The End of Hybrid? Why Your Office Needs a Radical Redesign

Leaders everywhere are asking the same question. Why isn't hybrid working the way we promised our team it would? Instead of giving people the best of both worlds, we've accidentally created a workplace model that leaves people disconnected, confused, and wondering why the office even exists. And that's what we're talking about today on Marc Haine Live. Welcome to this episode of Marc Haine Live. Of course, this is where small business owners and entrepreneurs develop new skills to help them create the jaw-dropping, show-stopping experience that their customers and their employees deserve. I am your host, Customer and Employee Experience Strategist Marc Haine. And it's so great to have you here because Today, my guest is Rania Neme. And today, we are talking about why hybrid work is not really working and how redefining the purpose of the office can actually rebuild connection, collaboration, and culture in a way that actually will serve our people. So, my one ask, if you know anybody who could use this information, maybe they're struggling with discontent in their office place and they're just pulling out their hair wondering why isn't this working, please make sure you share a link to this episode. It'll do them a world of good and it'll provide you as a service provider. And that's always a good thing. And if you haven't done so yet, please make sure you have subscribed to this podcast. It's free. It won't cost you a dime. And it'll feed my ego just enough for me to keep producing more episodes. Who knows? So, you know when hybrid work exploded onto the scene, right? Most leaders treated it, I think, like Assembling the fake IKEA furniture. You know, the ones that come in the flat box, has no instructions. You have to improvise a whole ton. And somehow, you end up with 3 leftover screws and a really, really wobbly chair. In our offices, we're trying now to figure out why engagement is slipping, collaboration feels forced, and people seem really allergic to returning to the office even though Prior to COVID, the office used to be where our culture thrived and lived. And that brings us to our Question of the Day. Is your hybrid model helping your team or is it quietly costing you trust, creativity and performance. If that question hits a little too close to home, then you know you're in the right place. I'd love for you to drop your thoughts, your questions in the comments here. And even if you want to become part of this conversation, feel free to share this episode on your favorite social media platform. Hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership and be part of this conversation. As I mentioned, my guest today is Rania Neme, Hi! a Senior HR Strategist, author, speaker, and adjunct Professor who has spent her career inside some of the most complex workplaces on the planet, including the OPIC Fund for International Development and the European Central Bank. She's an expert in people, people strategy, leadership development, hybrid work, and all the messy kind of human moments that make organizations tick. She's published with the Harvard Business Review, co-authored with Wharton's Peter Cappelli. And her newest book, In Praise of the Office, is shaking up the way business leaders think about connection, collaboration, and culture in this hybrid era. Rania, welcome to the show. It's so great to have you.

Thank you so much, Marc. And thanks for that wonderful introduction. It's a great pleasure to be here.

Likewise, it's great to have you because as I mentioned just prior to us hitting the live button. I've been a big proponent of giving people work-life integration as opposed to work-life balance. And so, people working from home I think was a real coup for a number of reasons. But now, we're seeing that we don't have the tools, I don't think, as leaders to deal with what it takes to lead hybrid workforces in a way that's productive. And then of course, when we do bring people back to the office, we're just going back to status quo.

Whoa!

Is that a fair assessment?

I think it is a very fair assessment of what you said, Marc. Also bearing in mind, I think one of the biggest issues is that when we went remote, we had no idea that it was going to last as long as it did, right? So, a lot of companies, they said, well, we all thought initially maybe for a few weeks, maybe for a few months. And nobody was clear. As we know, the mandates kept Pushing further and further, it was like you will come back in the summer, but then it was you will come back in the winter the next year. And because of that, it was now it's been five years, and in those five years now, we really see a the difficulty in getting people back to the office because obviously they've been doing this now for five years, and you know a lot of employees think that it's working well. And I think employers have not been clear as to the reason why they have to come back to the office. A lot of the mandates really feel like it's. It's a compliance exercise. It's not about coming into the office to connect. And that should be one of the main goals is connection, is that purposeful environment when you share experiences together. And I think that is what we're lacking right now. And we only saw that later. We didn't see that initially, like the first year of the pandemic, because a lot of things that you don't really measure, like the social interactions, the informal networking you do, you don't find this on productivity dashboards.

Right.

But they only showed later. Like a few years later down the line, we see now where there are these red flags.

Well, and it's interesting because the evolution of it all was we're in crisis. We have to make a decision. We got to figure out how to keep our businesses going. So, we didn't really care about all that because it was how do we just get a normal day out of it, right? And so now, it's clear. Like I mean, we hear all over like all over North America. We have Government's saying that they're going to start forcing people back to work. Businesses are saying, we want to see our people. We want people to come back to work. Of course, you got the employees going, I have to commute for 2 hours. I have to pay for endless parking, which is so expensive. And for what? What good is it? So why now after 5 years, why is hybrid work still not working?

I think what we're seeing right now is hybrid is not working because there's a lot of issues that we're only noticing now about why it's not working. And the first one is when it comes to new employees. New employees have a very hard time to really integrate in a culture when they do not see people, when they're not guided accordingly, you know, when they're not in the office.

Yeah.

So, I think for newcomers and early young professionals, they need this advice, this guidance that you get from your older colleagues or from mentors. And it's really difficult to get that in a hybrid setup. So, what we see is that those new employees, they suffer the most. And especially when you consider that, you know, average turnover is like every 3, 4 years, then it's like the people that knew things maybe before the pandemic are not there anymore. So, you're getting— you keep getting constantly new people in the workforce and they It's taking them a very long time to integrate or to really even get into the field, the organizational culture. So, that's really one thing that we have seen. But then also, in terms of— sorry, I'll just mention one more maybe.

Go ahead.

Go ahead. It's all good. In terms of collaboration, you know, these informal, spontaneous gatherings that you have in the hallway, the chats, the quick, let me pick your brain for something, you know, those moments that we underestimated, you know. We really underestimated them because they lead to things sometimes. They help you resolve problems quickly. They might lead to quick brainstorming. They are the fabric of the relationships of people that are in organizations. And when you don't have that, you cannot replicate that on Zoom.

And it's funny because people have tried, right? Really, these constructive collisions They've tried to put people in breakout rooms and just hang out together. And it's like, it just doesn't work. It's not the same thing. Yeah.

I mean, don't get me wrong, Marc. Of course, it's great to have these tools. So, we're not in any way saying that they're not. I mean, they of course, I mean, this is where the world is moving and we all use these tools. I mean, like us now. But sometimes, those moments that you have before the call when you are in the room together before the hybrid before the camera's on. These moments or after the call, those quick catch-ups, this is what we cannot replicate. Yes, we can all get on meetings. We can have content-related meetings. But these relationships that you form are very difficult to do in this hybrid setup.

Yeah, it's interesting because one thing I saw very quickly through remote working through COVID was all of a sudden, the fact that we got to beam into people's kitchens and people's living rooms and people's offices, we all of a sudden recognize that the people we have working for us are human beings with other things going on in their lives. All of a sudden, we saw pets and we saw children.

Yeah.

And it was like a different— it created a different awareness for leaders to know that this is not just, oh, Donna is more than just the clerk at the table. She's got this whole other thing, which I thought was really great. Like, I was really tickled when I could talk to leaders about the fact that now we can recognize that people are human beings. So, I mean, that was like, I think, a good outcome for leadership. But right now, this distance that we've created, what do you think organizations are misunderstanding about this flexibility that we were forced into?

Well, I think the biggest mistake we've done is assume that you can take an organization that was fully in-person and put that and make that hybrid and that it would work just like that.

Mm-hmm.

That's not how things work because to have a good hybrid setup, you need to create a lot of intentionality. It has to be done with intention. You know, you have to bring people together for a certain reason. You have to plan that. You have to plan when should everybody be in the office. It should not be for all of us to sit on Zoom Zoom calls alone in the office. It should be for us to get together, to connect, to, you know, for innovation, for mentoring, for all of these things that you don't do from home. So, I don't think that you can really assume all the practices that you had before, but just make them go hybrid and think that they will function. We have to adapt to the hybrid environment. And by the way, I am a big fan of hybrid. I'm not saying I'm not, you know. But it has to be done with intention. And there's a lot of— and if it's not, then you will feel a lot of inequity with how people are treated. Managers aren't trained maybe for hybrid setups. So, those are a lot of the issues that we see. Most of the managers have not received training on how to manage hybrid teams. Simple as that.

It would be simple to say that even their managers and the organization as a whole hasn't been trained on how to manage hybrid teams. Because to your point, if we have to do— it used to be when everybody was in the office, you would have like an away day. Where it's like, hey, let's take the team out. We'll go out for lunch and then we'll go and do an escape room. And we'll go, right? And you have an away day. But now, people are starting to think, oh, if I have to have an in-office day and they don't have the skills or the program or the strategy to be able to bring people together productively.

Yeah, absolutely. And again, it's not just about telling. It's not about mandating people, you have to come into the office. I think this is the wrong approach, and I think that's why there's a lot of employee resistance. You need to really explain the why. Why do you want me to drive, as you said, 2 hours to come into the office to sit on a Zoom meeting alone? Why? So I think that's what I mean by intentionality. It really needs to be planned. You have to come into the office Tuesday, Thursday, Friday because we will have our team Let's say events then. We will have mentoring sessions then. We'll have a group lunch, whatever. Just come up with things. Project kickoffs, innovation sprints, things that really are more difficult or more challenging to do in a hybrid setup. So, if you bring people into the office for these reasons, it makes more sense.

Yes, I do get a sense that when I talk to leaders around this idea of remote and hybrid work, places, that there's a ton of blind spots that leaders have developed around engagement in a hybrid world. Like they are fighting. It seems like they're fighting this uphill battle thinking that they're doing the best that they can. And then, the rationale to come back to the office is just born out of frustration.

I think one of the biggest issues is that organizations have allowed local managers like their own managers to decide about their own teams. Who's coming in and who's not? And what we see here is that no manager wants to be the bad bad guy. So they you know if you have let's say a team retreat on a Wednesday and then your your employee goes oh but I have to you know do something on Tuesday which is really important. I have to bring I don't know my mother somewhere or something. So can I come? I will instead come into office on Tuesday instead of Wednesday. Nobody's going to say no we have our team meeting on Wednesday so please come in on Wednesday because that would just seem inhuman right? So I mean in that sense it's like we the managers. Also, I think they're in a tough spot because they also have to bring people together. And I think that their managers, as you pointed out, probably also have not done that well. So, I think they're all kind of fighting the same battle.

So, are there any signs? Because I mean, we're seeing the job rotations happening very quickly. Retention is down. People are getting frustrated. They're even getting burnt out at home. Are there any signs that culture erosion as a whole is becoming kind of this full-blown out of control? What does this— do you think this— what are the signs of culture erosion now in kind of this hybrid remote working environment?

Yeah, I mean, that's a great question because in our book, also In Praise of the Office, what we mentioned is that we see right now is kind of the emergence of 2 cultures in an organization, which is the pre-pandemic and the post. And what we mean by that is that the one that was shaped before the pandemic are people who've been there for a while, who knew how it was to be in person, and who knew how things were done that way. And then what we see, they behave differently than the ones who maybe joined during when we were already in hybrid, and they work also in a different way. So we see a little bit the emergence of these 2 cultures. And I think I think this also, when we talk about cultural erosion, we really are talking about that we have the highest rates of burnout right now and mental health issues as well. And that's also because managers have a hard time to spot when somebody's having a hard time when it's on the screen. If you see somebody walking past your office, slumped shoulders, not feeling well, you can easily say, hey, what's happening? And then that will start a conversation and then you'll understand what the issues are.

Yeah.

It's very difficult to do that. And that's why we see a lot of these issues emerge. But also in our research, it showed that one of the biggest challenges in hybrid is loneliness, right? So is that people are, you know, feeling very lonely because for those maybe who don't have families at home or something, you know, they are in and out by themselves the whole day and they really do feel this loneliness. And this, of course, affects the culture as well. as well. So, we see cultural erosion in things like burnout, in lack of engagement, in the loneliness, and just generally in not being together and doing things together. And of course, when you don't do that, then you don't feel this collective, this collective, you know, organizational culture spirit. Yeah, you really don't feel that.

It really does seem to me that we not only need to have As leaders, we need to have new skill sets. But we also have to have a different mindset. When we come back, I'd like to delve into how we need to rethink what our on-premise presence looks like and what we need to do to compensate for some of these issues that we've been pointing out. And we'll get to that right after this. When the spotlight shines on your business, are customers applauding or yawning? In other words, how is your business performing? Make your Make your business a star with a new book, Lights! Camera! Action!, business operational excellence through the lens of live theater by Marc Haine. Marc uses his business and acting experience to help you see your business like a live show so you can create a performance your customers will never forget. Buy Lights!

Camera!

Action! today at your favorite online retailer or directly at marchaine.com. Welcome back. I am here speaking with Rania, why don't you tell us a little bit about your book? You hinted towards it a little bit. Let's get a deeper insight into what your book is all about. Sure.

So, the book is called In Praise of the Office. It's co-authored with Professor Peter Cappelli from Wharton. And it really talks about the challenges that we are facing right now with hybrid work and some of the ways that we can fix these challenges And as I mentioned, you know, it was really born, the book was born kind of out of this need to understand the other side of why remote work is not working well. Because right now we see the debate has become very one-sided, you know, remote good, coming into the office bad. And we have both, especially me, because I was working previously in different larger companies and I saw that there are some of those issues that we discuss in the book. And that's why we really wanted to get to the bottom of this and to kind of contribute to the future of work.

Lovely! And so, the book is available now, right? It's available on Amazon. We'll put the link in the show notes. Can we redefine? We mentioned what the workplace used to be for.

Do we have a new definition of what the modern office Well, I think a lot of organizations right now are trying to make it all about collaboration. So, they're using a lot of their, let's say, open areas to create collaborative hubs. So, we see that in many different companies. And I think that's a great idea because again, it reinforces the importance that we should be getting together for something, for a purpose, to work on a project, to collaborate on a project.

Okay.

to focus on innovation. Again, maybe for mentoring, for collaborative activities. So, I think the collaboration is vital for that.

And would you say then also development, like personal development?

Absolutely.

We used to have meetings where we would take once a month, we would have a half day where we bring in a subject matter expert to teach us something new about So, it helps our salespeople. It helps our HR people and so on, right? And so, people could use that for that. What mindset do you think, what mindset shift do leaders need to have now in order to start compensating in a more productive manner with hybrid workplaces?

Well, I think the mindset is really about the importance of output and outcomes and not presence. I mean, I think this is something that we have already been doing in the last years. But You know, I give you one example. Like one of the big challenges that we see is when it comes to promotions and career development in hybrid settings. And that is simply because sometimes when you are out of sight, you're out of mind. And if managers are not trained for that, they will perhaps only think about people who they have seen in the last, let's say, quarter or in the last 6 months more than the ones who are working from home. And when it comes to them promotion or career development opportunities, they're the ones who will be rewarded with these, unlike the ones who were working from home, which is not to say that they're not working as hard or as efficient. But that is one of the mindsets that we need to change. It's not just about where you are working. But it's really about what you're working on. How can I measure it and how productive you are?

It's funny because before COVID when we talked about evaluating the skill sets of our team, we had the recency effect. And we had The bias effect and so on. And now, we've just added one more variable into it.

Now, we have the proximity bias.

Now, we have proximity bias, right? And it's so true. It's because we heard this early on that the people who showed up, even the people who when showing up on Zoom, we're going to get together. We're going to do an hour where we're just going to connect. We'll put our heads down. We'll just work. We'll just do it and People found very little value in that after a while. It's like, why if it's optional? Why do I even bother? But then, the people who showed up then would be the people who would be front and center in the manager's eyes. And because of that, that bias would kick in.

Absolutely. And also, what we see is the wrong people get promoted because when you are working in a hybrid setup, just because you may be an excellent individual contributor and that does not make you necessarily a good manager. These are 2 different skill sets, right? And so, a lot of times you don't see or you cannot measure that. So, if you're an excellent individual contributor, you will get promoted. And then, because the manager cannot really see how you act with other people, right? So, we also saw a lot of these issues that the wrong people are then put in those jobs, managerial jobs.

So, what skills, what messaging, what What can leaders do to earn people's presence rather than mandating it? You've talked about creating kind of intentionality around bringing people together. But how do we move people so that when we do something, when we have a strategy to bring people together, your employees aren't just rolling their eyes and going, oh gosh, here we go again?

Yeah. Well, I think that honestly, the most important is connection and communication in my opinion. Because Again, this is something that managers really need to foster a lot of, and especially in hybrid environments. You cannot tell people, do this. You need to explain why are you doing this, how this is going to help you, how does it help you, how does it help the business. So I think we really need to— that's, I think, number one is in hybrid setups, managers have Mm-hmm. Even a harder role to manage actually, because they really, because they don't see the people all the time. So they have to kind of explain to them very, very well and manage regularly with touchpoints all the time to make sure that, you know, everybody's doing what is required and that everybody understands the expectations. So I really think connection and communication. We also mentioned, by the way, in our book, we have this framework where we talk about how to get people to come into the office without mandating them. So, to bring them to the office more to connect than to comply in a way. And it's about, you know, building the case for inclusion is to kind of shift the narrative from you have to come into the office to come into the office because it will help you develop your career, your growth, your professional development. So, you know, to change the narrative. About why people need to come to the office.

It's almost like you have to create coming to the office as an event. You have to start thinking about what if we're going to bring people in. What value can we give them? How can we create like in the event world, we talk about FOMO, right? The fear of missing out. How do we create FOMO for the people who might turn around and say, well, it's really inconvenient for me to come in. It's a Wednesday. It's going to be inconvenient I won't be able to come in. Maybe I can come in on Thursday. And being able to create a program around is that if people show up on Wednesday, that they walk out going, oh my God, you should have been there.

Totally. And that's why, Marc, a lot of companies, they do moments that matter. They have these moments that matter events because it's all about how to bring people in. You have to bring them in for a cause, for something that will excite them. So that they will want to come in and not feel that they're forced to come in.

I love that. Hey, just can we do a quick check-in for the people who are tuned in who are— this is really resonating with them. If they want to get in touch with you, how can they reach you?

Sure, they can reach me on LinkedIn, Rania Neme, or through my website, ranianneme.com.

Excellent! We will put the link in the show notes.

Amazing!

So, you mentioned telling people why. So, it's like having meetings for the sake of having meetings. That was one of the diseases we had pre-COVID. And I think even we still have meetings now just for the sake of, oh, because we always meet on Mondays at 2 o'clock. When it comes down to bringing people together, we talked about kind of these meetings that matter or the The rationales that matter. What role does transparency play in rebuilding this engagement to get people to feel more like they're included and a part of something?

Well, honestly, I think meetings here are crucial. And I'm glad you mentioned that. I wanted to, which is meetings have become so inefficient, many of them. And I think there's so many of them. So, what our research showed actually was that, you know, in the last years, the meetings have become more. They've become less efficient. There's more people because obviously you can keep, you know, adding people. There's no limit to the room. And most of the time, people have their cameras off, which means that they are, as we know, multitasking and not paying attention, which also has increased the rise for post-meeting meetings. So that you can discuss the actual meeting while you were multitasking. So as we see, this meeting culture is very important. And it also, this is something that I would really urge people to kind of change as soon as possible. Because what we see is that companies that do it well, like remote companies who are fully remote, they have thousands of pages of documents about how to be intentional even with meetings. How many people should attend the meetings? What is the agenda? Who stays, who doesn't go, cameras on all the time, otherwise please don't attend the meeting. So there's a lot of things that have to be done with intention. And when we talk about transparency, Marc, which you mentioned before, I think we need to be also very transparent with these meetings because otherwise I feel like we're just wasting people's time and they know it and nobody likes that. So this is something that is very basic and I think that Changes could be done there immediately.

It's almost like we've gotten to the point where it's so easy to get everybody on Zoom. Let's just bring everybody in and then, we'll filter out who needs to have the information afterwards.