Inside the Mind of Jess Wass - Exploring Flexible Work

Hi Reader!

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Labor Day has come and went, which means the unofficial end of summer has arrived. Personally, I'm a Fall lover so I'm not sad to see summer go, but I acknowledge that I may be an outlier here 😇.

Summer brought a ton of new coaching business my way as people started to reflect on their work life and realized they were ready to finally make a change.

Thanks for putting up with all my messages around my Career Clarity Coaching Program over the last few weeks. It was a huge success 🎉!

The group program has now closed for enrollment until 2024, but you can always explore working with me 1:1 or via the self-guided course.

With the close of summer, I'm also thinking about mourning the loss of Summer Fridays, vacation time, and general flexibility that sometimes accompanies the summer months.

For many organizations, its back to their regularly scheduled programs and stricter return to office policies.

So this month I want to talk more about flexible work.

In particular, I’ve been interested in conversations around remote work (vs. return to work) and the 4 day work week. I'll tackle the 4 day work week in the next newsletter later this month.

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Remote vs. Hybrid vs. Return to Work (RTW or RTO)

This time last year when entering the job search, many companies were still offering fully remote positions, but that all started to change in the last 9 months.

Now most companies have flip flopped back and want people in the office 3,4, or 5 days a week.

I even saw one company tell a candidate they were “4+ days in office”. WTF is 4+ 🤡?? Doesn’t that just mean 5 days in office? Or are they trying to tell us they are really a 6 or 7 day a week workplace? The absurdity of it all.

The biggest internet fodder around RTW came from the announcement that Zoom, the company most responsible for enabling all of us to move to remote work, was asking employees close to the office to come in 2 days a week.

Now I work closely with about 100+ people every year through my coaching business and I find most job seekers who work with me either want a hybrid experience or fully remote experience. Very few want to be in-office full time.

But what is most important from those conversations is that these individuals know what works best for them.

And if most people want to be either hybrid or remote, then the organization needs to know how to manage and work with a remote and hybrid workforce.

The issue I see is that organizations are not investing in figuring out how to effectively manage a hybrid workforce. Instead, they are trying to force us to return to the "old way" of working.

This is a mistake.

It's a mistake because you are missing out on the opportunity to enable people to truly thrive by working the way they work best.

It's a mistake because flexible work is one of the key tools we have to combat gender inequality in the workplace (and I'd argue racial and socioeconomic bias).

AND it's a mistake because we WILL continue to move in a direction of hybrid and fully remote work. Pretending its not happening will not enable an organization to pivot and thrive in this new era of work.

Organizations and leaders have the opportunity to innovate. And rather than take that opportunity, they are demanding all employees return to the office because "in-person leads to ideas spreading". Ironic, isn't it?

So all of this is to say that if you are a leader or manager in your organization, I recommend you invest in updating your managerial skills to be able to manage a hybrid and remote workforce more effectively.

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Check out the resources below and reply back to let me know which of these future work trends are you most interested in exploring?

• Remote work
• 4 day workweek
• “Right to disconnect” boundaries
• More vacation days
• Universal paid sick leave
• Longer parental leave
• Other

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Resources for Leaders & Managers

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​The Core Skills Needed to Effectively Manage a Remote Team​ Start here by reading through this article I wrote back in 2020 to help Managers acclimate to managing a remote team.

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​How to Hold People Accountable​ One of the reasons we end up micromanaging or getting frustrated when we can't walk over to the desk of a direct report is because we are afraid work isn't getting done properly. Instead of engaging in those destructive behaviors, learn how to better hold people accountable.

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​How to Set Clearer Expectations at Work​ Another core skill that will help immensely in hybrid and remote work environments is being able to set clear expectations so people are able to produce work that meets your standards.

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Resources for Individual Contributors

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​The Best Advice I've Received on Managing Up​ If you can master the art of managing up, you'll earn the trust you need to negotiate a more flexible work schedule. Master this skill with these simple steps.

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​The Top 5 Productivity Strategies I Use Every Day​ At the end of the day, all your Manager cares about is whether the work is getting done. Use these productivity strategies to help you stay on task and complete your work whether you are working at 10 AM or 10 PM.

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