Return to Office Is Like Returning From Deployment (S1:E7)

Lt. Col. Adria Horn shares a unique perspective on talent and turnover, and draws interesting parallels between returning to the office and returning from deployment. She serves in the U.S. Army Reserve and is executive vice president of workforce for Tilson Technology Management. She contributed to a McKinsey article called “A Military Veteran Knows Why Your Employees Are Leaving” after disagreeing with a widely-shared theory that employers just didn’t know what employees want. She’ll explain what she thinks is really going on and how she coaches her leaders to think about what people are experiencing at work right now. Lt. Col. Horn has been in the military for 21 years after graduating from West Point in June 2001. After September 11, 2001, she was commissioned as a military police officer, deployed three times and then switched to psychological operations while in Afghanistan. She’s stayed on active duty for about 11 years and has had five total deployments in that time frame. To conclude our conversation, we will be joined by Nadia Johnson, director of leadership and adaptive teams at Steelcase. Nadia will help us think through how Lt. Col. Horn’s ideas can be applied to our day-to-day work. Additional resources: A Military Veteran Knows Why Your Employees Are Leaving, (https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/a-military-veteran-knows-why-your-employees-are-leaving) McKinsey Get the latest workplace design, insights and research: www.steelcase.com/subscribe Work Better podcast is hosted by Chris Congdon. Produced by Rebecca Charbauski. Creative art direction by Erin Ellison and Emily Cowdrey. Technical support by Mark Caswell and Jose Jimenez. Digital publishing by Areli Arellano and Jordan Marks. Editing and sound mixing by SoundPost Studios.