In this episode of BTG Insights on Demand, Diana Lee—a senior HR leader and consultant—joins BTG's Rachel Halversen to discuss the ongoing debate over return to office initiatives. Together, they'll explore the evolving expectations of employees and leaders, how organizations can navigate this transition to foster collaboration and productivity, the role of HR during moments of significant change, and more. Listen to the episode, read our lightly edited transcript, or jump right to a specific section of the chat below:
Interview Highlights:
- An overview of the return to office debate
- What the central conflict is with RTO
- Work arrangement preferences
- Remote work drawbacks
- Why remote work will prevail
- How to find the balance between flexibility and necessity
- The role of HR when it comes to RTO
- Advice to business leaders navigating workforce pressures and shifts
- A look at some of Diana Lee’s personal transformative moments
Rachel Halversen:
Hi Diana. Thank you for joining me today. I am looking forward to speaking with you.
Diana Lee:
Hello Rachel. Same here. I'm excited to speak with you.
Rachel Halversen:
By way of introduction, can you please provide a brief summary of your background and why you're passionate about the field of human resources?
Diana Lee:
Yeah, sure, I'd love to do that. So Rachel, I'm a career HR professional. I've always worked in HR. I started my career in financial services, you know, working in a bank and then at American Express for nine years. And then after that I moved to media and entertainment and that's where I've worked most of my HR career. I started at the MTV networks where I was one of the senior HR leaders over MTV and Nickelodeon and Comedy Central… and worked at what was then called Viacom for over a decade. But then after that, moved over into working in some other organizations and sort of culminating my career at Sesame Workshop, which is a mission-driven nonprofit. So I've been lucky to have a wonderful HR career and what I've loved about it is that I've been able to use my HR knowledge and skills in working in a variety of industries as I just told you. It really has given me an opportunity to get an overview of many different kinds of businesses and cultures. And what makes me passionate about the work that I do I, I like to think of HR as people who are students of organizations. And I think that when you look at the people questions in businesses and organizations, they're actually the most fascinating questions I have to deal with. They're very complex and they're always changing. You know, I'm not a researcher and I haven't done academic work in the field per se, but I have had about 40 plus years of experience being on the ground, being an HR professional and then a chief human resources officer. And it's really that on the ground perspective that I'm going to be offering. And this is coming from literally you know, listening and speaking to thousands of employees and leaders.
Rachel Halversen:
I think your background sounds really interesting and exciting and I'm really excited to hear what else you have to say. So you've mentioned your impressive career as an HR leader across all of those industries, and I noticed that navigating change has been a big theme in your journey. With all of the workforce changes over the past five years, like the pandemic and how it reshaped work, how do you view the current debate around return to office initiatives? Should we lean into the new ways of working or is there value in returning to how things were?
Diana Lee:
Yeah, yeah. Return to office or RTO, I would say Rachel is the most animating and probably the most controversial issue in workplaces today. You know, it's really fascinating the recent history that we have because the pandemic really was a seminal event in our lives, in our lives personally, but also professionally. And what it did was it brought about a permanent change to how we work and also how we think about work. And I would say that no matter how strenuously--I know some companies and leaders are saying that they are bringing people back into the office--my own view is that remote and hybrid work is here to stay. And as I say sometimes, I think we're at the point where you can't really put the toothpaste back in the tube. So I think it's here to stay.
Rachel Halversen:
From what you've heard from both business leaders and employees, what do you think the central conflict is here?
Diana Lee:
You know, it's interesting, Rachel. I think when you really strip everything down and you get down to the basics of the situation, it really is a tug of war between control and autonomy. And I really speak in this moment, maybe less as a HR professional for a moment and more as just a manager of people. I have to admit that as a manager of people, it actually is harder to manage people remotely. Or to put it another way, it's actually less convenient to manage people when they're remote. And it's because as managers we've mostly been conditioned and trained to manage people in person. So it's a new set of skills that we're not that comfortable with. And you definitely feel less control over the process. And I know that, for example, we do have the technology to communicate with people all day long. You can send someone a DM and someone can answer quickly, but it's really not the same. So I really do think that for a manager of people, it's just harder to manage people right now. Now employees on the other hand have learned from working remotely during the pandemic. And of course all of these comments are really limited more to what I'll call for the moment, knowledge workers, people who work in offices, we know that there are actually plenty of people where the nature of their work requires that they be in person. So we're going to exclude them from the conversation right now.
But for people who work in offices or are knowledge workers, they learned during the pandemic that they really can produce the same or very similar outputs just working remotely. And with that, they've seen that there's a certain amount of freedom that comes with that, in terms of having some more autonomy over how they do their work and also their schedule. And I will say that the latter--your schedule and having more control over it-- is really no small thing at all. And that if you do have that freedom to schedule your time more freely according to whatever your own sort of professional and personal needs are, it's something that becomes priceless to you. And I really don't believe that for the most part, employees are going to go back to wanting to be in the office five days a week.
Rachel Halversen:
Of course, while remote work is widely desired, that's not a universal opinion. Some specific groups of talent actually prefer working in the office, wouldn't you say?
Diana Lee:
Oh, absolutely. I've found for example that, and again, this is a bit of a generalization, but I think it's really true, that what I'll call earlier career professionals are actually more eager to have the option of working in the office because I think that they instinctively understand that they can learn more and they can form relationships more quickly if they're there in person. Now on the other hand, I also found that the, what I'll call middle career professionals, those are the people who've been working for let's say 10, 20 years, they tend to desire remote work more. And I would say that for many of them that's driven by the fact that many of them, they're at the stage in their lives where they have more what I'll call outside of the job commitments and responsibilities, whether it be a child or elder care and, you know, commuting to an office five days a week becomes just too much of a logistical burden in order to balance everything. I definitely do see that there are differences depending on where someone is in the stage of their lives and in their careers.
Rachel Halversen:
A little bit more on that, aside from the challenges that younger professionals face without in office time, what are some of the drawbacks of remote work from an organizational perspective?
Diana Lee:
Yeah. And I will tell you that something that's been amazing to me as I've had my own experience and I've been reading just about other organizations, it's amazing to me how consistent the different sides are on this issue of the RTO debate. So by and large, what I'm finding is that executives and leaders really want employees to be back in the office. And by and large, I would say that employees want the option to work hybrid or remote. And I do think that one of the drawbacks to a complete remote work environment is that… I do believe that there is this fear about how complete remote work will really lead to a loss of cohesion and camaraderie within a company that leads to culture. And culture to me is probably one of the most important ingredients in an organization. The saying about how culture trumps strategy every day? Well, I think that's really true.
And as someone who is an HR leader who's worked in offices and I've had that experience of working both in the office and also completely remotely during the years of the pandemic, I really do believe there's a great deal of truth in that it is definitely harder to have a strong culture when people are remote. And you know, you can feel it if you're in the office and half the desks are empty, there definitely feels like there's less energy.
Rachel Halversen:
I agree with you there. Despite those challenges though, you seem confident that remote and hybrid work will continue. What makes you think that, especially when organizations seem to prefer those other models?
Diana Lee:
Yeah, my conclusion is that the main reason why hybrid or remote work will continue is because mostly because of talent demands. Rachel, I spoke earlier before about mid-career professionals who tend to want more of that remote work option. Well, those are exactly the people who have accrued the knowledge and the skills that employers need. And as a result, they have quite a bit of leverage when they negotiate with their employers about wanting remote work. So, I do believe that this is really going to drive the continued remote or hybrid work option because I think that talented people always have options and I think that ultimately employers are going to have to acquiesce. And once you make an exception for some, you just have to apply it to everyone.
So I think what we're going to see, Rachel over the next several years is we're going to see, and for lack of a better word, I'm going to call it more of like a talent correction or a talent matching. So for some of the large organizations that you and I have read about, about how they're demanding that employees go back into the office five days a week. Well, I think what will happen is that employees will probably use the next couple of years to figure out whether or not it's worth it to them to continue working for that company and to stay with them. And then for those who aren't willing to make that trade off, they're going to leave and they're going to go and take options where they are going to be able to work remotely or work hybrid. And I think what you'll see is you're going to see a little bit of, again, one of those corrections.
And of course we've already seen that there's certain sectors where that in-office option is definitely going to be more prevalent. And the example I would use there is what we're seeing in financial services, the big banks, the big investment banks, they really have more of an in-office culture. And I think we're going to continue to see that predominate in that sector. And then in other places, I would think that most organizations are definitely going to have more of the remote and hybrid option.
Rachel Halversen:
And earlier you called it a tug of war. So how do you think that organizations can balance the tug of war, offering employees the flexibility they want while addressing challenges like measuring performance and maintaining culture?
Diana Lee:
Yeah. I think that there are really two paths to that. One is how the work is structured and the second is having to do with training. So let me talk about the first a little bit more. So it sounds almost ironic, but in order to have a more flexible work environment where people are going to be offered a hybrid option, what that really means is that work actually has to become more structured and regimented. And what I mean by that is that, so if you work hybrid, that means that in the days that you come into the office, I think that there's going to be a need to have certain types of activities be the focus for when you come into the office. So what will happen is that when you come into the office, there's going to be a focus on things that you can't do as easily when you work remotely. Those are the days that there's going to be much more of an emphasis on getting your teams together to socialize, to team build. There's going to be an emphasis on big events, quarterly meetings, quarterly outings, and that's what is really going to help with in terms of structuring the work and really trying to take advantage of the benefits of when you're in the office and people can see each other in person.
And then also when you are working remotely and ideally you have the privacy to be able to do more solitary work. So I think we've already seen that, that's what companies are already doing. There are many more sort of on-site activities like team buildings and parties and lunches now with people coming back into the office on certain days. So that's definitely going to be one way to do it. The other way that I think over time that employers are going to have to try to wrestle with this is that there definitely needs to be a different type of manager and leader training.
I spoke before Rachel, about part of the resistance I think today for why many leaders are resistant to remote work is it's harder to manage people remotely when you're used to being in the office all the time. So I do believe that over time what we're going to need is that we're going to need to have more training of leaders to learn how to manage what I'm going to call maybe outcomes and outputs more, and probably with less of a focus on the process of working, which is what we're more accustomed to right now.
Rachel Halversen:
Thank you. I liked the way that you explained that. When it comes to this shift, what role should HR leaders play? Is it just about carrying out management's decisions or should they take on more of an advisory role to help guide leaders toward a solution that works for everyone?
Diana Lee:
Well, definitely the latter. HR, the value that we can add is that we can really be a very wise advisor here, hopefully a wise advisor to the leaders in terms of these types of decisions. And it's going to be based on a number of things. It's our responsibility as HR leaders to really have a pulse on the organization, what are the employees saying? What are their needs? And also at the same time, not only sort of having a pulse of the organization internally, but also externally. What's going on in the marketplace? What's going on specifically with our competitors? Who might we lose employees to if we make certain decisions? And so based on that to make the very best decisions that we can and to give the very best advice to leaders on how we're going to be able to reckon with this.
Rachel Halversen:
And we've been talking a lot about change, how work gets done, where and why, and it feels like we're in a constant state of rapid change, what some might even call a permacrisis. What advice would you give business leaders on addressing workforce and culture issues during a major change and transformation?
Diana Lee:
Rachel, it almost sounds a little bit like a truism, but I do believe this is the key and it's really hard and that is that communications is the key. I think that there's more of an emphasis today more than ever on employees wanting their employers and their leaders to be as honest and direct as they can, even when it's to tell them news that is not popular. Over the last several years, we've heard a lot about employers and employees talking about the need for transparency. And I really do believe that employees are really demanding that and expecting it now. And so I think it's going to really be incumbent on leaders to really be as honest as possible about the decisions they're making and why they're making those decisions.
And also at the same time, what makes this so hard is that I would also say to really not say something until you're really willing to commit to it. And the example I would put out there is that right now we know that there are some notable, mostly big tech companies that are saying that they want employees to be back in the office five days a week. Well, I think that one of the reasons that they're suffering such a backlash is because these were some of the same employers that said several years ago during the pandemic, that they were happy with employees working remotely. And I do believe that there wouldn't be as much of a pushback today if it weren't seen as a reversal of something that they said just four years ago.
So I do believe that the key to going forward within this world of change that we're talking about is really communicating, and especially as more people are working remotely, which I do think is going to become more the norm, it's going to be important to employees who they work for an, you know, what that company stands for. So communications really will be the key because in a more remote world, work is going to feel a little bit more transactional. And the only way that I think that you're going to feel motivated and working hard for an organization is if you feel like you're really part of a larger whole that has purpose. And that's where the communications will really be key.
Rachel Halversen:
And before we wrap up on the subject of transformation, I'm curious what have been some of the most transformative moments of your career?
Diana Lee:
Yeah, yeah. I've been giving this question some thought. And Rachel, I'd like to share probably a few more what I'll call personal transformative moments. The first is more as a leader of people, and the second one is a little bit more as an HR professional. So the first one came really early in my career, and what happened is that I happened to be put in charge of people when I was fairly young. I was 25 years old, I worked at a bank and I was put in charge of a 15-person recruitment department. And everyone I supervised was older than me, and it was quite intimidating for me at the time. And something that I learned quickly was that as their supervisor, I found that they studied me very closely. So for example, if they noticed if I wasn't smiling and if I didn't say hello warmly to them in the morning, they would wonder if I was mad at them or if I disapproved of something that they had said or done. Now, in actuality, that probably was the farthest thing from my mind. I probably was just thinking about a conversation I had just had with my mother or plans that I had for dinner that night. But that simple interaction could literally ruin the person's day, or at least get the person started off on their day on the wrong foot. So what I learned was that my simplest behaviors had a huge impact on their lives. So my takeaway was that it wasn't that I just wasn't like, to them, I was their boss, and I had a responsibility to them to play that role. So what I learned early on was that even if I was distracted or if I wasn't feeling so great that day, it was my responsibility to carry myself in a certain way. So from then on as much as I could until now, I make it a point to look everyone in the eye when I see them, to say good morning if it's in the morning and I smile. And as simple as it sounds, I think it makes a huge difference in people. So I learned that early on, and if I give a tip to any new supervisor or a leader, that's the one I give because it really makes a difference, I find. So that's one personal transformative moment as a people leader.
The second one is more as an HR professional, and again, it was fairly early on in my career. And as HR people are asked to do, I was asked to handle a dispute between two employees. And in this case, it actually was a physical altercation. It happened that there were two waiters who worked in the executive dining room of this large company, and two of them got into a fight, and they literally ... It started out with words, and then they ended up fighting. And by all accounts, you know, one of the employees was more of the aggressor and initiated the argument. And so what I did was I was asked to go in to mediate the dispute. So what I did was I spoke to the one employee who was what I'll call bullied. And based on my conversation with him, I made the recommendation to the supervisor that the other employee be terminated. He was terminated and he left, and I did not speak with him. Now, later on, I think this was several months later, I learned that this other employee who was fired actually filed a formal complaint against the company. And so he obviously felt that he was wronged. So looking back on that, I regretted not speaking to him because even if he was the aggressor, I should have spoken to him and heard him out. And that was a big lesson to me. I learned that it was important to listen to people, and even if the outcome would've been the same, and even if my recommendation was that he should be terminated for what he did, I wondered if he would've felt differently about how he was treated if I took the time to listen to him and to be respectful to him. And so that was a big lesson to me. I really do believe that employees really don't want to take formal or legal action against their employers. They probably sort of instinctively understand that it makes their lives hard when they do that, and that it's really important to be able to offer people an outlet internally and to let them express themselves and tell them what they're thinking or feeling, and it makes a big difference. So that was my other transformative moment that I wanted to share with you.
Rachel Halversen:
I really appreciate you taking the time to think about those and share those with me. Thank you so much for joining us today
Diana Lee:
I've really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for asking me to share my thoughts with you.
Rachel Halversen:
As a reminder, our guest today has been Diana Lee, a senior HR leader and consultant, and I'm Rachel Halversen for Business Talent Group. To start a project with Diana or one of our other highly skilled independent talent, visit businesstalentgroup.com, or subscribe for more of our conversations with on-demand experts and future of work thought leaders wherever you find your podcasts. Thanks for listening.
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