Hybrid Work Revolution - Weixi Tan - E-Book

Hybrid Work Revolution E-Book

Weixi Tan

0,0
9,13 €

-100%
Sammeln Sie Punkte in unserem Gutscheinprogramm und kaufen Sie E-Books und Hörbücher mit bis zu 100% Rabatt.
Mehr erfahren.
Beschreibung

In the wake of the global shift toward hybrid work arrangements, businesses and organisations are facing unprecedented challenges. Hybrid Work Revolution offers a comprehensive exploration of the changing landscape of work in the 21st century, focusing on the experiences of teams and the critical insights leaders may be overlooking.


The book is organised into three easily-digestible big bites. The first delves into the challenges of communicating with team members who are spread out across multiple locations, or worse still, in different time zones and countries. This section offers a perspective on how we can reimagine the workplace, leverage technology effectively, and enhance collaboration among our team members.


The second investigates the paradox for leaders to invest time to build close relationships, while giving team members enough personal space. The chapters here deliberate how leaders can establish trust, build psychological safety, and explore the factors that accelerates relationships in a hybrid work environment.


The last section takes a fresh look at the tracking of performance in a hybrid workplace, and explores some paradigms that will encourage a learning culture and drive employee engagement.

Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:

EPUB
MOBI

Seitenzahl: 174

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Bewertungen
0,0
0
0
0
0
0
Mehr Informationen
Mehr Informationen
Legimi prüft nicht, ob Rezensionen von Nutzern stammen, die den betreffenden Titel tatsächlich gekauft oder gelesen/gehört haben. Wir entfernen aber gefälschte Rezensionen.



PRAISE FOR

HYBRID WORK REVOLUTION

“Weixi’s thoughtful use of stories, reflections, pro-tips, and ‘try it out’ makes this book a highly practical and reader-friendly resource. A must-read for every leader and coach who wants to adapt and be adept at leading hybrid teams.”

— Tan Swee Heng

Master Certified Coach, ICF;

Head of Shared Leadership Team Coaching Academy

“No silver bullets, no killer apps. Instead, Weixi provides a brilliant exposition on the perfect storm of hybrid work that will severely test the leaders of every organisation, and a framework for analysis and action to help us survive and thrive in the coming decade.”

— Sim Siang Leng

Honorary Secretary,

Risk & Insurance Management Association of Singapore

“The old way of leading teams is now a thing of the past. In this gem of a book, Weixi provides the keys for greater collaboration and performance when leading teams in a hybrid work environment.”

— Wicky Andry

Customer Experience General Manager, Meratus Group

“Hybrid working is becoming a norm. Weixi has demonstrated in his book, how intentional design and thoughtful use of appropriate technology and tools can help leaders create engaged, inclusive, and high-performing work teams, while overcoming the challenges of enabling equality and equity in the teams.”

— Lee Yen Chin

Associate Client Partner, Korn Ferry

“Weixi’s book is your own personal leadership coach. Pragmatic and practical, targeted sections let you dive straight into solutions for issues you are facing with your teams today. Highly recommended for team leaders, managers, and those working in a hybrid work environment, whether in a formal leadership position or not.”

— Tan Peck San

Enterprise Transformation Consultant,

Center for Creative Leadership

“Whether you are a seasoned leader or starting to navigate the complexities of networked communication, this book is your companion for everyone working in the dynamic realm of hybrid work in our post-pandemic world. Weixi draws from real-world experiences and unfolds a narrative of growth, from navigating cultural nuances and diverse perspectives to providing essential context in open communication. Relearn the art of relationship-building, and delve into personal accounts that unravel the intricacies of leadership to build practical strategies in managing the challenges of this evolving landscape of modern work.”

— Adeline Cheng

Enterprise Sales Director, Accenture

“Hybrid Work Revolution is a brilliant window into digital strategy, with practical insights that blend academic theory and the practice of management in a way that only Weixi can deliver.”

— Dominic Ng

Head of APJ, Database Marketing, PayPal

“From the ‘Great Resignation’ to ‘Quiet Quitting’ and now ‘Liminality’, leaders face unprecedented human resource challenges that’s calling for them to have a mindset shift in managing new-age workforces. Weixi’s book offers useful and practical insights for leaders standing at crossroads when it comes to hybrid work arrangements contemplating the opportunities to be harnessed and pitfalls to avoid.”

— Jessie Lee

Director and Head of Clinical Trial Educators, Asia-Pac, IQVIA

“The world of hybrid work arrangements is still evolving post-pandemic and it is frequently challenging for leaders to navigate through this. Weixi’s book—which draws on research, observations, and dialogues through working with various teams—provides a useful compass. The way he has organised the content makes it easy for readers to refer to handy tips so that they are able to apply the concepts easily.”

— Ko Hui Yen

Managing Director, HireRight

“Dive into the essence of leadership mastery in the hybrid work environment with this book where intuition meets evidence-based practices. Through research and compelling evidence, this book unpacks and demonstrates how we can build strong teams while delivering on results, empowering both seasoned executives and aspiring leaders alike.”

—Chia Ai Ling

Director of Communications and Partnerships,

SG Enable

HYBRID WORK

REVOLUTION

What Teams are Facing and Leaders are Missing

TAN WEIXI

Candid Creation Publishing

First published 2024

Copyright 2024 © Tan Weixi

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except for inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

Candid Creation Publishing books are available through most major bookstores in Singapore. For bulk order of our books at special quantity discounts, please email us at [email protected].

HYBRID WORK REVOLUTION

What Teams are Facing and Leaders are Missing

Author:

Tan Weixi

Publisher:

Phoon Kok Hwa

Editor:

Patricia Ng

Page Layout:

Geelyn Lim

Cover Design:

Ryanne Ng

Published by:

Candid Creation Publishing LLP

167 Jalan Bukit Merah

#05-12 Connection One Tower 4 Singapore 150167

Website:

www.candidcreation.com

Email:

[email protected]

Facebook:

www.facebook.com/CandidCreationPublishing

ISBN:

978-981-17432-5-2

This book is dedicated to my parents, who gave me the courage and freedom to live a life of adventure.

My wife, who is my pillar of strength, and to my two precious daughters, without whom this book might have been completed a year earlier.

But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction

Part I: Establish Balance

Chapter 1Reimagine the Workplace

Chapter 2Embrace Technology

Chapter 3Enhance Collaboration

Part II: Enable Belonging

Chapter 4Build Trust

Chapter 5Boost Psychological Safety

Chapter 6Foster Relationships

Part III: Elicit Breakthrough

Chapter 7Reframe Performance

Chapter 8Encourage Learning

Chapter 9Drive Engagement

What’s Next

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Gratitude. That is what I have for all the amazing people who have contributed to the creation of this book. Similar to the hybrid landscape it describes, this book was created over the course of a long journey of conversations and adaptation, and turned out quite different from what was originally planned. I appreciate everyone who helped along the way.

At the top of that list is my wife, Siew Chin. Remember when I said this project would take a few months and you give me your signature Nike eyebrow, suggesting I might have underestimated the effort needed? You were right. Thanks for taking the giant step to leave a secure job and help me run the growing business. Thanks for taking care of the household when I get into my writing “flow”. I love you.

My two darling daughters, Ziyi and Jingyi. Thanks for being independent and taking ownership for your own learning and growth. I hope this book is a good example that we can overcome all odds with proper time management and focus.

CP, Teck Beng, Jesslyn, Shannya, Elana, Farhan, and everyone else at Workplace Asia. Thanks for helping me shape some of the ideas in the book, and your work in creating the accompanying https://hybridteams.co/ website.

Albert, Simon, Ghim Wee, Lee Yen, and my fellow associates at Korn Ferry. I can’t begin to express my gratitude. Thank you for believing in me, your sharing of ideas, and protecting my schedule at times so I can get this done.

Thanks for my book writing tribe, Kok Hwa, Andrew, Adeline, Deddy, Christina, Joanne, and John for pushing, prodding and propelling me to finish my writing. Your fingerprints are all over this.

To those whom I’ve neglected over the past year, sorry for missing out on social gatherings. You supported and cheered me on even when you had no idea what I was writing about. Time to grab a copy of the book.

To clients who trusted me, the leaders who shared your stories during our workshops, interviewees, and friends for sharing their tremendous stories and insights—thank you.

Finally, to humans. Thank you for letting me observe you. Team dynamics are perplexing, infuriating, and complex at times, and that is why I feel alive doing the work I do.

Preface

12th March 2020

I had been traveling somewhere in the world for my consulting work every month—sometimes every week—for the previous 13 years; that is, until the Covid-19 pandemic stopped me in my tracks. Little did I know that this particular trip back from Jakarta would be the last time I would step foot on a plane for the next two years.

In the face of a global pandemic, a vast majority of knowledge workers1 had to suddenly pivot from a brick-and-mortar setting to working from home, often in environments that were never designed for this new purpose. They attended training workshops from their dining rooms and engaged in important strategic discussions from their balconies. Teams were trying their best to navigate a dispersed workplace the best they could, by focusing on what worked now, rather than what worked best.

I was not exempt from this need to “pivot”. I now had to manage my team, my partners, and other stakeholders without the luxury of face-to-face meetings. I still remember a voice call with a particular client: “Let’s reschedule that workshop for September. Things should be back to normal by then.” On hindsight, the level of denial reflected by my earlier words seem almost foolish.

18th July 2022

In Singapore, where I am based, things eased up a bit from March 2022, and I took the opportunity with my siblings to bring my parents across the border, to have a mini reunion with some of our relatives. Both countries have different rules and regulations regarding the usage of QR codes and apps, and I observed how my parents were having difficulties adjusting to these technologies.

As I reflected on the overseas experience with my parents, I realised that this is what was happening to leaders right now. They were like the elderly, who have resisted technology, have not really embraced it, and now had no choice but to deal with it, and are frozen and need help. They had transitioned to remote working practices abruptly as part of the March 2020 lockdowns. Perceiving this shift as a brief emergency (just like myself), they focused on accomplishing the necessary tasks of the organisation, with the belief that we could all return to a “normal” work life, the way it was before the pandemic. But that soon turned into months, then years.

Many employees had adapted to a remote way of working and found it hard to let go of this work arrangement. Leaders had to realise that they had opened a Pandora’s Box. Team members had proven that they could effectively work from home and successfully achieve business requirements on their own terms in their own space in their own time. They now recognised that there was a price to pay in terms of the daily commute to the office. Are we confident enough to look them in the eye and tell them they are more productive sitting in the office while the big group of people next to them are gathering and chatting about the upcoming concert by Taylor Swift?

5th May 2023: The War for Flexibility

More than three years since Covid-19 was designated as a pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared an end to the global Public Health Emergency (PHE) for Covid-19, allowing most of us to return to life as we knew it before the pandemic.

Some leaders, such as David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, have always been keen advocates of adopting an office-first strategy, and took this as an opportunity to adopt a stricter stance to demand physical presence at the office.

However, employees who came to prize the flexibility of remote work were not backing down. The pandemic had exposed them to the benefits of a productivity increase while having a better quality of life, and also provided time for them to reflect on “what matters most”. What this meant was that organisations who were not able to offer some form of hybrid work arrangement might lose some of their most talented employees to other companies, a phenomenon that some termed as the Great Resignation.

In fact, at the height of the Great Resignation, employees held the upper hand, and many demanded hybrid and remote working polices as part of the employment contracts. This caused companies such as General Motors to backtrack from their plan to implement an office-centric way of work.2

At the time of writing, an uncertain economy had led to a series of well-publicised mass layoffs, seemingly shifting the power back to employers. Some companies started mandating more in-office days and set schedules, going to the extent of issuing ultimatums, while others like Salesforce used softer influencing techniques such as donating $10 to local charities for every day that an employee comes into the office.3

These measures met with varying degrees of success. As we continue to experience a disconnect between the work preferences of leaders and their team members, a likely middle ground will be a hybrid-work policy. In fact, as we can see from a survey conducted by McKinsey in July 2022 of 13,532 global workers, work flexibility is ranked right behind only salary as the motivator to stay in a role.4 This finding is consistent with another survey from Bloomberg that revealed that 39% of adults in the United States would consider quitting if their employers weren’t flexible about remote work. This figure rose to 49% for millennials and Gen Zs.5

What was becoming increasing clear is that hybrid work will be here to stay, and leaders have to change their paradigm from what works now, to what will work best.

There’s no “one-size-fits-all” solution to the future of where we work. While truly fortunate to be able to explore and answer many of those questions through my training and consulting work, I knew I needed another way to amplify the message. It is my hope that this book will provide a different perspective to our current ways of approaching the Future of Work.

1 This refers to workers whose jobs involve developing and using knowledge rather than producing goods or services. They use their understanding of an industry or a specialty area to provide advice and direction to workplace activities. These include professionals in information and communications technology, physicians, pharmacists, design thinkers, lawyers, accountants, and academics. (“Knowledge Worker.” Cambridge Dictionary, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/knowledge-worker. / “Knowledge Worker.” Wikipedia, 15 Oct. 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_worker.)

2 Ludlow, Edward, and David Welch. “GM Scales Back Return-to-Office Plan After Staff Backlash.” Bloomberg, 28 Sep. 2022, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-27/gm-scales-back-return-to-office-plan-afterstaff-backlash.

3 Pandurangi, Nidhi. “Salesforce Wants Employees Back In The Office So Badly That It’s Donating $10 To Local Charities For Every Day an Employee Comes Into Work.” Insider, 7 Jun. 2023, https://www.businessinsider.com/salesforcereturn-to-office-donating-charity-employees-remote-work-2023-6.

4 De Smet, Aaron, at al. “The Great Attrition is Making Hiring Harder. Are You Searching the Right Talent Pools?” McKinsey & Company, 13 Jul. 2022, https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/the-great-attrition-is-making-hiring-harder-are-you-searching-the-righttalent-pools.

5 Anders, Melin, and Egkolfopoulou, Misyrlena. “Employees Are Quitting Instead of Giving Up Working From Home.” Bloomberg Wealth, 1 Jun. 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-01/return-to-office-employees-arequitting-instead-of-giving-up-work-from-home.

Introduction

I have a magnetic whiteboard right next to my desk in my study room. On it, I have pasted an old post-it note. Stickiness long worn off, I have now reinforced it with a piece of sticky tape. On it is a quotation from United States Senator Paul Tsongas, shared with me by an ex-colleague Eyal, more than a decade ago—Nobody on their deathbed has ever said, “I wish I had spent more time at the office.”

I am a self-professed workaholic. In my last corporate role before I started my first business, my company did not require me to report to office on a daily basis, as long as the work was delivered. In those days, this uncommon work arrangement was called “telecommuting”. Friends who knew of this were so envious, and I started believing that I was the luckiest man on earth. But this was not the case. Together with the increase in workload and need to communicate with stakeholders across different time zones, I found it increasingly difficult to tear myself away from my Blackberry and computer screen. In fact, when my study room became my workplace, I couldn’t stop working. My body eventually broke down as a call for help, prompting the earlier piece advice from Eyal.

To Office, Or Not To Office?

That is the question.

In April 2020, an ABC News correspondent was broadcasting live from home, just like many other TV reporters during the pandemic. However, when the camera zoomed in for a closeup shot, it revealed that he was not wearing pants;1 and the rest, as they say, is history.

This probably would have been a career-ending move under normal circumstances. But fortunately for him, most viewers thought it was funny. Maybe because they, too, did not bother wearing pants in the many Microsoft Team meetings in which they suddenly found themselves in. Perhaps this was a signal that the tide had changed.

The Hybrid Work Paradox

A study conducted by Microsoft on 61,182 of their US-based employees over the first six months of 2020 offered some insights on the long-term effects of remote work.2 Similar to another iconic research led by Stanford professor Nicholas Bloom, it concluded that remote working increases productivity, lowers attrition, and improves concentration levels.3 Other recent research into the effects of Covid-19-induced virtual working supports the view that organisations get more from their employees, with 77% of people in the US saying they work the same or more hours, and 69% reporting their productivity levels are the same or higher.4

From the evidence, it seems that lockdowns have done wonders for discovering the benefits of virtual working. An interesting finding though, is that despite the merits of remote working (such as time savings from the daily commute to work, or the ability to focus on work without colleagues popping in to chat about last night’s football match!), employees also miss the stimulus and real-time collaboration offered when working with colleagues in a co-located environment.

This is what we call a paradox, which is a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality, expresses a possible truth.5 Examples of work-related paradoxes that leaders frequently deal with include investing for the long-term while returning a profit in the short term; acting globally while dealing with local needs; driving business performance while addressing the needs of the people.

Specifically, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella calls these seemingly divergent needs the Hybrid Work Paradox,6 and unsurprisingly, opines that solving this paradox will be the challenge of the decade, and the key to success in the Hybrid Work Revolution.

This is the reason why this book is written specifically to benefit leaders, such as:

•Corporate Executives and CEOs

– Strategic Decision-Making: CEOs and top executives need to make strategic decisions about the organisation’s future. Understanding the potential benefits and drawbacks of a hybrid workplace can inform decisions about office space, workforce planning, and overall corporate strategy.

– Digital Transformation: They can explore opportunities for digital transformation initiatives that enhance the organisation’s ability to function in a hybrid work environment.

– Employee Engagement: They can learn how to keep remote and in-office employees engaged, motivated, and aligned with the company’s goals.

•Human Resources (HR) Leaders

– Talent Acquisition and Retention: HR leaders can adapt recruitment strategies to attract remote talent and retain existing employees by offering hybrid work options.

– Employee Well-being: They can explore ways to support employee well-being, maintain work-life balance, and address burnout in a hybrid work environment.

– Policies and Procedures: Understanding the hybrid workplace can help HR leaders update and create policies that govern remote work, flexible scheduling, and performance evaluations.

•Managers and Team Leaders

– Individual contributors who are moving into a leadership position and looking for nuggets of advice.

– Leaders transiting from one company to another, as there could be a big shift in culture.

– Leaders who have been leading in a pure remote working arrangement, and looking forward to make some tweaks in a hybrid work environment.

Navigating the Hybrid Work Revolution

The advantages of on-site work include improved collaboration, increased social interactions, and more serendipitous discussions leading to better creative outputs. If we can combine this with the potential savings from office rental, and increased access to a global pool of remote talent, then it seems we have a winning formula on our hands.

However, trying to build effective teams in a hybrid work environment is no easy task. The complexity of building a virtual team is already so high that some experts believe that leaders of virtual teams require special training.7 Add to that the challenge of managing a team consisting of a mix of co-located and fully remote members, and some of us are almost ready to throw in the towel.