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HR entrepreneur Mike Coffey, SPHR, SHRM-SCP engages business thought leaders about the strategic, psychological, legal, and practical implications of bringing people together to create value for shareholders, customers, and the community. As an HR consultant, mentor to first-stage businesses through EO’s Accelerator program, and owner of Imperative—Bulletproof Background Screening, Mike is passionate about helping other professionals improve how they recruit, select, and manage their people. Most thirty-minute episodes of Good Morning, HR will be eligible for half a recertification credit for both HRCI and SHRM-certified professionals. Mike is a member of Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) Fort Worth and active with the Texas Association of Business, the Fort Worth Chamber, and Texas SHRM.
American employers actually have very few options when it comes to perks they can offer employees. And the number one perk, since employees are going, well, my health insurance sucks, and I don't get maternity leave, and I don't get this, and I don't get that, at least give me some flexibility in my schedule. And so what's happened is that the ability to have a flexible schedule or to work remotely is now the most requested perk.
Mike Coffey:Good morning, HR. I'm Mike Coffey, president of Imperative. Bulletproof background checks with fast and friendly service. And this is the podcast where I talk to business leaders about bringing people together to create value for shareholders, customers, and the community. Please follow, rate, and review Good Morning HR wherever you get your podcast.
Mike Coffey:You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or at good morning hr.com. More than 4 years after the pandemic forced companies to reexamine their basic assumptions about their workplace, many are still struggling to balance the expectations of management and employees when it comes to where their work gets done. After rolling out fully remote or hybrid models a few years ago, some employers are mandating that employees return to the office full or part time, and some employers who staunchly remain fully on-site are receiving pushback from employees and candidates seeking more flexibility in where and when they work. As the labor market cools and layoffs in some industries accelerate, might employers have more negotiating power as to where the work gets done? And what criteria should leaders factor into those considerations.
Mike Coffey:Joining me today to discuss this current state of where we work and how leaders can rise to today's challenges is Wayne Turmel. Wayne has written, trained, and consulted about leadership and communication for nearly 30 years. He's worked with leaders of organizations ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies. And he is the author of 15 books, including the recently revised, The Long Distance Leader, Revised Rules for Remarkable Remote and Hybrid Leadership, which he cowrote with Kevin Ikenberry. And Wayne is a master trainer and coach with the Kevin Ikenberry Group.
Mike Coffey:And Marshall Goldsmith called him one of the most unique voices in leadership today. Welcome to Good Morning HR, Wayne.
Wayne Turmel:Well, good morning, Mike. I listened to that, and, man, pressure's on.
Mike Coffey:Yeah. I I read it just like you gave it to me. So no. I I really do appreciate you being here because I'm intrigued because the book, The Long Distance Leader, revised rules for remarkable remote and hybrid leadership, The original was published in 2018. So what did you know that we didn't know, and why didn't you warn us?
Wayne Turmel:Well, you know, it's funny. I I have been trying to warn people for a very long time. My first consultancy in the remote space was 2007. I began working full time on remote and and virtual communication and work, and it was building. It was building.
Wayne Turmel:It was building. You know, in the years prior to COVID, remote work was growing at 20 to 30% a year. The federal government had begun creating a policy. They called it telework back then. What happened was COVID pushed us across the Rubicon.
Wayne Turmel:Mhmm. And at first, I felt a little bit of survival guilt. You know? And then I realized I was a little like the crazy guy with the sandwich board on the street who kept saying the end is near, and now I just have a new sandwich board that says told you. But it was building up, and, you know, it was gaining momentum, gaining momentum.
Wayne Turmel:And now the genie's out of the bottle and, you know, over a third of the workforce has experienced remote work, and that changes the ground under company's feet.
Mike Coffey:So 2020 till today, how would you describe the current state of the workforce? Because everything was chaos in 2020, then it kinda sorted for a little while, and then it's just been one thing after the other as far as push and pull, you know, going remote, pulling people back, and employers just trying to get that balance.
Wayne Turmel:You know, it's funny. We get lumped a lot. Kevin and I get lumped in with the remote work zealots, and that's not entirely true. I mean, I love it. I've worked remotely for 20 years, and it works great for me.
Wayne Turmel:I understand that it doesn't work for everybody. What's happened is that you've got people who had basically 2 years to reexamine their life and what they want and what they want in their work. And it's amazing if you give people time to stop and think and actually make choices. They're not necessarily gonna go back to the way things were. And, frankly, a lot of companies have figured it out that, you know, what we're paying for real estate and, you know, if I mean, think about it from a hiring perspective.
Wayne Turmel:We want the absolute best people. Well, if you are a collocated company, what you best people within a 20 mile radius of our office.
Mike Coffey:Mhmm.
Wayne Turmel:So the way that we think about our on for employees, what does it mean to have a job? What does it mean to work? What percentage of my life should be spent in that is a fair number of questions for employers. What kind of company do we wanna be, and where do we want to make a stand? Right?
Wayne Turmel:And and so there's this tension, and a lot of what people are doing right now is they're calling it hybrid work, and they're saying, well, you can work from home some of the time, but we want you in the office couple days a week. And that's not a strategy. That's a hostage negotiation.
Mike Coffey:What do you mean by that? Tell tell them all about that.
Wayne Turmel:How much can we make them come back to the office before they quit? How much can I refuse to go to the office until they fire me, and they kind of reach this uneasy, you know, agreement that doesn't really make anybody happy, but it kinda works? And that's what most people are calling hybrid work. In fact, hybrid work should be strategic, and HR plays a huge role in this. But it should be strategic, and HR is well, hybrid work by definition.
Wayne Turmel:Right? From a biological standpoint. Hybrids are not just one of these and one of these, and we mash them together. It's one of these and one of these, and it creates something new.
Mike Coffey:Okay.
Wayne Turmel:You know, the classic example is a mule. It's, yes, it's a donkey, and, yes, it's a horse. Old Canadian Farm Boy will tell you a mule is its own thing. It is a little like a donkey and a little like a horse, but it's a mule, and it needs to be treated as its own thing. And hybrid work, to be really effective is its own thing.
Wayne Turmel:And it's not just what work gets done where, but it's the addition of time. It's what work gets done where, when.
Mike Coffey:So how is that different than we're seeing so many, large, especially in tech employers who had gone remote say, now you've gotta be in the office 3 days a week or 30 days a quarter. That doesn't seem very strategic if, you know, just in and of itself. It's just you know, we're counting noses at this point, and we think maybe we'll build some culture along the way because people will be around. So how do you how are you strategic in deciding about how to be hybrid?
Wayne Turmel:It's really if you start looking at your work, right, a lot of people that get called into the office 3 days a week, the big complaint, well, I can't get any work done. Mhmm. Because I'm in the office and everybody's talking to me, and it's Janet's birthday, so there's cake in the break room. And It's always Janet's birthday. Always Janet's birthday.
Wayne Turmel:But here's the deal. Maybe if your job is fight traffic, go to the office, put your coat over your chair, sit at your desk, pound on your keyboard all day, get up, pick up your chair and your coat and leave, maybe that work shouldn't be done in the office all the time. On the other hand, if I work from home, studies show people who work from home get stuff done, man. We get our checklists accomplished, but that's not all of our work. So we wind up in meetings.
Wayne Turmel:You know, we're on Zoom from morning till well, maybe, just maybe, some of our time should be allotted to the heads down quiet work that lets us that get that done. And there are times when, you know what, you're not gonna get a lot done today because you're working with your colleagues, and you're brainstorming, and you're doing group work. What work gets done where and when is such a big piece of hybrid work.
Mike Coffey:That's interesting you say that because we went fully remote in 2020, and and I realized in our own you know, my small team of, you know, 22 employees, many of them had 30, 45 minute commutes. And, you know, when we put our disaster recovery plan in effect, which was, you know, I'm in tornado alley here in North Texas. I was thinking either a fire or tornado would hit our building, and we'd have to go remote. And and so we were ready for that. But then we did it, and it actually worked.
Mike Coffey:Thank god because I spent a small fortune putting it in place. But then I ended up selling my biz or selling my my office because we weren't using it, and I got tired of paying taxes on it. And, you know, I couldn't justify asking my employees to give me an hour, hour and a half of their day for free just to come into the office when we and plus, you know, everything was working. And like you say, productivity actually went up. So when my senior team and I, we have our 1 to 1 meetings scheduled every week, you know, set aside, and then we have conversations throughout the week.
Mike Coffey:Then we have our senior team meeting every Friday at 10:30, and it's set in stone. And then everybody else is in meetings like that throughout the week with their teams. But I found that, at least for my senior team, solving problems over Zoom wasn't as effective. And so when we have something we really need to work through, we get together, in person. And, in fact, we've built basically a mother-in-law house, you know, here behind my place with a conference room in it.
Mike Coffey:And we we use that, and then we have a set time every month where they can spend half a day. We go to lunch. They spend half a day working across the conference table with me on whatever they needed to deal with. And so we're kind of, you know, got it planned out that way. Is that the kind of deciding, you know, how to spend your time that you're talking about?
Wayne Turmel:Yeah. That's a great example. Where does it make sense for us to be together? Right? Where does it make sense for us to break bread together, and and spend some time, and have a beverage, and and, you know, talk in a little more relaxed kind of environment?
Wayne Turmel:Where does it make sense to have formal communication? When do we need a quick hit and get on with our lives? Right. Being really strategic and intentional about that makes a huge difference. Most employees don't object to meeting with their peers, or meeting with their boss or or whatever.
Wayne Turmel:It's when that detracts from the value of other stuff that they could be doing that it makes them crazy.
Mike Coffey:Makes sense. And so when we all went remote, and I was fielding calls from our HR consulting clients about, you know, what are we gonna do here? I said early on that the employers who had good performance management systems in place, accountability built into their processes, they were gonna be fine. They would they had sort this out, but those who manage by walking around looking over people's shoulders, you know, look hurry up and look busy kind of things, they're gonna be the ones who struggle the most. And that's been a lot of my experience, in in watching employers deal with this.
Mike Coffey:What how does management need to change when you're in a hybrid or remote environment versus when you're fully in person?
Wayne Turmel:Yeah. The big thing I mean, on one level, it what you have to do doesn't change that much. We we have a model in the long distance leader, and it's 3 gears grinding together. Well, the big gear is the leadership and management piece. And if you think about that, setting performance management, setting the vision, delegating tasks, yep.
Wayne Turmel:All that stuff still needs to happen. Right? What's changed is the second gear, which is not what we do so much as how we do it. And how we do it is mitigated by technology. You know, for the first time in human history, 70% of white collar work is done in writing.
Wayne Turmel:That's never happened before ever. And used well, Teams messages, Slack, email, text messages, it's incredible. Used poorly, it damages relationships and, you know, and and and works really badly. Are we using the right tool for the right job effectively? Right?
Wayne Turmel:Okay. We can't get face to face. Are we using webcams? Well, Bob really hates being on camera, so he never uses his webcam. Well, over time, that could diminish my relationship with Bob.
Wayne Turmel:It could it could change how the rest of the team thinks about Bob. If everybody else is on camera and Bob just never does, that's a problem. Right? So when we think about team culture, is everybody working by the same set of rules? Does everybody understand how this works?
Wayne Turmel:You know, we talk about engagement, and you said something really interesting, which was kind of extrapolating from something I said, but I never said it. And it's true, which is at the beginning of the pandemic, engagement shot up.
Mike Coffey:Right.
Wayne Turmel:That was the one thing senior leaders were worried about. Well, nobody's gonna care about no. Not the truth. There was a crisis. People pulled together.
Wayne Turmel:They wanted to make sure that they had a job, but they wanted to make sure that their peers were okay, that the business was okay. People care. When people care, engagement goes up. What we've found is over time, hybrid and remote workers who are engaged are the most engaged productive people you've got. If they're disengaged, they're the least productive and engaged people you've got.
Mike Coffey:Right. Then that makes sense. If if I'm happy because I like working remote and hybrid and I see purpose in the work I'm doing, I feel my manager supports me, then I've got the best environment I could want, and I'm gonna be more engaged. But if I'm just already a disengaged employee, being hybrid or remote gives me opportunity just to get less engaged. I'm gonna have less concern about my coworkers and and the environment.
Wayne Turmel:And, of course, it only takes one employee to be caught really slacking off
Mike Coffey:for suddenly remote work isn't working. Managed by anecdote. Right.
Wayne Turmel:It took that one example of the guy who had a totally second job during the pandemic that suddenly everybody heard about, right, to to, to kind of poison the well there. But here's the thing. Why are people engaged? Well, they're with the mission. They understand the mission.
Wayne Turmel:They like the people they work with, so we need to be conscious of building relationships. And there's a long term future here, which is where HR needs to play a role because a lot of situations by default go to the people in the office. Who gets the good assignments? Who gets the promotion? Who gets the best performance review?
Wayne Turmel:Or the person who's there in the office under the boss's nose.
Mike Coffey:That that there's that familiarity bias that that just plays in into it.
Wayne Turmel:If you're going to keep and attract people, there need to be processes in place to fairly measure performance and make sure that people are being equitably assessed and all of that good stuff. And that's infrastruct that's infrastructure stuff. Right? That's the kind of stuff that HR needs to do, because remote work, even if you are a mostly in office company this is where the Canadian in me comes out. American employers actually have very few options when it comes to perks they can offer employees, and the number one perk, since employees are going, well, my health insurance sucks, and I don't get maternity leave, and I don't get this, and I don't get that, at least give me some flexibility in my schedule.
Wayne Turmel:And so what's happened is that the ability to have a flexible schedule or to work remotely is now the most requested perk. And so it's one thing to keep the people that you've got, but as you're trying to attract new people, especially this is interesting. Especially new, middle and upper managers, who were the most resistant to remote work at the beginning. Right. But they've now experienced it for themselves, and they realize, hey.
Wayne Turmel:Wait a minute. I don't have to be in the office all the time to get my work done, and I'd rather not Right. If I could avoid it.
Mike Coffey:Well and I you know, the ability to, you know, get up in the morning and not spend all that time getting dressed and looking you know, you know, I'll pull the curtain back a little bit. You know, The I put I put this shirt and jacket on for this podcast. As soon as we finish recording, I go back to the, you know, my bedroom on the other side of my home office here and put on a t shirt and go back to work.
Wayne Turmel:And Right. It is a 111 degrees in Las Vegas today. I am dressed like a grown up from the belly button up.
Mike Coffey:Yeah. Exactly. It's it's it's it's the what they call it during COVID, the, oh, the the, remote work mullet. We were, you know, you know, business up on the top and and a party envelope. Yeah.
Mike Coffey:Yeah. And let's take a quick break. Good morning. HR is brought to you by Imperative. Bulletproof background checks with fast and friendly service.
Mike Coffey:25 years ago, I founded Imperative to help risk averse companies make well informed decisions about the people they involve in their business. Because we don't cut corners, our research is more thorough, and our reporting is more robust, our clients make better hiring decisions. However, employers often don't know what to ask beyond price when evaluating a background screening partner. So we've compiled a short list of 6 questions that you should ask any prospective screening partner, including Imperative, to ensure that you understand what they're really trying to sell you. These questions identify the most common ways background check companies cut corners that impact the quality, accuracy, and depth of the information they provide employers.
Mike Coffey:You can review the 6 questions you should ask of your background check partner at imperativeinfo.com/6. And, of course, you can always reach out to Imperative to discuss your background check process through our website at imperativeinfo.com. If you're an HRCI or SHRM certified professional, this episode of Good Morning HR has been preapproved for 1 half hour of recertification credit. To obtain the recertification information, visit good morning hr.com and click on research credits. Then select episode 169 and enter the keyword turmel.
Mike Coffey:That's turmel. And if you're looking for even more recertification credit, check out the webinars page at imperativeinfo.com. And now back to my conversation with Wayne Turmel. So we you mentioned technology, and, you know, it certainly is if if we had had we would have all just had to been forced to go back to work in person in the nineties when COVID hit, because of technology. I mean, PC Anywhere or some of those things we had back in the nineties, wouldn't have supported what we were trying to do.
Mike Coffey:But but now how do we implement this technology so that it's not the new distraction? Because just like when you're in the office and somebody comes and knocks on your door, wants to know about your weekend or whatever, and they're taking your time up. Now we've got Slack channels or Zoom chat and and just blowing up. And now you can you can send a message out to your entire team about something that only maybe one person needs to answer. You don't need 15 questions.
Mike Coffey:So how are you how are you seeing employers be useful in how they use technology in a way that's doesn't hurt productivity?
Wayne Turmel:It's funny. I saw a study in 2,001 that has stuck with me, and we've incorporated it into the long distance leader. It was from a European researcher who realized that all, communication is a balance of richness versus scope. And if you think about all the tools that you have at your disposal. Right?
Wayne Turmel:You and I having a cup of coffee, face to face, 1 on 1, incredibly rich communication. Right? It's real time. We can see body language and verbal, vocal, and visual cues. And if there's a question, we can ask it and handle it before it becomes a problem.
Wayne Turmel:And on the far end, there's email. Well, not everything needs to be a 1 on 1 in-depth conversation. It can't, and it shouldn't. On the other hand, you know, if anybody has ever spent 3 days apologizing for an email it took 30 seconds to send, you understand that email lacks richness. And, yes, it has scope and it has permanence and there's a written record and it's incredibly valuable.
Wayne Turmel:But we have all of these tools at our disposal that fit on this matrix of richness versus scope, and it's about choosing the right tool for the right job. My favorite bad example, my wife was once fired by Instant Messenger. And HR people everywhere just had a shiver run down their spine. It got the job done. She was fired.
Wayne Turmel:Boss didn't have to deal with tears. Didn't have to have an uncomfortable conversation. What's the problem? Well, we know what the problem is. Right?
Mike Coffey:Right.
Wayne Turmel:Microsoft Teams. 80% of people use 20% of the features. So I'm using chat. Sometimes I share my screen. If they make me, I use my webcam.
Mike Coffey:Right.
Wayne Turmel:Well, some conversations are a chat conversation. Hey, when is that meeting? It's 2 o'clock, you idiot. Look at your calendar.
Mike Coffey:Right.
Wayne Turmel:That's easy. If I'm having a coaching conversation with you, I need to give you feedback. Email probably isn't the right way to do that, and I probably well, if I'm traveling or something, we could be on the phone. Ideally, I'd wanna see you as I give you that feedback. Even if it's good news, I wanna see the smile on your face.
Wayne Turmel:I want you to see how proud I am of the work that you did. It calls for richness. If we're really intelligent about what communication gets done through which tool, technology is incredibly powerful. Right? Now just as with hybrid work, there's the question of time.
Wayne Turmel:Does everything need to be synchronous? If we insist that everybody start work at this time and end work at this time, you're gonna be in meeting hell, because people want to re that was the problem when Zoom first became available. We went from being left alone when we worked at home to suddenly I'm on Zoom calls. You know, Zoom went from what's that to a verb to a medical syndrome in about 18 months
Mike Coffey:Yeah.
Wayne Turmel:Because we weren't using it properly. So now companies are doing things like no meeting Fridays, Or if you're gonna be in the office Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, that's when the meetings happen.
Mike Coffey:So that we're in we're we're we we get that personal touch richness that you were talking about Exactly. While we're here. And so it goes back to that strategy of deciding what kind of work we're gonna do when and where.
Wayne Turmel:Exactly right. And, you know, when it gets back to perks and one thing or another, that flexibility I'm a morning person. Fortunately, I live on the West Coast. So my day starts at 6:30 or 7 o'clock every morning. Day started, let's go.
Wayne Turmel:But I'm done by 2 o'clock unless there's a compelling reason.
Mike Coffey:Right.
Wayne Turmel:Customer, whatever. Right? That works with my body clock. If I actually had to start at 9 in the morning when I used to travel for work and I had to go to the east coast, I would lose my mind. I'm at the New York office at 7:30, and there's nobody what do you mean people actually start at 9 o'clock?
Wayne Turmel:That's insane.
Mike Coffey:Because that's just not your style, and and you moved over
Wayne Turmel:Right. So flex so it works it works for me to be up at 7 in the morning. Kevin's office, our our main headquarters, is on EST. I send him a note. Hey.
Wayne Turmel:Good morning. I'm on the clock. What are we what are we working on today? It works.
Mike Coffey:That's interesting. Yeah. And just figuring out all of that and, certainly, there's times where the teams need to be and there's certain kinds of work where where, you know, it's a lot more collaboration. I need you to do tab a and slot a so I can do tab b and slot b and those kind of things, and they have to work synchronous. And you've got client considerations, but I think you're right that, you know, we had nobody has to be there to unlock the office at 8:05 8 o'clock right, you know, anymore.
Mike Coffey:And so we can work different schedules and just making sure we're whatever the business needs are, Matt. But if I'm a leader trying to evaluate those business needs and say, okay. You know, maybe this works or maybe this doesn't. And I need I know I need to attract this talent, and that's that's been a challenge. What are those considerations that I as a leader ought to be saying both about what our our our policy is gonna be and how we're gonna address it and, you know, how we're gonna maintain culture and keep people engaged.
Wayne Turmel:Well, culture, I think, is the way to do it. Culture, if you think culture is well, this is how we do it here, which is a lovely HR soft and fluffy kind of way of
Mike Coffey:Sure.
Wayne Turmel:Describing it. But what is it? What is the stuff that gets done, right, that is different in your company than it is at IBM, than it is at somebody else. And we actually have a model called the 3 c model, because we're good consultants, and we believe in alliteration and models. But, basically, there are 3 pillars that uphold a culture.
Wayne Turmel:Communication, collaboration, cohesion. Communication, how are we gonna communicate? And that's not just what tools are we gonna use, but how often are we going to communicate? What's the balance of written versus in person? Right?
Wayne Turmel:How are we going to communicate? Collaborate is how does the work get done? What are the workflows? Who depends on what for you know, on whom for what? Do we understand how the business actually works?
Wayne Turmel:And how do we make sure that that's properly supported? And make sure that there are humans there to do that.
Mike Coffey:Right.
Wayne Turmel:And then finally, cohesion, which is how are we gonna get along? How are we gonna build relationships? What kind and this is usually what they think of as culture. What how do we want to work together? Right?
Wayne Turmel:Some places are super competitive. Some people some organizations are everybody is doing their own individual work. We're an accounting firm. Everybody has their clients, and that's who they're working on. There isn't a lot of cross pollination.
Wayne Turmel:Right. Right? Maybe once a week, we get together and brainstorm and try to help each other out, but mostly, we're working our own little thing. That's gonna be a very different place than an advertising agency where people are brainstorming and bouncing stuff off of each other and need to be running over and take a look at what somebody's working on. But if you think about how do we communicate, how do we collaborate, how do we form the relationships that we want, that is a pretty good guide to what your organization should look like.
Wayne Turmel:And like everything else, you start with first principles. What has to happen? And then you worry about how to make it happen.
Mike Coffey:And there's always that temptation with new technology when, you know, to say, okay. We're gonna implement in this technology our current process rather than saying, what do we have to come out of this process? What does that you know, what does the output have to look like, and how do we best do that and make it most efficient using the technology rather than just recreate all the inefficiencies we had in our other process? And I think that's what you're saying is what we need to do as we examine this new workforce, whether it's hybrid or whatever. How do we best use the tools that are available to us to achieve our goal?
Wayne Turmel:Yeah. It's it's almost too late to do it easily. The first couple of years out of COVID was the ideal time since nobody knew what the heck they were doing. That was the time to take a look at this and reengineer, everything else. Now the boat's in the water.
Wayne Turmel:Now how do we fix the boat while it's in the water? This is way easier to do if you're a startup, frankly.
Mike Coffey:Oh, sure. Yeah.
Wayne Turmel:Than it is and with a startup, you don't have legacy brick and mortar, and you don't have real estate, and you don't have Mhmm. Stuff. Right?
Mike Coffey:Long term leases and a lot of stuff.
Wayne Turmel:Exact so it's easier to do that, but it's never you know, when is the best time to plant a tree? Right.
Mike Coffey:The set the best answer is yesterday. The Yeah.
Wayne Turmel:Second best answer is today. It's the same thing. You need to stop and think what's working, what's not working. What is attracting people, what is making them disengage, or not wanna come work for you.
Mike Coffey:So one last question because we're up on time, but I have a 25 year old son who's an engineer. And I know from talking to him, he just recently changed jobs. And talking to him and his peers, you know, he was in college when COVID happened. He spent a year of college as an engineer doing all his work and all his labs remote. I'm glad he's a mechanical engineer, not a civil engineer because I never wanna drive across a bridge that somebody who did their labs in their bedroom during COVID designed.
Mike Coffey:Yeah. The bridge. He, but, you know, he and his a lot of his friends want to work physically in an office.
Wayne Turmel:Yes.
Mike Coffey:And I think the COVID experience turned them off of some of that, and they don't wanna go through that isolation again. But also they know or the you know, especially a year into their a year or 2 in their careers, they've realized they need that mentorship. They need the that connection that often they may not be getting with a a leader that they connect with once a day over Zoom.
Wayne Turmel:Which again is be very specific and intentional about what you want. One of the things we're finding is people are a little surprised that new hires want that well, no. They need that. First of all, their social groups have all disappeared. Right?
Wayne Turmel:The people they hung with in college, the people they were friends with, some of them moved to new cities for these jobs.
Mike Coffey:Mhmm.
Wayne Turmel:They're at an age when they want to mingle with other human beings.
Mike Coffey:Right.
Wayne Turmel:Right? There's a social need there that needs to be met. As they get older, if you look at the chart of who you know, the bell curve of who likes remote work and who doesn't, newbies, new hires, people early in their career want more social interaction, real time communication. Middle managers who have families and kids that need to go to soccer and they know their job and half their people aren't in because they're regional, and so half the people aren't in their office anyway. They love remote work.
Wayne Turmel:Well, does it make sense to make the this group of people work remotely and make these people come into the office.
Mike Coffey:Sure. Yeah. It's it's kinda backwards. Right? Yeah.
Wayne Turmel:It's about being intentional. Interesting.
Mike Coffey:Well, hey, Wayne. I sure appreciate you joining us. That's all the time we have today.
Wayne Turmel:I am so sorry, but this has been a great conversation and
Mike Coffey:I've done it. I really enjoyed it. Well, thanks for joining me. I really appreciate it, and thank you for listening. You can comment on this episode or search our previous episodes at goodmorninghr.com or on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube.
Mike Coffey:And don't forget to follow us wherever you get your podcast. Rob Upchurch is our technical producer, and you can reach him at robmakespods.com. And thank you to Imperative's marketing coordinator, Mary Anne Hernandez, who keeps the trains running on time. And I'm Mike Coffey. As always, don't hesitate to reach out if I can be of service to you personally or professionally.
Mike Coffey:I'll see you next week and until then, be well, do good, and keep your chin up.