Page 7 - BusinessWest August 4, 2025

But connections are harder in general during the
new age of remote and (more commonly) hybrid sched-
ules, which make it more of a challenge for leaders
to promote communication in the office. But she said
hybrid arrangements are a net positive in many ways.
“I think the flexibility factor is strong. Unless you do
a lot of work in manufacturing, or have a job where you
have to physically be there — like hospitality — I think
you have to have a hybrid schedule. I see models where
having an in-person requirement on Tuesday, Wednes-
day, and Thursday is very effective.
“But here’s the thing,” she went on. “Just because
we’re coming in doesn’t mean we’re working more col-
laboratively together. Just coming in doesn’t mean you
and I will cross paths. So it’s not just getting people
to come in, but being very deliberate and intentional
about what we are doing to create more team-based
experiences.”
That goes back to Dulye’s original business concept,
the Spectator-Free Workplace.
“People want experiences at work that make them
feel, one, I’m valued; two, I really like the team I’m with;
and three, I really do like the company I work for. But it
takes an experience. If you’re still operating on routines
that you’ve been doing the last five years, that’s building
a spectator-filled workplace. And it’s not beneficial. It’s
just people coming into work, showing their faces, and
really not interacting. So I’m all for the hybrid work-
place — with very intentional team experiences.”
Beyond Meetings
Dulye concedes, of course, that hybrid schedules cre-
ate a more challenging environment for business lead-
ers when it comes to in-office interaction, but that it’s
still possible to create a healthy, connected workplace
even if employees are at home part of the time.
One strategy are team meetings where everyone is
expected to contribute.
“It’s not OK to have a team meeting where three
people out of 20 are talking, and everyone else just sits
there doing something else, and says, ‘yeah, pass, I
have nothing going on.’ Really? If you’re paying me and
one week has gone by and I have no new information to
contribute to my team, there’s something wrong. That’s
not acceptable,” she said.
“If you’re getting together as a team once a week
for 30 minutes, everyone’s got to bring something they
learned, maybe something they didn’t expect that hap-
pened, maybe even just a recognition of a team mem-
ber, but everyone has to contribute. You don’t get a
pass.”
Getting back to communication around AI, she said
some employees are worried about the implications on
job security, but those concerns existed when Lean and
Six Sigma came into being as well.
“People were all concerned about, ‘well, if we take
10 steps and go to five, how many jobs is that?’ So this
is not new. I think people need to understand this is not
a new phenomenon. People have always been fearful
that technology can reduce jobs when it makes work
more efficient.
“Again, it’s how do you see yourself being able to
utilize that technology in a role that you still want? Or,
maybe you want to think about a new role that requires
skill sets you have and want to grow, but maybe isn’t as
affected by AI. I mean, AI won’t affect us all at the same
rate. It affects us all, but by different degrees.” BW
“People were all
concerned about,
‘well, if we take
10 steps and go
to five, how many
jobs is that?’ So
this is not new.”
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