Many Americans favor the flexibility of working from home. Many companies consider it a perk. What’s the best path forward for employees and employers? Nick Fabrizio, distinguished senior lecturer at the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, discusses the future of work with host Chris Wofford.
Flexible work options might be here to stay. Nick Fabrizio, distinguished senior lecturer at the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, explains why in this episode of the Cornell Keynotes podcast from eCornell, hosted by Chris Wofford.
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Cornell Keynotes Podcast
EP 19
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Chris Wofford: On today's episode, I'm joined by workplace policy expert Nick Fabrizio from Cornell's Brooks School of Public Policy to talk about remote work. Nick tells us it's not the quote new normal anymore. It's just normal. And it doesn't appear that we're ever going back to pre pandemic work arrangements. We cover some interesting employment data and statistics and try to get a read on the ever shifting dynamic between employees and employers.
Chris Wofford: And we tackle some of the hard questions. What is remote work actually doing for our productivity? Are people as satisfied in their remote work situation as much as we think they are? What are HR team members and employers doing about recruitment and retention? And whether you're remote, in office, or in a hybrid situation, how should you navigate your career while building lasting connections at work?
Chris Wofford: One last note, listeners, you may hear me mention a thing that happened, quote, last week or in recent past. That's because this recording is an edit from a live show we did in late 2023. But I can assure you that the dynamic hasn't changed all that much since then. So anyway, here's my conversation with Nick Fabrizio.
Chris Wofford: Nick, it looks like we're never going back completely to the office, but you have some data to suggest that things might change.
Nick Fabrizio: Yeah, I mean, you can look at the data that keeps coming in, it seems like it changes weekly. But certainly in a recent survey, 70 percent of employed Americans would prefer to work remotely full time or part time if they were given the option.
Chris Wofford: And salary reduction, you have an interesting stat on that.
Nick Fabrizio: Yeah, you know, interestingly, 35 percent reported they would accept a salary reduction in return for flexibility. Now, I think in the field, we see things differently, right? It always depends on who you ask. So, If I'm speaking for you, I'd say sure, Chris might take 35 percent less.
Nick Fabrizio: But if I answer that for myself. I mean, I think it's okay, but I'm not really sure if I would accept 35 percent salary reduction for a hybrid work arrangement.
Chris Wofford: No, I don't think I myself would and some of the video production crew said the same. So, let me ask you this we had talked about, and this is a through line, every workplace related conversation I've had over the last three years.
Chris Wofford: The recurring theme is to be an attractive employer, you've got to offer flexibility, right? And the data you just cited suggests this as well, right? This is where people are. This is their mindset. Are things going to change as it relates to this sometime in the near future?
Nick Fabrizio: I think they will because of the stress that employers have with recruitment and retention. And then advancement and advancing your career is a whole other issue. But to stay competitive right now, it seems like industries across a wide range of different fields are, and sectors are starting to look at recruitment and retention and offer options to their employees in terms of being attractive to be able to recruit them and then hopefully retain them. But everyone's kind of jockeying for position right now.
Chris Wofford: You've got some statistics related to employee satisfaction kind of a grim picture, actually, you were painting before we got started today. Where are people at?
Nick Fabrizio: In a new Gallup survey that came out, only 28 percent of workers feel connected with the organization, and this is at an all time low.
Nick Fabrizio: Last year, it was 32%. Really interesting information. And it's interesting to think about, you would think that with a variety of different work arrangements, people would be really satisfied and maybe they might be satisfied, but in terms of being connected with the organization, it's not there. And that should be alarming to organizations.
Chris Wofford: Now, who is that incumbent to increase the engagement? I mean as remote workers, being visible, being present, making sure that people that your company understands or organization understands the value that you bring. What do we have to do as employees to further demonstrate that value? What do we do?
Nick Fabrizio: One of the things that I use as a baseline is humans interact. So when you have that interaction at the workplace, people feel more connected. It leads to a lot of things, job satisfaction, project satisfaction, and a feeling like I have a connection to other people in this organization. It's very hard to do that remotely. So it really depends, again, on the business that you're in, on the industry you're in, your age, how quickly and how fast do you want to advance, and where are you in your career? Because without that connection to people, it's very hard to advance when you are working remotely.
Chris Wofford: Companies that do connection well, employee engagement, those that are able to recruit and retain employees. What's a good example? What's a shining example of a company that's doing this right?
Nick Fabrizio: Right now the companies that are able to offer a hybrid, and attract workers that can have some flexibility and maybe only be in the office two or three days a week, they have the advantage.
Nick Fabrizio: But we see the pushback right now in, in just this week, Goldman Sachs announced return to the office five days a week. So that's not hybrid. It's not working remotely. It's not hybrid. It's back in the office. Amazon this week returned to a hub. So what they're telling their teams is you may have moved to Bismarck, North Dakota. But if to be back home to work remotely and you're completely satisfied. But if there isn't a hub in Bismarck, North Dakota, you're going to have to relocate to where a hub is so you can engage with a team. Again, it gets back to that baseline. It's because it's human interactions. And when people are working remotely and they're in their office, or in their home, or wherever they are, they don't have that interaction. And organizations now are starting, they're realizing that even from a retention standpoint, And they need those connections. So right now, if you can offer, I think a hybrid unless you want to take the hard line and say it's five days a week, you have an advantage if you can offer a hybrid.
Chris Wofford: Shifting gears a little bit, what about work that is, kind of a high touch you know customer sales, account management. You work in a capacity as a consultant for organizations, healthcare, banks, and others. How do you do your work?
Nick Fabrizio: This is the, if I'm not with clients and you're not meeting clients, you can't be. When you, and you can think of in that industry sales, but you could also think of being a vice president or in the C suite of the organization. If you're not out meeting with your clients and your customers, you're not going to be successful in your career and you're not going to be someone that can advance not only the organizational mission, but your own personal mission. So as a consultant, if I'm not working with client and doing some client facing work. I'm not going to be effective. So certainly I can go meet with the client wherever they are in whatever state that they're in and fly to them and spend some face time. Then my hybrid is when I come back to the office, I can work remotely on that project and fulfill the data analysis and all those things that I can do at home, write the report. But then you can bet I've got to go back out to the client and have that interaction again with them face to face. So those things can't all be done remotely.
Chris Wofford: Are there common complaints any themes that have emerged from remote workers who feel not necessarily very attached or close to the organization?
Nick Fabrizio: Absolutely. Some of the themes are, I have no connection to people. I don't hear from my boss enough. I don't hear from other people besides my boss. So I don't really know what's going on in the company. I know what's going on with my projects and my responsibilities, but I've kind of lost connection to the whole. And that is difficult for workers, especially when they're starting out trying to advance their careers.
Chris Wofford: So what can an employer do? What should an employer do to increase engagement among remote workers? I mean what's the practice these days?
Nick Fabrizio: That's the hard part, but I'd say as an organization, what you want to create is touch points. What are touch points where you can bring in your workers who are working remotely, put them on teams, and have them engage with others and with other managers. But you have to be very deliberate in that. It's almost like you are you're kind of coming out of your shell and you're developing a new set of responsibilities and skills, and the skill is based on you creating connections as a manager. You've got to deliberately try to create connections so those remote workers or workers in some type of hybrid can make connections with other people in the organization.
Chris Wofford: I'll speak about my work experience. I feel very connected. I mean, I'm here in the office, I'm here in the studio but I have a daily stand up. We have a 15 minute, we go around the horn and, you know, that seems like common practice. Years ago, this was kind of a new thing, the daily stand up. It was related to, working in an agile environment and everything that kind of comes with that. Would you encourage a daily stand up among teams? Do you have anything similar in your work?
Nick Fabrizio: I do think that's important because again it's bringing some structure to what otherwise could be sort of this disconnected environment. So for instance, I've got some friends who are accountants and they work on a project and they're on a team. But the team really doesn't meet. Everyone on all the accounts kind of works independently. They have their responsibilities and duties that they have to complete. And then they come together when everyone's done there. So they check in remotely, and then they just come together when the project's completed.
Nick Fabrizio: So that really isn't, there's not a whole lot of interaction. And I've checked with my friends and now, three years later now in this environment since COVID. They really don't feel connected to their team members. And that would be the opposite if you were in the office, because you would know your team members. For better or for worse, you would know their strengths, their weaknesses, their patterns, what they like, what they dislike.
Nick Fabrizio: But when you don't have to meet. Until you hit specific milestones, it's hard to make that connection and it's hard to really feel like you're really truly a part of a team rather than, Oh, Chris, you're assigned to team A, work with them on this project when it's done. Fantastic.
Chris Wofford: Yeah, I was talking to a couple of our video production guys before the shoot today. We're talking about productivity. Where are you most productive? Everybody's got kind of their story, right? For me, I'd rather be in the office. I'd rather be in the studio. That's when I do my best work. Maybe it's because I'm, generally speaking, kind of extroverted and feel connected to people. In their case, they both suggested that working from home they work highly efficiently. What do you think? What do you see at organizations or in your work?
Nick Fabrizio: I can tell you from my similar experience personal experiences. I work, I'm very effective working at home. Now remember, I have a hybrid so I have that client facing part besides teaching and being face to face with students as well but working with clients there's client facing work. But when I come back to the office, the home office. I'm very productive. I know I can do my data analysis there, write my reports, do my phone calls with clients and I'm very productive. Now I had a partner in my consulting firm, same type of work arrangements, but he had to go to the office because he was not productive at home.
Nick Fabrizio: Many distractions at home. He'd be in the kitchen making his cappuccinos, the dog would be barking, there were a million distractions, so he had to get out of that environment. I think it's individualized though, so I wouldn't say it's a set rule, but some people, myself included, are more productive being at home or in some hybrid than if I had to report to the office every day of the wee. But again, I think it depends on the job as well.
Chris Wofford: I have a good question from viewer Kurt who asks why the difficulties with employee engagement and team building characterize as a failure of the remote work model rather than representative of leadership that fail to adapt to new methods of virtual team building?
Nick Fabrizio: I think that's a great question, Kurt.
Nick Fabrizio: I think it's both though. I think it could be the failure of leadership and not helping to advance that model, but also it also depends on the work and what the job is. So can the leader create those touch points? How many touch points are there? And will workers still feel engaged and connected to the organization? Because right now with the surveys that we went through early on, they certainly do not feel connected at the office. And I think if you are working remotely five days a week, it's going to be very hard for you to get that worker to feel engaged and connected to the organization, despite what you try to do.
Chris Wofford: Viewer Dave asks, can you not build similar relationships via tools like MS Teams? So let's think about that, right? Workplace productivity project management type software. We use Slack at work. MS Teams are part of the environment to some degree. I don't really work in that too much. But uh, how about these, right?
Chris Wofford: I can't imagine my workplace without a tool like Slack.
Nick Fabrizio: Absolutely.
Chris Wofford: To keep those teams moving forward and generally engaging with each other quite often in a fun, familiar friend like way.
Nick Fabrizio: Yeah. And I think, and I use Slack as well and I like it. I think it has advantages. One of the problems is in this world where there's many different options, right? You can get slacked or teamed to death, right? So there's a teams meeting. There's a zoom meeting. There's a slack meeting. There's 5 or 6 or 10 different modes for us to communicate and some workers are saying that they feel overwhelmed by that. So will the organization or other organizations that they work with pick one method to do, and let's do that, because it's very hard even for the worker then to realize, oh my god, a team's meeting at 3, my client's got a Zoom meeting at 2, I've got something else happening at 4, so they start to feel disconnected because there's so many different mediums to keep track of.
Chris Wofford: We hate to get in the prognostication projection business, but you and I both have a sense that at some point, we're going to be returning to office. Now, I don't know what kind of disruptive event would bring that about. What would bring that about? This seems like if it were to happen, it would be incremental and slow. I don't know. What do you think?
Nick Fabrizio: I think there's a few things that are complicating this and bringing this to the head. One is the feeling of disconnected at work. One is retention. One are losing bright young workers because there is not a process for them to be evaluated, connected, and advanced in the organization. So you see a lot of younger workers jumping ship for a better opportunity. Organizations can't feel like, they don't feel like they can create those opportunities being disconnected. The other contributing factor is a lot of these organizations now are paying a lot of money in real estate for empty offices. That can't continue. It's easier if the organization during the pandemic would have said here we're selling the real estate. They were able to sell it and now they don't have the brick and mortar to return to like the Goldman Sachs example, they have brick and mortar to return to in organizations that have buildings and empty space. They're going to want to put bodies in those spaces. So some industries are going to force people back because of that. Others are going to force him back because they're working on recruitment and retention. Others are going to force workers back because they have some hybrid and they want to take advantage of both environments. I think very few of the organizations are going to say, five days a week you can be remote.
Chris Wofford: Viewer SL doesn't like the sound of that at all and asks, how do we avoid creating an environment of forced in person collaboration? My organization has made lots of mandatory meetings. It's getting to the point where it's burdensome, takes a toll on productivity. So you know, again, another person, right? Genie's out of the bottle. Can't put it back in. What do you think about forced collaboration?
Nick Fabrizio: You know, that is a great question. And you see some of this, I see it now with some of my clients who are working remotely because the thought is who knows Nick or Chris, maybe they're leaving at three o'clock. I have no way to know. So we're going to have a forced meeting at four o'clock every day. And so our touch point is going to be four o'clock every day.
Chris Wofford: Oh no.
Nick Fabrizio: So sometimes people are doing that and you can see how you could become dissatisfied as the worker when that happens.
Chris Wofford: Viewer Andrea asks, this is a great one. I really like this question. Are there specific performance metrics, key performance indicators that are more important for hybrid employees when considering career advancement? So what about metrics for performance and I don't know, remote work?
Nick Fabrizio: That's a great question. Chris, I think some of this is my fear that big brother is always watching, right? So when you work remotely and you're on your computer, big brother can tell how productive you are and how much time you're spending on the screen and what you're doing on the screen. I think of my friends that are the accountants. They're fine. They're left alone. They have a job to do. They perform X, Y, Z. They have certain level of productivity. They meet it. The boss really doesn't care. If they leave at two o'clock and they do something else, the boss is happy because they did what they had to do. The boss who controls them on this team, works with them on this team, said you can, if you complete everything by two o'clock, that's fine. But I really worry about trying to strike that balance between forced interactions and freedom in the workplace.
Chris Wofford: Sure. Okay. Good luck with that. Viewer Amanda asks, Can you speak to the impact of limitations in office work requirements have on finding talent? We haven't really discussed that quite a bit, right? Your talent pool is vast. It's effectively national or international. When you've gone completely remotely, there's gotta be something there that says this is advantageous for a an organization to do.
Nick Fabrizio: I think it depends on the industry, right? So there are certain jobs out there and there are certain people who find that attractive, right? So depending also on where you are in your career. I've had workers tell me, they'd say, Nick, I'm in my mid fifties. I'm gonna work five more years. I'm okay being remote. I'm not looking at advancement opportunities. I want someone to spell out the job, working remotely. I want to accomplish X, Y, and Z. I don't need a lot of meetings with my manager. I don't need to advance. I don't particularly need to love the organization. I just want to do my job, do it well, spend five years, I'm happy. You've got others though who say, I want to do my job. I want to feel engaged. We talked about it earlier. I want to feel connected to the organization. I want advancement opportunities. You really have to be deliberate when, if you are in that second ladder category, of finding organizations that can meet your goals and your objectives and try to match where you want to go with your career. Because if you hop to that remote environment and you're looking for advancement and you don't have the opportunities to shine, you don't have opportunities for others to see you shine, you're not going to advance, and they may not retain you.
Chris Wofford: I think we talked about it earlier in our conversation here minutes ago about the employee making the case for themselves. You seem to be stressing this. What does this mean? More one on ones with our managers and, those who have oversight over our jobs?
Chris Wofford: How do you do that? Do you have to toot your own horn a little bit, right?
Nick Fabrizio: Yeah, it's like the one question, certainly not more forced interactions, but I think it's the employee to be deliberate about keeping track of what they've accomplished, sort of your value to the organization. And it's like a personal self inventory of what you've accomplished. What you feel like you mean to the organization, how the organization is a benefit to you. But I always tell workers, try to keep track of your accomplishments and look for ways to promote yourself because if you don't do that with your manager, you're going to lose connections.
Chris Wofford: I have a question from viewer, Lindsay, who asks, what about the impact of remote options at work options on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, right?
Chris Wofford: Inclusion and exclusion. This is a dynamic that is taking place with remote work. Sometimes people feel that they aren't recognized for all the obvious reasons or aren't given an opportunity to do their job well. But the second part of Lindsay's question is, for example, opportunities for people with disabilities or caregivers who may have been previously excluded from opportunity.
Chris Wofford: So let's talk about people with disabilities. Has this provided more opportunity?
Nick Fabrizio: Yeah, that's a great question. And I say when. You can find opportunities for people that need special arrangements with where those opportunities are. That's a great match in terms of finding a talent pool, people interested in those jobs. That would be a fantastic way to bring others into the workforce where they wouldn't have had those opportunities pre pandemic. And so it's created. Some opportunities for those who would have struggled in a five day a week in office environment. So I think to a certain extent that those jobs will continue. And remember, it doesn't matter where those are. If those are remote and the organization is in Texas and you live in Pennsylvania, you can still stay in Pennsylvania and work for that organization. So I think those are special opportunities. I think they will continue. And I think that it increases the talent pool and helps with diversity. Certainly.
Chris Wofford: When it comes for the employer setting the terms of employment that is full transparency in the description of the job, maybe it doesn't need to be said, but you know...
Nick Fabrizio: Yeah, no, I think it needs to be said. And I think employees, when they are interviewing for jobs, really have to make sure they understand that and follow it up with their hiring manager, because a lot of places are worried about recruitment. So they tell candidates and they do postings based on what they think is attractive to the market, right? So right now, a hybrid or fully remote is attractive. They may not be privy, the employee, to behind the scenes meeting with the manager saying, "this is fully remote now. It's going to be hybrid in the next six months." And the goal is no more than two days remote. And the employee has no idea about that because it's posted, you go through the interview, and it's fully remote or it's a hybrid that you agreed to. Six months later, we're changing the rules of the game. So I think employees really have to be on top of their game and make sure they understand and reinforce what the expectations are with their hiring manager.
Chris Wofford: Exactly. What's communicated cannot just be get the job done. We don't care where you work, right?
Nick Fabrizio: Exactly.
Chris Wofford: Because and this comes, this the key performance indicators are kind of everything. I don't know, is this more of a conversation than perhaps it used to be? I know that, for us as an organization, again, full transparency. We use Slack as a productivity tool, a communication tool. We use a software called Wrike for project management, where we actually log hours and, you can kind of see where people are working and what they're getting done. What about metrics? How do you think about metrics in your work?
Nick Fabrizio: I think those metrics are being used by organizations. I always kind of get back to the, what are we doing here? More important than any metric. When someone says it's a return to the work, I always say, okay, that sounds fine. And I push back with some of my clients when they say, okay, we're going to have a in office policy now or a hybrid. And I say, okay, so I'll be the employee because a lot of employees won't ask this question and say, okay, so what are we going to do here? If we're returning to work and returning to the office, what are we really supposed to be doing in the office that we can't do remotely? Why go to the office and what's the compelling reason? I think organizations really have to be clear with the compelling reason for why workers have to or should return to work. Because back to your original question, organizations are gonna have a lot of benchmarks. They'll be able to measure things. You know, like nobody else. The question is though why are you in the office and what are you supposed to be doing?
Chris Wofford: So what is Goldman Sachs telling people? In Amazon or Disney or whoever.
Nick Fabrizio: I think they have done the value equation and figured, now again, it depends on the industry. Remember those connections.
Nick Fabrizio: I would never be a successful consultant if I didn't spend face time with a client. If I wasn't going to a client to meet with people, whether it's the banking or manufacturing or whoever it is doing a retreat or meeting with the board. I can't meet with a board of directors remotely and be half as effective as I meet with a board of directors face to face and we do a two day retreat and I'm in there in person. That can't be replaced. So it really depends on the organization you work in, what the goals and objectives are, and what's your purpose. So again, be purposeful and I know when I'm working with clients, I'm very purposeful and there's a reason why I'm there face to face with them.
Chris Wofford: You do a lot of work in healthcare, hospitals, you know, organizations related to healthcare, banks and others. So this is an industry where in person work is a requirement, right? This is the delivery of healthcare and medicine. Are there other industries that are struggling? In addition to healthcare with employing people because of that, that in person demand, you had mentioned that teachers struggling to find teachers.
Chris Wofford: Is this is sort of an after effect of things that have happened during the pandemic where working remotely is certainly more attractive to somebody who may actually leave an industry that they're qualified to work in?
Nick Fabrizio: Being married to a teacher, you know, I can tell you this personally, the problem is with a lot of these different worker ranges, there's no off time.
Nick Fabrizio: It's a very exciting time since the pandemic and now that everyone can connect with you Slack, Teams meetings, Zoom. People want to do parents want to do Zoom calls at 7 p.m. to talk about their kids progress in a class. Where before it would be before school after school or a phone call. Now teachers are expected to do Zoom calls.
Nick Fabrizio: So these expectations I see them across the line. Health care. You've got to be obviously nurses physicians. You've got to be face to face with patients. Banks. Customer satisfaction face to face. But I will say though, having said that, there are going to be pockets in every organization where there are going to be certain jobs that can have a hybrid. Billing collections, sales follow ups. There'll be certain segments in that organization where they can have a hybrid or a work from remote, so I think the better performing organizations in the future are going to find those opportunities to try to match the talent.
Chris Wofford: That's right, IT, completely remote. Uh, At Cornell University, I think that was the policy, right? You work in IT, you're home forever.
Nick Fabrizio: And that's fine, they can do their jobs from home.
Chris Wofford: Sure. Of course, it makes perfect sense. So, If you were to gaze out into the future, the near term, the long term, how do you feel things will look in five years? It's really tough to predict. I put you on the spot.
Nick Fabrizio: No, I think that's great. I think we're going to have a hybrid. I think, and the organizations will have to do a better job of defining within the same organization what roles are gonna be five days a week in office, what roles are gonna be two or three days a week in office, what roles are going to be completely remote.
Nick Fabrizio: That's gonna come from the same organization that they're going to have to do a better job of doing that. Now we haven't even touched on, we could do a whole new podcast on what does that do to employee morale? Seeing Chris was in another department. He can work from home five days a week. I've got to be in three days a week. Sally has to be in five days a week. that inequality, if you will, in the workplace is going to have a new host of challenges, but I think we're going to, we're going to quickly go to a hybrid where better performing organizations will have to define what their work arrangements are for different business units in that organization.
Chris Wofford: This is a constant developing story. Nick, we'll probably have to have you in in another year or so and look back at this one and say, wow. Be happy to. Okay, good. It's great. Thank you for the questions audience. Thank you for joining us for today's recording. We'll see you at the next keynote. Stay strong and stay safe.
Chris Wofford: Thanks everyone.
Nick Fabrizio: Thank you.
Chris Wofford: Thanks for listening to Cornell Keynotes. Check out the episode notes for information on remote leadership, hybrid work strategy, and human resources, online certificate programs from eCornell. Thanks again, friends.