How to create a productive hybrid work environment with Felice Ekelman and Julie Kantor

Hey, before we get to the show, I just wanna remind you that we have created a private Facebook group just for you, our podcast listeners. There are almost 1500 agencies, agency owners, inside that Facebook group every day talking about what’s going on inside their shop, asking for resources, gut checking decisions, talking about everything from pricing to hiring, to biz dev. All kinds of things are happening there. We’re starting conversations. You guys are starting conversations. What I love about it is the community’s coming together and sharing resources, encouraging each other, and just sort of having a safe place to talk about what it’s like to own an agency. So all you have to do is head over to Facebook, search for a Build, a Better, Agency Podcast Group, or Build, a Better, Agency Podcast.

And you’ll find the group. You have to answer three questions. If you don’t answer the questions, we can’t let you in. But they’re simple. It’s, do you own an agency or do you work at an agency? And if so, what’s the URL? What are you trying to get out of the group? And will you behave, basically? So come join us. If you haven’t been there for a while, come on back. If you haven’t joined, join in to the conversation. I think you’re gonna find it really helpful. All right, let’s get to the show.

Welcome to the Agency Management Institute community, where you’ll learn how to grow and scale your business, attract and retain the best talent, make more money, and keep more of the money you make. The Build a Better Agency Podcast, presented by a White Label IQ is packed with insights on how small to mid-size agencies are getting things done, bringing his 25 years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant. Please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Hey everybody. Drew McLellan here with, yep, you guessed it. Another episode of Build a Better Agency. Welcome back if you’re a regular listener, And, if you are new, we are happy to have you with us. So today’s topic is really a great one, and I’m excited to introduce you to our guests and for us to learn from them. But before I do that, I wanna remind you that we have two different offerings that we make available to you every month. First one is what I call, what is a MI. And it’s basically an hour where I present for about 10 minutes about sort of how agencies can engage with a MI, be more a part of the community, learn more about the work we do, how we work with agencies, both for free and for fee, and all those sort of things.

Learn about the peer groups and all the, that sort of thing. And then I spend 50 minutes just answering questions. So all you have to do is show up that the next one is January 11th at 3:00 PM Mountain Time. So again, the what is a MI, so learn more about how you can tap into a MI and get even more resources and help is January 11th at 3:00 PM Mountain. So if you’re interested in that, just shoot me an email and I’ll give you the Zoom link or go into the Facebook group and you’ll see the Zoom link. And then on January 12th, so the very next day we do a live, once a month, we do a live q and a where you can come and ask anything you want, and I, or we, if Danielle’s with me, will answer your questions.

So that one is January 12th at 10:00 AM Mountain. So an open mic, q and a, whatever you want to talk about, we’re there just to answer your questions and kick ideas around or whatever we can do to be helpful. So again, what is a MI, January 11th, 3:00 PM Mountain, and a AMI q and a open mic, January 12th at 10:00 AM Mountain. So put those on your calendar. Love to see you there. Today’s guest is actually guests, so co-authors of a book called Thrive With, a Hybrid Workplace step-by step, Guidance From. the Experts just came out earlier in this year in 2023. And the authors are Felice Eckelman and Julie Kantor.

So Felice is an employment attorney, and Julie is a business psychologist and executive coach. And so it’s an interesting story about how they ended up writing this book together, which I will let them tell you. But they come at the idea of Hybrid work, obviously from their perspective and their subject matter expertise. So the law, and then just the psychology of business and business coaching. And so we’re gonna talk to them about some best practices of how to create a really productive Hybrid work environment and what that looks like today, the trends they’re seeing, what they think is coming down the pike for us in the future, and how we can show up as leaders to create an environment that really serves the agency, the clients, and the employees.

So I’m excited to introduce them to you and for us to learn from them. So let’s, let’s get to it. Felice Julie, welcome to the show. Super glad to have you guys with us. Thanks for joining us today.

Great to be here.

So tell the listeners a little bit about both of you and how you came together and wrote the book and have the expertise that you have.

Okay, I’ll, I’ll lead it off. I’m Felice Ekelman. I am in my office in New York City right now. I’m a management side labor and employment lawyer. I represent companies in all aspects of workplace law. That means I provide training, litigate defense of cases, help employers whose employees are represented by unions, and essentially help clients who are employers stay out of trouble. I’ve known Julie for several decades. She’s actually somebody I turn to when clients need some executive coaching and leadership skills training.

And we have worked in together in that regard. So while we’ve worked sort of on parallel tracks until this book, we’ve never really worked together on a project, although we know each other. As I said a moment ago, from many decades, I should mention that the law firm I am with is called Jackson Lewis. And while I’m in New York, we have offices throughout the United States, and all of my colleagues are employment lawyers. And we all work on management side Julie.

And I am a business psychologist. I have a boutique, boutique culting consulting department. I’m actually working from home today with my blurred background, which is notable in the book. I talk actually. And yeah, so we, I serve clients on leadership development, executive coaching, both individual teams, helping them be effective leaders. The one thing I would say relationship to hybrid is that I had a job prior to hybrid, and now it’s Hybrid. I have a job on steroids, I bet. So, of taking the next step of Felice and I coming together.

We have a, a common colleague who is in HR at a publishing company. And she had reached out to us during the lockdown where we were truly in lockdown. You were New York City streets, it was a ghost town. And her boss was looking to write a book on work from home. We started writing it, and he ended up pulling the project. And honestly, he should have pulled the project because fact is, is we were not gonna be staying 100% remote. And in the conversations with her, this concept of hybrid, I mean we’re talking, June of 2020 was just beginning to come out.

We didn’t know how it was looking. Felice and I started talking together and realized that we had two different approaches. I don’t mean in terms of what our clients were coming to us, that sometimes either literally or figuratively the same client was coming to us, but Felice, as she said, helping them stay out of trouble. Whereas my clients were saying, okay, we got this problem. Let’s help grow and figure out how to, you know, get out of this and make this all work. And so the book came together when we were talking this, and we sort of came up with, she said this, well, you know, I help clients. I’ve spent my career helping clients avoid risk.

And I’ve said, I’ve spent my co spent my career helping clients grow. And so we wrote the book, by the way, through covid. We didn’t see each other through the entire time of writing the book, which is of note. And we wrote the book as a, as a, a real re almost a reference book. So for PE people who read it, we suggest, you don’t have to start at chapter one, you can start at chapter three. You can start at chapter two. It’s very, it’s a very thorough or detailed table of contents. It’s easy to peruse into your te your subject of interest and go into it.

So now that the, now that the world has gone back to air quotes normal, and people are sort of trying to figure out how post covid to come together, as we were talking about before we hit the record button in agencies, we have an interesting mix. We have agencies that are truly remote that they might get together once a year or twice a year for a retreat or something like that. But truly everybody’s working from wherever they live. And then we have a large portion of agencies that are doing some version of hybrid, but there’s lots of versions of hybrid within that. And then we have some agencies, actually we have a few agencies depending on the state they lived in here in the states that never left the office that worked five days a week all through Covid and, and or did go leave the office during the lockdown, but are back to five days a week.

So for you, as you’re looking at sort of this new, this new normal, one of the things that I’m seeing is that agencies that were hybrid, maybe a day or two a week, most of them are now moving. They’re adding a day in the office. So they’re moving to more in the office than out of the office. Are you seeing that trend as well on the, on a broader scope,

Julie, I, let me start and we can go from there. We are seeing all kinds of arrangements and when, when I talk to employers who are wrestling with what is the right approach, given that, you know, hybrid is the new normal, right? I can’t say this is the rule that every employer should take. To the contrary, every organization is different. And this provides leaders with great opportunity. It’s an opportunity to figure out what works best for their organization, given their culture, given the way that they work and given the needs of their staff to have flexibility.

And it’s a really great opportunity, as I said, to carve out a niche as, as an employer that really understands how work is getting done and how to support employees to make sure that the organization and its workers are doing the best work and are as engaged as possible in doing that work in a collaborative basis. So one of the things Julie and I have been consistent about in talking to businesses is, you know, there is, this is not a war of days. This is not a five, a three versus two or one versus four.

This is an opportunity to make meaningful decision so that time in the office is meaningful and time away from the office provides employees with as much flexibility as possible so that they can achieve this thing we call work life balance.

Yeah, and what I would say in terms of, I mean, the simple answer to your first question is, are employers coming, expecting people to come into the office more than one day a week or just more? The answer is yes. And I think what shifted, and as Fleece said, in terms of understanding the purpose, that initially the conversations were basically this sort of tit for tat conversation about, you know, I don’t wanna come in the office. Well, you have to come in the office one, you know, three days. It was only like, you know, a negotiation based on just numbers, right? It was not, you know, the, the policies were, is it three day? It was three, two, it was three, two was more common than one four.

But those are the conversations. It was just about the numbers. And in terms of them working, what employers started feeling is that there are things in terms of productivity that are, that are going down because of people not being in the office. Especially in something like marketing where there’s a lot of creativity. You know, you’re not, there’s a, not, you know, employee, you know, computer programmers who are just working individually, that there’s synergy. And especially when you get into any of the creativity realm of things, right? The synergy that happens face to face, right? And so What Felice was saying in terms of what we found in terms of the coaching that employers are needing is start looking for the purpose.

That it’s not just a tit for tat Yeah, I’m being mean and I want you to come in. And so it’s helping the employers shift the language. But there’s no doubt that one day a week is, we’re not seeing that at all for the most part.

Right. And are you seeing that if whatever the combination is that it’s everybody’s doing the same thing on the same days, do you find that’s more effective than, for example, saying, Hey, everybody’s gonna be in the office a day or two a week, you pick the day.

Well, you don’t want folks coming to an office and realizing that they’re the only ones in their team or unit or division who were there. So there needs to be, as we refer to it in the book, some intentionality about scheduling, but more importantly, there needs to be some intentionality about what happens on the days when folks are in the office. And so, you know, you don’t wanna have a situation where someone’s sitting at a screen all day and could have done that at home. You do wanna have a situation where you’ve maximized the opportunity for interaction and team building and collaboration. And what we talk about in the book is that this requires leaders, again, to be more intentional and spend the time planning to make sure that you haven’t asked people to get dressed and commute for no reason.

Yeah. And I mean, I think, and tied to that, it, it’s an issue of them to defining the act, what are in-house activities, what are at home activities? And like I said, I had a job before Covid. And so this is just another layer that employers have to think about, right? What are individual activities that you should be alone where you put down and you’re working on a crate creative piece, or you’re working on, you know, some, some new approach to accounting, or they’re deciding what program they’re working with you on, right? Yep. This could be one-on-one activity versus the activities where you want the syner synergy or they’re walking past each other in the hall.

And so employers not only need to think about what, but they need to think about the quantity, right? And people, organizations, the way that what they’re doing is more on the cr, you know, the creator end, which marketing sits in that bucket, large scale architects, any of those, they’re looking towards me being in the office less than, than organizations where there’s not that necessarily creative way. That nonetheless, one of the other main themes throughout the book is this concept of connections. And based on the location, the need for connection doesn’t change.

What has to change is how they are connecting. Hmm. But as Felice said, we don’t recommend people come in and out. You have a tracking issue. Not that we are recommending everybody become Big brother, but people just coming in and out. We, we, you end up being in a place where the employee is gaining a hundred percent employee flexibility, but the end of the day it’s a job that this work to be done.

And, and setting ground rules is really important. Both when, when folks work remotely or on a hybrid schedule. And one of the chapters talked about setting ground rules for communication so that everyone is in the same place in knowing when they should communicate by chat, by email, by text, by telephone, by meeting, depending on the nature of the situation. So that, you know, folks aren’t talking past one another and people aren’t wasting time. So in, in the look in the creative fields, flexibility is really important.

Yeah. And, and most of the employees are listeners are not punching a time clock. You know, they’re working of course during business hours, but they’re probably working more than ordinary business hours. And employers have to trust that work is getting done and that they’re working effectively and efficiently. And, and that’s really important because, you know, there’s a lot of concern on the part of some leaders that out of sight means not working. Right. And we all know that’s not true. There have been a lot of reports and anecdotally we can talk amongst ourselves, you know, are we productive when we’re not in the office?

Are we more productive? Are we less productive? I think it depends on the dead, you know, and,

And, and probably the person and the, probably the work, right?

Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. And so, you know, it’s not really fair. And, and by the way, the literature that’s coming out in surveys, you know, is completely all over the place with respect to are people more or less effective in an office or working remotely? And I think it’s ’cause it just depends. There are too many outside influences, right? As you just noted, Drew, right? So, you know, people can work remotely, people, people can work in an office. And it’s up to leaders to make sure that people provide their best work wherever they are.

So for, for managers who are, who have been managing for a while, managing pre covid, and for a lot of the agency owners listening, you know, they’re used to everybody in the office every day bump into each other in the hallway, you know, I see you and I go, oh, I forgot to tell you this happened in the meeting. Or you overhear me saying something to someone else, which means you jump in. And so I think one of the challenges for the managers is, is they’re really struggling. A how do I manage people in this environment? And B, how do I create a connected culture where collaboration is infectious? So, you know, I’ve had a lot of agency owners say, you know, it’s so hard because now when you wanna just have a five minute conversation with someone, you have to schedule it or you have to slack them, or you have to, it is just it, that getting up and just walking to somebody’s office or bumping into them in the, in the break room if you will, is sort of more challenging.

So how are you helping, and how in the book did you sort of suggest that we rethink about culture and those sort of water cooler moments that are, have been such a part of our work for, for many of us, for most of our career?

Yeah. I mean, I, I think there are actually two different points that you’re raising. One is culture and the other is the serendipity of getting work done.

Yep.

Serendipity of getting work done is difficult. There’s, the good news is there’s technology to help us, right? Sure. Anything, you know, from huddle rooms, you know, there are, you know, places where they’re not having that, where they’re literally have periods of time where they keep an open, you know, room, whether it’s Zoom or WebEx or whatnot, that your, that your program needs to be open. Your screen should be probably dark. And then if I have a quick question for you, I pinging you, ’cause everybody doesn’t want their video and their audio all the time, right? If I have a question for you, I pinging you and the the, because the message is, is I’m working on individual work, but I’m around.

And so it may be you spend the whole time where you and I are gonna chitchat and then we’re gonna say, Hey, we need Felice in this and we ping Felice because she’s committed to having that, in essence, what we talked about in college, which were office hours, right? Right. Where investor was sitting there and you know, you could stop by. So that’s one way that we have technology that is trying to benefit and help through this sort of ad hoc, the other piece on just, you know, sort of small, it’s like remind people that, you know, these things called cell phones. The first word is, second word is phone. And especially generational where, you know, probably under 35 the concept of you and I talking on a phone or me calling you, you know, without planning is just a foreign concept.

Is teaching people that you can do it. And if the person can’t pick up, the person can’t pick up. But the sense of teaching people A, to use it and B, pick it up, right? Whereas tendency, and this is a generational thing where your older folks will pick it up where tendency of younger folks is, if you call them, they will let it go to voicemail, right? ’cause they really don’t wanna talk to you. So, so there’s really an education piece there. Felice mentioned this piece in which we have in the book, which is looking at the different modalities and thinking about how much time you have to build in sort of for this free time. The other thing is making, and again, just throwing out suggestions, making it a policy, it’s okay to have a five minute meeting, right?

You know, it doesn’t have to be 15, 30 minutes, it doesn’t have to be 30. It could be a five minute meeting that you can schedule. So in the beginning of the day, now again, you need to think a little bit ahead ’cause you can’t just be in the moment while I’m passing the hall. But it could be, if you spend some time in the beginning of the day thinking about who I’m gonna just need to have a quick question with, rather than taking an email, we’re gonna have four exchanges back, which at the end of the day is probably gonna take us 15 minutes. But again, it goes to this word that please talked about in terms of intentionality, you have to think about these things you didn’t use to have to think about them in terms of the concept of connection and culture.

Again, we, so a couple of it is about being mindful about who’s in the office. So one of the activities we talked, least talked in the beginning about there has to be a purpose of coming into the office. One of the purpose is, is just connection. Right? Right. How is your weekend Drew like, right? Because there’s no doubt I feel really strongly about connection. I call it interpersonal glue. You know, if you and I like each other, we don’t have to be intimate, but you know, we have like, and there’s a, an issue we’re working on that’s got some contention, we’ll work through it. Whereas if you don’t, and I don’t know each other, we’re not gonna work through it. We’ll just avoid it. And so that’s one of the things in terms of being purposeful about coming into the office and you know, things like the pizza parties, the piece I say is you don’t make it after work because then it’s onerous.

You pay for it rather than expecting the employees. And the other thing we’re finding, and and I have a number of architect clients where it’s gotta be nice to come to the office, you know, the, the, you know, it’s gray and gross and dark and it’s dirty. That is not gonna be, well you take some time and I’m looking at budgets and people need to spend some time to do some, you know, refreshing that act stuff we’re finding actually matters in terms of, you know, when you have a repeat a group that is completely Remote, so they’re not coming into the office at all. So then again, you have to be creative and take some time consciously in the meeting to send some time.

And it’s known we have 30 minutes, but in fact the first 10 minutes we’re just catching up. You know, I know you had a, you know, I know you had a first date with somebody. I know your kid was born. And so again, trying to build some connection there, that’s off task. And some of it you can have free flowing. And some of our clients we’re working to come up with, you know, what, what some people call, you know, sort of warmup exercises. Right? Right. You know, they’re having, you know, like what’s the last two things you bought on on Amazon that just becomes some playful way to build connection.

Yeah. And to get to know each other.

Exactly.

If you’re not in the office, and I mean, for leaders who are in the office, they need to make the most of that time and like, walk through the office, right. And do the proverbial hangout in the door and check in. Right? I mean, if that’s only happening once or twice a week, then you really need to do it. You can’t rely on serendipity.

Yeah.

So that’s a big difference.

As, as you guys are talking, the word intentionality just keeps sort of both. You’re saying it, but it’s also just ringing through and everything you say that there’s, right, it can’t be that we had the luxury of just winging it. What happened in the office every day when we were in the office all the time. And now because the time is shorter and more precious, we have to be really careful about how we use that time. So both the employees and the employer feel like there’s been as much value squeezed out of that time both relationally and work-wise as possible.

And I would say for the leaders who are, you know, especially ones who are, you know, working with clients and they’re busy and they, you know, may have billable hours, they actually need to build in time. Right. That they’re gonna do, thinking about it, forget about scheduled time for us all to meet, they have to think about, well how much did Drew, Felice and Julie actually have to have to come into the office? You have to allow time in your busy schedule to do that.

Yeah.

And, and one of the other, one of, if I may Drew Yeah, please, as we talk about in the book extensively, is the need for supervisor or managerial training. Because these skills that we talk about in the book that require intentionality may not come naturally to people. And so, as with other leadership training, learning to lead in an environment where you see your staff sometimes all the time or never, or maybe all three requires some training on, on how to, so that’s another focal point of the book that managers may need to be taught some of these skills.

Yeah. So you what, let’s take a quick break and when we come back, let’s talk a little bit more about that idea of what kind of training do we as owners need to be thinking about for ourselves and for our leadership team to sort of do this well into the future. So let’s take a quick break and then we’ll come back and we’ll, we’ll jump into that. Just a quick reminder that every week we send out a newsletter. We brilliantly call it the weekly newsletter, comes out every Wednesday and it is filled with just some ideas that I have around something that’s important to you. So I of the lead story is always something that I’ve been talking to a lot of agency owners about, or something that I wanna sort of put in front of you to get you thinking.

A lot of times there’s questions to think about or, or some resources. And then there’s always a link to the weekly video and then a list of the workshops and whatever else is going on. We also, we get a lot of promotional offers from, you know, friends who are running agency programs like Macon or other folks like that with discounts. And so that’s also where we share all that information. So if you’re not hearing from me every week in your inbox and you wanna do that, just go to the AAMI website and scroll down to the footer and you’re gonna see a link to our newsletter. Just click on that. All you have to do is give us your name and email and we will start putting that in your inbox.

Okay. We would love to be a resource for you every week. So if that would be helpful, sign up today. Thanks. All right. We are back and we are back with the two, two authors of Thrive With, a Hybrid Workplace as step-by step Guidance From, the Experts, which just came out in 2023. So before the break we were, we were just talking about, you know, what happens culturally with the Hybrid environment. And Felice made the comment that, you know, a lot of leaders there’s we’re, we have to lead differently in this environment and we may need some help with some training or Guidance on how to do that. So let’s talk a little more about that.

So when you are working with a client who is a leader, whether they own the, the joint or they’re just in a leadership role, what kind of training are you seeing that is sort of lacking or what kind of knowledge or skillset that may be something we have to, we have to, you know, formally or informally go back and, and kind of strengthen as leaders inside the organization?

Well, one of the things that’s become increasingly important, and this can be part of equal employment opportunity and or diversity inclusion and equity training, is making sure that managers don’t inadvertently make decisions based on bias, for example. And in this situation where we have groups of employees who may be working remotely all the time, hybrid or on a regular office, in an office basis, leaders have to make sure that they’re treating everyone consistently and fairly. And if an employer has a policy permitting hybrid or remote work leaders should not disfavor the people who are taking advantage of those policies and not coming to the office every day.

That’s called proximity bias. Interesting. So proximity bias is when one favors people who are more proximate close by at their, you know, right there in the office next door, as opposed to folks who may be working in a different state in a different time zone who require a meeting request to be able to connect. And, you know, you can, you can see how disfavor those employees can have long-term implications, because more often than not, the folks who are taking advantage of flexible work arrangements are caregivers.

And that translates to women. And so if the organization has said to employees work wherever you like, how many days you like, and then a leader is disfavor someone who’s utilizing that opportunity, that is Yeah, interesting. Not gonna have a good outcome.

Right.

So, so this is actually one of the great points in terms of that we bring up in terms of our different perspectives in the book that we, we hope people get out of it because I will tell you from my end, the reality is that if we’re all working in the same office, and I have a question, I’m gonna walk over to you Drew, I’m asking you a question, right? I’m not gonna, you know, set up a, you know, a zoom call with Felice or even if there’s, you know, a huddle room that’s open to ask her this question. And so the reality is that that’s true. The reality also is, is in terms of helping grow folks, so translate that to training. So I would start off one of the pieces in training and get into and looking at onboarding where you have employees who are coming into the office and learning what, what, how the work is work is done, how do you engage?

And so employers look at your onboarding process and see how you, is it working? And then you need to work at how you’re training your leaders who are ultimately rolling that out. Other things in terms of training is this concept of communication. How much do your employees need to communicate and can you teach them the employer and, and the leader? And who is then responsible for teaching the employees what the communication standards are? Is it something that can be done asynchronously or is this something that needs to be done synchronously? So that kind of piece of information. The the other training piece, you know, I hate to sound pedantic, but it goes almost down to time management, right.

You know, whereas, you know, if I’m coming and go, if I’m always in the office, I don’t really have to think about it if I am 27 years old, right? And I’m not, I’m only used to being in the office. I don’t only know five days a week and well now I’m working at home, like how am I supposed to spend my day? I literally right before here got off a call with another people and there’s, you know, one of the things a woman’s said is that, you know, 27 year olds ish had been in work, work, you know, nine to five pre covid and now they’re literally thinking of working at home is days off.

And so, right. You know, they don’t know what to do. And so they literally have come up with a plan where they’re meeting three times a week for five minutes in the morning to look at somebody’s schedule for the day. And so leaders need training of how to see, measure how the people are being productive and then coaching them how to live in this Hybrid world or the Remote world when you have, when you’re a hundred percent remote and I never see you and you never see me, well what is the connection? How is the leader going to connect with you to in, in monitor, and I don’t mean in a big brother kind of way, just sort of seeing if you’re getting your work done right.

Leaders need to, to think about, again, just take time to think about the fact that they have to think about this of how somebody is spending their time.

Back in the day when knowledge and creative workers worked in their office every day, many supervisors viewed presence as a proxy for pro, for productivity for sure. You hear all the time, you work late. And now leaders have to learn how to really evaluate what their employee’s contributions are, which requires a whole new view of deliverables, responsiveness, and, and all of those key component of what makes a knowledge worker a creative worker successful.

Well, and I, and I think you’re right. I think, I mean I think you’re right. If so, as someone was in their office and it looked like they were working, we probably couldn’t see their computer screen. They could have been on Amazon for all we know, but they looked busy and so we assume they were busy. So I actually, I think one of the opportunities here, again, whether you’re completely Remote, you’re Hybrid or you’re in the office five days a week, is to really def redefine how we evaluate and talk about productivity in a way that’s actually measurable as opposed to just eyeball to eyeball. I see you, I see you in the same space as me. One of the challenges I think for agencies, and I’m sure for all businesses is that so much of agency life and behavior and professional sort of decorum was sort of taught by osmosis, right?

So you’d hire a kid right outta college, they’d come in, they didn’t know how to show up professionally, they didn’t know how to dress professionally. They didn’t know that being on time for a meeting meant being there five minutes early. They, there was just a lot of things that we just assume people know that they really don’t know if they haven’t worked in a work environment before that they just learn by watching their elders if you will behave. And so one of the big challenges, I’m curious about your thoughts about this. One of the big challenges agency owners are having right now is they’re hiring young people who have never had a professional job before. They, you know, they worked retail or something while they were in college, but they’ve never worked in a professional environment.

And owners are really uncomfortable sitting them down and talking about like, this is how you show up as a professional. This is whether you’re on a zoom or you’re at home or you’re in the office, here’s how we dress, here’s how we don’t dress, here’s how we show up, here’s, here’s how you contribute to meetings, here’s how you add value. So I’m curious, in your work, how are you helping clients think through or in the book, how did you talk about how do we, all the things that were learned by observation that we no longer have that mechanism anymore. How, how do employers identify what those things were and then how do they teach them in this new environment?

Well, I think first of all, the first piece is this intentionality is realizing that you have to talk with them about it. Right? Right. The first thing you said is we didn’t used to have to talk about it, they just learned it by osmosis. So the first piece is accepting responsibility that you do have to do it. The second piece is that I’m seeing now from our clients is they forget as leaders that they’re the adults in the room. Right. That they do have the right to say, you know, when you’re on screen you need to turn on your video. And I can tell you, you know, we’ve been, I’ve been called in many times by a leader to help deliver that message to 22, 23 year olds.

Yeah. And you hear from the 23 year olds as well, you know, I didn’t really wanna have to get dressed that morning or Right. Comb my hair. And it’s like, no, actually you do need, you know, to, and then, you know, teaching folks the connection between, let’s even just talk on Zoom, let’s not even talk in the office, but the I impact of putting your camera on, I mean, a lot of employers, they’re afraid to say, well, you know, my employees say they don’t wanna, you know, turn their camera on. And it’s like, you know, and again I’m like, you know, your, your signature is the bottom of the paycheck. Right. Employees are afraid.

I know we talked about before we got on that, you know, whether employers are afraid to make these, they feel like these are demand because you have, like I said, employees saying that they don’t want to, you know, they are the boss. Yeah. And so it does take time to think about it. And again, I think in a Remote world, just even something as concrete as Zoom behavior and you know, I talk about in term, in the book about we’re joking about blurring your background for a couple of reasons. One is you don’t know if it’s clean back there, you know, my my is there. But moreover cog, there’s literally less cognitive, it’s less demanding cognitively there’s overload versus when you’re looking at somebody’s background and you’re trying to figure out, you know, oh, who’s that picture in the background?

Right? But sitting down with somebody and saying these rules and it’s also connecting dots that things like you leave your camera off and come promotion and I’m thinking about or or layoffs. You’re not gonna be, and I’ve never met you in person. Right. If you think about remote people, who am I gonna think about the person who I can have some connection and idea with, or the person who it’s a name. I have no idea what it means. And, and again, it’s going back to employers feeling they have the right feeling like they’re walking on tiptoes. I will tell you that employers who haven’t are afraid to, and even the fact of defining the days in the week and we, you know, the issue also in terms of the economy, that there are a lot of out very talented marketing folks who are outta work right now.

And so, you know what that gives should give leaders a little bit more power to say, right, you gotta turn your camera on and you’ve gotta be present.

Yeah. I actually thi this is a great lead in something we talked about again before we hit the record button, that I would love to sort of wrap this conversation with. A lot of agency owners are still running their business outta fear. They, they had a tough time in Covid, post covid, they had a hard time finding good employees. And so now that they have good employees, they’re afraid. And, and so it is really the employees in many cases leading the employers a little bit around by the nose. And they, I don’t wanna come in more days, I don’t, I don’t wanna turn my camera on, I fill in the blank. And employers are struggling to find the courage to run the business the way they wanna run the business.

Whether that’s a, you know what, I want an agency that’s in the office five days a week and I know that’s gonna turn off some employees or I or we’re, we’ve been in for two days, it’s time to come in three days or camera’s on and everybody dressed in a professional attire. Whether you work at home or you’re in the office. Talk a little bit about both from the, both from the sort of business coaching psychology side, but also the legal side if you will. As we, as we kind of get to the top of the hour here, how should employers sort of approach this and how do they get out of the fear mindset and back to running their business the way they wanna run their business?

So we recommend that employers large and small have a policy, have a clear policy that all of their leaders can embrace and live by. And the policy has to make sense. Why is it that we’re moving from two days in the office to three, well these are the reasons why we think three is better. Why is it that we need a change in our policy from X to Y? So the employer needs to approach these presentations of policy policy as they would marketing a marketing kind of pitch.

You know, there needs to be a justification, it needs to be clear. Leadership has to buy into it and live by it and not undermine it. And it has to make sense. ’cause if it makes sense in the end, most employees are going to accept it and hopefully accept it with a smile. And, you know, if the policy or announcement backfires, it’s because the employer didn’t do their homework, the leader didn’t do their homework, the leader didn’t engage with enough different people from different standpoints, didn’t provide enough notice about the change, didn’t understand the marketplace and the competitive environment for talent.

So having a policy is important, but thinking very carefully before putting that policy together is also super important. And once you have a policy, you should really be consistent. So there was a recent article on the Wall Street Journal about accommodations and hybrid work. So the law requires employers to accommodate people who have disabilities or because of religious beliefs. And there may thus be reasons why you have to make exceptions to your three day in the office policy. Some somebody may have a physical disability or impairment or a mental disability or impairment that precludes them from commuting three days a week into an office.

Employers need to be sure that they are evaluating and fairly reviewing those requests and largely accommodating those requests. On the other hand, if someone says, you know, I have a long commute, I decided to move a hundred miles away and I really only wanna make the drive two days a week, that’s not a legal request for an accommodation. Right. That’s a, a request for like a different deal. Making different deals with employees is going to create havoc. It’s going to create inconsistently, employees will complain about. Right. Inconsistent and unfair treatment. So on the one hand you have legal required accommodations, which I will tell you as an employment lawyer you must evaluate properly.

And then there are deal makings, which as your employment attorney, I would probably tell you not to make. Yeah. Because it

Feels like favoritism to everybody else. Right?

Exactly. Exactly. And so as the is contemplating the policy, the employer needs to be sure that they’re not going to be tempted to make deals with their quote unquote best employees just to keep them there.

Yeah. So, so this is where the yin and the yang and I will tell you reality is, is that employee employers are trying, doing some deals ’cause they’re afraid to do it. I, I would say to you in terms of employers, think about to what degree you’re getting the productivity you want from somebody who is saying, I’ll only do this, I’ll only do that, I’ll only do this. And at some point, do you want somebody in the office when you’re trying, or you know, if they’re working, you know, remotely because what it trans or what flexibility, what we’re finding in a remote world is I answer emails when I want to answer emails and employers are are afraid to make it an issue that’s, they sent an email from somebody Tuesday at 11 and they’re not hearing from till Wednesday at noon and they’re afraid to say something because it’s not flexible.

And I say to them, that’s just not doing their job. Right. So in terms of this fear, the fundamental pieces, the person will leave. And I will say to you, what I have found with clients, and this is not a hard study that employers may lose about 10% of their employees if they say this piece in terms of coming into the office. But again, even in the remote world is ask not being afraid to expect somebody to do their job. And do you want somebody who is constantly, I don’t wanna do this, I don’t wanna do this, I don’t wanna do that. Right.

Right. Yeah. It it is a, it is a slippery slope, isn’t it? Once, once you, once you make the accommodation or once you make the exception or once you don’t say it. And I think it’s causing a lot of fatigue in, in agency owners because it’s exhausting to manage all of the different demands and requests and special, you know, I have to pick up my kid at four, so I have to be off, you know, like I do, I do remember that we actually were functional pre covid when we were in the office five days a week and people still could manage their lives. So it is an interesting time that all of a sudden nothing works within a workday.

But I think this also ties with this issue of communication, right? Fundamentally, you know, we talked about this early on, it’s about work-life balance. And the good news is, is that you can go to a four o’clock care appointment, you’re sick. But the what matters is, is I’ve told you I’m gonna be offline from three 30 to five, you can catch me, I will respond to this at five or at three o’clock I check in to say, is there anything timely that I need to respond? And this goes to this concept, intentionality and communication. I think there’s the other piece in, in terms of employers needing to think about and make standards and expectations about communications.

Yeah.

You know, Drew, the fact of the matter is that knowledge workers and creative workers want flexibility. And what we talk about in the book is that flexibility requires trust going both ways, right? And creating that trust is a precept to the flexibility. And employers who say I want it the old way, are probably gonna lose out on some talent.

No doubt, no doubt. Yeah. I, I don’t, I don’t think there’s any way to roll it all the way back, but we have to find a happy medium that actually works for both sides of the equation so that they both get what they want from and with each other. I mean, it also, right now it feels more combative as opposed to we’re trying to figure this out together. And I think we need to find a way to, and, and again, you know, Julie you said it, we actually have to talk about these things. We have to, we have to be brave enough to have a conversation that says, you know what? That just doesn’t work for us or for the agency or for our clients or for me.

And, and there’s a very small recommendation I have, which is get rid of the word, have to

Mm.

It’s not, you have to come into the office on Monday. Mondays are office days and two days are, are work from home days. And so you’re not making this, this either kudo recommendation or punishment that comes into the office. It’s just a fact. These are office days, these are work from home days. And so again, it’s sort of how this is communicated and messaging and it’s tied to the mental approach and values of the employers and reminding them you, your name is literally or figuratively on the shop on the door. Right,

Right. Yeah, you’re right. A lot of it is about language and communication for sure. So one of the great things about the book, and I wanna make sure I give you guys time to tell folks how to get the book and how to, how reach both of you is, and, and I think this conversation has been this as well. So I love the two sides of this because, you know, a lot of times we’re thinking about it just from sort of the psychology of working with employees or we’re thinking about, you know, Felice the, the rules that we have to follow and, you know, those get more and more complicated every day. So I’m, I’m grateful for the combination of your skillset sets to sort of help us look at both sides of this equation differently because it isn’t an either or. We have to factor in both that.

I think sometimes we lean to one side or the other and put ourselves at risk on whichever side. We’re sort of short cutting. So, so thank you for, thank you for coming together. It was serendipitous that you ended up writing the book together, but it’s to our good fortune. So tell folks before we wrap up, tell folks where they can find the book and how they can reach each of you and follow your work and learn more from you as after they listen to this episode.

You can buy the book online. Amazon has Thrive With a Hybrid Workplace available, so does Barnes and Noble. We also have a website, Thrive With a Hybrid Workplace dot com. Julie has her own website I do as well. And we would really welcome any thoughts, comments, reactions from readers. So we are very interested in hearing from you, Julie you wanna add to that?

Yeah, I would say, you know, Julie Kantor dot com or Felice eckelman.com. There’s information about, you know, the work that I do. You can learn more about that, about the book. There’s also a way you can certainly contact, I mean Julie at Julie can Julie Julie Kantor dot com, but it’s all on the, on the website. We’d love to have you purchase the book. Again, it’s at amazon.com or Barnes and Noble, just look up the title of the book.

This has been awesome. Thank you both so much for your time and sharing your expertise. This is a, this is such an important thing for us to get right and you know, I think a lot of folks listening are struggling with it. They wanna get it right, but it’s so different from the world that they grew up in as employees and now as employers are trying to figure out sort of how to manage it. And, and so your insights have been super helpful and I know the book drills much deeper into the things that we need to be thinking about doing this. So I’m, I’m grateful for your time and for the book. So thank you.

Great speaking with you. Thank you for your time, Drew.

You bet. Alright guys, this wraps up another episode of Build Better Agency. You know what, in our world there is nothing more expensive or more valuable than our employees. And so for most of us getting this right is the difference between our business being successful or not? So we have to pay attention to this And. if you, if there was a theme through the conversation, it was really about intentionality, it was about communication, it was also about understanding the rules. Like here are the legal rules and the things that we feel like we are bound to do because we’re afraid. And finding the difference between those and, and leading with some courage and some confidence. And so highly recommend you grab the book.

Also, this is a great topic for you and your leadership team to talk about how do we wanna show up? What does make sense? And I love the idea of really understanding the kind of work that is best done in person and the kind of work that is best done when we need heads down. And we can do that anywhere, whether it’s a coffee shop or home or at the office. So lots to chew on in this episode. Lots for you to think about. And more importantly, lots for you to figure out how to, how to implement inside your business in a way that makes you happy, in a way that makes your employees happy. And most importantly, I guess gotta make our clients happy. ’cause if they don’t stick around, then it’s all for Naugh. So grab the book, think about this, have some conversations, but intentionality and communication shouldn’t be a surprise to us.

And yet I think sometimes we struggle with both. So thanks for listening. Before I let you go, wanna give a shout out and a thanks to our friends at White. Label IQ, as you know, they’re the presenting sponsor of the podcast. So White Label IQ dot com slash aami. We’ll get you some free hours on the first project to do with them. They do white Label, design dev and PPC, and they are the heroes for many, many listening agencies. So check them out. If you do, please tell them that you drop by because of the podcast. That makes them feel good and makes me feel good as well. And I’ll be back next week with more guests, get you thinking differently about your business, hopefully helping you elevate the way you run the business, the way you serve your clients, the way you serve your employees and your community.

So I’m looking forward to it. I’ll talk to you next week.

That’s a wrap for this week’s episode of Build a Better Agency. Visit agency management institute.com to check out our workshops, coaching and consulting packages, and all the other ways we serve agencies just like yours. Thanks for listening.