Page 26 - BusinessWest August 4, 2021

“We will also continue to support fully remote and fully in-office arrangements where it makes sense,” she added. “Importantly, this approach is designed to incorporate employee flexibility, so it will look different across the company, depending on role, function, and business needs.”
With most employees working 100% remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, she explained, “we learned that we can successfully operate in a virtual work environment. That said, we also think there’s value in teams meeting in person to spur creativity, social connection, and collaboration.”
The goal now is to build on the work-life flexi- bility MassMutual has offered for years, while tak- ing into account employees’ feedback from recent engagement and surveys.
“Similar to how we approach many new situations,” Cicco said, “we’ll assess and evolve our approach as we learn more about what works best for our customers, employees, and company.”
Culture of Caring
Ross Giombetti, president of Giombetti Associ- ates — a leadership institute that helps business- es acquire and develop top talent — said the vast majority of his clients are currently maintaining a hybrid model and anticipate sticking with it for at least a while.
“I think most companies realized that, con- trary to the initial concerns they may have had,
a lot of people were very productive during the pandemic, working remotely, and it actually went a lot better than they thought,” he told Business- West. “So a lot of organizations realized that’s here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future.”
At the same time, he added, employers are
finding resistance to bringing workers back full- time because remote work has become a habit.
“If you think about how habits are formed and what makes humans comfortable with some- thing, it takes a full 90 days for a new norm or new habit to become part
of our routine. Take mask wearing — I would bet most of us took about 90 days to get comfortable and used to wearing a mask.”
ham, Fridays are remote days for everyone, and employees can request to work at home any other day they feel they’ll get more done there, with fewer distractions.
“If our team needs that, I encourage it. That’s
“I could see a lot of businesses and leaders getting impatient and frustrated; they want the old way to come back and expect everything to be great. But that’s not how it works.”
Well, many employees
stayed home more than
five times that long, so the
habit has become deeply
ingrained, becoming the
new norm. Giombetti also
noted that many employees
told to return to the office, at
least part of the time, may be
uncomfortable doing so, still fearful of gathering in groups.
In other words, working at home is a hard habit to break, for many reasons. That’s why most businesses are looking at hybrid scheduling as an acceptable option.
“I could see a lot of businesses and leaders getting impatient and frustrated; they want the old way to come back and expect everything to be great,” he said. “But that’s not how it works. A lot of the advice I’m giving people is to be patient with the process, be patient with people return- ing to work, whether hybrid or fully. When people are back around large groups of people, there will probably be some nervousness, and we need to be understanding of that.”
At Giombetti’s own company in Wilbra-
ROSS GIOMBETTI
how we operate,” he said. “I think many organi- zations understand it’s better to measure results, attitude, and performance than where they’re doing the work from.”
Galat said Big Y’s leadership learned many les- sons over the past 17 months.
“One is that we can still be very produc-
tive while employees are working from home
— there’s an increase in employee productivity when employees are happy. We’ve always con- sidered ourselves a culture of caring, and this [remote work] has helped people balance their personal needs, whether it’s child care, elder care, whatever.
“I also think a big part of productivity is flex- ibility,” he went on. “Some may log on earlier in the morning, or at times work later at night.”
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