle or they lack motivation, or commutes are not that big of a deal. But over the last two years, we've seen productivity measures rise. People have actually been able to exceed what people what leaders star was ever possible um and they were able to do

this overnight. And this is thanks to collaboration technology. This is thanks to the way that we communicate with one another. So leaders need to show what good looks like. They need to set expectations on what some of the goals are, and they need to empower their employees to do it on their terms, rather than continuing to expect them to adhere to really outdated norms of professionalism. We're speaking right now to Sheila Supermanny, and she's the co founder and

vice president of Future Forum. It's a research consortium that's founded by Slack that focuses on the future of work. She's also the co author of the new book it's called How the Future Works, Leading flexible teams to do the best work of their lives. When we come back, I want to hear about case studies when it comes

to what's working right now. Considering that this is all an experiment that's really still relatively new, we're gonna continue our conversation with Sheila Sumrani in in just a few minutes. We're going to get back and do a really interesting conversation here with Sheila. Sheila's Supermannian excuse me, co founder and vice president of Future Forum and the co author of How the Future Works, leading flexible teams to do the best work of their lives. She joins us on

zoom from Oakland, California. Sheila, we were just talking about Apple delaying a plan to have staff in the office three days a week, and they specified which three days. They said, Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Can you explain the logic behind that. I can't explain the logic behind what Apple's decision was in terms of those specific days, but I can't explain some of the backlash we're scene with

the cards to top down mandates across entire companies. Um In our book, we talk a lot about the importance of team level agreements, where teams get together and say this is how we want to work together. These are the days we want to come into the office, either quarterly or monthly or weekly, and these are the hours where we want to collaborate with one another. And the beauty of team level agreements is that it's about the team.

And with the top down mandates that we're seeing across companies, not just intact, but across the board. The challenge there is that you're assuming that work is one size fits all, that everybody's work is similar. But the work of an engineering team is fundamentally different than a work of a marketer. And you're also assuming that everybody is located, um within

driving distance of headquarters or of the nearest office. So this is an opportunity for leaders to say, all right, we're gonna build our principles, the purpose behind our flexible work. We're gonna encourage some behavioral guard girls, but we're gonna empower our team. Leaders are managers to figure out what works best for them um. And by doing that, you're enabling teams to do their best work on their terms, rather than saying this is the only way that people

can work. Sheila, When I see news like you know, Apple requiring their workers to come back three days a week, you know, putting that off for now, but we know it's inevitable, at least that's what it sounds like from the company. Uh. And then I see companies like Airbnb Branchski coming out and saying you guys can work from anywhere.

No granted, okay with an Airbnb. Obviously, the company's talking it's book right there, because if it's saying that it can be successful with people working from anywhere, then that's good for its business because then people, well, you know, use airbnb s to go live anywhere and work from anywhere. But from a competitive standpoint, how does the company like Apple compete with a company like Airbnb when it comes to attracting and retaining talent. What we're seeing from the

research is that flexibility matters. It's it's second only behind compensation when determined in job satisfaction. And what's more interesting in the context of the Great Resignation or the Great Rethink, is how I like to frame it is that employees who are not happy with their current levels of flexibility, both in terms of where they work and when they work, are open to looking for a new job in the

next year. So it's really critical for for companies, regardless of size and brand and compensation to think about flexibility. And I said, as I said earlier, it's about trust. Employees want to be trusted and they want to have the choice in terms of working on their terms. That's going to be really important as we move forward into

this new way of working. Sheila has got to ask about the role of women here, because I believe there was a stat out that when you had so much of the labor force essentially pull out in terms of participation, women took the brunt of that because of childcare issues. Um. And I think that that goes to serve or goes to kind of point out so many issues that have to have to do with kind of the role that

women play. But as they get more and more back into the workforce, you see childcare becoming a bigger and bigger issue. I remember a conversation and Tim backed me up on this order for for lack of better term, Uh, there was a conversation ages ago I remember from Chryl Sandberg and Emily Chang, a very own from Bloomberg to Technology,

asked her when you do kind of remote working. Sheryl Sandberg was very vocal about wanting to put her kids to sleep and um, you know, taking time off between five and seven to just spend time with their family. And Emily asked her, well, do you log back on after they go to sleep at nine ten o'clock and she goes, of course we do. Of course I do. Um. And so Sheila have to put that that scenario to you because you you made a very strong point about

trusting the work gets done and trusting Um. The flexible hours are in fact used. But does it still make sense to offer say a late night like nine ten o'clock for for people who do still have to do child's care for example. Yes, there's a lot in there. Um. What we're seeing from our research is that of working moms want flexibility and where they work, and that's the highest since we began surveying two years ago. Um, there's a lot in terms of flexibility and when you work.

And an example that we've adopted is from Dropbox. They've incuraged their teams to have core team working hours, So that's chunks in any given day where people come together to collaborate, to meet to discuss specific topics, and outside of those working hours you're able to do what you need to do. For my team, our core team working hours are nine am to one pm Monday through Thursday. Outside of that time, I dropped my kids off at

school and sometimes chaperon field trips. I picked them up and it's been able to provide a balance that I didn't have prior to the pandemic, when I was running to commute to the city every single day and coming home exhausted. NICKI dinner for everybody and put them to bed. It sounds great, seriously, of like of you know, you put the consident and then you have to go back

to work. That's not always the case. Um. And the beauty of a non linear work day or flexibility and when you work is that people have choice as to one works best for them. For some people it's it's in the morning, some people it's the middle of the day. But at least people have a choice in terms of

when they're able to do their best focused work. Is this I mean, I'm trying to think of what's permanent and what's not, Sheila, but it really seems like this is a fundamental shift in the way we work and it's gonna stick. What do you think? Absolutely, I think that we're not going back to how things were um back and now leaders need to adapt, They need to just they need to be intentional in terms of building a new way of working that meets employees needs. What

is that dangerous? And I'm gonna put my contrarian hat on here for a second, because you hear the stories from even China, for example, the closed loop system where they're spending thirty six hours NonStop working sleeping in um you know, the factories or wherever that they work, and they're able to say that this is a more efficient system. So I have to ask you, if you do have flexibility, is efficiency then at risk. I think a big piece of this is also like what the guardrails that leaders

are setting from the top. You can't say, hey, we're flexible, just do what you need to do. You need to have some level of principles as well as what are the behavioral guard grails that we're looking to encourage. And a big piece of that is to ensure that people don't burn out or they're not working around the PLoP, to show that they're always online, are there, committed to their jobs, and with figuring out what flexibility of site for specific organizations, leaders need to set that tone from

the top. Like at times Black as an example, we said, like you can't come back into the office five days a week if you're a senior leader within the organization UM Also, you scheduled scent. It's kind of like it's kind of like what are what Matt Boyle wrote about when it comes to leading by example, when it comes

down limited vacation. Sheila Subramannian, co founder and vice president the Future Forum, also the co author of How the Future Works, leading flexible teams to do the best work of their lives.