I’m very excited to welcome Sarah Barillaro, Chief People Officer at 3Play Media, a Boston-based company that provides closed captioning, transcription, localization, and more. Barillaro was previously the SVP of People at Brightcove and the U.S. Learning Partner for HR at John Hancock. She is passionate about “building something that attracts the right people for the right reasons and empowers them to learn, grow, and thrive,” and that’s why she’s joining us as a hero of hybrid work.

• Navigating uncertainty and change in the hybrid workplace

• The power of lunch: strategies for keeping humans in the loop

• Onboarding and the crucial role the office plays in it

• Exploring workspace design choices in promoting collaboration

• Importance of having a voice in hybrid work environments

In episode 16, I’m very excited to welcome Tiffany Mosher Taylor—recently recognized on the Top 50 Women Leaders of Massachusetts for 2024! Tiffany is a people resources executive and the current Head of People at Canoe Intelligence, a company redefining the future of alternative investments with cloud-based machine learning technology. Tiffany shares lessons learned from her more than 25 years of experience in HR leadership, including:

• Building remote connectivity to improve employee engagement

• Two key leadership qualities for adapting to hybrid work

• Doubling down on company values as a tethering force

• Managing ambiguity in crafting hybrid work policies

In episode 15, I am joined by Elizabeth Knox, Founder of MatchPace, an organizational effectiveness consulting firm that helps leaders adopt hybrid work. She shared her valuable insights on the importance of leadership in navigating change in hybrid work environments, and:

• Hybrid as a vehicle for the conversation about healthy/sustainable workplaces

• Why hybrid work is like money

• Navigating conversations with mutuality to build hybrid cadence

• Top technology traps in a hybrid work environment

In episode 14, I'm very excited to welcome Katie Finlayson, Head of Workplace Strategy at MillerKnoll, a collective of dynamic furniture brands representing over a 100 years of design research, which they leverage to reshape the experience of work and to design a more sustainable world that improves people's lives.

Katie is passionate about helping customers solve problems to create an amazing experience for employees while meeting business drivers, and:

• Embracing flexibility, purposeful space design, and new protocols
• Pharma success story: connecting a globally-distributed workforce via new spaces
• Designing spaces to support wellbeing, engagement, and change
• Improving equity and workplace experience for in-office employees
• Biggest lesson learned as a Facilities Operations Manager
  

Kaleem Clarkson, COO of Blend Me, has been featured in Harvard Business Review, named to LinkedIn’s top ten voices on remote work, a 2023 top remote work influencer by remote.com, and many more. He's passionate about work life integration and maximizing the remote employee experience, which is why he's joining us as a hero of hybrid work today.

Clarkson shares how orgs can build connected cultures in hybrid settings, including:

• Importance of addressing 3 buckets of connection to drive business results
• How great cultures fade if not measured frequently
• Manufacturing success story: The ROI of flexible work policies
• How to best manage change: two key ideas to keep in mind
• RemotelyOne podcast: not safe for remote work (NSFRW) stories

I’m excited to welcome Phil Kirschner to episode 12 of The Heroes of Hybrid Work. Phil Kirschner is Senior Expert and Associate Partner of Real Estate & People and Organizational Performance at McKinsey & Company, where he advises executive teams on the future of work, employee experience, organizational health, and post-pandemic workplace strategies. His passion for this area of research and consulting is evident through his work at Credit Suisse, JLL, WeWork, and now McKinsey. 

In this episode:

• Why it’s important a workplace is “virtual first, but not place-less”
• What hybrid companies can learn from remote cultures about organizational health
• How to embrace the chaos and learn from the 3 gravitational forces of hybrid work
• Real estate trends in corporate spaces with the shift to hybrid work
• The future of work: hybrid, Artificial Intelligence, and the gig economy

In this episode, I sat down with Jose Maria Barrero, applied economist, co-founder of WFH Research, and assistant professor of finance at ITAM Business School. In May 2022, he and his WFH Research co-founder Nick Bloom realized there was no timely data on working from home. They knew they could get good information off the ground very quickly and started running a survey of a few thousand individuals in the U.S. Since July 2020, they’ve conducted a survey every month.

Together, we dive into:

• Ideal number of WFH days for productivity and mental health (broken out by education)

• Should employees have 100% choice? Or more guardrails?

• Evolving trends (e.g. commuting distance) in hiring for hybrid workplaces

• The top 3 reasons people want to go into the office (hint: it’s not ping pong)

• The future of hybrid work: balancing in-person and remote interactions

We "kick off season 2 with our guest Christina Luconi, Chief People Officer at cybersecurity firm Rapid7. The Boston Globe calls her "a fixture on the Boston startup scene with two decades of experience advising CEOs, sitting on boards, and influencing the people side of corporate culture." For the past 13 years, Christina has been responsible for the entire employee life cycle of Rapid7 with a key focus on recruiting stellar talent, building and scaling culture, and making acquisition integration really work. In this episode:

• Leading with values: Meeting business objectives and work flexibility

• Navigating the Future of Work: Building Company Culture and Adapting Workspaces

• Designing office neighborhoods to maintain transparency and connection

• The importance of in-person collaboration and relationship building

Bethany Nicole Smith, driving force behind the HERitage Network, delves into the heart of the hybrid work transformation. This episode unveils:

• Hybrid frontrunners: Traits that set apart the successful from the striving.
• Ensuring fairness: Strategies to balance onsite and remote team dynamics.
• Experience dissected: Contrasting workplace vs. employee experiences.
• Fusion magic: The potent mix when these experiences align.

Tara Vasdani, the legal mastermind behind Remote Law Canada, unravels the intricate legal web surrounding hybrid work. In this episode, we dissect:

• Top legal considerations for remote work dynamics.
• Building a solid foundation: The imperative of hybrid work policies.
• Litigation trends: The surge of constructive dismissal claims in the digital age.
• Decoding designations: Differentiating between independent contractors and employees.
• Employer shield: Proactive measures to protect employer interests.
• Debunked: Common myths about hybrid work law.