Speaker 1: Hi there, my name is Josh and I'm a Learning Experience Designer here at the Predictive Index. This is an exciting time for most. Those who want to be back in the office are starting to run back and many of those who wish to remain remote are getting that opportunity. Personally, I was a remote worker even before the craziness of the pandemic brought. The silver lining to this situation was that we were all in the same situation. There was no possibility of being overlooked on a conference call by those in the room or missing out on those office water cooler conversations. That's why, although exciting, returning back to the office and having more of these hybrid work environments can be challenging. I wanted to talk to some of the experts here within PI to see how they felt about these changes and how others can manage this new workforce to make sure those remote folks like me don't get left out. Let's take a look.

Speaker 2: My name is Erin Balsa. I'm a Marketing Director here at PI. I've been here three years. I've been a hybrid employee the entire time. I come in three days a week and I work from home

Speaker 3: two days a week. My name is Maribel Olvera. I'm Senior Vice President of Operations for the Predictive Index. At the moment, I am a remote employee.

Speaker 4: My name is Matt Pepsil. I'm the Vice President of Partner Growth and the Godfather of Talent Optimization here at the Predictive Index. I work remotely Mondays and Fridays and I work in the office on Tuesdays through Thursdays. I wanted to start by seeing how these leaders

Speaker 3: felt about this new upcoming challenge. The one thing I'm most excited about is the access

Speaker 4: to a talented workforce. People's individual circumstances have always affected the way that they work. Now we can offer choice. We can offer flexibility and we can still do work in

Speaker 2: some ways more powerfully even than before. To get the top talent in the market because a lot of people, myself included, would never take a job that required you to go in the office five

Speaker 4: days a week. But everyone had equity. We were there for the most part all in the office or all remote. Now with hybrid, it is a different animal. I'm afraid more of the common thing that can

Speaker 2: happen where people that are remote are working from home. They miss out on those hallway conversations that happen. You don't want the people that are remote to get left behind or

Speaker 1: miss out on anything. Among all leaders, starting your focus with remote employees in mind seemed

Speaker 3: to be the main takeaway they wanted to get across. Assume that you will always have a remote person in the meeting, in the project, in the session that you're running. And set up your technology, the way you are going to work, to make that one remote person successful. If you are in a meeting

Speaker 2: room and you have some people dialed in and you might want to say, I want everyone in this room to minimize the side chatter because when there is side chatter it makes it really hard for the people in dialing in to hear what's going on. But you're also looking at the camera so the people dialing in feel that you're remembering that they're there and you're speaking to them equally.

Speaker 4: And the fact is even if you have one remote employee, we need to be cognizant and allow that person to have equity in terms of their access to information, to participation. So that might mean that we continue to use a lot of the remote tools that we used when we were fully

Speaker 1: remote. Their second piece of advice is to always work to improve the level of trust and

Speaker 3: communication within your teams. So you really need to help the team understand what is the best way to communicate what and you need to be able to have a team that trusts the intention of the

Speaker 4: others. I like to say that transparency equals trust. We truly try to ground ourselves on trust.

Speaker 2: We know that we have a foundation of trust on the team and if we don't feel that we know we

Speaker 4: need to talk about it. In a way that provides maximum transparency because I think when there's information, even if I wasn't directly involved with creating it, as long as I have a fair chance to consume it, then I feel like I'm part of it. As an editor, I'm always teaching people

Speaker 2: that it's more important to be clear than clever and that's a good rule of thumb for communicating in a meeting or in a room, especially if you have people who are dialing in and they might not be

Speaker 1: able to hear quite as clearly. But more importantly, you need to understand your employees needs and

Speaker 2: drives now more than ever. Understanding how different behavioral types respond to remote work. So some people love it. They would never want anything otherwise. They feel actually more heard in a remote meeting than they might in an in-person meeting. You cannot manage everyone the same way

Speaker 3: you need to customize it to their needs. Just because someone has chosen to work in a remote

Speaker 4: format doesn't mean that they don't want to socialize with their co-workers. They may have individual situations that make remote work a better choice for them. I have to go out of my way as a leader to make sure to interact with them, engage with them over virtual means. But

Speaker 2: there's also the flip side to that. Some reference profiles and behavioral patterns feel much less heard when they are remote. So you want to make sure that you're still giving them opportunities to lead so that they are just as motivated and just as engaged as they would be in the office.

Speaker 1: So what are the tools and ways that we can do this then? Understand where you have natural

Speaker 4: strengths and where you have improvement opportunities as it pertains to leading a

Speaker 2: hybrid team. And if companies can afford to get meeting technology, you know, a Zoom subscription, a meeting owl, any kind of technology where you can be face-to-face, it helps to build trust and build relationships. And you can have intimate relationships with people even if they are not

Speaker 3: in the office with you every day. But more than the tool is the clarity of when to use what. Identify

Speaker 4: that opportunity and just create a very simple plan to make an intentional effort to get better

Speaker 3: at those things. Be open to change it. Be open to explore new options. Everything can evolve. And I think that that concept of evolution of growth needs to be top of mind for us in the coming

Speaker 4: months. Hybrid work is here to stay. And as a leader, you're continuously improving. Every great leader is.

Speaker 1: Make sure you're continuously improving your style to be ready for a hybrid workforce. Dive into our hybrid toolkit for more resources that you can use today.