The Culture of Working From Home

Jim Harter: Culture Shock

Jim Harter is Chief Scientist for the Workplace at Gallup. He has led more than 1,000 studies of workplace effectiveness, including the largest ongoing meta-analysis of human potential and business unit performance. He’s the bestselling author of 12: The Elements of Great Managing, Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements, Wellbeing at Work and the #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller It’s the Manager.

Jim has also published articles in many prominent business and academic journals. He’s also the author now of Gallup’s book with Jim Clifton titled Culture Shock: An unstoppable force is changing how we work and live. Gallup’s solution to the biggest leadership issue of our time*.

Virtually every professional team is navigating some aspect of return to office and how that works best for their organization. In this conversation, Jim and I highlight the key findings from Gallup that have emerged in the data since the pandemic started. Plus, we explore the questions that managers can ask in order help this transition work better for everyone.

Key Points

Managers should consider these key questions to help employees and teams move towards smart autonomy:

• Which parts of your job can you do best at home?
• Which parts of your job can you do best at the office?
• When have you created exceptional value for our customers?
• When do you feel most connected to our organization’s culture?

In addition:

• Less than 5% of people in the United States worked from home in 2019. Today the number is six times larger and nearly seven in 10 full-time employees in the United States prefer some type of remote work arrangement.
• Number of days in the office is important, but matters less than other factors. Most associated with high levels of employee engagement is the practice of a work team deciding together (the option companies used the least).
• Splitters and blenders represent two different ways of approaching work and the populate tends to divide equally on this preference (even across generations). Knowing where people land will help engage them better in the workplace.
• Managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement. A key habit for a manager is one meaningful conversation per week with each employee.
• Less important is the time of interaction and more important it the quality. Smaller amounts of time discussion recognition, goals, and strengths can be more impactful than more time that doesn’t do this.

Resources Mentioned

• Culture Shock: An unstoppable force is changing how we work and live. Gallup’s solution to the biggest leadership issue of our time* by Jim Clifton and Jim Harter

Interview Notes

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Related Episodes

• Gallup Findings on the Changing Nature of Work, with Jim Harter (episode 409)
• How to Engage Remote Teams, with Tsedal Neeley (episode 537)
• Effective Hybrid Team Management, with Hassan Osman (episode 570)

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