Hybrid work still has some kinks to work out | The Excerpt

On a special episode (first released on July 11, 2024) of The Excerpt podcast: It’s been four years since pandemic lockdowns utterly transformed how we work, spurring the Great Resignation, quiet quitting and higher rates of burnout. And we still haven’t quite figured it out. Employees’ stress levels remain higher now than they were before 2020, according to a recent Gallup poll. What are business leaders not getting right years into this new paradigm of work culture? Harvard professor and bestselling author Arthur Brooks, whose work focuses on meaning and happiness, joins The Excerpt to offer advice to leaders and employees navigating hybrid work.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Dana Taylor:

Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Thursday, July 11th, 2024, and this is a special episode of The Excerpt.

It's been four years since pandemic lockdowns utterly transformed how we work, spurring the Great Resignation, quiet quitting and higher rates of burnout. And we still haven't quite figured it out. Employee's stress levels remain higher now than they were before 2020, according to recent Gallup poll. What are business leaders not getting right years into this new paradigm of work culture?

Our guest today is Harvard professor and bestselling author Arthur Brooks, whose work focuses on meaning and happiness. Thanks for joining us, Arthur.

Arthur Brooks:

Thank you for having me.

Dana Taylor:

The pandemic was an opportunity to go back to the drawing board with work culture. What innovative solutions were introduced at the beginning of the pandemic that you think we should keep?

Arthur Brooks:

Well, to begin with, it was an incredibly innovative period, whether we should keep the innovations or not. We have to recall that basically the economies around the world should shut down and that should've been utterly catastrophic. It should've been a worldwide depression of epic proportions, maybe the greatest depression that the world has ever seen, and it wasn't.

The reason is because innovation came to the rescue, and we should be really grateful for that. Most notably, remote work became the norm, and it became the norm almost overnight. You'll recall that most people spent who... About 70% or so of American workers who were working at a distance, the vast majority weren't for the first few weeks. But pretty soon, everybody got Zoom and then Zoom knockoffs, some of which were technologically superior from their point of view. So there's lots of competition, and it was really great.

The result is that productivity didn't take the hit that we thought it was going to, but there inevitably were costs. People working at home meant that they were working with a lot of distractions. They weren't seeing a whole lot of people, but it was a temporary solution. Or was it?

What firms started to find was that Zoom work was incredibly cheap because they didn't have to come back to offices in the same way they did before. It appeared that they had almost as much productivity as before, and a lot of people actually made housing decisions on the basis of it and moved away from their jobs. So the result was there was kind of a peace between employers and employees saying, "Hey, why don't we keep this for a little bit longer?" It kept on and it kept on and it kept on, and now we're starting to see the real costs of what remote work is bringing.

Dana Taylor:

So to that point, as you know, hybrid work is here to stay. A recent study published by Nature touted that employees working from home compared to in-office showed a 30% increase in retention without an impact in productivity. What are some other benefits to this model?

Arthur Brooks:

We don't know about whether the productivity numbers really are what we're going to settle on. Those are early studies that suggest that, and I strongly suspect that productivity numbers are going to fall and that we're not going to like a lot of the things that we see.

But more importantly than that, the happiness numbers have really, really taken a hit, and we actually understand why that is. Neurophysiologically, when we're around other people, we get a neuropeptide that's produced in our brains called oxytocin. It functions as a hormone, and it's also often called the love molecule. Now, I realize a lot of people would be saying, "Love the people at work? Are you kidding me?" You get it from human contact, eye contact and touch, and you get nothing more than a trickle of it from Zoom contact and even less from social media and virtual means being with each other.

One of the things that Gallup has found for many years is the likelihood of wanting to quit your job and the likelihood of job satisfaction are absolutely proportional to the likelihood of having a best friend at work, and if all you do is Zoom in, you're simply not going to have a best friend at work. That's a big problem, and that's what we're seeing more and more of for people who have only worked at a distance or have hybrid work where they rarely see their colleagues, they're tending to get lonelier and lonelier. Not everybody, but the majority.

Dana Taylor:

So staying on that, how does hybrid work impact not only a person's overall happiness, but their ability to find meaning? And how does that differ from fully remote work?

Arthur Brooks:

So meaning is really a combination of coherence, which is to say why things happen the way that they do, purpose, which is goals and direction in your life and significance why you believe that your life matters. And one of the most important ways that you can get those parts of meaning in your life, especially through work, is by working with other people, getting feedback, seeing expressions, having teams, making common cause maybe against the boss, whatever happens to be. And when you don't have the in-person experience, it's much harder to find meaning in your work. The result is you're more likely to say, "Eh, it's just a job. And you know what, if a better job came along, I'd want to take it and I'm kind of on the market." And guess what? Those are exactly the things that we see in much, much higher numbers than we've seen before.

A lot of people my age are saying, "Ah, these Gen Zers, what's wrong with them? They're not dedicated to their work, they're not loyal to their employer." No, no, no, no. They don't have the same neurophysiological experience that other people are having, and as a result of that, they don't have the same sense of connection to their work. They have less sense of meaning as well. This is one of the reasons that so many young people today are feeling empty about their work, and that's creating a real kind of hollowness to the big part of their life.

Dana Taylor:

With a hybrid work model, in-office days aren't always being allocated equally. One study from the research firm Leesman suggests that younger workers in the US are more likely to be required to come to the office, and there are two reasons often cited for this disparity, trust and mentorship. Do you agree with this? Why or why not?

Arthur Brooks:

Well, yeah, I mean I think that there are very plausible reasons. This is not just a question of discrimination. It is the case that younger workers, they need more supervision, and they need more mentorship. They need more teaching and supervision. That's normal when somebody's new to a profession. It's not just that you give the privileges to older people. Older people need less mentorship, and they need less supervision, which means they need to be in the office less.

But there's one thing to keep in mind. That might sound like it's a kind of a cost. It's also a benefit. There's very clear indication that people who come to the office more get more promotions and make more money. This is one of the best ways to be more successful is when you're in a work environment that has the option of being more hybrid, not taking the option. You're going to do better in your career under those circumstances.

Does it cost? Yeah. Is there a commute? Uh-huh. Does it take more time? Absolutely. You got to dress out of your pajamas? Totally. But guess what? You're the one who's actually going to be in the corner office in 15 years and the hybrid guy in Tucson, maybe not so much.

Dana Taylor:

Virtual meetings are often still required for people who are in the office, and it can be very awkward when one group is missing a conversation, whether it's in the chat or impromptu in the hallway. The Leesman study found that 40% of all workers found it difficult to participate in these types of meetings. How do you recommend leaders address this?

Arthur Brooks:

I recommend that hybrid work environments that are semi at a distance and semi in person and, again, that's the way of the world. We're not going back to fully in-person. I recommend however, that you save the in-person days for the meetings because meetings are much better when people are together. Now, again, I hate meetings. Don't get me wrong. Meetings are terrible. And if I could get rid of all the meetings in the world, well, then, I guess that means I'm dead and I'm in heaven.

But the point is that if you're going to have meetings, make them short, follow the rules. I've written about this extensively in my Atlantic column of how to actually run a meeting that doesn't destroy happiness, but when you're doing it, mostly put them on in-person days so that you can get the most out of the experience, and people don't feel left out as much as they would otherwise.

Dana Taylor:

Let's go back to mentorship, career growth and networking opportunities that typically happen in-person, as you've said, and really impact an employee's satisfaction with their job. How can leaders effectively manage these aspects in a hybrid work environment?

Arthur Brooks:

Well, mentorship is something that best happens with eye contact and touch as well. Maybe not touch because of liability, and obviously we're talking about appropriate touch, but the whole idea of being able to connect with another person is the essence of mentorship. You're not going to be mentored very well when you don't have a human connection with a person. Anybody who's fully at a distance is simply not going to be able to get adequate mentorship. On the contrary, you need to have that. That's the first and most important thing that we should require to do in-person.

Dana Taylor:

And then career growth.

Arthur Brooks:

I mean, career growth, once again, you have to have a career trajectory and not very many careers have a good trajectory when nobody actually sees the person in more than 2D. You don't have a sense of that person about what they want, about what they can do. You don't really know a person because our brains are actually not made to know a person in 2D on Zoom. We don't know each other under the circumstances. Our brains can't accommodate that.

So the result of it is when you're talking about moving somebody ahead with respect to promotions, with respect to responsibility, you always think of the person that you know better because you think of that person in a role, and the boss's brain works the same way as everybody else's brain. You're simply not going to have the impact that you want to have if you're never there in person.

Dana Taylor:

So asking the question, how can leaders effectively manage those aspects is the real question. How can employees or how should employees manage all of that?

Arthur Brooks:

Yeah. You know, my oldest son, who's very talented and really successful in the job market just changed careers, just changed jobs. He took a new job in a company and he asked my advice because he had the option of being as hybrid or as remote as he wanted. My recommendation was to ask to be in the office at least two to three days a week. In other words, not at most two days a week, but at least two to three days a week. He took that option because that's what he wants. He's a very social person, but he also recognizes that this is the secret to making the relationships and having the experiences that are going to lead him to have a better, happier career going forward.

Dana Taylor:

You've studied work satisfaction for years. What are some other drivers here?

Arthur Brooks:

Work satisfaction really comes from the idea that you're earning your success and that you're serving other people. That's really what it comes down to.

Now we've been talking about earning your success and making sure that other people recognize it. That's creating value with your career, creating value with your work, and bringing value to the lives of other people. You have to be able to demonstrate that so that you can be rewarded for it, and you're not going to be rewarded for it as much when you can't demonstrate it as convincingly. That's one of the reasons that being in-person is so critically important.

Serving other people is really important as well. There are the kinds of jobs where you actually will never see a client, you'll never see a customer in person. But there are also jobs more and more where you would've seen clients and people in person, but now you don't unless you choose to do so. You will be less satisfied with your job if you feel like you're serving people less, and you will feel like you're serving people less if you never see those people.

One of the great secrets to happiness is feeling like you're touching somebody else, and that requires that you have some physical contact with that other person as well. Again, our brains don't work in virtual 2D very well. They work in real life 3D, and that means if you're going to serve other people, you got to see those people.

Dana Taylor:

Well, my own anxiety and stress levels certainly increased after the pandemic. How can workplaces be less stressful for employees?

Arthur Brooks:

Well, workplaces are inherently not that relaxing depending on what you're doing for a living. If you're working for a law firm, I mean you're working in the business of stress, for example. It's really important we be able to, that human relationships exist such that we can lower each other's stress, and we need bosses who are really good at trying to lower the temperature inside workplaces, for sure.

That's one of the reasons that I personally have dedicated my own work to teaching happiness to leaders. I, literally, have a class at the Harvard Business School called Leadership and Happiness, where I'm trying to teach bosses to be happiness teachers. I'm trying to teach teachers, but not college professors. I want people who are listening to us and watching us right now to be able to avail themselves to these resources.

So what I recommend is that people who have significant leadership responsibility, especially inside companies, that they learn what the basic protocols are to leading such that people want to follow you, so that people look forward to going to work. And that's what I'm writing about all day. That's what I write about in the Atlantic, and I talk about in media, and there's a lot of science out there that people can learn from and become better as a result.

Dana Taylor:

And what other challenging areas do you think leaders still need to address?

Arthur Brooks:

Hell, there's so many things that leaders need to address, for sure. I mean, this is just one of the things that we're talking about. I deal with leaders and their careers, their personal careers all the time, and one of the things that I found is basically this. Nobody wants to work for an unhappy boss. The best predictor of an unhappy workplace is a miserable boss. It just is. And so as they say in the airlines, "You got to put on your own oxygen mask first." For the leaders who are watching us, take care of your happiness.

Now, that means a whole bunch of things. Are you aligned with your work rhythms? Are you serious about your home life? All these things are really, really important. So the number one problem I see in companies when I go into companies, which is what I do for a living, I go into companies all the time, I can spot in 20 seconds if there's a miserable boss on site. Maybe I've not even met the boss, but I can tell if there's a miserable boss. So that's the number one thing for leaders to pay attention to. What's your happiness like?

Dana Taylor:

Then finally, Arthur, what's your best piece of advice for people who are struggling with hybrid work?

Arthur Brooks:

Yeah, people who are struggling with hybrid work, one of the things that I would suggest is, I hate to say it, go on the market. Go on the market. I mean, it's a good job market. I mean, I realized that it's maybe not as wild west as it was a year ago, but it's still a darn good job market compared to historical circumstances, and start looking for a job where the lifestyle actually fits what you need as a person.

Remember, you're going to spend at least a third of your time at work. You need to actually accommodate that circumstance, not to your convenience, but to your happiness, to your relationships, to your sense of productivity. And if doing this hybrid work is unbelievably convenient, but you're lonely, it's just a terrible trade-off, it isn't good enough. Your convenience is not worth your loneliness.

It's a hybrid work, yeah, I get it. You don't have to get out of your pajama bottoms, you don't have to get in the car. But if you're feeling lonely and blue, if you're having trouble sleeping and you don't know why, you're probably lonelier than you think, and you need to get into a work situation where you can address that right now.

Dana Taylor:

A lot of great info here. Thank you so much for being on The Excerpt, Arthur.

Arthur Brooks:

Thanks for having me.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks for our senior producer, Shannon Rae Green for production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty.

Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.