TechTalk Supporting a Dispersed Hybrid Workforce
With many working remotely, organizations now need to apply new strategies to help employees stay productive, happy and connected.
By Insight Editor / 21 Oct 2020 / Topics: Modern workplace
By Insight Editor / 21 Oct 2020 / Topics: Modern workplace
Using collaboration technology to its full extent can go a long way when your workforce is dispersed. In this TechTalk, Insight Connected Workforce teammates Joe Flynn and Mike Gaumond discuss best practices to empower employees.
To experience this week’s episode, listen on the player above, watch the conversation below, or scroll down to read a complete transcript. You can also subscribe to Insight TechTalk on Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
Audio transcript:
Published October 20, 2020
JOE
Welcome to today's TechTalk. Our topic today is going to be leading through disruption, how to manage a dispersed workforce. My name is Joe Flynn, Director of Technical Architecture at Insight, and I'm joined here today by Mike Gaumond, my leader, Senior VP of Insight's Connected Workforce.
Mike, thank you for joining me.
MIKE
Thanks for having me, Joe, appreciate it.
JOE
Oh, my pleasure, sir.
So, let's jump right into it. We all hear how things are forced to change the past six months and why, but for today's conversation I want to skip the what, the how, the why and let's just move on to how do we handle the new norm of a dispersed hybrid workforce?
In a recent article you wrote, Mike, you described that a disbursed workforce is a shift in where work actually gets done on a regular basis, right? The where, it could be remote, it could be on site, it could be a hybrid of both. That shift we not only see in our workforce today, we see it at home with our kids, right, our kids end up doing virtual schooling, hybrid school. In this discussion, I want to cover three main topics of a dispersed workforce. First, it's going to be cost and modernization, then culture, and then lastly, work-life balance, which we know has always been difficult in the past, but it's even harder today.
So, let's start with cost of modernization. IDG released a report saying that CIO's are more concerned with cost control but on the flip side, CEOs are more concerned about employees' experience and the digital transformation.
Mike, you lead an organization. I'm one of those people, right? And, within Insight, you have workers that work remote and you have workers that are in the office. Many of us are remote today. Between the resources that work for you and all of the customer conversations you have, where do you see the balance between cost modernization and employee experience?
MIKE
I think it's a great, great question. And you know, cost is certainly a consideration and it always will be, but the focus I see is really on the modernization and the employee, the employee's work experience. You know, in your, your IDG, interesting, because you know, over time you almost always see the CEO's priority becomes the CIO's priority, so you'll begin to see that shift. So, I hear a lot from clients, like one of the best parts of my job is I get to spend a lot of time with them, and I listen, I listen to what they're frustrated and what they're challenged with and what their priorities are. But, there's a huge focus on providing a compelling experience to the employees in their organization, right, so they view the employees in their organization as their customers, and they see it as their job, whether those employees are working remotely or on site to provide a compelling experience with technology. And ultimately they want to do that so that their company can make those employees productive and retain them so that they don't lose them, you know, to their competition.
And what I hear a lot these days is a corporation saying they want to deliver a consumer-like experience for technology to their employees. So, think of when you go get a new iPhone, right? You go to the Apple store, you get a new phone, you log in with your credentials, all your apps come down, all your contacts come down, everything's ready. There's no big setup, right? You walk out of the Apple store and you're ready to go. They want the same experience on a laptop or a tablet or a desktop in their environment. So, we're seeing a big push towards that from the experience perspective,
JOE
Correct.
MIKE
With being a big push towards security, right? So, as more and more employees went remote, the surface area for security attacks got much, much larger. In fact, there were, there were articles out, I read that a very high percentage of employees didn't even have secure WiFi, you know, in their home, right? So, there's, there's some big security risks out there. And you know, I think, those are the factors that, you know, I hear about from the clients and and get them to want to drive towards really delivering that compelling experience. Yes, do it on a cost-effective basis, but deliver that experience.
JOE
No, and I, too, have those conversations of bringing a consumer experience into the corporate world and I agree, it's a common conversation that we've seen, we see many customers want more and more, absolutely.
MIKE
Yep, once somebody experiences that on the consumer side, they kind of come back to work and say, why can't it be the same here?
JOE
Exactly, so now let's dig into company culture. Here at Insight, our values are heart, hunger and harmony. And one thing I can say about every company I've ever worked for, they're really shown here at Insight, and they're really communicated from the top down. I think all of our leadership drives it quite well with throughout the company.
While in the office, though, it's much easier to walk by someone, brighten their day with a conversation, make them feel connected or engaged. I can tell you just from my own experience dealing with you, I would travel to Phoenix, I would work into the Tempe office and you would always seem to stop by say, hi, carry a conversation, whether it was about football or whether it was something around work, but it made you feel, make me feel like engaged, right, it made me feel connected, 'cause I wasn't always in the office. But with the new norm today, working remotely, many people find that it's harder to get those relationships right, to feel engaged or stay involved. What are your suggestions that people, both leadership and coworkers, can do to help peers stay involved and not be left out on an island?
MIKE
Yeah, I think it's another really good question, because you know, very clearly, building and sustaining culture when many people are remote is more difficult than if you can get people together for extended periods of time in the office. So, it absolutely creates some, some, some real challenges. And you know, I certainly don't have all the answers, but a few suggestions.
One is, I highly encourage folks to use video for the, the, the conversations between your teammates, even if it's one-on-one or if it's in a group setting, you know, there's a lot of studies out there that show that something like 70% of communication is nonverbal. So, if you don't have the video, you're missing out on almost three quarters of the information that's being conveyed between two or more people. So that's a big gap. And in the remote world, people might be a little reticent to do that because you know, they dress more casually at home or they're worried about, you know the, the, their kids or their pet showing up on the video.
You know, I'll tell you a quick story. One of our marketing execs, we were on a call with about half a dozen of us. And she, we were all on video and she's in her home office. I'm in my home office, and her teenage daughter, you could see the office door opens up, her teenage daughter walks up to her mom, gives her a hug and a kiss and then just turns around and walks out and closes the door. And the exec's really quickly trying to cover up the camera or whatever, and I know her pretty well, so I messaged her and I said, "Don't cover it up." I go, "that just made my day, like it warmed my heart to see that," right? So, you know, when we see other people and we see their pets or their kids or their spouses, it helps build that connection even though, even though, we're not there with them.
The second thing I would suggest is, and I do this with my team, so I have twice a week 30-minute touch points with my leadership team. We try really hard not to talk about work. We just say, "How's it going, how's the family, how are the kids, got any interesting plans for the weekends? Who's your favorite football team?" You know, just try to replicate some of the kind of chat you might've had in the hallway, right? So that, that's something we do as well.
And I think the last thing I'd highlight here is that, you know, it's tough with employees like you and I, who know each other and it's easy for us to have a conversation, Joe. But if you were brand new, right, it's even, you know, new employee, it's even, it's even more challenging. So, you know, you, you might need more touch points with, with a new employee than a tenured employee. You might need to establish a buddy, someone they could reach out to, to just ask the silly questions that's not their boss, which is what they would do in the hallway. So I, you know, I think it's great and it's a, it's one of the tougher things about this remote environment.
JOE
No, I like two things you mentioned, is video, I think it is important for people to encourage the use of video. But I also think in many organizations, it has to be done from the top down, right? I think when we join calls and we see like yourself, and our CEO, Ken Lamneck, on the call who are always on video, that's encouraging. So that makes you everyone else, or more people, shall I say, want to turn on video and start engaging. And I agree, right? I'm sure when we have conversations you probably see me rolling my eyes or something like that.
MIKE
Exactly. Language and facial expressions tend to say more than actually just voice sometimes.
JOE
Yeah, that's right, you can say, see if somebody's not in their head, shaking their head, looking confused or looking upset. And you cue in on that very, very quickly. But if you don't have the visual, you have no idea.
MIKE
Correct, I got to reframe my facial expressions when we actually bring up your football team, so I think we're good there.
(both laugh)
JOE
So, the last topic is definitely the hardest for me, right? It's achieving the healthy work-life balance. And I will say I'm probably one of the worst role models in that scenario. But a study that Microsoft had recently done saying with the recent times, they have seen more and more people on average are working three to four hours more a day. But on the flip side of that, they're seeing people are also stepping away during the day to possibly run an errand, take care of kids. 'Cause remember I said previously, right, kids are possibly homeschooled, they're hybrid, they're virtual. And there's a lot to do, some people have to pick up their kids back and forth. So, it is a pain point today for many people. So, and we actually see that here at Insight, we ran our own reports, we ran our own test, and we see our employees are doing similar things where they're working later, starting earlier, but they are stepping out during the day.
As a leader within Insight, actually one of my leaders, right, what do you suggest that other leaders do with their employees or help their employees achieve a better balance in their work-life routines?
MIKE
Yeah, another really interesting topic in the remote world, right? So, the blurry line between your work life and your personal life just got a lot blurrier because you're in your house for many of us, for example.
So, you know, a few things I would do. One is try to establish some fairly regular hours, you know, don't accept every one of those early-morning and late-evening meetings that we all get, you know, sent to all the time. You know, so that, that, that's a piece of it. A second one is what you touched on, which is build some breaks into the day where you can go walk the dog, talk to your kids or your spouse or just walk around the block or go get a cup of coffee, right, we need that break to kind of get away and shift gears and then refocus. And then the other thing I would suggest is build in some time to think and to work, right? So, it's really easy for us to fall into this very reactionary mode which is I'm just going from meeting to meeting, and IM to IM, and email to email and I'm not stepping back and thinking. And there's lots of research out there that shows, you know, if we work too many hours that errors go up and creativity goes down, right, and that's not good for the individual or the company. So I encourage the team, take some time, carve out some time to think and to strategize and to think about what we could do differently with our clients or with our teammates and then come back and figure out, okay, now let's put the plan in place to go and execute on that.
JOE
Absolutely, I got to say one of the technologies I love and been taking advantage of is focus mode, so with the office in the cloud, as an option note it'll automatically schedule you focus times during the day so you can block out times to do what you say. Maybe it's take a walk, maybe it's even getting work done, 'cause I've seen, just in my own calendaring, a lot of 30-minute meetings pop up. And if you don't schedule the focus time to just stand up, walk around or get something done, it tends to be very difficult to get through your day.
MIKE
Exactly. You'll just be wall to wall with that, you know, 10 hours a day.
JOE
Agreed.
So, Mike, great conversation. Thank you for joining me today. Hopefully looking forward to another one with you but again, I think it was an awesome conversation overall.
MIKE
Thanks, Joe, really appreciate it. And the Packers are still better.
JOE
(laughs) Have a good day, we'll leave it on that topic.
MIKE
(laughing) Take care.
[Music]
Modern Workplace Director and Distinguished Technologist, Insight
With over 25 years of experience in the IT industry, Joe loves that technology constantly changes and provides new challenges, pushing him to learn more every day. As a leader for a vendor-agnostic organization, Joe is equipped to advise clients on the solutions that drive the best value for their business. He is a champion across many technologies and approaches knowledge-sharing not as a one-time project but as a continued mindset.
Sr. Vice President, Portfolio, Insight
As a results-oriented change agent with a track record spanning startups to the Fortune 500, Mike and his team provide industry-leading installation, integration, consulting and managed IT services.
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