Kelly Barlow shares her insight into the findings of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.

Workplace expert Kelly Barlow’s insight on the most common buzzwords we’re hearing in the new world of work.

TC’s Kelly Barlow recently returned from Lisbon, Portugal, where she attended Running Remote’s annual conference.

“Workplace Project.”

It’s an amorphous term covering everything from renovations, construction, and moves to changing ways of working or implementing new technology. When we work with clients on any of these types of projects, we start by considering the impact on four areas that are key to workplace transformation: space; technology; people; and process/policies.

We’re careful to think of these areas as an ecosystem, not in isolation. Transform one and the others are impacted. Take a look at the visual below. It’s easy to see, for example, how changing culture could impact customer service or why shifting work styles may require a shift in technology.

Four Keys Areas of Workplace Transformation

How We Put These Keys into Practice

We use these four areas as a means to have four distinct conversations with our clients. This gets leaders thinking about critical questions for each of the four areas. Take these questions around Space, for example.

How well does the current space support our people and mission?
What might need to change to meet the future vision or to meet goals that have been set (i.e., better productivity, more collaboration, higher customer service scores, etc.)

We simply follow the map above and ask tailored questions about each area. It sounds cheesy, but I like to think of it as walking through a building and checking each floor, ensuring each one has exactly what we need to ensure a successful transformation.

After “walking the floors,” and asking our critical questions, we will have identified what must be included in our transformation. This knowledge is what equips us to build out an effective change management plan to meet our goals.

Tips for Utilizing the Four Keys Areas of Workplace Transformation
Align leadership first – and stay aligned. Before beginning the transformation, it is essential that your leadership team is aligned on a shared vision for the future workplace and are prepared to communicate with one voice about the coming changes. If leaders aren’t in lock step, how can you expect your workforce to be onboard?
Engage your workforce. It’s not only critical for you and your leadership cadre to be aligned on the answers to the key transformation questions, but for your workforce as well. Whether it is hosting focus groups or conducting employee surveys, getting their input may be the difference between an office design that facilitates desired levels of collaboration vs. one that leaves team members feeling isolated.
Ask – then ask again. Workplace transformations are not set it and forget it. Once your transformation is underway, continue to look at things through the four key areas and ask those same questions. Observing changes in practice may shift some of the answers that were developed in theory. Always be ready to pause and consider optimization options if a proposed change isn’t having the desired effect.
Communicate clearly. At every stage in the transformation process, clear and purposeful communication will help drive project buy-in and engagement. From the big stuff such as scope (i.e., these are the things we are considering as part of the transformation) to specific details about rollout (i.e., we might test out technology sooner than we see actual changes in our workspaces or we may pilot changes to processes and policies before moving into our brand-new space), keeping your stakeholders informed will result in a smoother transition for all.

If you are considering workplace changes, I’d love to “walk the floors” with you and help develop a strategy to get your organization where it wants to go. You can read more about The Clearing’s Workplace philosophy here or email me anytime at Kelly.barlow@theclearing.com.

We all know the old adage: change is hard. In large organizations, change becomes even harder. Change affects every person differently, making it difficult for leaders to predict how a proposed organizational transformation may be received. While cataloging every individual’s opinion on proposed change may prove unwieldy, there are tools leaders can use to more broadly anticipate reactions and plan accordingly. Today, we’ll cover one used frequently at The Clearing: Empathy Mapping.

What is an Empathy Map?

An empathy map is a tool that is commonly used to visualize and articulate what a particular type of person, user, or customer is saying, feeling, thinking, or seeing around a particular topic. Organizations often employ empathy maps when facets of the workplace are going to change for their employees. Such changes include implementing a new tool or technology, shifts in the way people work, returning to the physical office post-pandemic, or a big organizational announcement.

No matter the expected change, an empathy map’s purpose is to help you understand how the core personas within your organization are going to react to the information. This helps leaders better plan an effective rollout of the information.

Here at The Clearing, we find empathy maps particularly useful in facilitating smooth workplace transformations – especially as people begin returning to the physical office. For example, a leader may want their team in the office a certain number of days each week. While that may work for the leader, team members may have different expectations. An empathy map not only helps that leader see what the reaction to such an announcement may be, but it also allows them to put themself in their team members’ shoes.

How Do I Create an Empathy Map?

Step 1

The first step in creating an empathy map is to determine the groups you are going to use to sort people into. At The Clearing, we call them archetypes – and during the pandemic, we used them to conduct our own empathy mapping exercise. In the early days of the pandemic, we mapped out how people might react if they were asked to come back to the physical office.

We identified four archetypes using the information we had available around the pandemic and anecdotal accounts from our team members. Here’s where we landed.

The Innovator. The person who gets a lot of energy out of new situations. They’re diving in and bringing things to the table to help advance the way we work in this environment.

The Worrier. The person who is scared by the unknown. Am I going to get sick? Am I going to lose my job if I don’t come into the office? What if I’m not successful working from home?

The Challenger. The person who no matter how much thought was put into a decision or change is always ready with a question or 10. This person is very vocal and not afraid to let you know they disagree or think they have a better solution.

The Team Player. The person who is a model employee and champion of change. They’re going to be the first to join you in a given change.

We recognized that these four groups didn’t cover every individual in the company, but did represent large cross-sections of our team. By examining these diverse perspectives, we were able to have an effective conversation about employee reactions to being asked to return to the physical office.

Step 2

Once you have your archetypes solidified, spend time with each of them. We recommend scheduling a leadership session and walking through an empathy map template for each of the archetypes you’ve defined with your leadership team. By following the map, you can consider answers to the same set of questions for each archetype.

When we went through our back-to-the-office exercise at The Clearing, we did exactly that. The map helps a leader determine not only what an archetype group may feel when asked to come back to the office, but what they may say to others about the proposed change and how the people surrounding them might influence their reaction. Here is a sample of the questions we considered:

Once you’ve filled out the map for a given archetype, take the answers and consider the pain and gain that person may experience if asked to come back to the office.

Step 3

When you put all the pieces together a leader gains a sense of how a person might react to the proposed change. It makes constructing a transformation plan that leverages the positives and accommodates the negatives much easier. For our worriers, we considered options such as vaccination requirements or continued work from home. For our innovators, we discussed how to involve them in planning for revamped ways of working in a changed in-office environment.

Empathy Maps in the Real World

When we work with clients on planning a transformation, we conduct this exercise early in the process. In some cases, a broad decision may have been made but the details are not yet set in stone. Empathy mapping at this point serves as a check on the proposed action and a jumping-off point for detailed planning.

For example, a company may make the broad decision to require employees to return to the office. Undertaking an exercise similar to what The Clearing did may expose potential flaws in that decision.

Will requiring in-person work result in large-scale departures from the company?
Will employee experience scores decline due to the loss in flexibility?

We recently partnered with a client who was discussing their own return to work. The leadership team was proud of their culture and values. They believed that maintaining that culture required in-person work. Walking them through an empathy mapping exercise helped them think outside their bubble and rebalance their desire for getting “back to normal” with the benefits their employees had realized in with increased flexibility.

We saw a lightbulb go on when leadership started to consider the positives their working mothers experienced from at-home work or the improved work-life balance of former 3-hour commuters. It became clear that their return-to-work plan would need to balance the pains and gains of the organization with the pains and gains of its people. In the end, empathy mapping helped leaders not only craft the right plan, but communicate it in a way that successfully mitigated many of the anticipated concerns of the workforce.

We Can Help

An empathy mapping exercise does not have to be formal; however, we find that using a neutral facilitator to conduct the session helps participants more effectively think outside of themselves. It also allows leaders to be fully present in the exercise instead of trying to guide the discussion and capture outputs.

If your organization is considering a big change, we can help you better prepare for both the desired outcome and the potential hiccups. Reach out to me at Kelly.Barlow@theclearing.com – I’d love to chat about how we can help.

My colleague and fellow consultant Andrea Bachinski recently introduced a new TC blog series, Solution Area FAQs. In this series we’re responding to the most commonly asked questions we receive from clients around the work our Solution Areas undertake. Andrea covered our Culture Solution; today, I’ll answer questions around workplace – specifically the common questions we receive from leaders and employees re-entering the physical workplace while adapting to a new hybrid work environment.

With that, here are a few of the most-asked workplace questions, along with TC’s input about how others are addressing these dynamic workplace challenges.

What is a Hybrid Work Environment?

A hybrid work environment is a nebulous term – it means different things to different employees, leaders, and organizations. Generally, it describes a work environment where employees split their time between working remotely and from the physical office.

For some employers, a hybrid work environment designates that team members work remotely on set days and in the physical office space on others. For other organizations, employees have the freedom to choose when to work remotely and when to spend in the physical office. However, the general idea is that individuals whose jobs allow for remote work now have increased flexibility. Approximately half of the U.S. full-time workforce — 60 million workers — report that their current job can be done remotely working from home, at least part of the time. (Gallup)

According to a recent Gallup Poll, as of February 2022, “most remote-capable employees continue to work from home at least part of the time, with the mix nearly even split — 42% have a hybrid schedule, and 39% work entirely from home.”

As such, many organizations and employees that have the ability to work in a hybrid environment are realizing they can be as productive at home as they are at the office. However, they’re also discovering a hybrid work environment directly impacts culture, business processes, and how people fulfill the organization’s mission. It may sound straightforward, but there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to how you make hybrid work for your organization.

In working with our clients, we’ve found that for service organizations and most of the federal government, there’s little true need to be on-site from a productivity standpoint. However, that doesn’t mean time on-site isn’t important when it comes to teamwork, collaboration, knowledge sharing, networking, getting to know one another, and sustaining and maintaining a desired culture. It’s up to leadership to evaluate an organization’s culture and business needs and make the determination of what will work best for both its people and mission.

How Are Organizations Establishing a Hybrid Work Environment?

We get asked this question quite a bit, along with these follow up questions:

“What are other organizations doing about hybrid work?”
“What are they doing about their physical office?”
“What are they requiring in terms of in-office hours, days of the week, etc.?”

Generally, we find that leaders are curious to learn how similar organizations are operating in this new remote-capable work environment. Additionally, some leaders are looking outside of their realm – especially the federal government. For example, a leader may look at an organization like Google and say, “Well, this is what they do. Why can’t we do that?” In Google’s case, “that” is offering employees a fully remote work option and an amenity-heavy, innovative physical office. While imitation is the highest form of flattery, mirroring another organization’s hybrid work environment can make re-entry or your organization’s new hybrid workplace policy sticky as every organization and its employees have different needs.

At The Clearing, we help leaders understand and plan what will work bespoke for them by using the best practices we’ve acquired working across industries – specifically a set of re-entry questions for leaders to consider when developing their plan. It provides that window into what others are doing while also helping draw lines in the sand around needs for physical workspace, for people to be onsite, etc.

Additionally, our workplace team pulled together tips around four critical areas leaders must examine when it comes to inclusivity in the hybrid workplace to ensure their people feel safe, supported, and empowered to thrive.

How Do I Create Opportunities for People to Come Together?

We recognize as an organization, and from our clients, that it remains critical for people to have human connection. Whether it’s for getting to know the organization and the mission a little bit deeper, informal on-the-job training, or simply imbuing a sense of the culture, some facets of the workplace work better in person. However, a lot of people have found joy and productivity or other tertiary benefits that make working outside of the office very attractive. To encourage people to return to the office, it’s important to consider programming. What are you offering that makes people want to come to the office?

When a leader draws that line in the sand and states that employees must be in the office two days a week or everyone must be in on Wednesdays it feels more like a mandate and less a useful opportunity. Negative elements of being in the office may surface. For example, comments may be:

“Oh, everybody’s going to be there. It’s going to be harder to get my work done.”
“I have a full day of meetings and there are not enough meeting rooms.”
“I’m going to be late to pick my kids up from school if I can’t leave on time.”

We’ve found organizations achieve success when coming into the office isn’t framed solely about the work, but instead treated as a destination. Essentially, flipping the script so it’s not why I have to come into the office but why I want to come into the office. Here are a few examples:

In a hybrid environment, make the office the destination for work supplies. It becomes an organic way to get team members used to coming in person.
Use the office as the jumping-off point for team events (e.g., we’re going to meet at the office for our team meeting and then go to lunch).
Provide snacks, lunch, or other perks on the days you want people to come in person.
Use an employee communication channel (such as Slack) to allow people to communicate more easily when they’ll be in person so that others who may need to meet with them can choose the same day.

Leveraging the approaches above may help mitigate the risk that people will not return to the office, find the office sparsely populated, and determine future trips aren’t worth it. To make a hybrid workplace work for you, invite your teams to think creatively about incentives not only to get people back into your physical space but also to preserve the culture you worked so hard to build.

Finally, creating these opportunities for people to gather in person allows you to evaluate how people are using the office in a hybrid environment. This will help you make decisions around what to do with the office space based on real team members’ needs and desires.

How Might I Measure Success for my Current Workplace?

Many of our clients ask us how to measure success. Whether going through a renovation, move, or shift into a hybrid work environment, it requires time and money to successfully transform a workplace. As we work with leaders to develop plans for transformation, we build in success measures to help guide the process and shape the end result.

When considering success measures, we think about how we want the people impacted to feel post-transformation and how the transformation has measurably improved the organization’s bottom line and productivity. To do this, we look at two elements: intangible and tangible factors.

On the intangible side we look to answer questions like:

Do people feel like this transformation was positive?
Do employees feel like their job takes less effort because they went through this transformation?
Has the transformation made team members’ jobs more enjoyable?

On the tangible side, it’s about the return on investment. As an example, consider a move to a hybrid environment and a reduction in physical space.

What was being paid for the old space? How much are you saving in the new, smaller space?
How was the old space or work environment hindering productivity? How much more productive is the workforce in the post-transformation space or environment?
Is your workforce saving money because they’re not coming in every day?
What other benefits or compensation has been reduced with fewer employees in the office every day?

People are typically the number one investment in an organization. We work with organizations to consider the value of the investment over the lifetime of the space. Even if the workplace transformation cost is high, when evaluated as a percentage over the life of the lease or building, it is minuscule compared to the amount of time, money, and resources spent on people. Providing your number one investment with a work environment (virtual or in-person) that supports them will help them feel taken care of, more fulfilled, and more productive in their work – enhancing your ROI.

What’s Next?

If you have more questions about Workplace or navigating a post-pandemic shift, I’d love to chat. You can reach me at kelly.barlow@theclearing.com. In the meantime, keep an eye out for FAQ posts from The Clearing’s experts in Strategy, Leadership, Culture, and Customer Experience.

I don’t know about you, but after working remotely for over a year, I finally have my operating procedures for virtual meetings locked down.

AirPods in
Camera on and angled at my good side
Chair positioned to ensure I’m getting the best light
Dogs out of the room and door shut
Business on top, joggers on the bottom

However, like many of you, I’m now heading back into the office and client sites a few days a week – which means I’m facilitating meetings and trainings with a mix of in-person attendees (masks on!) and virtual attendees. This hybrid environment requires that I am ultra-sensitive in ensuring all participants have a smooth and fulfilling experience, and that starts with tech setup. And just like fully remote meetings, we need to ensure we get our hybrid operating procedures down pat.

65% of respondents in a recent GBTA survey said they are interested in holding more hybrid meetings.

Thankfully, our Workplace Team developed a simple – but useful – checklist for ensuring your tech setup (including audio and video) is on point both in the room AND virtually. Some of it may seem basic, but I keep a printed copy with me as a reminder to ensure I’m considering the needs of all of my attendees no matter their location.

You can download it here. This simple checklist has prevented countless “echo chambers” and has helped me ensure participants tune in and engage vs. tune out and “multitask.”

That’s a win-win in my book.

We are six months into full-time remote work. I don’t know about you, but I’m beginning to forget what being in the office felt like! And I miss it. I miss it so much that I find myself rewatching workplace-centric TV like Mad Men, The Office, 30 Rock, etc. As I rewatch these shows, I think about the evolution of the physical workspace and where it’s headed in the near future.

In June, I participated in The Value of Office Space Panel: How to Avoid Rash Decisions in Uncertain Times with Eric West of West, Lane, and Schlager Realty Advisors, Randy Thomas of Abbott, and Roger Sola-Sole of sshape. During the panel, we discussed the possible impacts a fully remote workforce will have on the value of office space in 2-5 years.

Traditionally, the office was a second home with dedicated space containing family pictures, plants, knickknacks. For many of us, we did all our work from the office, and we spent 24% of our lives in and around that space. Over the last 20+ years, we have seen a shift to more shared spaces, providing employees with a choice in where and how they work within and outside the office. The introduction of technologies like email, personal computers/laptops, mobile/smartphones transformed traditional workspaces and our work styles but still, the physical workplace remained a central hub for getting office work done until six months ago.

COVID-19 changed our perspective of the office rapidly by forcing those workers into a fully remote setting in a matter of weeks for an indefinite amount of time. Functions we never imagined doing away from the physical workplace are getting done from home. This opens a host of opportunities for rethinking the purpose and need for the physical workplace. As you and your organization consider what the workplace may look like in the future, consider these few basic questions before making decisions.

Questions to Evaluate the Future of Workspace 

What is the value of the physical office space? How does physical space enable your mission, vision, and strategy?
During the pandemic:
What impedes your ability to meet the mission?
What benefits do you experience from virtual work?
Other than just getting back to some ‘normal,’ what do you think is the true advantage of working in the physical office?
What requires someone to be in the office (necessity)? What functions are best done in the office (preference)?

Additionally, before making any big decisions, get input from your workforce. Design the physical workplace to support your workforce and enable their productivity while reflecting your organization’s desired culture and values. Consider engaging your workforce around opportunities and challenges through a survey or series of virtual focus groups.

Questions to Engage the Workforce 

What opportunities does more mobile and virtual work offer?
What is missing from the virtual environment?
How has this period of maximum telework changed your work preferences?
What can technology truly NOT replicate?
What aspects of the culture are being impacted by a more mobile/virtual workforce?

As I’ve thought through these questions, I imagine a very different kind of workplace, one that is a center for interaction and innovation in service of meeting client’s needs. I’m physically doing most of my work at my home office, outside, or my favorite coffee shop.

What about you? What do you think the future workplace will look like? Share your thoughts with me: kelly.barlow@theclearing.com.

When The Clearing made the choice to institute mandatory telework in the wake of COVID-19, I was very anxious about staying productive in a 100% remote environment. I am no stranger to mobility, I work from a variety of locations(my home, client sites, or the office)regularly, based on my workload, meetings, and personal needs. However, the reality of two adults working from home with two large dogs in a small DC apartment hit hard.

Over the last two weeks, I have been able to quiet my anxiety and stay productive by finding a workplace that is mine – only mine – and making a few small moves to help establish my home as a work environment during the day. Here are a few moves you can make to do the same.

Five Ways to Create a Home Work Environment
Find a space that is yours. Identify a space you can make yours.
Clear the space of personal distractions like bills, art projects, and shopping lists
Organize your workspace with the documents and tools you need to be productive
Set up  your computer so you can easily take video calls (keep in mind what’s behind you, common areas in your home, and lighting
Have earbuds, headset, etc. easily accessible in case you need to switch to them to decrease background noise
Keep this space as your dedicated workspace to ensure you can jump into work each morning and walk away from it for breaks and the end of your workday
Establish a routine. Set a new work from home routine and schedule.
Find ways that help you get energized in the morning and ready to work
Set up regular check-ins with your colleagues, customers, and teams to help stay connected
Use your calendar and collaborative tools (e.g., Skype, MS Teams, Google Chat) to signal to your team your availability and plans for the day
Set ground rules. Discuss what’s going to work with your spouse, kids, housemates, and yourself.
Establish boundaries for spaces within the home and working hours
Name and claim common space vs. personal space in your home
Identify a signal  for when you are busy versus when you are available for distractions
Take breaks. Remember to block time for wellness by scheduling breaks in your day.
Look at your calendar each morning and block off time to take breaks to: go outside, walk the dog, have a snack, eat lunch, etc.
Use a timer or your smartwatch to give you a reminder to stand up and stretch or do a lap around your home
Sign off and shut down. It can be very tempting to work late into the night now that the physical separation between work and home is blurry.
Pick a sign-off time and stick with it
Shut your computer down at the end of the day to remove the temptation of logging in to check something or respond to an after-hours email
Turn off notifications on your smartphone

With these practices in place, I have been able to get my work done, be focused in meetings, and find a balance between work and home life (maybe even more than before!). I’m continuing to be agile and adopt new ways of working and being as time progresses. Tell me about what you’re doing to stay productive, focused, and balanced at kelly.barlow@theclearing.com.

The first DC snowfall is a wonderful reminder of the importance of mobility in the modern workplace. A mobile work environment empowers the workforce to make decisions that prioritize their safety and wellbeing while enabling mission-critical activities to continue. The workforce can decide to commute early to avoid traffic and dangerous road conditions or work from home to avoid traffic altogether.

Mobility isn’t just about working from home (telework). Mobility is the ability of your workforce, enabled by information technology and progressive workplace policies, to perform work both within and outside the workplace. It includes a range of separate and distinct modes of working that enable the workforce to be successful no matter the circumstances (weather, health, work or personal travel, offsite work duties). Mobile work includes working from places such as home, the road (conferences, training, site visits), satellite locations (client or customer locations or satellite offices), co-working spaces, or even a conference room or office/workstation not assigned to you within the existing workplace.

Here are three tips for outfitting your workforce for mobility:

Invest in the right technology and tools. In order to enable mobility, it is critical to equip the workforce with mobile devices such as laptops, tablets, and smartphones that permit the workforce to work from anywhere, anytime. Additionally, consider investing in collaboration software (i.e., Slack, Jabber, Skype, WebEx, Zoom) to ensure the workforce can collaborate from wherever they are.
Train supervisors on how to manage a mobile workforce. The workforce will look to leadership and immediate supervisors to understand the extent to which the organization is embracing mobility, which requires a shift to managing outcomes rather than by sight. Enrolling supervisors in how to successfully engage and manage a distributed workforce signals their commitment to mobility and the workforce’s wellbeing while supporting the organization’s mission and business goals.
Outfit the workforce on culture shifts. Implementing a mobile environment doesn’t happen by just investing in the right tools, technology, and training. It is critical that you engage the workforce in conversations around the desired mobile culture, defining etiquette, rules of the road, and necessary policy updates as well as providing training on new tools, technology, policies, and best practices for working and engaging in a mobile environment.

By creating a mobile workforce, organizations are better positioned to further their mission in any circumstance (snow, flu season, World Series or Stanley Cup Championship parades, etc.) and attract and retain the right talent. Start moving toward a mobile environment by thinking about your next technology refresh (what mobile technology could you infuse into your next investment?); engage a test group to identify organizational best practices and culture shifts; or sponsor a mobility week to practice mobility and test new tools and technology.

Share your story on how mobility has better enabled your organization’s mission, workforce wellbeing, or talent pool by sending me an email at kelly.barlow@theclearing.com.