RTOs Won’t Fix It: What Execs Are Getting Wrong About Performance and Culture

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[00:00:09] David Rice: Welcome everybody, uh, to the latest of our monthly panel discussions. These just keep on growing and we're excited to provide a valuable way for our audience to engage with the experts and to continue to develop content for people managing people that helps you win at work, hopefully.

Uh, so thank you for joining us today and taking part. Uh, my name is David Rice. I'm the executive editor of People Managing People. If you're not aware, and we'll get started here in just a sec, but first we wanna make the sort of best use of our limited time together today. So we'd love to learn a little bit about, a little more, more about you and your current RTO situation.

Uh, so we've posted a poll so you can let us know where your company kind of currently sits. Are you enforcing full RTO? Are you kind of doing a hybrid model? Maybe you're still remote. Um, is the plan still being decided? Let us know. We're, uh, we're very curious.

I'm really excited to introduce our [00:01:00] speakers today for, you know, we've got some chop voices and thought leaders in the space. And with us we have Brian Elliott.

Brian is the CEO of work forward. He's, uh, focused on reshaping the future of work to be more flexible, human centered and productive. Uh, a long time product and strategy leader. He is passionate about building better workplaces through thoughtful design and bold leadership. Brian, welcome. Thanks David for having me here.

Great to be here with you and Hiba. Absolutely. Well, you know, I always like to start, uh, with like a cool icebreaker question for you. So I wanted to ask you, you know, you've been on the road a lot lately. I I follow your LinkedIn. Yeah. And you're speaking of events like Transform and I four CP about the future of work.

Yeah. Uh, when you're not on stage shaping what work looks like next. Right. Uh, have you managed to sneak in a moment of fun? What do you do for fun on the road?

[00:01:47] Brian Elliott: Um, I actually, well I do at those places too. Um, uh, down at, uh, I I four CP Institute for Corporate Product Productivity. My wife actually was down there along with me.

Uh, most of her family was also there in Scottsdale. [00:02:00] Uh, we did a couple of spring training, baseball games and swimming in pools and hiking around, uh, the Phoenix area. So I always try to find a way to make sure I've got a little bit of extra time on the calendar, uh, when I'm on the road to, uh, get in a little bit of fun as well as a few conversations with people.

And it's great to see folks.

[00:02:17] David Rice: Excellent. Excellent. Yeah, I think all three of us are gonna be at running remote next week in Austin, so that's, that's gonna be exciting.

[00:02:23] Brian Elliott: Exactly.

[00:02:25] David Rice: Um, also with us today we have hip Yusef. She is the Chief people officer at Workweek, where she champions a people first approach to scaling modern media businesses, uh, with deep HR and culture expertise.

She's known for building inclusive teams, either se sorry, and leading empathy and transparency with ash of humor. If you don't subscribe to her newsletter, it's probably the best newsletter about hr. So you really need to change that and just get subscribed 'cause it's one of my favorites. Um, so welcome Heather.

I got a question for you. You got a full-time role [00:03:00] leading people strategy and a thriving content presence online, as I mentioned. Uh, what's something that you've shared recently, either serious or silly? It's your choice. Yeah. But that really sparked a reaction from your audience.

[00:03:11] Hebba Youssef: I first, I'm so pumped to be here with you all for this discussion 'cause I talk about how return to office mandates are the hill I will die on.

So there's just that I will die on that hill with the snacks and welcome anyone to join me. Um, something funny that recently popped off that I did not expect would go even slightly viral. I made this meme with Gail when she like returned back to Earth after their brief stint in the air, that face that she was making.

I, I made a meme that said HR, when someone calls us the Fun police, because at the last two companies I've started, at day one, I introduced myself and somebody says, hrs here now we can't have any more fun. And every time I'm like, I'm actually like the most fun. I like to have a ton of fun. I just don't want you to like harass your colleagues or create like unwelcoming environments.

So if that's [00:04:00] your version of fun, you're not gonna think I'm very fun, but if that's not, then I'm a good time. So I just laughed hysterically at like all the people that were loving this meme and I was like, wow. I was just. Thought I was being funny to myself, and then all these people really enjoyed it and I was like, great, this worked.

[00:04:16] David Rice: That's awesome. I love it. No. Yeah. Yeah. I often think the same thing. Like a lot of the HR people I've met, I'm like, they're a blast. You just gotta get to know 'em a little bit.

[00:04:25] Hebba Youssef: Yeah. But you should see people's reaction when I tell 'em I'm in hr, they're always like, Ugh.

[00:04:30] Brian Elliott: Yeah. I'm like, or, or I'm so sorry.

[00:04:33] Hebba Youssef: Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, yeah, I mean, thank you for your apology. 'cause I need it. But

[00:04:38] David Rice: it's times I also get the same reaction just telling people that I, I cover hr, that I, I talk about HR issues. They're like, Ooh. It's like, it's not that bad actually. You should really like pay more attention.

[00:04:48] Hebba Youssef: Fascinating time to be in the space.

Lemme tell you,

[00:04:51] David Rice: it has been for about five years now. Really? So, yeah. Um, so I don't know. Can Michael, can we get our poll results and see where we are? Okay. [00:05:00] Here we are. So it looks like most of folks are operating in a hybrid model, and I don't think that's a huge surprise to any of us here. Um, so this is really cool, but 14% did say it's complicated.

I'm interested to hear that more about that as we go. Um. So to give us kind of to set the stage for today, I, we wanted just kinda take a moment, you know, we're in a moment where the narrative about work and reality, the reality about work are not really in alignment, right? Leaders are pedaling, RTO mandates as sort of the ticket to innovation and collaboration, but we see a workforce resisting it at every turn, every chance they get.

They're coffee badging, right? They're quiet, quitting, you name it. You've got some potentially using it to push people out the door, and we're gonna talk about that a little bit. And you've got some who are rolling it back as quickly as they rolled it out, right? And others who have doubled down on flexibility as sort of a competitive advantage.

But the only thing, uh, the, the only thing you're gonna hear about in the media really these days is the JP [00:06:00] Morgan chases, the Amazons right? The ones that want to deploy 'em as control tactics. So I. We're here today to talk about RTOs, where they're going wrong, and quite frankly, the point that a lot of leaders are missing when it comes to this.

So with that in mind, uh, we're gonna start with you. My first question is, is, sorry.

[00:06:21] Hebba Youssef: I said hit me. Sorry. Oh,

[00:06:22] David Rice: okay. Uh, is everyone actually enforcing RTO mandates? The media makes it seem like they are, but at the same time we see a lot of things out there suggesting they're practically unenforceable.

[00:06:34] Hebba Youssef: Yeah, I have not heard of anyone being fired yet for not returning to the office.

Like obviously, I don't know if that would be in the news. And I think, Brian, you actually wrote about this for your article with MIT Sloan, where you talked about how do you actually enforce this. I have not heard of a single person being fired for their not maintaining their return to office mandate.

And I've actually heard the opposite from a lot of HR people where they're like, we don't know how we're ever gonna enforce this. Yeah, we're just [00:07:00] asking people to return, but like, what are they gonna do? Wait for the managers to kind of wrap them out? But Brian, I think you've done research on this or you have data points.

Yeah. Like, I'll, I'll turn to you.

[00:07:09] Brian Elliott: I'm a data geek, uh, as everybody knows. Um, but yeah, there's a ton of data out there that says, even given all the noise around this, it's not happening. Right. So I'll drop a link, uh, to my newsletter in this from like last month where I had sort of latest and greatest. I'll probably also drop a new one, uh, on that, uh, in, in the next week or two.

But, um, what you're seeing out there is, you know, there is, there's sort of this movement towards three days a week as the thing that people are doing. Not five, there's not many P CEOs who are gonna go all that way, but even the three day a week companies, and even in the companies that are threatening to fire people, it's not happening.

Mm. I had,

[00:07:43] Brian Elliott: uh, OCU space's, Nick Halverson, they, they measure like 50,000, 50 million square feet of space, right? Including companies that have said, get your butt back in the office, or we're gonna fire you. And they see no difference between those organizations and the people who have a like, Hey, we'd like you to be in three [00:08:00] days a week, and they're getting about two, like literally the same results.

And in part it's because you, you get this intimately, like if I'm a manager and I've got somebody who's performing really well and I'm under pressure to do more with less, and the HR person who's had to create the report that they despise that says two of my 12 team members aren't coming in often enough, but they're both good performers, I'm gonna fight tooth and nail before I actually fire those people.

There's no way, um, it becomes an excuse in a few big companies. It's an easier way to in, in a couple large companies that I know to actually pull the trigger on a layoff because somebody wasn't compliant and also didn't have the greatest performance ratings. But that's literally the only, uh, version of it that I'm aware of.

For the most part, it's unenforceable and just pisses people off.

[00:08:48] David Rice: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well that was kind of my next question for you was like, of those that are enforcing it, are employees actually returning. Because it seems to me like everybody's [00:09:00] dodging in it, in return.

[00:09:01] Brian Elliott: Uh, I, you know, I work with a lot of organizations.

There's a lot of places where the people are coming in two days a week, but most of those organizations, they've seen one and a half to two days a week now for a couple years. Because, especially if your team is co-located, if everybody lives in the same city, that's what most people want. Honestly, most people want a couple of days a week because there's actually some benefit to socialization and teamwork and collaboration in person if everybody is co-located in the first place.

And so like, there's the, this is like three years running now where I've had this conversation where somebody will say, my policy is, is three days a week. I said, you're getting two, right? They're like, yeah, we're getting two. And it doesn't change. It doesn't change. If you threaten people, it doesn't change.

If you say, I'm not gonna give you a bonus if you don't come in. It doesn't change if you say, I'm not gonna promote you. There are some changes that have, that have caught told people. Like the Amazon thing about you've gotta move. And relocate to be with your, your team. Yeah. That one was pretty freaking extreme.

And it did cause some people to quit over it. Um, and because they, they just couldn't, [00:10:00] uprooting your family is not something people are gonna do. Walmart did sort of the same thing with a move to Bentonville. That's where your job has been relocated. That's a much more drastic and dramatic version.

[00:10:10] David Rice: Mm-hmm. And with all due respect to Benton Villa, it's not exactly a big draw. Um,

[00:10:16] Hebba Youssef: I'll not be moving.

[00:10:17] David Rice: Yeah. It's, you know, yeah. I don't, I'm not moving for

[00:10:21] Hebba Youssef: Yeah.

[00:10:21] David Rice: Uh, for most jobs, uh, it'd have to be pretty special and really tap into like what I'm passionate about or I just wouldn't even consider it. And I think most people are kind of in that same boat.

Right.

[00:10:31] Brian Elliott: Yeah. Yeah. And besides, I think uprooting your family, you've also gotta believe that there's a future job market there for you too. And that's a challenge.

[00:10:38] David Rice: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, outside of Walmart in Bentonville, I don't know exactly what's there, but I imagine it's not a, a lot, you know, 'cause I think they kind of dominate the town, right?

It's kind of a company town almost. Yeah. Um, my next question was kind of like, you know, we talked about not firing employees, uh, but there's actually some [00:11:00] discussion around like firing managers and I think that this maybe is getting part of like, there's been a lot of layoffs of managers. Mm-hmm. They're talking about flattening hierarchies.

Right. But I think they're using this as another way to do it. And are you actually gonna kind of reprimand fire managers who aren't enforcing the RTO policies that are giving people that flexibility? It's like often feel that middle managers are caught between executive directives and employee expectations.

Right. So have, I'm curious how can organizations support them during transitions to new work models?

[00:11:32] Hebba Youssef: Oh, that's such a good question. I don't know if anyone saw that Gallup released their like global engagement report or whatever. I think it was yesterday.

Yeah. But

[00:11:40] Hebba Youssef: they cited like engagement is down for the second time in a 12 year period, and then they zeroed in on manager.

Yeah, managers being the reason why engagement is down and I think it's just a very hard time. First of all, I think management is an impossible job. I think it's something I've done for over a decade and still feel like I [00:12:00] struggle at some days because it's a job where you have to do so much, so much context shifting.

You're also caught in between that executive layer and that employee layer where like you probably know the ins and outs of your team. Maybe you've built a really good relationship with them, where you don't care where they work, but now you have executive level telling you they have to be in the office and you have to like deliver that message.

And I think a lot of managers are struggling with that. When the return to office mandates first started, there was like a big article about how managers felt like they were trapped in the middle between the two and didn't know what to do. Because we intimately know as managers where our employees can do their best work.

And if you know them, you know that that might not be the office. That might not be somewhere where they thrive. So I think it's, it's really hard to be a manager right now 'cause you are caught in the middle of all of that. And I think managers are feeling the pressure to do that return to office mandate at the same time that we're watching a lot of companies slash that management layer, like that Amazon article that came out a few months ago and they started doing [00:13:00] their layoffs.

They said, we're gonna lay off like 15% of managers or something. And it was to flatten out the org 'cause they felt like there was too much structure in the org. And so now it's, it's a really interesting time 'cause I see the value in having a manager, especially a lot of managers aren't solely just coaches.

They're usually player coaches. They're usually holding a book of work that they have to do and managing their team. So to flatten an organ to cut them out when they're doing both work and management. I think just like under serves the organization and the employees, employees do need a manager. They need someone to talk to, to guide them, to get career advice from.

And so I worry if we're just gonna slash that role completely. Who are they gonna go to to get any sort of support?

[00:13:42] Brian Elliott: Yeah. We're three, we're now third year of the year of efficiency. Right?

[00:13:47] Hebba Youssef: Yeah.

[00:13:47] Brian Elliott: And that, that sort of, there's these spans and layers, exercises that big firms in particular have been doing for the past couple of years where they take out, you know, they're gonna take your, your span of control from six to 12, um, and they [00:14:00] take your span of control from six to 12.

You are R and IC as well as you're, you're a coach player. You no longer have time to do your own work really, which also means you're losing touch with your craft and you're kind of getting burned out on that. You really don't have enough time either to really do effective coaching and mentorship. The other one that was my favorite, this was, I think this was also in the Gallup thing yesterday.

44% of managers have had any kind of formal training. Yeah. 44. Yeah. So what, what you're doing essentially is you're taking out a layer of managers in the first place. You're putting more load on people who have no training. You probably got promoted into the position 'cause you were the senior most person when the old boss quit.

And, and they're saying good luck to you. And so that piling on doesn't help any the, you know, we think we can use gen AI to go faster on this as not actually helping yet, and most organizations because. The, you know, the, the aim is often and off, right? Like, tell developers they should be able to vibe code in our 4 million lines of code and make [00:15:00] it work.

Hmm.

[00:15:01] Brian Elliott: Which also doesn't work. And the RTO um, thing just lands like a wet noodle, right? Mm-hmm. So there are ways to give managers tools to help them figure out through team agreements and things like that. Like, if my team is local, then I can have the conversation about what do we do on the two days that we're in person and how do we make sure we don't overstuff that those days with meetings?

So God forbid we get some time together to socialize and connect what events do we wanna do in person? But you're not even giving them the basic tools to do that. And so the burnout continues to increase, and it's just like adding layer after layer after layer as the years go by of sources of, uh, challenge.

And now by the way, we're throwing on top of that, here comes a recession and you're dealing with people's fears about layoffs, getting even more extreme. So, alright. That's, that was, that was bright and cheerful, wasn't it?

[00:15:49] David Rice: It gets that though. There is like a perfect storm, right? There's a, we're in this moment where there's a perfect storm happening and it's like, okay, so you've got a younger generation that's, that's looking at this manager seeing how [00:16:00] burnt are burnt out.

They are. And they're starting to use AI and now they're saying that they trust that as much as they trust the manager, the person who they're watching sort of suffer essentially in front of their eyes, right? Yeah. And then we sit back and we go, how come these younger folks don't want any management jobs?

Well probably 'cause it doesn't look like a picnic, you know, but, and then you're gonna enforce this RTO mandate in the middle of it, which already erodes trust. And so it just sets the manager up into a position where it's just like this storm of things that just are unpleasant and un like. Untenable.

Really? Yeah.

[00:16:35] Hebba Youssef: While you were talking about that, I was thinking in my head like, what's the reality that they'll somehow just like make AI managers and then make everyone report to ai? Yeah. It was like a real thought I had. I was like, somebody is gonna come out with that idea and be like, we don't need managers.

You just need to talk to this thing. This thing will assign you all your tasks. You can talk to it like you had talked to, like your manager about your career development, and now we don't need this middle layer at all. Mm-hmm. I'm just waiting for [00:17:00] that thought leader to come out with that.

[00:17:01] Brian Elliott: Oh, it will.

It's already debate.

[00:17:04] Hebba Youssef: I do, to be very clear, set the record straight. I do not wanna report to a robot. I would like to report to a human. Forever.

[00:17:11] Brian Elliott: Yeah, there are some, like, there are some benefits to using the tool, but it's like a both and, right? Yeah. Like you gotta, you gotta have humans who actually know how to, uh, lead with empathy and how to coach people and other things like that.

But the tool can also be an outlet for doing that in terms of closing gaps on like gender adoption of mentors and coaches that are prevalent all over the place. But it's not gonna solve the problem. It's just a crutch, uh, in a lot of places. No.

[00:17:35] David Rice: Well, and it's interesting you bring up the idea too, because there's a comment in the q in the chat right now saying, uh, we are trying to enforce the two days a week and we are starting tactics, which is kind of a big, big brother type thing.

And if we get to where we are reporting to in ai, it's gonna feel very big brothery, right? Oh,

[00:17:52] Hebba Youssef: absolutely. Yeah. I don't, I don't wanna do, I don't, I don't want that. Can we not make that our reality please?[00:18:00]

But it's interesting 'cause like even this morning with chat GPT, I think of like new use cases all the time. My CEO and I both took a personality test, the predictive index, it's like, uh, behavioral assessment. And I dropped our results into chat GPT and I said, tell me where we would have conflict. And it so clearly identified the three places me and my CEO have conflict.

And I was like, great. I mean this is actually helpful 'cause now I'm gonna coach myself and I'm gonna coach him because now I know we definitely have this conflict area. So I see it more as like a support to help managers get better at coaching emotional intelligence, giving feedback, but to solely dehumanize work just feels like we're moving in the wrong direction.

Yeah.

[00:18:43] David Rice: Yeah. I think, I think we're all in agreement on that. Yeah. I, I'm curious, you know, kind of building on this, what's more important, the enforcement of return to office or addressing other top priority issues? I mean, what, what does the actual research tell us about [00:19:00] productivity, innovation, and engagement?

Is this, uh, even helpful in the areas that the best intentions return to office order? Right. Yeah, exactly.

[00:19:10] Brian Elliott: I, we, does it actually

[00:19:12] David Rice: meet that

[00:19:13] Brian Elliott: I can go on a litany of bad intentions, right. And I, I hear 'em all the time and a lot of it is. There's a lot of CEOs right now who are actually pushing it because they think everybody else is doing it because that's what the headlines tell you when that's not the reality.

Um, but there also are places I've seen where the data says there actually is a problem and there's a challenge. And it really comes down to you've done sort of a not the world's greatest job of supporting especially younger employees in the first place. So the, the one that I've seen now three times is, um, junior salespeople.

So I think inside sales people straight out of, out of undergraduate that are, um, manning the phones, doing cold calls all day long, and if they are fully remote, their managers aren't that great in the first place. They're not connected with one another. They don't have, you know, back office slack channels set up to [00:20:00] ask each other questions.

Yeah. They struggle and it's really kind of gnarly. And so that's one of those places where it's like, it actually probably just makes sense to make sure that they're geographically co-located. Gen Z is more likely than any other generation to want to be in the office. Part of the time, not full-time, not fully remote.

And so you can start setting up for that group of people in those, the, in that function. Hey, the right answer probably is for us to be in the office three days a week. And so I'm gonna be in, as your manager, we're gonna do um, uh, lunch and learn sessions. We're gonna do practice pitch, uh, with each other and you're gonna hear the gong go off because that's gonna get you excited.

But that's the kinda thing that actually is like, okay, there's actually a problem here. I've identified a problem and that's the problem I'm, I'm trying to solve, but I'm also gonna solve it at the appropriate level because that's not the CEO saying that's also the right answer for, you know, the Jamie Diamond thing.

The guy that asked him the question, Hey Jamie, can we have a little discretion? Was a guy who managed an IT team that had people working in nobody was in the same office on his team. They're all spread [00:21:00] out across time zones. That's when we go, like, what you're really doing is you're actually inhibiting collaboration and productivity.

'cause you're forcing people whose, whose collaboration spans time zones to spend two hours a day in a train.

Mm-hmm.

[00:21:13] Brian Elliott: Um, that's the, you know, you, you solving it at the CEO level is almost always not the right place to solve this unless you're like a five person organization.

Yeah. Yeah.

[00:21:24] David Rice: I mean, we, we had just had a question or a comment in the chat and it said too often I hear, why am I the only one here from my team going in?

Or the people I work most closely with are in other offices, states, locations anyways, so what's the difference if I do it or not? And I've, I've talked to people myself who are like, I went in for this meeting and then I was only gonna be one of two people in the call. We were gonna do it on Zoom anyways.

And then, because some executive got called into something else, the whole thing got canceled and they still have to come in again tomorrow. And it's like, what is the point of all this? You know, like it's a very, it's a recipe for disengagement and I'm not surprised [00:22:00] that we're seeing some of the trends that we're seeing.

So, um, so well that kind of gets at something that is because there are questions where you think, this doesn't make sense, right? Like. Unless they wanted to push people out. Right. And so I guess the question that you have to ask is, and hey, we'll start with you on this one, are RTOs a a reduction in force in disguise?

And how do we distinguish a thoughtful RTO policy from a disguise cost cutting measure? If you're looking at it, like, if you're just watching leadership CEOs, you know, they're, they're talking about this and you're in hr. And you're trying to discern their sort of actual intent.

[00:22:40] Hebba Youssef: Yeah, it's so interesting.

Every time I make a video about return to office on TikTok, everyone in the comments is like, it's a layoff in disguise. It's a layoff in disguise. And every time I wanna be like, hi, I work in hr. Like I understand why we would do these things. So just to like walk you through, if I'm ever gonna roll out a mandated initiative to my employees, the [00:23:00] first thing I'm gonna do is think about what's the impact of this initiative.

And obviously attrition is one of them. Like people will leave if you force people to work a certain way to do something exactly the way you want it done. That's just like anti-human. We're all different. So like no one wants to be forced to do anything. And so I think like if a company is doing a return to office mandate, they have probably run the numbers and said we might lose 10 to 15% of our employee base and we might be okay with that.

That might be what we actually want to happen. And without coming out and saying it, that could be the outcome. So I think like when employees are saying it's a forced layoff, yes, anytime your employer forces you to do anything, they're probably running a risk analysis in the background. Is this employee going to leave or not?

And so I think like if it were me and I were doing it and I had to do a forced mandate or forced return to office, I would be clear with the employees like, Hey, we know this might not be for all of you, so some of you can opt out of this if you [00:24:00] want. Just like the federal government did. Not that I agree with what's happening there, but the federal government did the, you can all choose to leave.

And sometimes I think if employers had just done that before they had run their return to office mandate, they might actually have not have had such an awful income on or outcome on their engagement if they were just honest and transparent. 'cause now the commentary from employees almost everywhere is they just want us to leave.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's hard to fight that.

[00:24:28] Brian Elliott: It Well, especially when that, that's what Vivek and Elon said. Yeah. They said the quiet part out loud. Right. Super loud. They're like, we want people to quit, so we're gonna force them to come to the office. It wasn't about productivity, especially if you look at how the Feds rolled it out.

Right. It was pretty horrible. Gracious.

Yeah. They've

[00:24:43] Brian Elliott: actually had to roll it back, like at the F fda because businesses started griping about you can't lose, um, FDA people. 'cause then we can't get, you know, patents approved and new drugs and food approved kind of a problem. Any rate. Um, the, the, I actually like when I listened [00:25:00] to the Amazon one, uh, I actually.

Believe they meant what they said when they said culture. And I think it's because we mistake what we often think about culture and what we want culture to be with what mm-hmm. Executives sometimes want, which is, I want your nose on the grindstone. Amazon's never been an easy place to work. I've known the organization since 1999.

I've worked with them, uh, back for like a decade in my startup days. It's always been a really challenging place. And so, you know, if people want to work to live as opposed to live to work, that's not what the executive suite wants, uh, out of folks. I think the, the big part that I continue to reinforce, 'cause I get outreach about this all the time, is think about who you're going to lose.

Not

[00:25:43] Brian Elliott: just the fact that some people are gonna quit, but the people most likely to quit are two groups. The first group is people who have marketable skills. Like your data scientists are the ones that can go almost anywhere they want to, whenever they want, with whomever they want. Um, and so, you know, this is a challenge to them, [00:26:00] not only in terms of like the fact that the flexibility doesn't work, but it's a sign of a lack of trust, right?

And that's got emotional context that comes with it, that causes people to wanna leave. And the second is women by like a three to one margin. If you look at like two different studies, one by Nick Bloom, one by Mark Ma, where they measured like what was happening post, um, impact. And that's because in the US women, uh, are 90% of the time, uh, the primary caregiver in the home, not the guy.

So.

[00:26:26] David Rice: Yeah. Why don't they wanna kids think there's better, there's

[00:26:29] Brian Elliott: better ways to, there's better ways If you want to, you know, if you wanna do a riff, do a riff. Yeah. I don't think it's a good idea, period. Anyway. But like, this is one of the dumber ways to do maybe the dumbest way to do a riff,

[00:26:39] David Rice: the least intentional way.

[00:26:41] Hebba Youssef: Yeah. I also wrote a lot about like how the office isn't necessarily an inclusive space. So you say like, women are more likely to leave, like caregivers, people with disabilities, like those from underrepresented groups often classify the office as an unfriendly place. Yeah. Because they have these, like other things happening in their life that they have to go handle and, [00:27:00] and forcing them into an office five days a week isn't, uh, helpful.

And so I think like if you do care about diversity, equity, and inclusion, forcing a mandate people to return, like you are going to hit potentially those groups the hardest.

[00:27:13] Brian Elliott: Yep. And just plain old talent. Like, think about that. The sheer volume of people that, that impacts, right? Yeah. Women, people with disabilities, veterans.

Um, uh, it is just, it's a wide range of folks.

[00:27:24] Hebba Youssef: Yeah.

[00:27:25] David Rice: Yeah, that's interesting. I've come across a few orgs recently and they've basically said, well, what do you wanna do? You know, and they've offered that flexibility. Like you just choose like if you don't wanna be in the office, and that's really what makes it work for you, here are these locations and if you wanna do it hybrid and here, here's your options.

And they've given a a structure to it. Right. And some orgs are built for in-office collaboration.

Mm-hmm.

[00:27:49] Brian Elliott: Yeah.

[00:27:50] David Rice: Others aren't.

[00:27:52] Brian Elliott: I actually, I was gonna pick on that a little bit. Like the remote first thing doesn't work for a lot of people and it doesn't work for a lot of organizations. It [00:28:00] doesn't work for a lot of people.

'cause there's only like 15% of people that wanna be fully remote. Like we did three years of research on this. Right? Like globally. In terms of office workers, most people want some regular time together with their team. It might be once a month, it might be two days a week, it might be three days a week.

But that regular time does matter to them and most organizations aren't. Aren't geared this way, right? Mm-hmm. They just aren't in terms of sort of being more a synchronous in collaboration and document driven and things like that. And so you gotta find the balance point in between and you don't find the balance point by letting everybody individual choose their own adventure.

So I, I'm a real big believer in getting that leaders working with their teams, sort of at the function and cross-functional level to say, Hey, look, um, this is our patterns. These are our habits around not just where people work, but like what hours do we commit to being available to each other during the day.

That's actually more important than how many days a week you're in the office, like nine till one west coast, because that's noon until four East [00:29:00] Coast. Monday through Thursday. Don't schedule doctor's appointments and kid pickups and everything else because we promise each other. We're gonna be available for conversations and meetings.

That putting that, um, decision making node at the level of like a leader and a team gets people engaged in the conversation and helps solve it. And I've seen this at, you know, Atlassian and we, I did some work with Airbnb on this last year, but it's also places like, you know, Allstate and Target, not just the tech firms that are sitting there going like, Hey, we gotta figure this out, but we're not figuring it out.

Individual chaos doesn't work. The CEO making a unilateral decision also doesn't work. These organizations are too complex to to run. Think we can run it that way.

[00:29:41] David Rice: Well, that kinda leads to my question. What, what are the key indicators in HR leadership look at to know which work model actually fits their org pro profile?

[00:29:51] Hebba Youssef: Ugh. Sorry,

[00:29:53] David Rice: go for it.

[00:29:54] Hebba Youssef: What a loaded question. What a, sorry. I just, wow, that reaction just came out. Wow. [00:30:00] Should probably control my thoughts. Um, yeah, I think it like, depends on where your people are located. Like you have to look at where is your talent in their current state. Like we are a fully remote company, but we have a subset of employees in Austin, Texas.

That's actually where our entire executive team except me reside. And then we have a bunch of people in New York City. And so we've like built little hubs there, but everyone else is fully remote and we haven't asked anyone to move and, and that like works for us. But where I will say we struggle is like, I don't think asynchronous work comes naturally to everybody.

I think communication is a really hard skill for people to land, written, verbal, all of it. And if you can't have some sort of guidance around that, your org is gonna run into way more issues that are actually gonna, like, subconsciously cause your employees to disengage. 'cause you haven't really set the right foundation for them to be in that model.

And so we've been fully remote. I've been there for three years and I still to this day still think we have work to do when it comes to like [00:31:00] documentation and our asynchronous work. Yeah, and just like people's default communications, like get on a quick huddle in Slack, have a Google meet, send an email.

Maybe it's a slack. I think when you don't spend the time clarifying, like what does work actually look like when it's getting done across these models, you're gonna run into more conflict than solutions. And that's why I think some CEOs just default to Okay. But when, when we're in person, it'll be easier.

Yeah. Yeah.

[00:31:28] Hebba Youssef: It's, it's frankly like hybrid work, I think is the hardest model. It's not for the faint of heart. You have a lot of work to do to make it work. So I think like that's the first thing. You gotta look at where your employees are. You gotta look at what's gonna work for your organization and you gotta look at your personalities too.

Like my CEO would love to have everyone in person with him every day when he's alone in the office, he sends the same meme every time where it's like a meme of the, it's like one character alone. And he's like, where is everybody? And we're all like, our lives don't revolve around your schedule, but he's not [00:32:00] gonna ever force people to go back.

But I think if he had the option and he knew it wouldn't hurt culture, he probably would want people to work with him in person.

[00:32:08] Brian Elliott: I think I, I think, like I've been wrestling with, this is the hybrid, the hardest thing for a while now, back and forth in my own head, and I'm even writing a little bit like it is and it isn't like mm-hmm.

If, if all of your team, this is you, you said the first thing you said HIPA was like really critical, which is, is your, are your teams distributed or are like, or is everybody co-located? Right. That's such a huge thing because if your team is, if your teams are co-located, meaning ev, the manager and the team always are in the same geography, then hybrid can be hard because you're just figuring out a different set of muscles than defaulting to one direction or another.

If your teams are majority distributed, like Microsoft's, like three quarters of their teams have the manager and people on the team. Live in different cities. Hybrid's not harder. Hybrid's essential because that's how your organization is, period. You're not gonna solve it by seeing everybody march into the office on the same days because you're not marching into the same office [00:33:00] in the same places.

You're spread out across time zones and everything else. So you need, you need a different you. You're gonna have to invest muscle behind this. And I think sometimes it becomes this default for, we don't wanna invest in talking through how we actually work and making it work. We just wanna focus on doing the work.

It's like, no, if you don't figure out how you work and how to make work better, you're never gonna get good at this. And congratulations. Past minimum scale, your teams are probably distributed anyway. Yeah. You probably better figure out a management technique that's better than our people's butts sitting in seats.

[00:33:31] Hebba Youssef: Oh yeah.

[00:33:32] David Rice: Absolutely. You know, it's not, you mentioned the documentation thing, it doesn't come naturally to everybody. I can remember, remember when we first started this like back in 2020 and it was like, no, it was the wild west of documentation. There was no standardized formatting. It was nothing. I, as in some ways, as, as I've gone from job to job and in sort of the remote work area, it's been interesting to see how different org do it.

And it, I do think it's gotten better, but it's, it's [00:34:00] still pretty all over the place. Every lives. It's a hard thing to manage. I think it's, um,

[00:34:06] Hebba Youssef: chat GT makes it easier just saying,

[00:34:08] David Rice: yeah. Oh yeah,

[00:34:10] Hebba Youssef: that I'm like, when people are like, I can't write a document, I'm like, there's no excuse. Just ask Chay between, write it for you and then edit it.

Like that's, there's no excuse anymore. So I do agree with you. The 2020 was the Wild, wild West. Nobody had anything documented at any organization I worked at.

[00:34:25] Brian Elliott: Yeah. And, and I think on top of that, like we so many organizations default to meetings are the method by which most of the collaboration happens.

And they also default too often, especially some bigger ones that may have worked in too. Um, if you're not in the meeting, you don't know what's going on, right? Mm-hmm. And some of that is because, you know, historically, nobody, nobody writes meeting notes. Nobody captures it and sends it out. The tools can help you dramatically,

uh, do

[00:34:53] Brian Elliott: that if you do, as long as it's not countercultural, right?

Like, um, but getting [00:35:00] out of being purely meeting driven and synchronous is hard. But this is where technology can play a role, I think, in making things a lot easier and a lot better. And that may not result in you being completely document driven, but it's a step in the right direction.

[00:35:15] David Rice: So earlier I mentioned, you know, middle managers kind of stuck between employee expectations and executive demands, but really though as always, HR is stuck in the middle of the game, right?

Between kind of, you know, the conflicting pressure of execs and employees and candidates who want a little bit of autonomy, right? So, I'm curious, what do you have, what advice do either of you have for HR leaders sort of navigating those conflicting pressures?

[00:35:43] Hebba Youssef: I think every HR leader needs to get comfortable with conflict.

I like live and breathe for conflict. My CEO and I are both very conflict friendly. When people watch us, they're like, this is uncomfortable, the two of you. And we're both like, no, this is fine. We're gonna get to a solution. I think conflict is like [00:36:00] really hard and you have to be able to navigate it as an HR person because yes, we have a responsibility to the business, but the people drive a lot of that business.

And if we can't show up and have a con, like have a conversation and disagree with somebody on a strategy that could be really detrimental to our employees. We've just lost the plot. And I think a lot of HR teams settle on not doing the conflict and the outcome is the employees are hurt time and time again.

And then the business overall suffers as well.

[00:36:33] Brian Elliott: Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. All of that I, I think that there are. You've gotta be able to be the balancing point between those forces, right? And that's not easy in either direction. There are times when there are employees who are off the reservation too far and an extreme right?

That can be things, you know, that can be things like, Hey, we all agreed we're gonna get together once a month and you've done it zero times in the past four months. You have to do it. That's actually part of the job and part of the [00:37:00] agreement that that can be, you seem to be living in a country where we don't have legal residency.

And I'm sorry that's really intolerable. 'cause you, you're, you know, you know, far off, far, far off. And there also is you have to have some hard conversations with the CEO and those are never comfortable. It in, in my experience of helping, uh, CPOs chief people, officers who are dealing with this, it almost always comes out of a, my CEO just came back from a CEO group meeting and, and he is wound up.

They're like, oh,

[00:37:29] Hebba Youssef: right. That's triggering for me.

[00:37:31] Brian Elliott: Yeah, exactly. And there, there is a part of that is things like saying, hey, or you know, let's think about our talent strategy here. Are we distributed? Are we co-located? What's the, where's the right place to make this decision? But a lot of it also is like, hey, what problem are we trying to solve?

And you know, if there's something specific, let's address it. If this is just your honestly a little ticked off because you said three and you're only getting two, let's think about whether or not all the time and energy and effort we're gonna spend in [00:38:00] announcing yet another policy, trying to enforce it, being threatening, not just will that have an impact, but is that the right place for us to be spending that amount of time and energy organizationally?

Or should we think about like our business goals, um, and refocus it there. I know you're not happy with it, but you know, unless we can point to a problem, maybe we should just focus elsewhere.

[00:38:26] David Rice: Well, uh, we're at two 40. I'm gonna open it up to q and a. Folks, please put your, your questions in the chat. I hope that you all will come with some, some really, you know, tough ones for the, for our guests.

But, uh, before we do that, I really wanna, um, go ahead and, uh, offer up another poll, actually. So we're gonna have Michael put that out there. And also, uh, you know, I wanted to, oh, there it is. It just popped up in the middle of my screen.

Mm,

[00:38:54] David Rice: sorry. Um, I wanted to share a few things. So, first of all, if you really, and are enjoying this [00:39:00] session and we'd like to see it, our next event, we're gonna be covering a bit of a touchy subject right now, but something that needs to be discussed given the state of the market.

We're gonna be talking about best practices for executing a reduction in force to support employees and hopefully maintain trust through the process. We get a lot of questions about trust around here, and I. We are constantly thinking about how you can maintain it. So, uh, subscribers to the People Managing People newsletter will get the link directly to their inbox.

So subscribe. If you haven't already done so, just head on over to people managing people.com/subscribe. Uh, don't forget to follow our speakers for more of their insights. Trust me, it's worth it. Uh, they've got there wealth of information and you can find them both on LinkedIn and with their newsletters as well.

So, uh, we will send out links to those after the event ends. And before anyone takes off today, because I know that as we go through the q and a, I'll start losing people. Please take a second to let us know what you thought of today's event and let us know if there are any topics that you'd like to see us cover in the future.

Um, that link will [00:40:00] also be in the chat. Okay, so let's get to some questions. First of all, we had Bruce, he asked, is it risky for an employer to force RTO on someone who's meeting expectations, but then not enforce RTO on someone who's performing above expectations? So could the employees that gets laid off essentially sue the employer for wrongful termination.

[00:40:21] Hebba Youssef: Ooh, that's such a good question. My, my, sorry. Sorry. I'm not a legal expert. I'd like to be very clear. I do not have a law degree, even though I spend a lot of time reading legal documents. Um, my take on this is, it is risky if you care about equity because it's really hard to say these set of rules apply to you, but these set of rules apply to you.

And so that's why I'm a fan of, if you're gonna have a mandate, you need to enforce that across the team the same way, regardless if they're a top performer or not, because you do enter that gray area of, well, why are they getting this treatment and not me? And that can be something that does [00:41:00] come up if there's some sort of separation where they can point to inequity based on potentially like what demographic group they belong to.

[00:41:08] David Rice: Mm-hmm. All right. Uh, next up we have, sorry, did you wanna say,

[00:41:16] Brian Elliott: did that work? Was that good? Was that good? That's a good, that's a good, a good answer and good, great question. And, uh, I would say, Bruce, uh, consult your general counsel.

[00:41:23] Hebba Youssef: Yeah.

[00:41:24] David Rice: Always

[00:41:24] Brian Elliott: ask gc.

[00:41:25] Hebba Youssef: Always ask legal. Always

[00:41:27] Brian Elliott: ask you gc

[00:41:29] David Rice: Uh, Galen asked, you know, we touched on it, but curious about subtler impacts, like impact to manager slash VP bonuses context.

Uh, a friend of mine had a colleague who stashed their team's key cards in a locker so that one person could come in to badge in for the whole team in fear that their bonuses would be impacted. They were fired, not because of RTO adherence, but because they tried to gain the system. Curious on your thoughts on that.

[00:41:56] Brian Elliott: This, this is where companies tread into stupid, I'm sorry. [00:42:00] The system you set up is the system people are gonna, uh, obey, right. And play around with and gamify. So if you want, you know, um, people to, uh, if you want, if you're counting badges, then people are gonna coffee badge. Like I, I know of a tech company that two years ago was pushing this stuff and it wasn't the manager, it was just other employees.

They'd find a way to like meet up at a coffee shop. They'd trade out days of who was going down. And you know, the person who's going down to the office would walk in with four badges, plunk, plunk, plunk, plunk on the reader in front of the security person who like, smile at 'em and wave 'em through, right?

Because you're, what you're, what you're doing is saying, I value that measurement of activity more than I value your output type of thing. Um, Wells Fargo, uh, fires like, what a dozen people for, um, mouse jiggers, uh, like a year or so ago. Mouse jiggler is something that emulates mouse clicks because Wells Fargo, who, I'm sorry, uh, they're somewhat famous for setting up incentive systems that people gamify like, this is the third time this has happened to this [00:43:00] company.

Um, and if what you're incenting is a set of things that are, um, activity as opposed to output, don't be surprised when people decide to gamify the activity. It's just, it's, it's a, you play silly games, win silly prizes. All right. I have thoughts.

[00:43:23] Hebba Youssef: Me. No, I mean, that, that was a perfect, no, you, you violated a system, so you, you got, they got fired like that is there, when you put a system in place, if you, you probably are writing what happens if people violate it.

So the company was like, well, within their rights to fire the person. And they shouldn't have done that, unfortunately.

[00:43:45] David Rice: Uh, one question that I have is around sort of like setting up the expectations for what the office time is for. I think one of the things that happened when this all first started was there was a lot of talk about things like water cooler moments.[00:44:00]

And my first thought was, well, how is that different than a donut meeting? Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? And also, is that a good use of our, if we were forced to go in the office, would that be a good use of our time? Because I cannot tell you when I worked in an office, how many water cooler chats I had that were not only so forgettable, but completely useless.

So I'm, I'm curious, you know, like. What sort of structure do you put around the, like expectations, if any, uh, of how that office time is meant to be used?

[00:44:30] Hebba Youssef: Look, I'm a yapper. I would be in that office talking to everyone I. I honestly think like I'm more, I am more productive at home because when I was in an office, I was trying to have, I like friendship chats, trying to go on walks, trying to get coffee, like not getting a lot of work done, I'll be honest.

Um, but I do think it's really interesting looking at loneliness and connection. Yeah. Loneliness has been like trending down. The pandemic really like shook something in a lot of us. It turns out when you don't go out regularly and interact with people, your sense of loneliness goes up and then a [00:45:00] lot of other things also happen.

And I think companies are looking at in office time and that are thinking about like connection. Mm-hmm. And how do you decrease like employee loneliness? Because if employees feel connected to one another, to their manager, to the company, they're actually gonna show up and do better work. And so like I'm not mad if companies are saying like, we want you back in the office 'cause we want you all to hang out and have fun with one another.

Like, we want you all to have those water. I think that's like actually a good reason. Yeah. I think if you're gonna say the only way you can collaborate in the office, that's that I'm not buying. But if you said, we really hear you all, we know you all wanna connect, we wanna set aside time in the office, space, in the office for you all to have fun, I think that's like a great reason to go into the office.

[00:45:43] Brian Elliott: Yeah. Seconded strongly. Like I think your days in the office should be your, your least productive days. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Make sure that those days, like I've actually worked with a number of, of leaders who sat there and said, Hey, look. Here's the days my team is co-located in the first place. I'm gonna be in Tuesdays and Thursdays.

I gotta check with somebody and see if I can [00:46:00] tell his explicit story. But like, I'm going in my lunch hour and a half, I've got 90 minutes, it's always open. I'm gonna be sitting, you know, in this area swing by if you just wanna have a chat or catch up or whatever else. And he also makes sure that he doesn't book a ton of meetings on those two days.

Mm-hmm.

[00:46:14] Brian Elliott: Right. Just leave it open and leave space in there. I'm also a huge believer that if you've got distributed teams, find a way to find the freaking funds to get them together once a quarter. Like just do it. Um, I've, uh, written a case study on Zillow. They've got a fantastically engineered program around doing this where people, almost every IC comes together at least a couple of times a year, most or three to four times a year to like three days together for team building and meals and socialization and.

Goal setting and talking about what we're up to and a MA with the boss and that type of stuff. I think that's hugely valuable. The, I think, David, the other thing that water cooler gets used for is the same thing as whiteboard. Like it's this magical spark of innovation. Mm-hmm. Which is such utter bullshittery.

It's, it's [00:47:00] amazing. Um, water, the, you know, the white, the whiteboard thing usually is said by a guy who looks like me, who like me loves holding the pen, um, at the board and conducting an orchestra. Right. And they just sort of miss having an audience and be being able to conduct an orchestra. We did some research on this in 20 22, 23.

Um, innovation didn't change within teams like your ability to create new products, new processes, um, didn't change based on whether you were full-time in the office, fully remote or um, or hybrid of some sort. What it did depend on was this small thing. I've psychological safety, um, can I ask a stupid question?

Can I raise a heretical idea? I'm the new person. I'm the young person. I'm the person who doesn't look like the boss. Um, can I throw something out there? And you can do that in a variety of different ways that don't, don't have anything to do with whiteboarding or chance encounters with the CEO in the elevator, which we know happens all the time.

[00:47:57] David Rice: Right? Yeah. You want everybody to have the [00:48:00] same site level of psychological safety as I have running this webinar.

[00:48:06] Brian Elliott: Yeah. I, I went, I went slightly PG 13, at least on you on that one. Sorry about that.

[00:48:10] David Rice: No, totally. Okay. I, I, I welcome it. I, sometimes I ask questions, and I think this is a little bit stupid, but it'll get somebody riled up. No. Um, uh, there's another question that came in from Bruce. He said, how can an employee give constructive feedback about RTO policy without retaliation from the CEO or hr?

Should employees slash managers feel comfortable giving feedback on this?

[00:48:38] Brian Elliott: They should, but that really depends on what context and culture the CEO and the head of HR set up in the first place, right? Like,

yeah,

[00:48:47] Brian Elliott: clearly the guy that s JV time got fired and then he got reinstated because they really, what a dumb thing that was from a PR perspective, right?

Yeah. Um,

[00:48:55] Brian Elliott: but, but, but person who fired him clearly thought you don't speak back to the boss, especially when [00:49:00] the bosses is that ticked off, that sends a signal, right? Um, look, I think a lot of what Jamie Diamond said, especially about younger employees, is honest and somewhat accurate. But if you then, you know, shoot back at the messenger who's saying, Hey, by the way though.

Operationally, here's why this is problematic for us, then you're squashing a lot of that, um, opportunity for like innovation that I was just talking about. So it is hard, you have to figure out, like as a leader, what the guardrails are about, what's an acceptable conversation to have and not an acceptable conversation to have.

And people also have to recognize things like, we, we did this at Slack because Slack as a product got famous for employee activism at times. Mm-hmm. So we, I would go around and so with some other execs and talk with companies about like, how do you use this productively? And things like, you should allow employees to ask questions if they shouldn't expect an instant answer on every question, especially when it comes to policy.

And once you actually explain the decision behind something, people also have to have some degree of respect [00:50:00] for it. And so you have to give people space to raise concerns and raise ideas. But you've also gotta, the employees also have to recognize that there will be a point in time in which we've explained the rationale behind the decision.

We're not reconsidering it for the 13th time in a row.

[00:50:15] Hebba Youssef: Yeah, I've been there. We, we have like an open door policy. I mean, I have a smaller org so my employees can come to me with anything. But my style of HR leadership is like, you can come to me with any piece of feedback you have. I might not be able to do anything.

Like on, I tell employees right away, like, honestly, I might not be able to do anything. This is not something I can change. But you can go ahead and tell me how you feel about it, get that off your chest and I'm gonna tell you I can't do anything. And then we can both figure out how do we move forward and I can help you there.

But like from a retaliation perspective that like, that's just not an HR practice. I'm okay with like retaliation in general over an employee airing their concerns just seems really unethical. Like, I wouldn't do it. And that's, that's not how you create productive work environments. Like Brian said, like we want people to feel [00:51:00] psychologically safe so that they can do their best work, their most innovative work.

They're never gonna be able to do that if they're afraid to ask a question or give their feedback. Yep.

[00:51:10] David Rice: Absolutely. Um. There was a question, and if we need a minute to look at this, I, I'll, I can do that. But it was kind of directed at Brian. It said an article in the San Francisco Business Times, uh, recently claimed that return to office mandates seemed to be working in San Francisco.

They cite some Placer AI data for March. Uh, she was wondering if you saw this and what your was,

[00:51:32] Brian Elliott: yeah. Um, so actually stay tuned to my newsletter, please. God. I'm gonna talk about the place of AI data. Um, San Francisco has seen an uptick. Um, some of that is, you know, it's still way below every other major metropolitan area in the United States.

Some of that is Daniel Lurie. Um, asking people to come back four days a week. Some of it is downtown's a little safer. I like, I live in the city, I've lived here for. 25 years now. Um, it was a scary commute for a lot [00:52:00] of people, uh, for a large amount of time. As the commute itself gets safer, people feel more comfortable doing it as well.

Um, and I know firms, I mean, like, you know, the, the folks that open AI are typically Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, in the office, sometimes Thursdays, sometimes Friday. Anthropic, which is in the old Slack headquarters, is 25%. People enjoy it. There's good meals. It's a lovely office. Been there a few hundred times.

Um, so I do think there is some coming back. The Placer, uh, data also, if you look across January, February, and March of this year says that we're basically exactly where we were at this time last year. Like literally no change. Mm-hmm. So January and February were worse than last year. March was better, but if you add the three together, we're treading water.

Um, so given like the, by the way, uh, DC is up, nobody should be surprised at that, right? Because you come in or you lose your job and Yep. You know, you come in to places where you have to bring your own toilet paper, uh, in some cases, I'm not joking. I know. Wild. It's, it's insanely dumb and bad. But at [00:53:00] any rate, I actually some degree of getting people back into downtown is a good thing because it's good from a, you know, local, um, vibe perspective.

I think San Francisco has also done a nice job, and I'll stop talking about it, uh, for the past six months or so with programming downtown, right? So there's more, the restaurants are, uh, staying open more. There's been some popups, there's like this Thursday night thing that they do that's actually a lot of fun that I've been to.

I'm down there probably two or three times a week myself.

[00:53:28] David Rice: Is there something to that, like maybe it's a, a little bit about building sort of coalition and community, right? Like this is something I keep coming back to here in 2025, as we all sort of have to get better at building community. And maybe that is part of it, right?

Like, is working with other businesses working to kind of create a culture that is something that people wanna be a part of to go to the office. Yeah.

[00:53:51] Brian Elliott: Yeah. And, and communities brought in that too. Like Soho came back way before Midtown did. Mm-hmm. Soho's got mixed use. Soho's got [00:54:00] offices, it's got residential, it's got restaurants, it's got shops, midtowns sort of, uh, office Central, right?

So mm-hmm. There, there's, there's different things that people move around for. And mixed use downtowns have also recovered better than, um, dedicated, you know, single purpose downtowns.

[00:54:18] David Rice: Absolutely. Uh, let's see here. Do we, folks, if you have something else that you want to put in the the q and a, please do.

We got, uh, four minutes left, but uh, I was gonna ask, you know, Brian, you mentioned before, get the team together, find the budget and get them together. And I was recently talking with a gentleman who plans offsites and I asked him what's the sort of ideal amount of time because like we just did an offsite for the company that I work for, and we do it typically like once a year.

It's for a full week. It's awesome. We all get together. There's a ton of energy in the room. There's ideas flying everywhere, right? And it's great. And we go away and there's a lot of stuff to work on. And I'm, he said 10% of [00:55:00] your year would be the ideal amount of time, but that seems like a lot of time. So how do you kind of convince your executive team, so to speak, that this is like a key investment rather than maybe a, an office space?

[00:55:16] Brian Elliott: Yeah, I've actually seen people do this pretty successfully. It's hard because the buckets of money are slightly different, right? So, but if you look at, um, Allstate, Atlassian, Zillow, Dropbox, a whole mess of firms. Um, they've all shrank office space by some percentage. And what they did is they put some of the proceeds, they didn't take it all to the bottom line.

They basically put some of the proceeds into redesigning what they, what they kept, number one, because the open floor plan co desks just really doesn't work these days. Um, and they put money into, um, travel budgets and small teams to help facilitate these events. So, um, at LA Airbnbs is called ground control.

Zillows is called Z Retreats. Uh, like three, four person [00:56:00] teams that work with the seven, 10,000 person organization because when you're getting people together, it does actually boost their engagement. Atlassian's got data that shows this, um, much more than like random in office visits. But the other thing is most managers suck at, um, doing team building exercises.

And so those small teams can help facilitate better higher quality content and better events and provide some, you know, not just like, here's the do it yourself guide, but for, you're bringing 300 people together because that's the entirety of your HR and and finance team. Um, someone helping orchestrate that is actually gonna be important.

[00:56:38] Hebba Youssef: We do two retreats a year and I organize the whole thing 'cause we're only 55 people with one person on my team. But honestly, like we did three days, we did four days this last time. Everyone flew in on a Sunday, out on a Thursday, and then we just gave everyone Friday off and we made it really clear like, here's what we're trying to do this day.

We did like a cross-functional team day, a [00:57:00] team day, and then a company day. Yeah. And we kind of broke it out that way to like, give people connection with others, give people connection with their team, give people connection with the company. And it ended up being like, brilliant people came back and said it was the best experience they had ever had.

Yeah.

[00:57:13] Brian Elliott: By the way, Dave, if you look up the Atlassian data in terms of like the 10%, what they actually show is that, um, those quarterly gatherings have a persistent impact for like three to five months beyond that, which is why quarterly ends up working pretty well. Uh, because, you know, after 90 days that, um, that, uh, comradery burns off and you start treating each other like you're just digits.

And so getting back and breaking bread is kind of a nice thing to do

[00:57:39] David Rice: always. Uh, I always enjoy it. So. Well, I want to thank you both for joining us today. This is an extremely valuable chat. Uh, I enjoyed it personally 'cause like heaven, I'm ready to die on this hill. So, uh, really loved it, uh, incredible insights.

And I, I just wanna [00:58:00] thank you both for being here. David, thank you for

[00:58:02] Hebba Youssef: having us.

[00:58:02] David Rice: Yeah, it's been a blast. See

[00:58:04] Hebba Youssef: you all that. I can't wait to see both of you next week. Exactly.

[00:58:06] David Rice: I'll see you both next in person.

[00:58:08] Hebba Youssef: We better get a picture of the three of us together so that we can prove like we went from virtual to person.

[00:58:14] David Rice: We had an offsite for this webinar. There we go.

[00:58:20] Brian Elliott: First, never webinar offsite. Yes. That'd

[00:58:23] Hebba Youssef: be amazing. Thank you so much y'all. Thanks

[00:58:25] Brian Elliott: everybody, folks. Thanks. Every great questions.

[00:58:29] David Rice: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, so folks, there you have it. Uh, to everybody in the audience, thank you for joining us today. Please take a second to fill out that feedback survey that we just posted in the chat a bit ago so you can let us know what you thought of today's session and hopefully submit a topic that you want us to look at in the future.

Um, and of course, big thank you again to our panelists for volunteering your time. Uh, and I hope that you find the balance that you need in your org for RTO. And have a great rest of your day, everyone [00:59:00]