February 27, 2025 • 23 mins
Why are organizations asking to bring their employees back into the office? The Broad Matters podcast invites Frederick Morgeson, Eli Broad Professor of Management, to provide insight into this recent shift back to work. As the five-year experiment of hybrid and virtual work sees a possible end for many companies, Dr. Morgeson discusses the long-term impact to work culture for both organizations and employees in the pursuit of going back to normal.
Follow Frederick's research at his website, morgeson.com, and on his LinkedIn page.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
- Welcome to Broad Matters.
A podcast bringing you thoughtleadership, innovative perspectives
and real world impact from Michigan StateUniversity's Eli Broad College of Business.
I'm Ken Szymusiak,
Managing Director for the Burgess Institutefor Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
- and I'm Quinetta Robertson, the John A.
Hannah DistinguishedProfessor of Management and Psychology.
- Today, we are speaking with Frederick Morgeson,
(00:23):
the Eli Broad Professor of Management,and current and founding editor of the Annual
Review of Organizational Psychologyand Organizational Behavior.
We are at the leading edgeof generating new knowledge
and expertise in the business world,and it tells you what's true when you do
research and follow rigorous practices.
It's somethingthat we can bring into our classrooms
(00:43):
and into our work with organizations thattell you this is going to work if you do it.
And so Broad mattersbecause we're generating the forefront
of the next generation of knowledge.
It's somethingevery organization should care about.
- Frederick, thanks for being here.- Thanks for having me.
- Frederick,you've been at Michigan State
for 25 years., during which you've conductedaward winning research, taught a variety
of courses, and consulted on numerous topicsin human resource and talent management.
(01:07):
Could you share a bit about your backgroundand the focus of your research?
- Sure, Quinetta.
It's great to be here, as well.
And you know, the thing for meis that I'm fundamentally interested
in the idea of leadershipand how we lead organizations.
How do leadersdeploy talent to deal with the problems
and the events that are occurringin their organizational environment?
My research is focusedon topics of leadership
and work design and event management,and these sorts of things.
(01:29):
And the ultimate goal is, ishow do we deploy our people?
How do we deploy our expertisein an organization for its effectiveness?
- We've seen a recent shiftin organizations like Amazon, Apple,
Meta, Zoom,
and so many otherswho are telling their employees
that it's time to come back into the office.
Given your extensive research and work
(01:50):
design, why do you think these companiesare pulling people back to the office?
-You know, I've been tracking
kind of these issuessince the beginning of the pandemic,
and I've had a chance to kind of talk witha lot of people in organizations about this.
And when you talk to people,
they have a variety of sort of explanationsabout why they're bringing people back.
They're worried about productivity,accountability of people working from home.
(02:10):
They're worried about
can they build culture in the waythat they want to in their organizations?
They're worried about collaborationand the ability to collaborate effectively.
They're worried about developmentand especially people early in their career.
Can they get those experiencesthat are really needed
to develop themselves as professionals?
And so these ideas of we know how to do thatbest in person.
(02:31):
We have the most experience in historywith that.
There's a lot of logic to that.
I think the question is, ishow true is all of that?
And I think that's the challenge,and that's where the research can give us
some insight into., “Is this somethingthat is in fact needed to do those things?
And that's the big question.” -Do you have the big answer?
- The big answer is, it's complicated,
(02:51):
which is the most unsatisfying answer of all.
But I think the challenges is that, you know,we get very familiar with how
we have always done things.
There's a desire on the part of a lot oforganizations to sort of go back to normal.
If we had quizzedeverybody in January of 2020 and said,
you know, something's going to happenand it's going to basically send
everybody home, period around the world,no one would have said, “yeah,
(03:14):
I can see that happening.”And yet it happened a couple of months later.
And so we all dealt with this.
We all experienced this.
And it's a lived experience
for all of us, which is very different thankind of reading about it or hearing about it.
You experienced it.You were in school and you went home.
You were at work and you went home.
Some businesses shut down entirely.
Others radically changed their operational process.
(03:35):
And it's been the slow process back.
And the question is, will it ever beback? And are we, in fact back now?
If you look at some of the data
on occupancy in office spaces, it's hoveringstill around 50, 55 percent.
That's a far cry from essentially the 100percent occupancy we had pre-pandemic.
And so that's I think, something
that we're really going to grapple with ishow do we manage our workforce
(03:58):
going forward in a way that recognizesthis new reality we are in?
- Yeah,
I just want to riff on that a little bitand just kind of ask a follow up question.
Was 4 or 5 years enough time to changeculture in some of these institutions
so that it feels normal to maintainthis remote work environment,
because you still see this, like balance.
Now, some of them are like,yeah, this is working really well.
(04:19):
Some are in this camp where it's like,oh man, we gotta go back to the way it was.
Companies that are built to be dynamic,I think can handle this really well.
But some of these institutionswhere they have large employee bases, it's
hard to keep track of accountability unless,you know, people are checking in, right?
- I think the accountabilityis one of the big things.
So why are they bringing people back?
I think there's lots of explanations aroundculture and collaboration and other things.
(04:41):
At the root ofit is a worry about accountability.
What are you doing when I can't check upon you in like a real way?
And so I think people have not helpedthemselves when they're working from home,
and they kind of disappear when you needto pull somebody and you go find them.
I have in my mindthat CEOs worry about people
doing laundry and walking their dogsduring the middle of the day,
because in a moment's notice,you can't find them.
I think that is drivinga lot of the desire to come back.
(05:04):
The explanation that's given is different
around productivityand culture and collaboration.
But I think at its root,a lot of it is about accountability concerns.
Ken (05:13):
Do you anticipate any lasting changes in how work is structured
or how employees might engagewith organizations through this?
- Well,
I think one of the big lasting changesis the fact
that this is a lived experience by everyone.
And so you have done this thing.
You went partially remote.,if not fully remote, for a couple of years.
You did your job just fine.
Everybody has that experienceor a lot of people have that experience.
(05:34):
So now you're being told you got to come backbecause you can't do your job remotely.
Well, that for a lot of people fliesin the face of their own lived experience.
And so now you're telling me we can't do it,and yet we did do it.
It's not an abstractthought that you can't work from home.
I did work from home.
You're saying I can't be productive. And yet,if you're a sales person, you have numbers.
Maybe your numbers are greatwhen you work from home.
(05:55):
Maybe you go into the office and everybody’ssitting on zoom calls or teams calls
while they're sitting in a physical building.Well, I could do this at home, right?
And so part ofit is getting around this idea about
how do you explain whyit's important to be there.
One of the leadership challenges of managingthis event and managing the explanation
about why we're back and creating a narrativeand a story about why we need to come back
(06:18):
and what it means for us organizationally,and why that was an experiment in a way.
And and maybe we don't wantthat experiment anymore.
It doesn't mean there's not consequences.If you do make everybody come back.
But that's certainly a challengefrom a leadership standpoint,
articulating the logicin a way that is real to people
that have experienced something - - ...and what work is, to some extent.
(06:38):
Not just the place you earn, it'swhere you have colleagues.
I almost think about.
It is like a division of introvertsand extroverts almost.
You kind of wonder, like,will there be kind of two
labor pools where people really opt into
this is the lifestyleI want, now, after five years?
I'm going to find companies that supportthat and folks who want to be around people.
You know?
- So you said a bunch of things can that
I think are really important for this issue.
(07:00):
And one is there'sdefinitely distinctive preferences
on the part of a workforceabout whether they want to be in full-time
or a significant part of timein a hybrid arrangement.
And folkswho are totally happy staying remote.
And that's something that I havepersonally seen evolve in my students
and in working with organizationsis early on,
there was more of a desire to stay remote,
but then people begin to see the downsidesof being fully remote.
(07:22):
Organizations are social structures.
They don't exist
without the people in them, and a big partof what people get out of their work lives
is the social piece - the connectionto others, the ability to interact
and develop friendships.
It's a huge driver of retention is the sensethat you have a friendship network at work
and you're connected to them.
(07:42):
You're achieving something together.
In person is the most sortof rich communication medium.
Those are all real strong pulls for people.
And when I asked my classes,you know, who wants to work remotely?
It's become a 50/50 thing.
Where half of them are kind of like,“maybe not fully remote,
but certainly some hybrid flexibility”versus “no,
(08:02):
I want to be there.” I want to be underfootfor a lot of the reasons you mentioned.
- I wanted to unpack something you said earlierabout there being this lived experience,
but then this misalignment in the narrativebetween the accountability and the culture.
Do you have any guidance or thoughts onhow leaders let people know
(08:23):
about the importance of being in the officeat some times versus others?
Is there a way to coach leaders on that?- I think so.
One of the is to have a narrative
and explanationabout why we want people back,
but for that explanationto resonate with people.
So you can say, well,we need people to come back
because they can't be productive at home.
While there might be data
and the science is very clear,people tend to be more productive
(08:45):
working remotelybecause you're not interrupted as much.
You tend to work more.
So that explanation ringshollow for a lot of people,
probably because they've had the experienceof being perfectly effective.
So to have an explanation and narrativethat rings true, that is compelling,
it doesn't have to be somethingthat everyone agrees with.
There's a phrase that I've seen going aroundis this notion of disagree and commit.
(09:05):
So the idea being that I might disagreewith, in this case, coming back to work
full time or in a fuller way,but I am going to still commit to doing it.
I think the long-term challengefor organizations is,
can you get your peopleto come back and stay back?
And that's the twist.
And, you know,
(09:26):
I think organizations are certainly withintheir rights to say, “we want you here.”
I think it's more effectivewhen you can have a compelling explanation
and argumentabout why that is, and be open about the fact
that not everybody's going to agree.
But at the end of the day, leadersare decision makers and organizations,
and that's how it's always been,and that's how it will always be.
I think maybe not having blanket policies.
You'd let people flexthat have maybe earned the right to flex
(09:49):
because they're super valuableor some other thing that they've earned.
So blanket policies become challengingfor really high performing talent.
But understanding that
but then the question becomes is if notevery organization is doing this, now what?
Because some part of your workforce
is going to want to be remoteor want to be hybrid, at least.
(10:09):
They're not going to want to livein New York City,
where their commute is two hours each way.
They're going to want to worka significant part of time from home.
Citigroup made an announcement.
They're embracing a long term, more flexiblehybrid approach, which stands in contrast
to, like JPMorgan and some of the otherbig financial firms in New York City.
Jamie Dimon was quoted.
He basically said,“I don't care what you people think”.
(10:29):
And it's like, oh, well, you know,
a lot of employees don't like hearing that.
Now, that may be true.And I think this is the disagreeing idea.
He's not wrong,but people don't want to hear this.
And if you're competitive, set is saying,well, we're going to embrace this.
You might lose your key people.
And I thinkone of the things that I've learned
and what we know in our research, is thattalent is what drives your organization's
(10:51):
success, period. There is nothing else.
So whatever you think matters
organizationally,know that it ultimately resolves
back to what the people are doingin your organization.
When you think you're being innovative, it's
because the people are coming upwith new ideas.
If you think you're being adaptiveis because the people in your organization
are adapting to the changesin the environment. Talent is king.
And so the question becomes is,if the very best talent leaves,
(11:16):
where does that leave you?
Organizationally, we see all the timethese high-profile hires in the AI space,
in the tech spacewhere these sort of really successful
people are being wooed awayfrom organizations.
Now imagine you're sitting in an environment
where you're insisting upon peoplecoming back and your main competitor isn't.
Do you think you're goingto lose across the board, your people?
(11:36):
No, you're going to lose your best people,
because your best peoplealways have the most options.
They're always the most demanding,
but they're always the most valuable andthe most important for you organizationally.
That's the dilemma leadershave to grapple with and weigh.
If you push them away,you might win the battle, right?
But you might lose the long term war.That's the thing to weigh.
(11:57):
You can make them come back.
But we have to think about the implicationsof making them.
- Frederick, those are great examples.
Are there any others that you're workingwith firsthand in your research
that you could kind of comment on in termsof what types of results
you're seeing,or some trend lines that might be emerging?
- Absolutely.
Ken, and I think this is an example of sort
of this virtuous cyclebetween kind of the research activities
(12:18):
that we do at Broadwith the practical implications
that matter for organizations,for the students that we teach
and the peoplethat kind of follow what we do.
I had a project studyingwhat I call event leadership.
This is this ideathat leaders need to respond to
and manage the eventsthat are occurring in their environment.
Obviously, the pandemic is a huge event
and everything that sort of was wroughtby the pandemic.
And I was talking with the senior leaderat a major organization.
(12:39):
I can't say the name,but a major organization.
And he was telling me how they've embracedkind of the remote work model.
We talked about the implications of that.
And, you know,it involves kind of moving their business
around the globe and,you know, reapportioning resources.
But one of the points that he madewas in recruiting.
One of their big competitors in the space hasinitiated these return to office policies,
(12:59):
and that they love the factthat their competitor did this
because they've startedto systematically hire
their senior executiveswho don't want to come back to the office
and honestly don't need to be backin the office in that kind of a role.
And so they see thisas sort of a real competitive advantage
for themfrom a talent acquisition standpoint.
It was one of the thingsthe Citigroup CEO mentioned as well.
(13:19):
We see this as a competitive advantagebecause it allows us to appeal to top talent
that does have a lot of options.
Again, your very best talent, they're goingto be treated well where they are.
You've got to figure outhow do you lure them,
how do you recruit them,how do you get them to be interested in you?
It's an example to me of how you can envisionwhat the future looks like
(13:39):
and take advantage of it, today, especially,we have other organizations
who are maybe stuckin kind of the old way of working.
When I talk about this to organizations,I say there's no going back.
And I think we as human beings,we seek the familiar, right?
That's the fundamental psychologyof human beings.
And we seek to go back to whatwe've experienced.
The new generation of workersmay not want it.
(14:01):
And in a lot of ways,we're all changed by it.
So there really is no going back.
There's a going forward and the questionfor us is what does that forward look like?
And that's why we do research.What does the future of work look like?
What is that future of hybrid or remote worklook like?
It's hard to know,but it probably doesn't look like the past.
And I think that's the thingthat we have to understand.
(14:23):
And if you think about who makes decisions
in organizations, it tends to be peoplein baby boomer, generation X generations.
And yet your workforce is filledwith generation Z and millennials.
They might not want the same thing,but the decision makers are,
you know, “this is how I did it.
I spent 20, 30 years working my way,grinding it out, and so should these people.”
(14:43):
And maybe they don't.
I mean, there's lots of explanationsfor why we want to do things.
And I think being honest with yourselfand clear about why you're doing it,
try to share as much as you can,even if it's information
that you think people aren'tgoing to like to hear.
You not telling them doesn't meanthey're not thinking about it,
not speculating about it,and not doing all of those things
(15:05):
that we know people do in organizations.
So you have to understandthat very little private information remains
in organizational settings.So you have to control it.
You control the narrative.You manage the meaning.
“We've announced return to office.
Here's why we're doing our returnto office. Here's how it benefits us.
We know that some of you don't like that.Here's why we need to have that happen.
(15:25):
We know that some of you are going to leave,
and we understand that as well.”
Organizations have different culturesand have different values.
It's a fundamental principle of our fieldis that people sort themselves
in organizations where the valuesare consistent with their own,
and I think this is a dimension uponwhich people will ultimately sort themselves.
In the end, employees see through iteither way, and they can vote with their feet
(15:46):
by leaving. And I think that's an okay thing.
People have gotten maybe over the last fiveyears in the idea that they have more agency
because they don't have to go on acan stay home, but we all have always worked
at the pleasure of the leadersin our organization to some extent.
- The flip side is
how hard it is for, you know, ateam of 12 to 15 people to build rapport
and work together on complex problemsremotely has become an issue, right?
(16:09):
Like when somethingneeds five people in a room
and it requires a whiteboarding session, Zoomdoesn't have the same dynamic.
The outcomes are not what you getwhen you put yourself together
in a room and feed offone another to come up with unique solutions.
There'sprobably no right or wrong at this point,
but these are trade offs across the board.
- It's the one domainwhere the science is pretty clear.
(16:30):
It's actually better in person.
If you have a job or you have an organizationthat really relies upon really deep kind
of teamwork, collaborative processes,
creativity, in personstill seems to be the way to go
because of all the things you mentioned -the immediacy of it,
the abilityto bounce ideas off of each other.
Even before the pandemic,there was a research literature on remote,
a virtual teams,
and the advice
(16:50):
that comes out of that researchis that when you're launching
that team, you're best offto get them together in person.
So at least they get to know each other,know what their styles are, and so forth,
and then then go away.
And then you bring them back periodicallybecause that in-person interaction
is just so important.
And so if you're doing kind of complex,collaborative, creative work,
(17:11):
yeah, in person is still the way to go.
Many of the traditional practices
are difficult to do online,and so don't try to do them the same way.
And so it's not that it can't be done, it'sjust that it's done differently.
And I think that's the opportunity fororganizations to sort of envision the future.
We need to have our teamsbe cohesive and collaborative.
(17:32):
Okay, so let's not try to replicatean in-person setting online.
Let's think broadly about howwe might actually do that in a different way
than we would do it in person.
- How do you address workplacedesign and return-to-office policies
with your MBA students,and what feedback do you receive from them?
- This has become just an enormously kindof hot topic in my Executive MBA.
(17:53):
My Full-Time MBA and in my MSMSL classrooms.
That last one is 100 percent online.
It's something on everybody's mind
because it obviously affects themin a pretty major way.
And I will say early on,I saw a lot more interest in pure remote.
And as the years have gone by,I've seen a movement toward, well,
probably still a priority for hybrid,but a certainly a significant
(18:15):
non-trivial number of people who say, “no,I want to be back in person
for the things that we talked about earlier.”This idea of I like the social connection,
I like to segment.
I don't want to have an office in my housebecause then I can never escape my work.
During the pandemic,people got burnt out more
and their well-being went downbecause they could never escape.
You can be reached around the clockbecause there's your office.
That's a real challenge.
(18:36):
And so we talk a lot aboutwhat does that future look like.
And I think organizationsshould think a lot about the fit question.
And that is, you know,some people really want to be in-person,
just likesome people really want to be creative.
Some people really want to deliverhigh quality customer experience.
These are individual characteristicspeople have.
So maybe organizationally we say, “you know,I want my people there.
(18:59):
I'm going to focus in my recruitmentselection
on peoplewho expressed the desire to work in person.”
And then it becomes these differentkind of fit elements, right.
So if you're willing to offer hybrid,that's a different kind of workforce.
You also have to have expectations for themthat you communicate.
And I think that's kind of a wayin which you can navigate
this is by trying to understandwhat people fit with our organization.
(19:20):
I do a lot of work in health care.
And so one of the things a lot of health care
organizations care about is hiring peoplewith empathy.
It's hard to train, so you got to find it.
So you segment your recruitment and you'rehiring on people with high levels of empathy.
Couldn't you do that same thing with workfrom home versus in-person versus hybrid,
and have some assessmentdevoted to that preference and establishing
(19:42):
that expectation in the recruitmenthiring process.
- Yeah, I really like that idea.
Thinking about new tools and waysto kind of measure how someone has that
cultural fit upfront based on whereyou want to take your office five,
ten years from now. Right.
That's my seguequestion here I'd love to build on
is based on your research,where do you see the future of work
headed in that kind of 5 to 10 year horizon?
What are you seeing?
(20:03):
- So I like to make thisprediction in my classes
that if we came back for the 20 year reunion,what would the world look like?
5 to 10 year windows, maybe more ten years: You know, we're going to look (20:09):
undefined
and we're going to say, here'sthe winners and losers.
And I think the winners are going to bethe people that figured out
how to take advantage of this new reality,not to try to enforce
a return to some previous state.
Maybe some part of your organizationor some organizations.
That is the answer.
But I think my advice would be to tryto figure out how can we leverage this?
(20:34):
How can we take advantage of the factthat people are now more familiar
and more comfortable?
We've learned a lot about how to do this,
maybe not 100% remote, you know,maybe have certain rules around hybrid.
Maybe some people have to come inand we pay them more for that.
You know, it's a compensable factorof working in person versus working remotely.
So in that long term, the organizations thatsurvive and thrive, I think, are going to be
(20:57):
the ones that figure outthat your talent has a lot of options.
Some of those options are going to benot working 10 percent in person,
and we have to adapt and develop systemsthat enable us to do this effectively.
I would say revisit, re-envisionthe entirety of how you utilize your talent
and why you're doing that.
And that kind of goes back to somethingI said earlier,
(21:19):
this idea of having a logicand a justification
not just to convince people to do it,but to actually think through
why we're doing thisand what do we gain by doing it?
What do we lose by doing it right and makingthat calculation and thinking, you know,
maybe we do have kind of a different cohortsin our organizations
where this is our positionsthat can be flex and hybrid,
(21:41):
and these are positionsthat have to be here and here's why.
And how are we going to compensate peopleand how are we going to develop them
or reward them in this new,more complex world?
- Thank you so much for joining us todayon the podcast, Frederick.
If people are interested in keeping upwith your work, where can they find you?
- Well, all of my professional stuffis at my website.
It's morgeson.com, so M-O-R-G-E-S-O-N-DOT-COMand I'm on LinkedIn and so kind of connect
(22:06):
with me and love to hear
kind of your experienceswith kind of the hybrid
return-to-work policies or anything elseleadership. I'm a curious person.
That's why I got into researchand I would love to hear from you.
- Want more Broad news and insights?
Follow us on LinkedIn, X, Instagramand Facebook at MSUBroadCollege,
or visit us on the webat Broad-dot-MSU-dot-edu.
(22:27):
forward slash news.
- And remember,
like, rate and subscribe to Broad Matterson Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
- That does it for this episode.
I'm Quinetta Roberson...- and I'm Ken Szymusiak.
Join us next time to hear faculty and staffweighing in on relevant issues and discussing
how their workmakes an impact, illuminating how and why
(22:48):
Broad Matters.
- Welcome to Broad Matters.
A podcast bringing you thoughtleadership, innovative perspectives
and real world impact from Michigan StateUniversity's Eli Broad College of Business.
I'm Ken Szymusiak,
Managing Director for the Burgess Institutefor Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
- and I'm Quinetta Robertson, the John A.
Hannah DistinguishedProfessor of Management and Psychology.
- Today, we are speaking with Frederick Morgeson,
(00:23):
the Eli Broad Professor of Management,and current and founding editor of the Annual
Review of Organizational Psychologyand Organizational Behavior.
We are at the leading edgeof generating new knowledge
and expertise in the business world,and it tells you what's true when you do
research and follow rigorous practices.
It's somethingthat we can bring into our classrooms
(00:43):
and into our work with organizations thattell you this is going to work if you do it.
And so Broad mattersbecause we're generating the forefront
of the next generation of knowledge.
It's somethingevery organization should care about.
- Frederick, thanks for being here.- Thanks for having me.
- Frederick,you've been at Michigan State
for 25 years., during which you've conductedaward winning research, taught a variety
of courses, and consulted on numerous topicsin human resource and talent management.
(01:07):
Could you share a bit about your backgroundand the focus of your research?
- Sure, Quinetta.
It's great to be here, as well.
And you know, the thing for meis that I'm fundamentally interested
in the idea of leadershipand how we lead organizations.
How do leadersdeploy talent to deal with the problems
and the events that are occurringin their organizational environment?
My research is focusedon topics of leadership
and work design and event management,and these sorts of things.
(01:29):
And the ultimate goal is, ishow do we deploy our people?
How do we deploy our expertisein an organization for its effectiveness?
- We've seen a recent shiftin organizations like Amazon, Apple,
Meta, Zoom,
and so many otherswho are telling their employees
that it's time to come back into the office.
Given your extensive research and work
(01:50):
design, why do you think these companiesare pulling people back to the office?
-You know, I've been tracking
kind of these issuessince the beginning of the pandemic,
and I've had a chance to kind of talk witha lot of people in organizations about this.
And when you talk to people,
they have a variety of sort of explanationsabout why they're bringing people back.
They're worried about productivity,accountability of people working from home.
(02:10):
They're worried about
can they build culture in the waythat they want to in their organizations?
They're worried about collaborationand the ability to collaborate effectively.
They're worried about developmentand especially people early in their career.
Can they get those experiencesthat are really needed
to develop themselves as professionals?
And so these ideas of we know how to do thatbest in person.
(02:31):
We have the most experience in historywith that.
There's a lot of logic to that.
I think the question is, ishow true is all of that?
And I think that's the challenge,and that's where the research can give us
some insight into., “Is this somethingthat is in fact needed to do those things?
And that's the big question.” -Do you have the big answer?
- The big answer is, it's complicated,
(02:51):
which is the most unsatisfying answer of all.
But I think the challenges is that, you know,we get very familiar with how
we have always done things.
There's a desire on the part of a lot oforganizations to sort of go back to normal.
If we had quizzedeverybody in January of 2020 and said,
you know, something's going to happenand it's going to basically send
everybody home, period around the world,no one would have said, “yeah,
(03:14):
I can see that happening.”And yet it happened a couple of months later.
And so we all dealt with this.
We all experienced this.
And it's a lived experience
for all of us, which is very different thankind of reading about it or hearing about it.
You experienced it.You were in school and you went home.
You were at work and you went home.
Some businesses shut down entirely.
Others radically changed their operational process.
(03:35):
And it's been the slow process back.
And the question is, will it ever beback? And are we, in fact back now?
If you look at some of the data
on occupancy in office spaces, it's hoveringstill around 50, 55 percent.
That's a far cry from essentially the 100percent occupancy we had pre-pandemic.
And so that's I think, something
that we're really going to grapple with ishow do we manage our workforce
(03:58):
going forward in a way that recognizesthis new reality we are in?
- Yeah,
I just want to riff on that a little bitand just kind of ask a follow up question.
Was 4 or 5 years enough time to changeculture in some of these institutions
so that it feels normal to maintainthis remote work environment,
because you still see this, like balance.
Now, some of them are like,yeah, this is working really well.
(04:19):
Some are in this camp where it's like,oh man, we gotta go back to the way it was.
Companies that are built to be dynamic,I think can handle this really well.
But some of these institutionswhere they have large employee bases, it's
hard to keep track of accountability unless,you know, people are checking in, right?
- I think the accountabilityis one of the big things.
So why are they bringing people back?
I think there's lots of explanations aroundculture and collaboration and other things.
(04:41):
At the root ofit is a worry about accountability.
What are you doing when I can't check upon you in like a real way?
And so I think people have not helpedthemselves when they're working from home,
and they kind of disappear when you needto pull somebody and you go find them.
I have in my mindthat CEOs worry about people
doing laundry and walking their dogsduring the middle of the day,
because in a moment's notice,you can't find them.
I think that is drivinga lot of the desire to come back.
(05:04):
The explanation that's given is different
around productivityand culture and collaboration.
But I think at its root,a lot of it is about accountability concerns.
Ken (05:13):
Do you anticipate any lasting changes in how work is structured
or how employees might engagewith organizations through this?
- Well,
I think one of the big lasting changesis the fact
that this is a lived experience by everyone.
And so you have done this thing.
You went partially remote.,if not fully remote, for a couple of years.
You did your job just fine.
Everybody has that experienceor a lot of people have that experience.
(05:34):
So now you're being told you got to come backbecause you can't do your job remotely.
Well, that for a lot of people fliesin the face of their own lived experience.
And so now you're telling me we can't do it,and yet we did do it.
It's not an abstractthought that you can't work from home.
I did work from home.
You're saying I can't be productive. And yet,if you're a sales person, you have numbers.
Maybe your numbers are greatwhen you work from home.
(05:55):
Maybe you go into the office and everybody’ssitting on zoom calls or teams calls
while they're sitting in a physical building.Well, I could do this at home, right?
And so part ofit is getting around this idea about
how do you explain whyit's important to be there.
One of the leadership challenges of managingthis event and managing the explanation
about why we're back and creating a narrativeand a story about why we need to come back
(06:18):
and what it means for us organizationally,and why that was an experiment in a way.
And and maybe we don't wantthat experiment anymore.
It doesn't mean there's not consequences.If you do make everybody come back.
But that's certainly a challengefrom a leadership standpoint,
articulating the logicin a way that is real to people
that have experienced something - - ...and what work is, to some extent.
(06:38):
Not just the place you earn, it'swhere you have colleagues.
I almost think about.
It is like a division of introvertsand extroverts almost.
You kind of wonder, like,will there be kind of two
labor pools where people really opt into
this is the lifestyleI want, now, after five years?
I'm going to find companies that supportthat and folks who want to be around people.
You know?
- So you said a bunch of things can that
I think are really important for this issue.
(07:00):
And one is there'sdefinitely distinctive preferences
on the part of a workforceabout whether they want to be in full-time
or a significant part of timein a hybrid arrangement.
And folkswho are totally happy staying remote.
And that's something that I havepersonally seen evolve in my students
and in working with organizationsis early on,
there was more of a desire to stay remote,
but then people begin to see the downsidesof being fully remote.
(07:22):
Organizations are social structures.
They don't exist
without the people in them, and a big partof what people get out of their work lives
is the social piece - the connectionto others, the ability to interact
and develop friendships.
It's a huge driver of retention is the sensethat you have a friendship network at work
and you're connected to them.
(07:42):
You're achieving something together.
In person is the most sortof rich communication medium.
Those are all real strong pulls for people.
And when I asked my classes,you know, who wants to work remotely?
It's become a 50/50 thing.
Where half of them are kind of like,“maybe not fully remote,
but certainly some hybrid flexibility”versus “no,
(08:02):
I want to be there.” I want to be underfootfor a lot of the reasons you mentioned.
- I wanted to unpack something you said earlierabout there being this lived experience,
but then this misalignment in the narrativebetween the accountability and the culture.
Do you have any guidance or thoughts onhow leaders let people know
(08:23):
about the importance of being in the officeat some times versus others?
Is there a way to coach leaders on that?- I think so.
One of the is to have a narrative
and explanationabout why we want people back,
but for that explanationto resonate with people.
So you can say, well,we need people to come back
because they can't be productive at home.
While there might be data
and the science is very clear,people tend to be more productive
(08:45):
working remotelybecause you're not interrupted as much.
You tend to work more.
So that explanation ringshollow for a lot of people,
probably because they've had the experienceof being perfectly effective.
So to have an explanation and narrativethat rings true, that is compelling,
it doesn't have to be somethingthat everyone agrees with.
There's a phrase that I've seen going aroundis this notion of disagree and commit.
(09:05):
So the idea being that I might disagreewith, in this case, coming back to work
full time or in a fuller way,but I am going to still commit to doing it.
I think the long-term challengefor organizations is,
can you get your peopleto come back and stay back?
And that's the twist.
And, you know,
(09:26):
I think organizations are certainly withintheir rights to say, “we want you here.”
I think it's more effectivewhen you can have a compelling explanation
and argumentabout why that is, and be open about the fact
that not everybody's going to agree.
But at the end of the day, leadersare decision makers and organizations,
and that's how it's always been,and that's how it will always be.
I think maybe not having blanket policies.
You'd let people flexthat have maybe earned the right to flex
(09:49):
because they're super valuableor some other thing that they've earned.
So blanket policies become challengingfor really high performing talent.
But understanding that
but then the question becomes is if notevery organization is doing this, now what?
Because some part of your workforce
is going to want to be remoteor want to be hybrid, at least.
(10:09):
They're not going to want to livein New York City,
where their commute is two hours each way.
They're going to want to worka significant part of time from home.
Citigroup made an announcement.
They're embracing a long term, more flexiblehybrid approach, which stands in contrast
to, like JPMorgan and some of the otherbig financial firms in New York City.
Jamie Dimon was quoted.
He basically said,“I don't care what you people think”.
(10:29):
And it's like, oh, well, you know,
a lot of employees don't like hearing that.
Now, that may be true.And I think this is the disagreeing idea.
He's not wrong,but people don't want to hear this.
And if you're competitive, set is saying,well, we're going to embrace this.
You might lose your key people.
And I thinkone of the things that I've learned
and what we know in our research, is thattalent is what drives your organization's
(10:51):
success, period. There is nothing else.
So whatever you think matters
organizationally,know that it ultimately resolves
back to what the people are doingin your organization.
When you think you're being innovative, it's
because the people are coming upwith new ideas.
If you think you're being adaptiveis because the people in your organization
are adapting to the changesin the environment. Talent is king.
And so the question becomes is,if the very best talent leaves,
(11:16):
where does that leave you?
Organizationally, we see all the timethese high-profile hires in the AI space,
in the tech spacewhere these sort of really successful
people are being wooed awayfrom organizations.
Now imagine you're sitting in an environment
where you're insisting upon peoplecoming back and your main competitor isn't.
Do you think you're goingto lose across the board, your people?
(11:36):
No, you're going to lose your best people,
because your best peoplealways have the most options.
They're always the most demanding,
but they're always the most valuable andthe most important for you organizationally.
That's the dilemma leadershave to grapple with and weigh.
If you push them away,you might win the battle, right?
But you might lose the long term war.That's the thing to weigh.
(11:57):
You can make them come back.
But we have to think about the implicationsof making them.
- Frederick, those are great examples.
Are there any others that you're workingwith firsthand in your research
that you could kind of comment on in termsof what types of results
you're seeing,or some trend lines that might be emerging?
- Absolutely.
Ken, and I think this is an example of sort
of this virtuous cyclebetween kind of the research activities
(12:18):
that we do at Broadwith the practical implications
that matter for organizations,for the students that we teach
and the peoplethat kind of follow what we do.
I had a project studyingwhat I call event leadership.
This is this ideathat leaders need to respond to
and manage the eventsthat are occurring in their environment.
Obviously, the pandemic is a huge event
and everything that sort of was wroughtby the pandemic.
And I was talking with the senior leaderat a major organization.
(12:39):
I can't say the name,but a major organization.
And he was telling me how they've embracedkind of the remote work model.
We talked about the implications of that.
And, you know,it involves kind of moving their business
around the globe and,you know, reapportioning resources.
But one of the points that he madewas in recruiting.
One of their big competitors in the space hasinitiated these return to office policies,
(12:59):
and that they love the factthat their competitor did this
because they've startedto systematically hire
their senior executiveswho don't want to come back to the office
and honestly don't need to be backin the office in that kind of a role.
And so they see thisas sort of a real competitive advantage
for themfrom a talent acquisition standpoint.
It was one of the thingsthe Citigroup CEO mentioned as well.
(13:19):
We see this as a competitive advantagebecause it allows us to appeal to top talent
that does have a lot of options.
Again, your very best talent, they're goingto be treated well where they are.
You've got to figure outhow do you lure them,
how do you recruit them,how do you get them to be interested in you?
It's an example to me of how you can envisionwhat the future looks like
(13:39):
and take advantage of it, today, especially,we have other organizations
who are maybe stuckin kind of the old way of working.
When I talk about this to organizations,I say there's no going back.
And I think we as human beings,we seek the familiar, right?
That's the fundamental psychologyof human beings.
And we seek to go back to whatwe've experienced.
The new generation of workersmay not want it.
(14:01):
And in a lot of ways,we're all changed by it.
So there really is no going back.
There's a going forward and the questionfor us is what does that forward look like?
And that's why we do research.What does the future of work look like?
What is that future of hybrid or remote worklook like?
It's hard to know,but it probably doesn't look like the past.
And I think that's the thingthat we have to understand.
(14:23):
And if you think about who makes decisions
in organizations, it tends to be peoplein baby boomer, generation X generations.
And yet your workforce is filledwith generation Z and millennials.
They might not want the same thing,but the decision makers are,
you know, “this is how I did it.
I spent 20, 30 years working my way,grinding it out, and so should these people.”
(14:43):
And maybe they don't.
I mean, there's lots of explanationsfor why we want to do things.
And I think being honest with yourselfand clear about why you're doing it,
try to share as much as you can,even if it's information
that you think people aren'tgoing to like to hear.
You not telling them doesn't meanthey're not thinking about it,
not speculating about it,and not doing all of those things
(15:05):
that we know people do in organizations.
So you have to understandthat very little private information remains
in organizational settings.So you have to control it.
You control the narrative.You manage the meaning.
“We've announced return to office.
Here's why we're doing our returnto office. Here's how it benefits us.
We know that some of you don't like that.Here's why we need to have that happen.
(15:25):
We know that some of you are going to leave,
and we understand that as well.”
Organizations have different culturesand have different values.
It's a fundamental principle of our fieldis that people sort themselves
in organizations where the valuesare consistent with their own,
and I think this is a dimension uponwhich people will ultimately sort themselves.
In the end, employees see through iteither way, and they can vote with their feet
(15:46):
by leaving. And I think that's an okay thing.
People have gotten maybe over the last fiveyears in the idea that they have more agency
because they don't have to go on acan stay home, but we all have always worked
at the pleasure of the leadersin our organization to some extent.
- The flip side is
how hard it is for, you know, ateam of 12 to 15 people to build rapport
and work together on complex problemsremotely has become an issue, right?
(16:09):
Like when somethingneeds five people in a room
and it requires a whiteboarding session, Zoomdoesn't have the same dynamic.
The outcomes are not what you getwhen you put yourself together
in a room and feed offone another to come up with unique solutions.
There'sprobably no right or wrong at this point,
but these are trade offs across the board.
- It's the one domainwhere the science is pretty clear.
(16:30):
It's actually better in person.
If you have a job or you have an organizationthat really relies upon really deep kind
of teamwork, collaborative processes,
creativity, in personstill seems to be the way to go
because of all the things you mentioned -the immediacy of it,
the abilityto bounce ideas off of each other.
Even before the pandemic,there was a research literature on remote,
a virtual teams,
and the advice
(16:50):
that comes out of that researchis that when you're launching
that team, you're best offto get them together in person.
So at least they get to know each other,know what their styles are, and so forth,
and then then go away.
And then you bring them back periodicallybecause that in-person interaction
is just so important.
And so if you're doing kind of complex,collaborative, creative work,
(17:11):
yeah, in person is still the way to go.
Many of the traditional practices
are difficult to do online,and so don't try to do them the same way.
And so it's not that it can't be done, it'sjust that it's done differently.
And I think that's the opportunity fororganizations to sort of envision the future.
We need to have our teamsbe cohesive and collaborative.
(17:32):
Okay, so let's not try to replicatean in-person setting online.
Let's think broadly about howwe might actually do that in a different way
than we would do it in person.
- How do you address workplacedesign and return-to-office policies
with your MBA students,and what feedback do you receive from them?
- This has become just an enormously kindof hot topic in my Executive MBA.
(17:53):
My Full-Time MBA and in my MSMSL classrooms.
That last one is 100 percent online.
It's something on everybody's mind
because it obviously affects themin a pretty major way.
And I will say early on,I saw a lot more interest in pure remote.
And as the years have gone by,I've seen a movement toward, well,
probably still a priority for hybrid,but a certainly a significant
(18:15):
non-trivial number of people who say, “no,I want to be back in person
for the things that we talked about earlier.”This idea of I like the social connection,
I like to segment.
I don't want to have an office in my housebecause then I can never escape my work.
During the pandemic,people got burnt out more
and their well-being went downbecause they could never escape.
You can be reached around the clockbecause there's your office.
That's a real challenge.
(18:36):
And so we talk a lot aboutwhat does that future look like.
And I think organizationsshould think a lot about the fit question.
And that is, you know,some people really want to be in-person,
just likesome people really want to be creative.
Some people really want to deliverhigh quality customer experience.
These are individual characteristicspeople have.
So maybe organizationally we say, “you know,I want my people there.
(18:59):
I'm going to focus in my recruitmentselection
on peoplewho expressed the desire to work in person.”
And then it becomes these differentkind of fit elements, right.
So if you're willing to offer hybrid,that's a different kind of workforce.
You also have to have expectations for themthat you communicate.
And I think that's kind of a wayin which you can navigate
this is by trying to understandwhat people fit with our organization.
(19:20):
I do a lot of work in health care.
And so one of the things a lot of health care
organizations care about is hiring peoplewith empathy.
It's hard to train, so you got to find it.
So you segment your recruitment and you'rehiring on people with high levels of empathy.
Couldn't you do that same thing with workfrom home versus in-person versus hybrid,
and have some assessmentdevoted to that preference and establishing
(19:42):
that expectation in the recruitmenthiring process.
- Yeah, I really like that idea.
Thinking about new tools and waysto kind of measure how someone has that
cultural fit upfront based on whereyou want to take your office five,
ten years from now. Right.
That's my seguequestion here I'd love to build on
is based on your research,where do you see the future of work
headed in that kind of 5 to 10 year horizon?
What are you seeing?
(20:03):
- So I like to make thisprediction in my classes
that if we came back for the 20 year reunion,what would the world look like?
5 to 10 year windows, maybe more ten years: You know, we're going to look (20:09):
undefined
and we're going to say, here'sthe winners and losers.
And I think the winners are going to bethe people that figured out
how to take advantage of this new reality,not to try to enforce
a return to some previous state.
Maybe some part of your organizationor some organizations.
That is the answer.
But I think my advice would be to tryto figure out how can we leverage this?
(20:34):
How can we take advantage of the factthat people are now more familiar
and more comfortable?
We've learned a lot about how to do this,
maybe not 100% remote, you know,maybe have certain rules around hybrid.
Maybe some people have to come inand we pay them more for that.
You know, it's a compensable factorof working in person versus working remotely.
So in that long term, the organizations thatsurvive and thrive, I think, are going to be
(20:57):
the ones that figure outthat your talent has a lot of options.
Some of those options are going to benot working 10 percent in person,
and we have to adapt and develop systemsthat enable us to do this effectively.
I would say revisit, re-envisionthe entirety of how you utilize your talent
and why you're doing that.
And that kind of goes back to somethingI said earlier,
(21:19):
this idea of having a logicand a justification
not just to convince people to do it,but to actually think through
why we're doing thisand what do we gain by doing it?
What do we lose by doing it right and makingthat calculation and thinking, you know,
maybe we do have kind of a different cohortsin our organizations
where this is our positionsthat can be flex and hybrid,
(21:41):
and these are positionsthat have to be here and here's why.
And how are we going to compensate peopleand how are we going to develop them
or reward them in this new,more complex world?
- Thank you so much for joining us todayon the podcast, Frederick.
If people are interested in keeping upwith your work, where can they find you?
- Well, all of my professional stuffis at my website.
It's morgeson.com, so M-O-R-G-E-S-O-N-DOT-COMand I'm on LinkedIn and so kind of connect
(22:06):
with me and love to hear
kind of your experienceswith kind of the hybrid
return-to-work policies or anything elseleadership. I'm a curious person.
That's why I got into researchand I would love to hear from you.
- Want more Broad news and insights?
Follow us on LinkedIn, X, Instagramand Facebook at MSUBroadCollege,
or visit us on the webat Broad-dot-MSU-dot-edu.
(22:27):
forward slash news.
- And remember,
like, rate and subscribe to Broad Matterson Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
- That does it for this episode.
I'm Quinetta Roberson...- and I'm Ken Szymusiak.
Join us next time to hear faculty and staffweighing in on relevant issues and discussing
how their workmakes an impact, illuminating how and why
(22:48):
Broad Matters.
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