In a world where businesses are actively transitioning back to physical workstations at the office onsite, remnants of our hybrid work era continue to linger, reminding us of the flexibility and adaptability we’ve come to value. The current shift underscores the need for a deliberate digital workplace transformation. Such deliberation is not merely a reaction to a once-remote workforce but a proactive strategy to avoid disjointed technological solutions and instead cater holistically to the future of work.

Digital transformation and service management have evolved and are no longer just about supporting a dispersed team but about creating an environment that incorporates the best of both worlds — the connectivity of remote work and the collaboration of physical proximity.

As we embrace the ‘back to work’ paradigm, leaders grapple with preserving the digital efficiencies developed during the remote era. How should service management adapt to a diverse workforce? Moreover, how do we find an equilibrium between the stability and comfort of traditional work environments and the rapid advancement of technology?

In this shift, what’s the blueprint for organizational leaders to shape a workplace that leverages technological innovations and resonates deeply with the workforce’s evolving expectations and experiences?

Watch this video to get answers to many pressing questions, including:

• • How can we seamlessly merge legacy and modern systems in today’s evolving workplace?
  • How do we build an IT setup that’s agile for remote work and robust for onsite needs?
  • How can we ensure top-tier cybersecurity while preserving workspace adaptability?
  • How can we adapt service strategies to cater to an ever-changing workforce?
  • What leadership approaches are vital to steer constant digital shifts effectively?
  • How do we anticipate the next tech wave and ensure adaptability?

Transcript

Sanjog Aul [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome to the CTN virtual roundtable. The topic is connecting errors, the strategic path from hybrid to holistic workplaces. And it’s made possible by zones. My name is Sanjog, all from CIO Talk Network. I’m your moderator, and we are going to get started with this interesting discussion on where we started from pandemic to then hybrid. And now we are trying to find this utopics state, which is the holistic workplace where everyone feels nurtured, everyone feels enabled, and the business gets what they want. And the people who have been shifting from one mode to another also get what they want. Now, before we get started, I would like to ask each of you a question.

Sanjog Aul [00:00:43]:
Maybe you could give your own answers. Before we get into the details, is which fantasy virtual meeting background that best represents your work from home experience? And as you start answering this question, please mention your name and your company name. And let’s start with simple question. Right? And I’ll start with Alan.

Alan Zhang [00:01:12]:
Yeah, so we have gone through this pandemic period. I think we have an extra challenge because our CIBC is a canadian bank and they acquired the us local bank in 2017. And I’m not proud to say it, but by end of 2019, the IT integration hasn’t completed. And then we went into the pandemic and lockdown. So we need to deal with lots of issues to meet the demand for remote work and also integrate our it between us and Canada. So we’ve made lots of progress. But to me, I think we are far from where we need to be to work more effectively. Given the hybrid setup is probably going to be the way we work in the foreseeable future.

Alan Zhang [00:02:10]:
We’re going to bring people in the office more often, but we also have people remote. So how does it effectively we support all this to make sure everybody is as productive as they can be. I think that’s our challenge.

Sanjog Aul [00:02:25]:
So I have a two part question for you, Alan. First was, my original question was, what is that fantasy virtual meeting background which you would use to demonstrate your work from home experience? What reflects it? And this is a fun question, but on the other side, I’d also like to ask you, what is your top challenge which holds you back, or where is an area of improvement which holds you back from giving your team, your management and the whole environment that best holistic workplace experience? So start with the fantasy virtual meeting background that you would like to use.

Alan Zhang [00:03:03]:
Well, the fantasy, I don’t know. I think we’ve seen it in Sci-Fi I think you can have. I would say maybe the hologram, you can feel like people are in the room where they were nothing. But if you want to talk about fantasy, maybe that’s my fantasy, but I want to be realistic. That’s maybe too far in the future. If we do it today, it could be super expensive. But there are things we can do today. I’ve seen other places done it even before pandemic.

Alan Zhang [00:03:37]:
We are not doing yet. For example, we need to bring people to use. If we don’t have come in five days a week, we can share space. Lots of companies would have done hoteling, and they have effective way of booking spaces, have technology support, you can do it on your smartphone, things like that. I think that’s probably our next step at CIBC. Us, we can do it in Toronto as a bank, but not in the US yet. We are running into obstacles to make those happen. I think that’s my next item on my wish list.

Sanjog Aul [00:04:18]:
All right, great. Andy, your virtual background, which you would have put out there. That’s the fun part. And then, of course, your top challenge and our top area of improvement.

Andy Goodfellow [00:04:28]:
Yeah, so I’m going to cheat a little bit. Sanjog. So my virtual background, fantasy, you can make it into fantasy, I suppose, but would definitely be a golf course. So I would say if I can, if I can, with the new kind of work environment, if it enables me to work from a golf course, I’m totally there. I think the new ways of working has helped me golf a little bit more because I got to recoup some of my commute time and stuff like that. So I think it’s, in a lot of ways, made us more efficient. But, yeah, that’s where I go to escape and get headspace. So when I can.

Andy Goodfellow [00:05:04]:
When I can escape somewhere to fantasyland, it’s going to be a golf. A golf course somewhere, probably a Kohler course up in Wisconsin or something like that. So anyways, not exactly what you asked. That’s what I would probably put behind me. Biggest challenge for me personally is my leadership team. So I have half of my team. They’re fully remote. A few of them we hired remote during pandemic, and a few of them moved.

Andy Goodfellow [00:05:30]:
So the other half is in Chicago, where we’re based. And so we’re building a brand new space downtown that will open up in January. And our requirement is people leaders need to come in two days a week. That’s currently our only plan for our requirement for return to office. And that means anybody within a 60 miles radius of downtown Chicago. So I have half of my leaders that will come in a couple days a week, whatever days that is, they choose. And I have another half of my leaders that won’t. They’ll fly in maybe monthly at the most, but probably quarterly.

Andy Goodfellow [00:06:05]:
So how I personally can enable fully remote leaders with leaders that will be in office, I think that would be a pretty big challenge because there’s just two different working kind of environments that they have to get used to, but they’re on the same team. Right. We’ll see how that goes. I think that’s going to be a tough one.

Sanjog Aul [00:06:27]:
David Larue, chief information officer for Keh Dave, what’s your virtual background that you fantasy or what’s that fantasy, virtual background. And then your top challenge?

David LaRue [00:06:39]:
I think eventually, and it’s similar to Alan’s perspective, I think the metaverse kind of an environment where people can kind of interact with each other, where you feel like you’re next to them, but you’re not really there next to them. And I think it’s a virtual where we can actually be mobile when we’re communicating with each other. So right now we’re kind of chained to our desks to do this. Right now we’re all sitting in front of a monitor with a camera. I think that paradigm could be potentially changed, which would be a lot more fun than being at a desk communicating to somebody in a flat panel kind of situation. Challenges. I think similar to Andy, we have people that are remote all over the country currently, and some groups are totally remote and some groups are not. So there is a kind of a separation of why do they get to be remote? And we don’t get to be remote is a little bit of a challenge.

David LaRue [00:07:36]:
I think the reason why you get together is for collaboration, and I so picking the days of the week that you can come in kind of defeats the purpose of collaboration, because we really need to pick days of the week where we have a distinct focus on a particular item that we want to do and collaborate on. And I personally want everybody in the office in a whiteboard, and I’ve got conference rooms and whiteboards all over the place because I want those free flowing ideas to come across and have people interact with each other, agree and disagree, but at least you get everything out, and then you go back and you execute. So I think right now is, I think you need that FaceTime. I think you need the ability to read people’s body languages. But at the same time, the other challenges is because of the change since the pandemic, I would say that anybody who’s done remote development or done this all around the world has dealt with this in the past, at least on an it side. I think it’s a much bigger change and change management for the rest of the organization than it is for it because we’re kind of used to it. But I would say a lot of the people in core functions and accounting and finance and legal and those types of things, it’s a bit of a change in paradigm for them and I think that’s going to accelerate and I don’t think it’s going to slow down.

Sanjog Aul [00:09:01]:
So your point well taken, David. So I’m going to come to David Martin, who’s the digital workplace portfolio leader from zones. But before that, I wanted to at least share with you what we are hearing. So we are seeing the leaders telling us and being from media that they are saying that we have to be able to figure out, to build a good holistic workplace. We have to merge the legacy in modern systems, then we have to figure out a way to build it that is agile and which allows you to be remote and it still stays robust. When people are coming for onsite, then they are talking about cybersecurity and then they’re talking about leadership, which has to support and sponsor this holistic environment. And then finally do something with whatever we are trying to do right now cannot be for the next two years or three years. I know future can unfold in so many different ways, but at least how to future proof it.

Sanjog Aul [00:09:56]:
Now, this is what I’ve heard coming back to you, David. You also talked to a lot of people, right? And you might have heard a number of different things. And if you start talking about all the challenges, of course, we can spend the whole hour right here. Pick the ones which you feel or pick the one which you feel is the one which people are getting the most heartburn.

David LaRue [00:10:18]:
The wrong.

Sanjog Aul [00:10:19]:
David.

David LaRue [00:10:19]:
Go ahead.

David Martin [00:10:19]:
David Martin, what I hear most of the challenges is being able to collaborate on demand, whether it’s Friday afternoon or Monday or Tuesday morning. Those are key and important not just from having the technology platforms in place, but having the culture in place that enables that as well. I go back to culture quite a bit within companies. What’s the best way for that company to attract people, to keep their people, that is a representative, the workflow within, within the company. Sometimes you can have, I’ll just pick HR may have a different vibe about it than say an accounting or it as an example. So even within companies, you don’t have necessarily one size fits all. A lot of it is driven by the leadership within that as well. So having that flexibility within each of those core areas are ultimately very important from what I’ve seen.

David Martin [00:11:17]:
And you got to be able to provide clients, at least from providing managed services, the technologies, the SIS, the hardware, any of the support services, you got to be able to provide that type of flexibility and those capabilities around there. A lot of times the individual performer may only meet once a week with their team, and that’s fine. And then other times, if you’re in a creative stack, you need to be able to meet multiple times during the week to be able to launch something or a project.

Sanjog Aul [00:11:46]:
As an example, Ebenezer, what have you faced or what you’re facing? What do you want? And keep telling about your virtual, a fantasy, virtual background, virtual meeting background.

Ebenezer Arumai [00:11:59]:
My fantasy maybe like camping, camping background. So that may be a idle one because that, that’s the one will make me relaxed and, you know, enjoyable background. Okay, so with regards to the challenge, there is another challenge built in before the pandemic. Yeah. So work from home is an optional. It is allowed only one day in a week or sometime once in two weeks. Yeah, it’s then after the pandemic, you know, everyone has to work from home.

Ebenezer Arumai [00:12:36]:
And then when we were trying to hire people, now people demand, hey, I can’t come to office, it has to be remote.

Ebenezer Arumai [00:12:46]:
So.

Ebenezer Arumai [00:12:46]:
And then we were competing with against bigger giants like Microsoft and all the big giants, you know, for them also, remote working is fine. You know, before, you know, California salary is going to be higher and Chicago salary may be a little lower. But now all of them are level set because anybody can work from anywhere. So that’s another challenge we had. And it was so difficult for us to hire a person. Before we used to hire for x dollar per year. Now it is x plus certain because they are able to work for any other company across us, sometimes across the globe. So that’s another challenge we face now.

Sanjog Aul [00:13:43]:
when what you just mentioned, let’s take that interesting thought that people would want to have a different salary to go also.

Sanjog Aul [00:13:43]:
But that’s an interesting point that you make. So let’s continue Priyadh. Love to hear your top challenge and of course your virtual meeting background. That’s from the fantasyland.

Priya Almelkar [00:13:54]:
Well, I moved to North Carolina to be closer to the beach, but I find myself stuck in office chairs, so my fantasy background would be somewhere at a beach. However, as a company, we rolled out a policy that says work where it works. Right. And yes, we have manufacturing that requires, but then you have to give perks, like, for our manufacturing workers, for them to be required to be in the office at all times. I think kind of like David Larue and David Martin mentioned, it is more about the culture, I think is the challenge. Right? So it. Yes, we were used to doing this. We have had global organizations for a long time.

Priya Almelkar [00:14:40]:
We’ve had the technology to support it. For other organizations, it’s a little bit of a. More of a challenge. And where we are finding the biggest challenges. How do you bring in people who have kind of built relationship over the years? Even if you get on a video call, I think you relate much quickly. You are able to collaborate much easier. You have that understanding. You’ve kind of built a foundation for that culture.

Priya Almelkar [00:15:06]:
Where we are seeing challenges is our new hires as we are bringing in, onboarding them. How do they get that same sense of belongingness? How do they feel like they’re part of the team? That team has, that has been, you know, worked together side by side in person for a long time. How do you get them, you know, in the environment where we are allowing work, where it works? One of the things we have rolled out is we have given the team flexibility in terms of, you know, picking their space. Right. So if it is, you know, you are going to come into the office three days and, you know, it could be any office which is close to your, where you live, then. Then, you know, you get a permanent desk. Otherwise it’s hoteling. So a lot of people choose to actually come in because they like to have their own space.

Priya Almelkar [00:15:59]:
But, you know, new hire integration is something that we continue to struggle with.

Andy Goodfellow [00:16:04]:
Great.

Sanjog Aul [00:16:04]:
So we’ll continue to focus on challenges, and then we turn it around and come back and get into the hackathon mode. So, Ralph Santinoro Santitoro, director of product line management, multi cloud networking and security solutions for CNN. Yeah, go ahead, Ralph.

Ralph Santitoro [00:16:18]:
Yeah. Thanks, Sanjak. Yeah, so I think so. I work for Siena, and we’re a multinational networking and technology supplier. And one of the things we’ve done at Siena, I joined right during the pandemic. So everybody was pretty much at home. So I don’t know what it was like before that at the company, but one of the things the NIT did really well was they were already on the path to digital transformation. And so I felt as joining the company during the pandemic, everyone’s working from home.

Ralph Santitoro [00:16:48]:
I had no user experience issues. It was just as good as if I were working in an office and I think because we’re an information technology company that has continued to this day, and I’ve heard some others talk about leadership and culture, I think is really, really important in terms of, you know, all the way from CEO on down is instilling a culture in the company of how it should operate. And we don’t have a go back to the office mandate or anything like that because we are just as efficient working from home as we were in an office. And. But I think the point is, if someone wants to go into the office, it’s not viewed as, or it’s not viewed better than if you were staying home. And I think that’s really important because some organizations have had this sort of back to office mandate if you, you don’t come in the office or you have to be in the office to be more effective. And I think that’s a really important thing. One of the other speakers mentioned earlier about collaboration, and we do all of our Zoom calls, video, and a lot of times that’s how we have a lot of social interaction, too.

Ralph Santitoro [00:17:55]:
A lot of people will join a call maybe a few minutes late, start developing the relationship with the folks by having a chat with them on, talk about their family, how things are doing, what their hobbies are. And I think that’s really important, making that sort of cultural connection. We used to do that in person to go out for a beer or something like that. Now we might do that if we go visit a trade show or we’re visiting a customer. But I think the other benefit that this provided as well is because our clients are also working from home as well. In the past, when you were to visit a client, it was always expected that you go in person and that you know, that that’s inconvenient. You got to get on a plane, go perhaps across the country to another country, and now you can just have that over Zoom and it’s not viewed negatively, it’s viewed neutrally, and you can have just as good a collaboration and dialogue with one of your clients as you could in person. Of course, in person, it’s always great to do that kind of bonding.

Ralph Santitoro [00:18:54]:
So in terms of the virtual background, since we want to have a little fun here. So I always put, I change my virtual background every week, and I usually put outdoor. I’m an outdoorsman. I love hiking and biking and the beach, and I usually put backgrounds of places I’ve traveled around the world that I’d love to go back to again. But I think it’s interesting when you see the different types of backgrounds people have, it tells you a little bit about them, right? Do they just have the corporate logo all the time, or do they put like something really cool or something really abstract? Right. And it’s always also a good point, too, a conversation point. You can say, hey, tell me about your background, especially when it’s really unique. Where is that? Or, wow, where did you get that from? I really like that.

Sanjog Aul [00:19:41]:
So, Ronald Blanek, CIM SVP strategy, innovation, customer experience, and retail analytics for Hibbett retail. So, Ron, what’s going on with you? The areas in which you want to see improvement and of course, your fantasy virtual meeting background.

Ronald Blahnik [00:19:57]:
Well, you’re looking at my fantasy background.

Sanjog Aul [00:20:00]:
Okay.

Ronald Blahnik [00:20:02]:
The idea of hitting the open road, running into the sun as it’s coming up in the morning, it’s the only way you can, for me, the only way I can train for marathons. And I find it freeing. It’s also centering, and it’s also a great place to plan. I mean, you got 20 miles on a road and you’re out there for four or 5 hours, you can get a lot of think time, Mandy. And you want to think because you don’t want to focus on your feet. It’s. Yeah, that’s my, that’s my fancy background. That is not me.

Ronald Blahnik [00:20:35]:
But yeah, I enjoy running. And so that tied in pretty well. Not planned. So I appreciate you asking the question. I guess in terms of the challenges, we had a different experience with COVID than a lot of companies. We operate 1100 plus restores, but we pick, pack and ship out of all of them. So we were able to retain our associates, our full time associates, and be able to work through the pandemic. Following Covid, I was given supply chain, so my DC never closed.

Ronald Blahnik [00:21:06]:
We did have protocols we had to enforce. We did have sections of building that we might have to go and clean on any given day. And we had a crew that worked every day cleaning all the building. They just kept rotating. And so we had to create an environment for those folks who said, why me? When other folks were at home and we did some fun things around, bringing in food and that kind of stuff and trying to create community, but also with the social distancing. I said we had to change break times, lunch times, and all those kinds of things to try and create some healthy environments working in the corporate office. We went home in March when it was mandated by Jefferson county down here in the Birmingham area of Alabama. Six weeks later, that was lifted.

Ronald Blahnik [00:21:47]:
So six weeks later by we were back in the office 50 50. We chose that for social distancing. We went to daily stand ups with the pandemic. That’s the CEO and all his direct reports, meeting every day at 11:00 so instead of meeting once a week, we moved that to daily to literally make decisions as we needed to. We are still a 50 50 shop, but we’ve listen to our associates and let them pick their days. So we got some people that work five days in one week and they’re out the entire next week. Right. Working remote.

Ronald Blahnik [00:22:21]:
We got some people that like Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Some people like Mondays and Fridays. The important thing and the challenge that you mentioned was adjusting our leadership thought process to outcome based results as opposed to task based results. When we think about task based results, people want to monitor that task, and they feel to monitor that task, someone has to be there for them to look over their shoulder to recognize. At this point in our evolution, you don’t need to look over their shoulders. You got to trust and verify and become outcome based leaders. I think the area that I would want to continue to focus on in terms of growing our leadership capabilities is planning skills and human skills. Recognizing everybody that jumps on a.

Ronald Blahnik [00:23:07]:
We use teams, and we were using it before the pandemic. And so when the pandemic hit, we just went about our daily business. But recognizing that when someone jumps on that call, what they may be feeling, that when you were in person, you could see them, you could see their posture, you could see looks and stuff like that, you’d be able to identify pretty quickly that someone was going through something personal. I think it’s a little more challenging for leaders now, and they need to make time for that. And that’s probably one of the big challenges that I would continue to work on.

Sanjog Aul [00:23:38]:
All right, before I go to you, Ryan. This is Ryan Shull, global IT director, IT operations, manufacturing, and solution engineering, with Dyno Noble. I’ll come to you in a second. But one thing additional, which I also hear a lot of people talk about, is that while we do the cool stuff and the innovation stuff, but the good old service management sometimes takes a backseat, and that is where rubber meets the road. If it’s not handled properly, it may pull us two steps back, even though you’re trying to go one step forward. So that’s another area which we should be talking about in this conversation. So that along with leadership in cybersecurity and tech and legacy systems, etcetera, we should have some focus on making sure that service management is properly tackled over to you, Ryan, what is your top challenge and what is your fantasy virtual background?

Ryan Shull [00:24:34]:
My fantasy background would actually be no background. It would be that I was actually living in the spaces that I see in everybody else’s, and I’m visiting the wonderful places. If we could make vacation, our actual work would be in a pretty amazing life, I think. But outside of that, I think you were right on point there. The user experience plays such a big role to everything we’ve discussed, even to leadership, how their employees interact with systems all the way down. For us, our challenge is really user Persona. We have so many different user bases that touch the systems differently, and how do we put technologies that can sustain that, where an end user has a seamless experience, no matter if they’re in the office, if they’re home, if they’re hybrid, the experience is the same all the way across. That’s what keeps me up at night.

Ryan Shull [00:25:29]:
The challenges of making sure that every day, everything is exactly the same for every user across multiple Personas. And coming from a manufacturing environment, we have a lot of different Personas. Some are on site all the time. We have some working hybrid. We have some fully in office, some fully out. So it’s how do we standardize, how do we have systems that support each user and we don’t look at them as different, and we want them all to work seamlessly, because one user could be hybrid today and fully in the office tomorrow and from fully office to hybrid. So that’s what our challenges are. And how do we get that end user experience to just be seamless and never understand the struggles we do on the backend.

Sanjog Aul [00:26:16]:
Great. So now that we got an almost a very rich inventory of the type of challenges or flavors, some are showing a pattern, others are some unique. So I’m going to come back to the same. The first person who I asked this question. So, Alan, you had shared, you said you have a bunch of different challenges, but if you had to put them in one bucket or that one top challenge and you needed to get, or you’re hitting a snack because of it, it is still a problem and not a project, what would you like? So what’s your question for the fellow group here, which, if answered, will help you move forward?

Alan Zhang [00:26:53]:
I’m sorry, can you, can you explain that a little bit?

Sanjog Aul [00:26:57]:
Sure. So I’m basically asking. So you mentioned that you’ve got a bunch of different things going on, a lot of things in flux, right? And you did mention that there are some flavors or challenges that you had. So what is that one thing which if you could solve or which is becoming a snag for you, which you’re hitting because of which you’re not able to make progress, what would that be? So that we can have the rest of the group jump in and say, okay, this is what you’ve tried. Have you tried this?

Alan Zhang [00:27:25]:
I see. I think earlier I mentioned we now are returning to the office more often, and during the pandemic, we have grown quite fast. We have many more people in the team now. The office space, some part of certain teams, they have not enough space. I know you can still come in and see some space, stay empty when I do come in. So I think a solution to help this would be to have an effective hoteling system. It can support that. So people will be easily booked their space when they come in, so that we don’t have to waste empty space and then we don’t have to, at the same time ask people to share space on the same day.

Alan Zhang [00:28:24]:
That is something I see we need to build at this moment, but it seems to be more difficult than I expected. I wonder if you can provide any advices and how, if you have done it, how.

Sanjog Aul [00:28:39]:
Okay, so, Ron, do you want to take this?

Ronald Blahnik [00:28:42]:
Yeah. So what we did is we leveraged the Microsoft platform. One of the tools they have is called Waldo. So the whole thought of where’s Waldo? And the idea is that you can turn in your. It will read a graphic or a planogram of your entire office space and will turn all those spaces into hotel cubes that people can sign up for when they’re coming in. It also helps people say, listen, I’m coming in, but I need to work with Bill, Bob, brea, and Tim, and it will help you find a space where five cubes are available so they can be close and collaborate for the day. That was pretty effective for us for a bit, but because we’re a 50 50 space wasn’t a huge issue. We didn’t find a lot of people saying, listen, I need to go sit someplace else.

Ronald Blahnik [00:29:25]:
We had plenty of open conference rooms, but we did try that tool. It was pretty effective in a short term mode, and that might be something you might want to try.

Alan Zhang [00:29:35]:
Oh, is that w a l D O?

Ralph Santitoro [00:29:37]:
Waddle? Yep. Oh, yeah. Just talk to your Microsoft account manager about it. Yep.

Alan Zhang [00:29:44]:
Thank you.

Sanjog Aul [00:29:45]:
All right, Andy. Yeah.

Andy Goodfellow [00:29:46]:
There’s a couple others I can recommend, too. I didn’t know if you’re a Microsoft shop or not, but there’s one called Robin. It’s. The website is robinpowered.com. and they have a lot. This is what they do, right? So they have a lot of integrations with different, different shops. If you’re not a Microsoft shop, if you’re a Google shop or some other shop, you can look into Robin, robinpower.com dot. The other one is by architecture and a real estate firm called Gensler.

Andy Goodfellow [00:30:12]:
The product is called Wisp. Website is genslerwisp.com. but you could just search, you could Google for Wisp. That one’s pretty effective where you can map out entire buildings, entire floors, and you can do searches for where, you know, John Smith sits and it’ll tell you exactly where his location is and all that jazz. So both those tools I’ve used and found them pretty helpful, not only with booking rooms, but helping you find people that used to only find, you know, remotely.

Priya Almelkar [00:30:40]:
So.

Alan Zhang [00:30:40]:
Awesome.

Ryan Shull [00:30:41]:
All right, Ryan, mine’s more an add on question. How do you guys manage the, I wouldn’t call it sanitation, but the disinfecting of the spaces, because when we went into a hotel thought process, that was a big concern of a lot of the employees at our organization.

Alan Zhang [00:31:05]:
But that’s a good question. So to me, the pandemic is over. What’s left is the hybrid working mode. Right. I think if the pandemic becomes, comes back or another pandemic comes, I think that’s probably become more important at that point. But for now, I would think we’re kind of back to normal, although we now kind of got stuck to this hybrid working setup. But if we do need to sanitize these days, we are much better than doing that than before, I suppose you have the airplanes, you have restaurants and all that. Lots of experience we can leverage.

Sanjog Aul [00:31:51]:
Did you have another comment, Ron?

Ronald Blahnik [00:31:53]:
Yeah. So in reference to the question that was just posed, what we did is our associates asked the same question, how are you protecting us in the office? Why don’t you just let us stay home? We implemented a camera system at the employee entrance that actually takes temperatures as you walk through the door. So if you are in a red zone outside of normal temperatures, you get stepped to the side, you go to a nurse’s office. Right. They’re not going to have you infect the crew. The second thing we did is, of course, we had the cleaning. Whenever anybody was, had to go to remote because of a Covid diagnosis, we did a cleaning. But what we eventually implemented was we put ionizers in our, in our air filtration system, which kills a great many of the call it agents that are out there.

Ronald Blahnik [00:32:43]:
And we saw the rate of sickness drop from in the building drop precipitously as a result of that implementation. It was a little costly, but it was effective.

Sanjog Aul [00:32:56]:
All right, so, Andy, what would you say your top snag that you’re hitting and what you would like to ask the fellow group to help you out, give some suggestions?

Andy Goodfellow [00:33:09]:
Yeah, no, it’s a great question, and I actually hit on a little bit in your original question, Sanjog. So I have half my leadership staff is remote. Totally. And then I have half that will be coming in a couple of days. I also have a really large amount of my organization that will be remote all the time, and they’ll have people that will come in that are in the Chicago area because they like to come in. So the challenge I have is how do the remote folk, how do we keep the remote folks plugged in? Because you just get like serendipity interactions when you’re together, which can create opportunities for people when they’re in person. Water cooler talk, seeing somebody in the hall or coming in the entrance at the same time or that kind of stuff, eating lunch together because you happen to walk past their cube. Right.

Andy Goodfellow [00:34:01]:
If you’re remote, you lose all that. You don’t get any of that. So you could fall behind or you could miss out or you could, you know, you could. I think the big fear probably that remote folks have is will I get forgotten, right? Or will I, will I be second to the people that are coming into the office? And I think it’s a real thing, right. Especially for people that are new in their career. Like, if you’re coming out of college and you’re walking into an entry level role and you’re just sitting in your basement all day, like there’s a huge amount of workplace community that we all used to have that they’re not going to start with. So they’re going to be at a huge deficiency. They’re not going to develop skills that we developed early on in our careers.

Andy Goodfellow [00:34:41]:
So I think it’s a limiter. And I think the remote folks know that. I think that they realize that there’s things people are getting that are coming in that I’m not getting. How do I get those things? So we’re thinking about trying some things where we have these online communities for our remote folks, and we try to kind of think about it remote first and a lot of things, but they’re just still not going to be in the office. So I don’t know, I just, I worry about that and how to kind of overcome that challenge. It feels like a really big one, especially over time. I feel like it will compound. So I’d love any.

Andy Goodfellow [00:35:11]:
Any.

Sanjog Aul [00:35:12]:
Absolutely. So, Priya, you want to go with this?

Priya Almelkar [00:35:15]:
Sure. So one of the things of it, my lead team is also the same way. I have people that are in different time zones even. I have people in Northern Ireland, I have people in Seattle, and then, and most of my leadership team is here in North Carolina. So one of the things we do is making sure that there is time out of when I am not included and just the team is getting together. So on a weekly basis, the lead team has. Where they get together on a video call. Teams call and everybody has their cameras on.

Priya Almelkar [00:35:50]:
So I think body language, even in 2d, you get to read a little bit video on. So that definitely, I’ve had some people who just onboarded in the last three months, and they are definitely seeing a difference with that and just being able to set up some time. You know, I think, yes, we get glued to our chairs, but setting that one on one video time to be able to build those relationships, I think the remote workers have to take a little bit more initiative, and that is what I’ve seen be successful.

Andy Goodfellow [00:36:22]:
Great.

Sanjog Aul [00:36:23]:
So, David, please go ahead. Next. And my request will be, because we got a quite a full roster, right? Ten people having ten challenges. We want to help all of them. So be very, whatever suggestions you give, let them be very actionable and very crisp so that they can get what they need, and we move on and recover all different challenges from all different panelists we have here. So, yeah, go ahead, David. David Martin?

David Martin [00:36:47]:
Yeah.

David Martin [00:36:48]:
What I would suggest is you focus on building the community. Look at your outcomes that matter and build in that community. Take a survey or voice of your workforce to see what would work for them. Put in voluntary type initiatives. Whether you’re doing something with a mission or you’re supporting the United Way, whatever it may be, build some things in your community. Also, you have to train your first line leaders to be sensitive to these types of issues and spend more time reaching out. To be proactive and not reactive to those things would be my top three.

Sanjog Aul [00:37:23]:
Awesome. Alan?

Alan Zhang [00:37:24]:
I would say, I think once we turned remote virtual, people forgot to chitchat. I think now you go to meeting your business. Maybe we can set up specific meeting just to sort of like the water cooler conversation or even in real meetings. Right. You have a team you can start the meeting with, you know, five minutes, just talk about what’s going on in their life, things like that.

Ralph Santitoro [00:37:53]:
All right, Ralph, yeah, just the second. That as well is have a little. Spend a little time. So one of the things I do is, and on my team is we’ll talk about personal things, like, it’s not all dive into business. We’ll spend either some time at the beginning of a call or at the end of the call. But I think I’m not into the whole virtual happy hour thing. I don’t find that very useful, for whatever reason. One of the things that we’ve done as a team is every so often, at least once a quarter, we get together.

Ralph Santitoro [00:38:23]:
And even if people are in different time zones and all that, we’ll literally get together for like a summit where we’ll get together. Everybody kind of talks about what they’re working on. It’s not like a status thing. It’s more social. We’ll go out. We’ll go out together, have some social time, but we’ll tie it to business, and people talk about what they’re doing. We might pull in some educational opportunities there. Maybe some people are talking about some new technologies or something, whatever the group was interested in learning.

Ralph Santitoro [00:38:55]:
So I think that once a quarter is probably, like, the right amount of time and, you know, getting together with the team as well as, you know, the weekly team meetings. But they tend to be more business oriented, where they’re more status updates of what people are doing. But one of the things I try to do always is during that is, you know, make it not all business. I think, you know, the previous comment was, you just can’t dive in because we kind of got used to that.

Ralph Santitoro [00:39:21]:
Right.

Ralph Santitoro [00:39:21]:
So it’s really being able to, you know, you know, how’s your, how’s your family doing? How your child’s in college, you know, you know, make that sort of bonding connection. And I think lastly, the, for the new hires, this is a really big challenge for them. I feel for them, because if they’re going into, you know, let’s say they’re working from home, they have no social interaction, they have no connection. Right. So I think that getting together in person creates that initial bond, and then you can build upon that subsequently after that. So you really need that sort of first time get together, especially when people are not in the same time zone or geography.

Sanjog Aul [00:40:01]:
All right, Ebenezer, let’s keep it quick. Let’s keep moving.

Ebenezer Arumai [00:40:04]:
I’ll keep it very quick. Yeah. So I would just want to tell you what I did see. Some people are in Toledo, some people are in LA, some people are in Chicago. So not necessarily that everyone has to come together in one place, but I group them. I group them wherever they are, and I will just sponsor them.

Ebenezer Arumai [00:40:22]:
You guys can bring your family and get for go for a dinner. And we call it as a, you know, company sponsored dinner. Yeah. So we. We did it two times in a year. So that really worked out a great idea. And they got to know each other very quickly and they got a personal connection between them. So it was really awesome.

Sanjog Aul [00:40:46]:
Great. So, David Larue, very quickly share or reiterate your top area or snack that you’re hitting so that the team can step up and help you.

David LaRue [00:40:55]:
So I would say just making sure that everybody stays connected to each other. And what I just did is put a zoom room on in part of our development area, and we did the stand ups with a zoom room, and so it sees across the whole development area, and we have a stand up every day, and that way we can both stay connected and understand what some of the challenges are. Cross functionally, it’s very quick, very easy. It keeps us all connected.

Sanjog Aul [00:41:22]:
All right, so any. Any specific areas that you think people can give you an answer?

David LaRue [00:41:29]:
So kind of related, but when I have new developers, it’s very tough to have them work remote, so kind of guidance.

Sanjog Aul [00:41:36]:
So you want a better orientation process so that they don’t feel that they are just coming and been thrown into the deep end without the floaters. That’s what you’re dealing with.

David LaRue [00:41:46]:
Yeah.

Sanjog Aul [00:41:47]:
Okay. Anyone from the group want to, you know, just share what you guys have done in your respective areas? Ryan, you want to take this? Yeah.

Ryan Shull [00:41:56]:
So I think what we did for, we felt the same thing with, especially some remotes we had in Pakistan and India. And so what we’ve started doing is we pair them with someone in our IT team, and they will spend a lot of time for a couple days with that user, helping them understand our systems, our culture.

Ryan Shull [00:42:17]:
They really.

Ryan Shull [00:42:18]:
That first week where you used to do that onboarding, traditionally with HR, you still do that really quick, but it’s usually within three or 4 hours. Now, virtually after that’s over, they go right into with someone on the team, and they’ll spend that, that same first week, but really one on one with someone to understand the systems. They can kind of show them who are the people, the players, how you navigate our environment, even down to the culture level. And we’ve had a lot of success in that pairing. And then it also gives them someone in the future they can rely on and start some. You know, not always do they become friends, but they have at least someone that they can lean on in the organization.

Sanjog Aul [00:43:00]:
All right, so, Ron, I’ll take yours very quickly. Just please give a very pointed suggestion.

Ronald Blahnik [00:43:07]:
No, the, when we hire someone that’s remote, we want to give them a corporate trip. So you have a corporate trip to the corporate office. They come either for one or two weeks, and we immerse them in the business units that they’re going to serve, whether it’s distribution or stores or supply chain. And the whole idea there is to get them connected to the business, to want to serve the business and be a part of it, and then send them home with some real knowledge of how the company works.

Sanjog Aul [00:43:31]:
Okay, now, David Martin. So since you have an interesting position where, you know, people have challenges, and you’ve also helped suggest challenges, but some of the challenges that people say might beat you as a professional. So what on earth should I do here? So this is a group. You could ask for any inputs on a very specific area where, you know, which is a typical snack people are hitting, and perhaps people will raise their hands and come to rescue.

David Martin [00:43:57]:
Yeah, I’m going to mention what David had. One of our biggest challenges, I’ll have to say, is acclimation. And we’re in a growth mode as well as we’re building our business. So whether it’s an office worker or a service desk worker or a field deployment engineer, we’ve got various types, I’ll say various job responsibilities across the ecosystem, in our environment. Acclimation is one of those key things in understanding our culture and bringing them in as well. I liked what I heard. I think, as Ryan mentioned, the buddy system. I also like the corporate trip that Ron mentioned.

David Martin [00:44:32]:
Those were two fantastic. I was busy writing notes here. So if anybody else, whether we’re doing service desk, corporate, working in a depot, distribution center, or field deployment, any of those are challenging because we have various hats in our mode of operation today.

Sanjog Aul [00:44:49]:
So anything specific? Any of the group members here would like to give ideas, David, who in turn can take to his customers and to also his internal ops. Any specific area. David, would you say you already got some thoughts from these guys, right? Like, from the answers that they gave, anything which is still stuck to say, okay, you could watch, you could walk away to install, or if you got answers from them on a one specific question, what would that be?

David Martin [00:45:14]:
I think that what I’ve seen out of the group is a bunch of different suggestions approaching many of the same problems from different perspectives. And I don’t think there’s a silver bullet is what I would say out of each of these, whether it’s a global that Priya mentioned earlier in different areas or distribution center, I think that was Ron as well. Hopefully answering this question, is that I took. I’ve got two pages of notes here that I took from this team to build back on solving some of these problems, not just for my organization at zones, but for our clients as well.

Sanjog Aul [00:45:51]:
Absolutely. No, this is great. I mean, I’m so glad it’s working out. So, Ebenezer, your typical snag you’re hitting, what specific answers or answer are you looking for which will help you make your life better?

Ebenezer Arumai [00:46:04]:
Yeah, definitely. So with regards to the talent acquisition challenge, what I face, the one which I explained earlier, like, we are trying to compete with the bigger organizations in terms of the rates and other things. So how any of you guys, any of you guys had this challenge, or if you had, how did you manage or if you guys have any other, you know, thought process behind this? Like, for example, before I used to hire, you know, security engineers for certain, like, x dollar amount. Now it’s huge. Right now, some.

Ebenezer Arumai [00:46:51]:
Some situation is double because of the other markets open because of the remote working situation. Okay. Anyone who wants to help, Nazar, I can.

Priya Almelkar [00:47:03]:
So I think probably you might have to figure out how do you define segments of different, like, domains, right. There are certain domains that, you know, you might find better talent in California versus, you know, other that you might have find better talent in Chicago, for example, you said, I think maybe try to figure out how you balance between. Right, where there are higher salaries versus lower salaries. Me personally, we went in, for example, I was looking for a strong manufacturing architect. I had to go with wherever the population was, people who had worked at intel and things like that, which means I had to, you know, figure out that I was going to spend higher dollars on that. Right. So I think probably based on your talent strategy, I think kind of do a mix and match in your talent strategy.

Sanjog Aul [00:47:57]:
All right, Ron, I think, Julie, we.

Ronald Blahnik [00:48:00]:
Got to add to that is groove your pipeline. Start developing relationships with universities that will produce the kind of resources that you’re looking for and help your leaders and teams understand. Just because someone senior leaves doesn’t mean you have to hire someone at the same level. The idea of giving someone at the mid level an opportunity to step up and take on some additional responsibility often leads to a great deal of connection with the company and feeling like, hey, I can grow here and there’s options for me. So I encourage you to do both.

Sanjog Aul [00:48:33]:
All right, David, Martin?

David Martin [00:48:35]:
Yeah, I’m doubling down on what Ron said. Grow your teams from internal. Don’t make it just a one time strategy to backfill somebody. Build from the ground up, whether your, your introduction of your career, you know, coming out of the university level, build them into the mid level, the mid level to the next, and it’s always a organic thing you can do. It’ll also increase your productivity, it’ll increase your retention, and you’ll find that in the long run, you don’t even have to, you don’t have to always be at market to keep your people because there’s growth in the future for almost everybody. It’s not just the check they stay for. It’s around the growth that they’re going to have in their future.

Ronald Blahnik [00:49:18]:
That’s a great point. I would add, challenge your HR team to look at the total compensation package. One of the things we focused on that I should have mentioned immediately was our PTO policy and our flexibility and work from home and the corporate discounts at stores. I mean, someone walks in, get a 35% discount on your new products. That’s pretty, that’s pretty compelling for some folks. It depends on the age groups. But, yeah, look to your HR to say, listen, it’s not just about cash. It’s about total comp.

David Martin [00:49:50]:
Yeah.

David LaRue [00:49:51]:
All right, Ryan, I think Alan’s had his hand up for a second, if it’s okay.

Sanjog Aul [00:49:56]:
Okay, sure, Alan, go ahead.

Andy Goodfellow [00:49:58]:
Yeah.

Alan Zhang [00:49:58]:
So I think the key is diversify your workforce. I think we’ve been leveraging the interns co ops just so that we get some lift out of, you know, relatively cheaper staff. And then I think also to hit the nail on the head is, you know, since people are remote, you can look for talent overseas. In other markets, they may cost less.

Ralph Santitoro [00:50:24]:
Right.

Alan Zhang [00:50:25]:
Since people can work from anywhere.

Sanjog Aul [00:50:27]:
All right, Ryan? Yeah.

Ryan Shull [00:50:29]:
I would also add, look for other industries that are similar. We’ve had great success. Like, if we need a service desk and we just absolutely can’t find a service desk, go to customer service. And if someone is great at customer service, you can train them the it side. So there are some other options you can use in industries that are very closely aligned.

Sanjog Aul [00:50:47]:
Okay, so, Priyadh, now, let’s take your top challenge, where these guys can help you get some more clarity or maybe something actionable.

Priya Almelkar [00:50:58]:
Sure. I mean, like David said, I’ve been taking lots of notes. My challenge was how to integrate the new hires. And I think we, throughout the conversations, we heard quite a bit about maybe having some employee resource groups. You know, buddy system, being able to bring them on site, you know, for some time. So those are some things that I’ve taken, but if there are other ideas, would love to hear them.

Sanjog Aul [00:51:26]:
And besides what they have shared, is there anything specific that you’ve done which is new, more or different than they can benefit from means a strategy or an approach?

Priya Almelkar [00:51:35]:
I think what, what we have done based on some of the challenges, I think some of us said that, right. We had to, we were working all throughout, you know, the pandemic, so we had to kind of, we had time to be able to define our strategy, refine. I think, like I said, our CEO and our Chro, they rolled out work where it works. I think it makes people feel they have the flexibility, so they want to come more, they want to be on site more. So that has worked really well. Being able to develop that culture of supportiveness across so that remote people kind of feel part of the team. I think that been working really well for us and having some sort of incentive program for our manufacturing team that has been working well for us as well.

Sanjog Aul [00:52:23]:
That’s great. So, Ron, any comment?

Ronald Blahnik [00:52:26]:
Yeah, two things. One, we think about who’s on our team, right. We tend to think hierarchically. I’ve changed that. On my organization, your team is your level. So there’s a manager’s channel, a director’s channel, and a vice president’s channel. And that’s a place you can go and ask just what we’re doing in this session right now. Has anybody got a solution to this problem? Right.

Ronald Blahnik [00:52:46]:
And talk to a peer who’s got different background and responsibilities, and maybe you learn something from another, from another peer. This is what you would have done when you went for coffee. And now they’re doing it in teams channels, and we’re calling it, that’s your working group, those are your peers. Right. That’s your team. The other thing is, we build these team channels around projects and outcomes, but the idea of creating social or team oriented channels as well has been pretty effective for us.

Sanjog Aul [00:53:16]:
All right, Ralph?

Ralph Santitoro [00:53:18]:
Yeah, I think.

Sanjog Aul [00:53:19]:
Yeah, go ahead.

Ralph Santitoro [00:53:20]:
Yeah. To add to Ron’s point, I think one of the things we encourage is reaching out, even outside of your organization, to other build the relationships. This gets back to culture and having an open culture where you could just reach out to somebody, maybe you only casually know them, and to help you out on a particular area.

Ralph Santitoro [00:53:39]:
Right.

Ralph Santitoro [00:53:39]:
So it’s not limited to your particular organization, but they might have the expertise, whether it’s operations, finance, technology, whatever, and to help you out so we don’t. So I forget who made the comment about, don’t get locked into your organizational structure. Like, don’t just stay within that. To go beyond that and build a culture where people, you know, want to help other people, you know, as best they can based on their background and experience.

Sanjog Aul [00:54:04]:
Andy?

Andy Goodfellow [00:54:05]:
Yeah, I was just going to actually double up on that. At Zora, we have a construct. We call it first team. Your first team? My first team are not my reports. My first team is the vps. All the people that report to the president, that’s my first team and my directs. They’re their own first team. And so there’s that whole kind of Ronzinatta I can see.

Andy Goodfellow [00:54:25]:
That’s the concept we’ve built, actually, for all six years I’ve been there. It’s very effective. And it caused people to just think differently about how they leverage their peers and how they can help each other become more successful and how they think differently across business and get business context. So it’s super powerful concept, I think. Yes, for sure.

Sanjog Aul [00:54:42]:
Awesome. So, Ron, coming to you, I’m sure you gave very good answers to many of them. Thank you so much for stepping up and helping other leaders. Now, what is it that you could get as help from the team here who can share their insights and experiences with you in any specific area?

Ronald Blahnik [00:55:00]:
I really feel like I’ve gotten my questions, my questions answered. I think it’s the ones I brought up originally, which was teaching our leaders to plan better and to be more human centric in their skills. Recognizing that you’re not in the same room and you have to be sensitive to what’s going on in people’s homes more than perhaps in the past, others of you have solved that within your group. Interested in knowing any of those techniques?

Sanjog Aul [00:55:27]:
All right, Ryan, your challenge? So that other people can step up and help you.

Ryan Shull [00:55:33]:
Yeah, I agree. I think we’ve really covered every aspect of it. The only thing that is a little bit different that I’d like to ask this group is we struggle with communicating as a wider group to every level and saying even outside of it, what is the best communication for a holistic kind of environment that everyone’s using to get their communications through? Email is not in everyone’s hands. Phones are not in everyone’s hands. How do you get from the top to the bottom the same message sent out? And is there any tips or tricks anyone can give me for that?

Sanjog Aul [00:56:09]:
Okay, Ron and David Martin. So let’s start with David Martin just very quickly.

Ronald Blahnik [00:56:15]:
Yeah, we do our Monday morning meetings. Right. It’s not just, look, about last week, it’s what’s happening this week from the CEO’s meeting that I sit in. We have 24 hours to get that to everybody in the company. Now, it’s graded level, right? Stuff that you share. You don’t share everything. The other thing we do is we do a monthly all hands with the CEO. And so they’ll pick a topic and we’ll discuss that.

Ronald Blahnik [00:56:42]:
And then they just go to open Q and A and it goes, those questions come in and they’re unscripted. And if you’re on, if you’re in the C suite, you have to answer that right now. No, no, don’t dodge it. Come right back up. Be human. Right, because you may stumble, but, but ultimately that’s something that has helped our folks feel like, hey, they’re connected to the, to the strategy, into the business.

Priya Almelkar [00:57:04]:
Awesome.

Sanjog Aul [00:57:05]:
David Martin.

David Martin [00:57:06]:
Yeah. Specifically, without going into tactics, build a communication team that’s responsible for both providing a push and a pull for your resources. It’s got to be top down. You’ve got to be able to provide it at the ground level and the mid level and the top tiers for that push and pull. And everybody consumes information differently and in different speeds and feeds. So the more flexibility you have that I know when I’m doing transformation with large clients, one of the things we always build into the governance and steering processes, change management. And within that you also have your communication plans and tools in which to enable around that because otherwise you don’t ever get adoption, you don’t get awareness. And all of those tend to lack.

David Martin [00:57:52]:
And from an it perspective, if you’re lacking that communication, you will never realize the ROI and the benefits that you want to get to move your company along.

Ralph Santitoro [00:58:00]:
Yeah. And I think, I think just to add to David’s point, you got to do surveys. Now, we don’t want to get surveyed to death, but they have to be meaningful questions. But what’s more important, we do surveys on a regular basis. But then we show how the items in the survey, you know, based on the comments that came in, how they were addressed. Right. So you’re seeing, you had you turn it into actionable results and then you show that the action was done. So then people can actually see progress happening.

David Martin [00:58:27]:
Right.

Ralph Santitoro [00:58:27]:
So that’s really because otherwise this survey just goes into a black hole.

Ralph Santitoro [00:58:31]:
Right.

Ralph Santitoro [00:58:31]:
So you want to show, and so the survey is done and very quickly thereafter plans are put in place and then execute it to achieve at least some perhaps as many as you can of what the survey is capturing.

Sanjog Aul [00:58:42]:
What a great conversation today. Special thanks to all our panelists, Ellen Zhang, Andy Goodfellow, David Larue, David Martin, Ebenezer Arumai, Priya Albaker, Ralph Santatoro, Ronald Blanek, and Ryan Shull. Thank you so much, all of you, for making this session really meaningful. I wish I could have taken notes, but I’m going to listen to this recording three times to get as many notes I can. But I’m sure there was a lot of nuggets that were shared. And this is not coming from thin air. This is coming from experience. So all of our viewers are going to love this.

Sanjog Aul [00:59:15]:
And thanks again, all of you who have attended and contributed to make this virtual roundtable successful. And special thanks to zones for being our sponsor because without them, this would not have happened. So thank you so much again, folks, and have a lovely day ahead.