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
Jon Fukuda
Design Planning and Management Support
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Kevin M. Hoffman
Theme 2: Enterprise Team Journey
2019 • Enterprise Experience 2019
Gold
Jayne Engle
Civic Design for the Next Seven Generations—A Discussion on Sacred Civics
2022 • Civic Design Community
Kate Kalcevich
Designing inclusively with AI
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Soma Ghosh
What emerging methods are advancing UX research [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
2023 • Advancing Research Community
Jesse Zolna
Inviting the Whole Org to Come See For Yourself
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Victor Udoewa
Radical Participatory Design: Decolonizing Participatory Design Processes
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Lija Hogan
Three Years Out: Perspectives on the Near-Term Future of User Research
2024 • Advancing Research Community
Christopher Noessel
AI of the now: Designing for Agents
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Amy Thibodeau
Opening Keynote: Process and Ambiguity
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold
Laine Riley Prokay
How DesignOps can Drive Inclusive Career Ladders for All
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Jen Briselli
Learning is the north star: service design for adaptive capacity
2025 • Advancing Service Design 2025
Gold
Gabriela Barneva
Operationalizing Inclusive Design in Design Ops
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Gold
Jennifer Bolduc
What's involved with getting people back to work?: A panel discussion
2021 • DesignOps Community
Bria Alexander
Day 3 Welcome
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Jon Temple
Panel: Stacks, Security, and Stakeholders: The Hidden Work of UXR Tool Procurement
2026 • Advancing Research 2026
Gold

More Videos

Erin Hauber

"Scaled Agile felt at first like a step backwards—design looked like just the finishing touch, not a key ingredient."

Erin Hauber

Design is Not the Frosting on the Scaled Agile Layer Cake

October 24, 2019

Megan Kierstead

"Self-doubt comes home with you because research is ambiguous and many stakeholders don’t know what it is."

Megan Kierstead

You Are a Badass at UX: Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

March 10, 2021

Maggie Dieringer

"Getting designers into a cadence of reviewing work with senior stakeholders was not a muscle the team had built."

Maggie Dieringer

Creating Consistency Through Constant Change

January 8, 2024

Meaghan Waters

"Maps stop you from getting lost in legacy complexity and keep everyone aligned on what’s important."

Meaghan Waters Fotina Koutropoulous

Lack of Product Thinking will Doom Your Legacy Modernization

June 9, 2021

Jemma Ahmed

"It really matters to researchers’ identities whether they see themselves as user or market researchers."

Jemma Ahmed

Bringing together market and user research

October 17, 2019

Maria Taylor

"Knowledge management solutions must focus on both the explicit knowledge that can be documented and the tacit knowledge that resides in people’s experiences."

Maria Taylor

Knowledge is Power: Managing the Lifeblood of the Design Org

October 3, 2023

Sam Proulx

"No one uses the screen reader with out-of-the-box settings; users customize it to fit their needs."

Sam Proulx

Understanding Screen Readers on Mobile: How And Why to Learn from Native Users

June 6, 2023

Catherine Blizzard

"The team can now tell the World Service what to do, not just what the audience thinks."

Catherine Blizzard

Using Integrated Insight to Drive Growth

March 10, 2022

Randolph Duke II

"Flat Carol was a nearly life-size cardboard cutout of Carol."

Randolph Duke II

War Stories LIVE! Randy Duke II

March 30, 2020