Get comfy with your hybrid workplace

If an employee shows up at the office all the time, does this person have an edge over peers who prefer to work from home in terms of career advancement? This is among the concerns that typically arise in the hybrid workplace, an uncharted territory for today’s businesses.

And while employees have their own issues, leaders face just as many challenges. How can you engage your team, especially if it’s large or fast-growing? How do you ensure fairness and inclusivity? How do you introduce new technology and ward off cyberthreats, which tend to be greater in a remote working environment?

“I think hybrid is going to be, in some way, shape or form, the norm moving forward. And the companies that will succeed are the ones who really have figured out a way to operate in a hybrid world,” says Jeetu Patel, executive vice president and general manager of security and collaboration at tech giant Cisco.

“And the best next generation leaders you will have are the ones that actually know how to build relationships without being physically across each other. They should be able to build a relationship even if they have never met someone,” he says in an interview with Inquirer on the sidelines of Cisco Live Melbourne.

Patel knows it well enough. He joined Cisco in mid-2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when working from home was imperative for most people around the world. He has 12,000 people on his team, out of Cisco’s 85,000 head count. During his first nine months with the tech company, he never met anyone in person.

Unlike other leaders who abhor virtual meetings, Patel finds it easy to harness cyberspace to connect with colleagues. “But you couldn’t make it just transactional. You have to actually get to know them as human beings. And so [with] a lot of my peers, we actually spent a lot of time on video getting to know each other. By the time I met them for the first time, they were already close friends of mine,” he narrates.

That is seen to be a skill that the next-generation leader must master in order to build the kind of intimacy needed to work well with the team, that kind of comfort level needed to draw out constructive criticism.

“Without that intimacy, you cannot build trust, and without trust, you cannot have conflict and without conflict, you cannot make good decisions and debate. And so that’s very important that you have that level of foundation that’s built,” Patel says.

Enabling technology

Even for an organization like Cisco—purveyor of technologies that enable remote work and battle cyberthreats, and one that has embraced flexible work mode for more than a decade—it is a continuous learning process to keep employees engaged and connected regardless of where they are, explains Anupam Trehan, Cisco vice president for people and communities for Asia-Pacific, Japan and Greater China.“I think there are two ways that you do that. One is the technology play, and then one is the leadership and activity [aspect]. So, [there are] lots of focus on both areas,” she says.

On harnessing technology, she cites innovations like Webex and Team Space.

Cisco’s Webex is a platform for video conferencing, online meetings, screen sharing and webinars, one that is interoperable with other platforms like Microsoft Teams, Google Meet or Zoom. It has a noise removal feature so that all background noise, say the vacuum cleaner, crying child or barking dog, could be filtered and the user’s voice is optimized instead.

Team Space serves teams and team leaders by supporting their performance and delivering real-time intelligence derived from several data points. It is designed to provide insights into team engagement and performance.

Sara Morales, vice president at Cisco people and communities, explains in a press chat how she uses Team Space to run her unit.

“On a weekly basis, I check all my team members’ check-ins and that check-in consists of what I loved and loathed, very descriptive words, in the past week; what my priorities are for this week; and maybe most importantly, what I need most from my leaders. And it offers that connection between employees and leaders, to know what the highest priority work is and where support is needed,” Morales says.

“But also over time, I’m able to tell what type of work my team really gets engaged by and what really kind of sucks the life out of them, so to speak, so I can allocate my work differently to what will engage my team members most.”

At Cisco Live Melbourne, the tech giant demonstrated a communication system via hologram, using augmented reality goggles. Maybe future interactions could be via 3D holograms, instead of just the flat images on computers or tablets.

What is fair?

Apart from constantly thinking about engagement and connection, Trehan cites a lot of work around ensuring inclusion and fairness.

“One of the studies that we did a couple of quarters back with employees worldwide [showed] there was this worry: If there’s somebody who’s in the office vis-a-vis somebody who’s working from home, my worry is that will (that person in the office) have a better chance from a career perspective than me?” As such, Trehan cites the need to invest on knowing what is “fair” and weaving this in corporate processes. As the role of the “people leader” has shifted drastically over the last few years, it’s imperative to invest a lot in leader capability as well, she says.

“We will continue to listen to our employees. We will continue to learn along the way and then make adjustments, whether it’s a tool, whether it’s a platform, whether it’s investment in capability or experience, and then we continue to be on the journey,” she says.

As part of this listening process, Cisco conducts a quarterly “real deal” sentiment survey. About a quarter of employees worldwide are picked to participate in the survey, drawing insights into how they are feeling and where is it that they need support.

Cisco’s leaders are also asked to launch an engagement pulse with their teams. Cisco’s EROs or employee resource organizations also help support inclusion and diversity goals. There are 17 of them, including Women of Cisco, Men for Inclusion, Women in Finance, The Green Team and Pride.

“We work very closely with a lot of our employee networks to tell us what do we need to do in the space and where is it that we’re doing well and we need to continue, and what is it that we need to get better at? So we use different ways of measuring and checking in on where we are on that journey,” she says.

As such, when The Great Resignation swept the globe, Trehan notes that Cisco, relative to its peers, “didn’t see a huge spike.” She adds, “It’s a lot less.”

Multiplier effect

Beyond creating diversity, Trehan says it’s very important to create a culture of inclusion. From a development perspective, it means investing in women and leadership.

At Cisco, everyone in the executive team signs what they call a “multiplier” pledge. This is a pledge to sponsor at least one extraordinary diverse person in their organization and help them progress in their career.

This is different from mentoring, Trehan explains. “Mentoring is more where you advise and guide and help. Sponsorship is where you actually become an advocate for their career.”

In meetings for instance, the person you manage may not be there, but the sponsor’s ability to speak about the sponsored individuals brings them strength and connects them to their networks. “You can actually play that role of advocacy. So for us, multiplier effect is a huge one,” she says.

Another effect is proximity—learning more about walking in the shoes of somebody who’s different from you. It then helps Cisco’s leadership to know what they need to do differently.

“So we’ve got Women of Cisco. We’ve got Back to Business, which is which is for people—it’s not only for women—who are coming back to work after a break. We’ve got a lot of these different networks. And they do a lot of sessions with either internal or external speakers, training sessions for career networking. It just like [making an] investment in themselves.”

All told, she says Cisco does not have any single approach to develop diverse leadership. Instead, it’s something like an ecosystem approach, she adds.

At the end of the day, Patel says it’s the workforce who will decide the future of work.

“I think it would be very unfortunate if we actually regressed back to the way things were before the pandemic. I think it’s a fantastic opportunity to have anyone in any part of the world, of any gender, of any race, of any language or background, to be able to participate in a global economy. And that, I think, is what lifts humanity. And so, we will do our part in making that happen.”