Rosenverse
What's involved with getting people back to work?: A panel discussion

Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.

Log in Create free account

100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.

What's involved with getting people back to work?: A panel discussion

Thursday, July 1, 2021 • DesignOps Community
Share the love for this talk
What's involved with getting people back to work?: A panel discussion
Speakers: Jennifer Bolduc , Diane Gregorio and Emily Day
Link:

Summary

Join us for a conversation about what’s involved with getting teams back to work in person. This session features perspectives from Jennifer Bolduc, Head of People and Culture at HappyCo (formerly Capital One), Diane Gregorio, Head of Product Experience Operations at DocuSign, and Emily Day, Director of Global Workplace Services at HashiCorp (formerly at Pivotal), and will be moderated/facilitated by Lou and the DesignOps Summit conference and community curators - Alana Washington, Head of Shipper Experience, UberFreight, Bud Caddell, Founder/CEO Nobl.io, and Kristin Skinner, Head of Experience Design Operations at Expedia Group.

Key Insights

  • DocuSign empowers managers to decide office attendance, promoting flexibility in hybrid work policies.

  • Happy Cow operates fully remote in the US but maintains an in-office culture in Australia, creating cross-continental hybrid challenges.

  • 90%+ of employees in surveyed companies prefer remote or hybrid work over full-time office presence.

  • Intentional rituals like themed virtual meetups and guilds help maintain connection and belonging in distributed teams.

  • Attrition rates have soared in 2021-2022, reflecting broader 'turnover tsunami' trends driven by shifting employee priorities.

  • Open conversations about employee goals and honest feedback can preempt unwanted attrition and improve team dynamics.

  • Leadership must coach managers on relationship-building and trust in remote contexts, avoiding mistrust of remote work.

  • Meeting design needs rethinking to prioritize collaboration moments in person and keep hybrid meetings inclusive.

  • Operational complexities like compensation and tax implications vary greatly with remote work and require thoughtful policies.

  • Return-to-office is not a return to normal but an ongoing experiment requiring agility and frequent reassessment.

Notable Quotes

"We asked our employees if they wanted to come back and 95% said no to regular office attendance."

"Covid proved people can work from anywhere, the real challenge is trust and managing that well."

"We empower managers to decide how many days their teams come to the office, not leadership top-down."

"The best way to build trust and bond in teams is just breaking bread together and sharing meals."

"Attrition is real and painful but also an opportunity if we have a deep and broad hiring funnel."

"Having honest conversations about where you want to grow can turn around a relationship or project."

"Every meeting now should be treated as if it’s fully remote to avoid creating uneven hybrid experiences."

"We need to redesign work and meetings with the newness of hybrid work in mind, it’s a new experiment."

"There’s a class distinction in who can or cannot avoid going to the office; 70% of workers never left the office during the pandemic."

"Remote work is becoming less niche and more of a standard in attracting and retaining talent."

Ask the Rosenbot
Frances Yllana
DesignOps Exposed: What do our peers really think of us?
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Gold
Husani Oakley
Bias Towards Action: Building Teams that Build Work
2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Gold
Lada Gorlenko
Theme 2 Intro
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Charlotte Vorbeck
Pipeline to Civic Design
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Dan Willis
Enterprise Storytelling Sessions
2019 • Enterprise Experience 2019
Gold
Steve Portigal
Looking Back…to Look Ahead
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Matt Duignan
HITS, Microsoft's internal human insight system: From research library to living body of knowledge
2019 • Advancing Research Community
Rachael Dietkus, LCSW
AI: Passionate defenses and reasoned critique [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
2024 • Advancing Research Community
Maria Skaaden
Panel Discussion: Methodologies and Work Environments
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Michael Weir
Mixed Methods and Behavioural Science
2023 • Rosenfeld Community
Chris Hammond
Embedding sustainability into enterprise design and development: A journey towards "sustainability consciousness"
2025 • Climate UX Interest Group
Tristin Oldani
Turning awareness into action with Climate UX
2025 • Climate UX Interest Group
Lavrans Løvlie
Ask me anything – Authors of Service Design: From Insight to Implementation
2025 • Advancing Service Design 2025
Gold
Scher Foord
Turn the Ship Around: How to Apply Design Thinking Across Your Organization
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Marisa Bernstein
It Takes GRIT: Lessons from the Small, but Mighty World of Civic Usability Testing
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Rich Mironov
How Can Product Managers and UXers Help Each Other (and Why are Product Folks so Annoying Sometimes)?
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold

More Videos

Carl Turner

"The difference between the way people talk about how things are done and how they are actually done reveals unconscious assumptions."

Carl Turner

You Can Do This: Understand and Solve Organizational Problems to Jumpstart a Dead Project

March 28, 2023

Karen Pascoe

"If your leadership isn’t aligned to your agenda, it’s vital to negotiate and influence to bring them on board."

Karen Pascoe

Developing Experience Teams and Talent in the Enterprise

June 8, 2016

Jilanna Wilson

"We share the inconvenience of meeting times across time zones, alternating so no one team always bears it."

Jilanna Wilson

Distributed Design Operations Management

October 23, 2019

Shawna Hein

"We treat our shared tooling and design system as a product with a dedicated team maintaining reusable components and governance."

Shawna Hein Kevin Hoffman

Create a Cohesive Civic Design Practice Across Agency, Vendors, and Contracts

November 17, 2022

Barb Spanton

"You need to find your own mattress—a grounding purpose or phrase—that you can rely on when progress feels hopeless."

Barb Spanton

Doing Work That Matters: A Look Beyond The Idealistic Notion of 'Doing Meaningful Work'

June 10, 2022

Briana Thomas

"What our users see is the perfect plate, but there is so much unseen work behind it."

Briana Thomas

The Quiet Force: Uncovering Hidden Leadership in High-Impact Design Teams

September 24, 2024

Gina Mendolia

"Therapists create space for clients to reflect and discover insights in a safe environment."

Gina Mendolia

Therapists, Coaches, and Grandmas: Techniques for Service Design in Complex Systems

December 3, 2024

Lija Hogan

"The era of 100-page reports is ending because we simply can’t produce them fast enough at scale."

Lija Hogan Milan Mijatovic Sam Proulx Louis Rosenfeld

Three Years Out: Perspectives on the Near-Term Future of User Research

March 15, 2024

John Calhoun

"If nobody owns the onboarding experience, it likely won’t get done or get the energy it deserves."

John Calhoun Rachel Posman

Two Sides of the DesignOps Coin: Teams Ops and Product Ops

January 8, 2024