Who’s with Bridgette Hyacinth?
I’ve always said life doesn’t happen in 9 to 5 boxes. Neither should work. My colleague sent this to me on LinkedIn the other day and it’s a must read. Especially for the CEOs who still think everyone must come into the office. My colleague said it reminded him of my RTO blogs. It reminds me of the fact that leaders need to trust teams and focus on output and client and team happiness because out of that good business flows.
We’ve been living and advocating for flexible work since the inception of our firm in 1998 when we were virtual while the rest of the world was on dial-up. Yup we did it even when the technology wasn’t available. The computers didn’t say no — they couldn’t access anything to say yes! Video — bah! It didn’t exist. But we persisted in our ability to work across time-zones and from home offices and rarely skipped a beat. In fact, one of the hardest times in our business history is when we had a physical office for some functions while the rest of the team was virtual.
Despite the cause — a pandemic — we were relieved to return to our roots of 100% virtual and happy to see the rest of the world catch-on, get with the program, trust their teams to do the right thing. They learned to innovate by developing new ways to work together.
I just heard this week about a leading publisher who went total flex. The CEO (a woman ahead of the curve) left the firm and the new leader is changing its RTO tune. Now people who have moved to wherever they want to live better and good lives, who also do good work, are faced with a new leader reversing a promise made by a prior one. (New sheriff in town and all that.) People are faced with moving again but why? There can be no employee loyalty and goodwill when promises like this get broken.
I’m with Bridgette on this one. Anyone else?