237. Is hybrid the worst of all worlds? With Professors Ina Purvanova and Alanah Mitchell, authors of The New Workplace"

0:00Some of our most almost heartbreaking, I would say, interviews were with young people who had to work from home. They felt lonely. One of them talked about being depressed. One of them talked about feeling like a soulless husk. I mean, who says that? I'm a soulless husk. That is Professor Ina Purvanova, along with Professor Elena Mitchell, who we'll hear from in just a second. She's been studying the world of hybrid, remote and in-office workplaces for years. And more importantly, what impact this has on people forced to work in an environment that just doesn't suit them. That woman was counting every task she did because she had to be in the office to do them.

0:41If she would have maybe just been given a flexible assignment where she had a hybrid role versus an in-office role, she might have been able to find some happiness there. She ultimately ended up leaving that company because she just was too upset about where she was working. This research into remote, hybrid and in-office work turned up countless stories like these. Stories of people fed up, burnt out or just worn down by the mismatch between where they had to work and where they worked best. Today we're asking the question every leader needs to face. What if hybrid isn't the best of both worlds but is actually the worst?

1:17Ina and Elena have spent years mapping nine different work personas, from the officers who never want to leave the office, to the avatars who live entirely online, and the integrators trying to bridge both worlds. And in this conversation, you'll hear what happens when those worlds collide, why hybrid can feel like a trap, and what you, the leader, can do to stop alignment problems turning into resignations. Hello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioral science meets workplace culture. Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

1:56My name is Leanne. I'm a chartered occupational psychologist. And my name is Al. I'm a business owner. And we are here to help you simplify the science of work. After this very quick break, we'll get into the nine personas that determine how people like to work, why hybrid sparks conflict, and how to move from misaligned to half aligned without losing your mind or your best people. See you in a second. Let's join Al as he interviews Ina and Elena. My name is Ina Parvanova. I'm a professor at Drake University and I work in Pullman College of Business and I teach leadership and organizational behavior.

2:31Yes, and I am Elena Mitchell. I am also a professor at Drake University. I teach in information systems specifically. So really looking at how we use technology to work together. So in our book, a little bit of background, Ina and I both have been studying this topic of virtual teams and working together through the use of technology for decades. And we had already started working on this project pre-pandemic. And so we were looking to explore how companies were providing space to their employees and the different spaces that they were working in. And we were looking at multiple different companies, but then the pandemic happened and really disrupted our work, but also gave us an opportunity to learn from different types of companies about what they were doing.

3:15And so we really looked at three different companies with three different strategies. So the first company kind of embraced their office space and wanted everybody to come back and be there all the time. The second really just became very happy with that remote work option and really encouraged people to stay there. And then the third kind of mixed the two approaches together and came up with a hybrid strategy. So we had three companies in those three buckets. And then we wanted to look at the alignment of those three different companies and how the employees that they had working in those different arrangements actually ended up fitting with the strategies that they had chosen.

3:50Probably the easiest way to think about the word alignment is to think about the word fit. How big of a fit you are to your company and vice versa, how well the company fits its employees. So it goes both ways. Even before we finished the book, we had an article in the Harvard Business Review that outlined the nine personas that we found. And that was so fun because as people, as our friends and people that we work with, we're reading about those nine personas. They would message us and say, oh, this is what I am. This is me. Right. And so they could really see like what their company strategy is, what their preferences and what that means for them and how they fit into their company.

4:30And then our goal is ultimately to share the stories of those personas and then show how we can get them to work together. Because yes, we are not trying to sway anybody one way or another. We recognize that there's differences in what company's goals would be and what employee preferences would be. And those can even change over time. Some of what we found from the people that we talked to is while they see themselves solidly in this bucket, right Right now, at this phase of their career or this phase of their life, they could see changes happening in the future that might shift them to another bucket.

5:05And so that was also interesting. It's not like it's not a static decision of what we like right now and why. Right. I mean, we opened the book by saying sameness is out, choice is in. And we think that that is, quite frankly, perhaps the biggest gift that the pandemic gave us, to understand that there are choices out there and to understand that you can, in fact, find your alignment if you listen to what you prefer and if you really ask smart questions of potential future employers. Let's talk about these personas for a second. I don't give us all nine because then people won't buy the book. But can you tell us, perhaps share a couple of them?

5:41And it would be interesting if maybe Elena and Ina, if you had different personas. I would probably say one of the personas that I really loved because I was surprised to find it was what we call the officers. So those are people who are absolutely gung-ho. I am pro-office. I do not want to work anywhere else. This is where I feel at home. I was in the office even before it was allowed for me to go back to the office during the pandemic. And now that we're all back, I never want to go back. I will never take a job that is not office based. I was shocked to hear the number of people that we had in our participant pool who fell into that bucket because I'm not in that bucket personally.

6:30So to me, the officers were a very, very interesting persona. So opposite of that one, the officers who wanted to be in the office, we would have avatars, right? So avatars are people who want to work remote and they want they benefit from that and they're happy to be there. And so that kind of is the place that they fit in. And they maybe were working there before. They find that to be the most beneficial use of their skills and knowledge and productivity is just being able to work remotely on their own schedule. And their avatars is how they're kind of seen, right? Right. Their technology systems.

7:05And I don't talk a lot about what our different personas are. And I definitely think that that shifts with your roles, right? Like when I was working as a faculty member, probably the more of a hybrid preference would be where I am. But then since I've moved into a new role, which is exactly what I was talking about before, since I've moved into a new role, I'm in the office all the time. And that's the expectation that I would have. And luckily, I'm able to find value in that. And that's kind of hopefully what the book does is help to give people tips for finding value in the different strategies that their companies have chosen to.

7:41And to Elena's point, I mean, being that I am in a faculty role, I am more of that kind of mixed persona. So those we call integrators. So people who kind of like a best of both worlds experience. And I actually would like to think that I'm one of the original integrators because I always have worked in a hybrid modality. I would always come to the office on my teaching days and prefer to work from my home office on my non-teaching days because that's where I could get the quiet time to focus on writing and doing my research. Where back in the day, almost everybody would always come to the office regardless.

8:15So I think that I'm one of the OGs. So it seems like Elena, your persona has changed because of your role. And then Ina, your persona has stayed because of your preference. But are there any people who just perhaps have like a hectic home life where they just want to get away from it? And that's what pushes them towards opposite. Yes, we especially we talk to what this is some of the surprising stuff that we found. And female executives, surprisingly, we found almost like a significant trend where they prefer to be in the office because it gave them a little bit more separation from what their expectations would be if they were to be in a remote or out or at home kind of position.

8:57Yes. And on the opposite of that, by the way, we also found, and that was a very significant trend that, by the way, has been replicated by others since we published the book, that male executives and high level ranking leaders within organizations actually lean more towards the avatar persona, preferring to work from home. So some gender stereotypes that we would normally have and that I believe people continue to have. As Elena said, that's one of the surprising things that we uncover with our research. But again, some of the gender stereotypes would lead people to imagine that women would be more of that avatar persona and men would be more of that officer persona.

9:37And what we find that, especially if you look at higher ranking male and female leaders, it's really flipped. You mentioned hybrid there, which to an outsider who has not got your knowledge or your expertise or looked at your research, they might think, oh, that's the best of all worlds. But I can also see a scenario where it's going to create the officers and the avatars and they're like battling each other. What did you find around the hybrid? That is exactly what we found. We actually found that hybrid is both the best of both worlds and potentially could be the worst of both worlds. and the reason for that is precisely as you're pointing out people who prefer to be in the office full-time are kind of upset as to well why are we hybrid why can't we just like rip the band-aid and say everybody back to the office all the time and then people who prefer to be mostly remote are like well why are we hybrid why don't we just say let's just stay home all the time so you know those two extremes were like the company is halfway where i want them to be why don't they just move fully to where I want them to be.

10:40And so there was a lot of back and forth between the officers in the avatars in hybrid settings. Whereas, you know, the integrators in hybrid settings, which are in perfect alignment with their hybrid company, obviously, were kind of caught in the middle. And so I think that that's a really important thing for hybrid organizations to realize is that even though the hybrid strategy might seem as the best of both worlds, it actually may create a lot of more rifts between employees that you really, really need to manage very carefully from a human resource perspective. So this may not be a question you can answer, but if hybrid isn't the solution, did you come across a perfect solution?

11:23That's a very interesting question. I think that what I would say is that the perfect solution is not, it's not realistic, right? Like there is no perfection. You know, there would always be somebody who would not be happy. Right. But whatever might come close, if you will, to a perfect solution. To me, one of the lessons that specifically from the book that we're trying to communicate is just be clear, be clear in terms of your expectations, be clear in terms of how your tactics, your implementation tactics match what you say. because otherwise it's confusing and people don't know what's expected of them.

12:07People don't know what the right way to act is. They don't have an ability to adapt because they don't know what they are adapting to. One thing that we did find in follow-up research, by the way, which we had been doing since the book was published, is that people are very adaptive, in fact, in that, you know, they have moved more. People have moved closer to alignment with their companies. While we were collecting the data for our book, we found that about 50 % of our participants were fully aligned. And then in the follow-up research that we've been doing now, we are actually finding that that level of alignment has risen up to 65 to 70 % of the workforce.

12:52So that's, you know, a good two-thirds of the workforce are now aligned. But that is happening when people know what's expected of them. And so to go back to the idea of what's a perfect solution, the perfect solution is just to know what you want to do and to communicate it very clearly and to make sure that your actions or what we call implementation tactics actually match your workplace strategy. I remember one interview that we did where an employee was working for a company that wanted everybody in the office, right? And this employee was just every day counting all the tasks that they did and how unnecessary it was that she was physically there.

13:37So she just would, you know, I did this, this, and this, and none of them necessitated me being in the office. So I definitely think, yes, there's not a perfect solution. But the thing is that you really have to pay attention to if your employees are feeling like that employee did, and feeling like probably that task that they, the task that they were doing could have been done somewhere else. And she really wanted to be doing them somewhere else. So maybe you want to accommodate that, or maybe it's not the right fit. Right. But I also, I get nervous if, if every company is picking their strategy and then every company, and then every employee is picking their preference and working for a company with that preference.

14:18Have we like negated all diversity of employees and thought that we just have the same similar types of people and the same similar types of organizations, like that would be a challenge too. So I think it's just important to recognize there are different choices that can be made. There are different preferences. Those shift over time, which I illustrated in my own example. But you just have to pay attention to it and make sure you're, you know, adjusting as needed. Right. And that's a really, really important point. I think that there are two levels always, right? Like there is the macro level, like what the organization stands for, broadly speaking.

14:54Let's say it's a company that believes in being in the office, or it's a company that believes in, you know, freedom and whatnot, and wants to be fully remote, whatever. So that's the broader level. But I think to Elena's point, and that kind of seems contradictory to our book a little bit, although it's not, is if you are looking for that perfect alignment, does that mean that in an office company, all the employees there would be what we call officers. And what would that do to the diversity of thought and perspectives among the workers in that company? Or conversely, if you're a fully remote company, what we call remote first, if all of your employees want to work from home, does that negate that other diversity of perspectives?

15:37And so therefore, a second level of alignment needs to come in. And that's a little bit more of that micro level. So within the context of your big picture strategy, how do you still attract and retain some employees that might not be a perfect alignment to your strategy, but maybe they are halfway aligned. Maybe they agree and love some aspects of your organization, maybe your mission, maybe your vision, whatnot. So how do you accommodate those people to where you meet them halfway? So it's always going to be some sort of a macro big picture. Here is my main message. Here is who we are. Here is why we are that.

16:19But then looking at the composition of your workforce and making sure that you're making mini micro adjustments as necessary to be sure that you have that diversity of thoughts and opinions. It's always been a blend. It's just that people for some reason fail to recognize it. And I think that the media has actually done a disservice. And honestly, that's probably one One of the reasons why Elena and I wrote this book is because once we got into this research a little bit more, we realized how many myths are out there in the media. And they are amplified by very loud voices like Elon Musk's or the Jamie Dimons of the world.

16:55And that's just not true. And in research, by the way, we have always looked at virtuality, as we call it, on a continuum. So, you know, you can be fully in office, you can be fully online, but most people are kind of a mix of both. So it's always been the case that we've been a mix of both. Here's where leaders get tripped up. It's not job titles, it's tasks. We used to say dress for your day, but now it might be more appropriate to say locate for your day. I would say based on our interviews, a lot of IT individuals tend to fall more towards a work from home preference. And I think that that might be due to the fact that they are very comfortable with technology and a lot of their work can be more legitimately, if you will, done from home.

17:43Although I would say that even a lot of the IT individuals that we spoke with would say that some type of in-person interaction from time to time was beneficial. So even though their preference may have been for more fully remote type of work arrangements, they still would see some value in a hybrid arrangement. A lot of the marketing types of people that we spoke with tended to prefer, a lot of the communications professional that we spoke with tended to prefer more in-office based work just because they kind of felt like they fit off of each other. What we did observe was tasks, differences in tasks, right?

18:24Like if you know you're going to be heads down in a spreadsheet and that's what you're going to be doing today, I think that we found people to be fairly flexible on that, right? Like if I want to be not interrupted, I'm happy to be doing this from my house or from a pod in my office where people can't find me. Like I think it depended on the task. If you need to be more collaborative or you want to check in with people, then I think then the office was making sense. So I don't know that we looked at job titles, but tasks, I would say we saw some clear separation between where tasks, like task location fits, for example, like where that task makes the most sense for you to do.

19:03Yes. One of the leaders that we spoke with, I was very impressed with that comment that she made. She said it used to be back in the day that we used to tell employees, dress for your day. You know, so like on days where you have meetings, maybe you dress up a little bit. On days where it's more heads down work, maybe you kind of, you know, dress down a little bit. But now she said we actually tell people, find your work location based on your day. And so that's what we ended up referring to in our book as task location set. So depending on whatever it is on your calendar for the day, it may be more beneficial for you to work from home or it may be more beneficial for you to come into the office.

19:43We'll be back after this short break where we start to understand whose responsibility it is to decide on whether you work fully remote, fully in the office or a mixture of both. Welcome back. OK, let's get practical. Who actually calls this decision about the work policy? Should it be the leaders setting the rules or do the teams set the tone? Ina's take might surprise you. I feel like there's a bit of a chicken and egg situation here because it's like, who decides what the alignment is? Who decides we are all officers or we're going to be mainly office? Is it the organization or does the organization listen to what the team wants?

20:18How does someone even navigate that? When we started the research, we kind of found out that organizations were, like I said, already about 50 % aligned with their workforce, which actually shocked us because we started the research during the pandemic and right as organizations were coming out of the pandemic and were kind of placing their bets, if you will, as to what workplace strategy they were going to adopt, whether office forward, remote first or hybrid. And they already had a very decent, I would say, level of alignment. I mean, 50 % of the workforce being on the same page as you, especially when the pandemic just blew everything apart, if you will, to me was a very large number of alignment, right?

21:03So that leads me to believe that organizations are not just coming up with those strategies out of a hat, but they must be reading the tea leaves at least to a degree and knowing what their workers or at least a significant majority of the workers would appreciate and would like. And I know, you know, speaking specifically about the office forward company that we started, I know for a fact that that was the case for them. I believe the remote first company that we started also realized that people just loved being remote and absolutely decided to stay there. So some of those strategies, although, of course, naturally, they would come from the company to kind of answer your question.

21:46They are coming out of at least an implicit understanding that the leadership team has of what the workforce is willing to do and where they are at. I think that that's true. I think in every case, we were talking to employees at all levels. And so certainly as an individual, you get to make those choices about if you're working there and how you're doing that. And as a team lead or as a manager, you get to make choices about how you're engaging with your team. And then at the organizational higher level, you get to decide about what that right mix is for you. So I think it's happening at all levels and in different ways.

22:26You mentioned something before. You said that, I think you said 65 % alignment with some of the companies you've found now. As a manager, I'd be asking, is that okay? Is that enough? Do I need to be striving for 100 %? That's a very good question. So I would like to point out the 65 % alignment right now, in our opinion, is almost kind of just a natural alignment that happened where people after, you know, coming out of the pandemic, their organizations kind of initially being a little bit lukewarm about what they expected people to do. And then over the next several years after the world opened up after a lockdown, organizations becoming a little bit more clear in what they expected.

23:12So some of that alignment that we saw moving from 50 % roughly to 65 % roughly on average is kind of just that natural momentum, if you will. And now I think that what we're seeing in the data now is that things have stalled, that people are pretty set in their preferences and that organizations are becoming pretty set in what they want to do as far as their workplace strategy. And so to answer your question, no, 65 % is not okay. We can't just rely on this natural momentum that was happening, natural alignment that was happening as people were figuring out what's expected of me, what do I actually like, what works for my life.

23:55I think that now is really the time to get on board with this, you know, alignment idea and really figure out how I can improve those numbers. Because let's think about what that means, right? I mean, if you're half aligned, maybe it's kind of OK-ish. But if you're fully misaligned, then that hits your engagement levels. That hits your commitment to your organization. And eventually those things actually show up in your performance. And so you begin to be present versus to be engaged at work. So alignment is really, really important. And you can't just say, OK, it's five and a half years after the pandemic now.

24:35We've decided we're going to pursue this strategy. And that's that. You know, people just need to adapt. No, as a leader, as an organization, it is your role to help people adapt. I wouldn't think that 100 % alignment is where we need to be. So if we have about 65 % who are just perfect alignment, full alignment with the strategy that your company has chosen, that's great. Some percent of that is also going to be half aligned, right? Like maybe you are requiring everybody to work remote. You have some percent that likes hybrid and they like the remote, but they also like some time in the office, right?

25:14So they're half aligned. But then you also have some percent that wants to be in the office all the time. And so they're misaligned. They're not really matching up with what you're doing. I don't know that you need to pay all of your time and attention on that population that isn't isn't matched up with what you're doing. But if you could at least nudge them to value the hybrid, then you then then they're only half aligned rather than fully misaligned. Right. So that's the part. The example that I mentioned earlier where that woman was counting every task she did in theory because she had to be in the office to do them.

25:48If she would have maybe just been given a flexible assignment where she had a hybrid role versus an in-office role, she might have been able to find some happiness there. She ultimately ended up leaving that company because she just was too upset about where she was working. But if she could have had some flexibility, I suspect that would have been a half aligned situation and she would have been a little bit more happier. Yes. And that's a really, really super important point. So the balance of, you know, the 65 percent, so the 35 percent, that is a combination of half aligned and misaligned.

26:22And maybe half aligned is not that bad, you know. And so really, how do you perhaps move the misaligned to maybe half alignment versus to alignment? One thing that we have been finding out is that people are flexible, but they're flexible to a degree. And what we mean by that is they wouldn't jump over an alignment point. They would jump to the next alignment point. So if you are misaligned, you would more likely jump to being half aligned versus jump all the way to being fully aligned. And so, again, from an HR perspective, how do you, A, ensure that you know who is where in terms of their alignment?