The Aspen Ideas Festival is underway. Mitch Berlin, EY Americas Vice Chair, Strategy and Transactions, joins Cheddar News from Aspen to discuss how organizations are adapting to a hybrid model, and tips for bringing people back to work in a meaningful way.

Closing Bell

The Hybrid Future of Work

Welcome back to closing bell and center news everyone. This segment is brought to you by Ey empowering today's leaders to realize tomorrow's opportunities. Well, the aspen ideas festival is underway. It's event where some of the world's most inspired and provocative thinkers gathered to discuss ideas and issues that shape our lives and challenge our times. I caught up with mitch Berlin ey Americas, vice chair of strategy and transactions who's presenting at the aspen ideas festival on the hybrid future of work. And we found out how organizations are adapting to a hybrid model as well as tips for bringing people back to work in a meaningful way. Take a look. Well, it's clear that the hybrid model is here to stay, but that doesn't mean that people don't show up in person. We thrive on apprenticeship model, We need our people in the office to learn and so we ask that they be in 2 to 3 days a week if they feel comfortable doing that. But there are many advantages to the hybrid model that we need to take advantage of. First of all, on these video Webcasts, I learned more about my employees and I would have learned in two years, I understand their hobbies, their pets, all these different things that I see in the background. So that's a great way for me to accelerate relationship building. Second, the hybrid model has really helped with our employees well being the time that they spent commuting to the office, They're now using to jog to take their kids to school to have a healthy breakfast, they can break in the middle of the day if they want to take a run, they can attend their, their kids spring concert. So the intersection of their personal and professional life is much more well balanced and easier to manage. How can leaders create an affiliation to an organization in a hybrid or even a completely virtual environment mitch? So culture starts from the top right. So the leaders have to exhibit the culture that they want in their organization and whether they do that in person or through, you know, whatever virtual technologies out there, they have to get that message across. Let me tell you what we're doing at Ey, we have changed our communication protocols, we've gone from fairly canned quarterly webinars, two monthly live interactions in the morning talk show type environment where myself and my my co leaders engage with our employees and a live venue. We invite them in, we have guests, we take questions live from the audience. But the key here is not so much the content but the feeling that we want to get across on those webcasts and that said, this is a fun group of leaders who like each other and our family and don't you want to be part of that family. So we use that to, you know, to help deliver the culture. We also are onboarding almost 1800 people in the next 12 months. So we're going to take advantage of the metaverse and have an onboarding environment and ey office in the metaverse where new employees can come in and the me and my colleagues live during live office hours in the metaverse or when we're not in the matter, we're not live there, they can see a video of us to learn a little bit more about us what we believe in and again trying to convey the culture of the organization through the metaverse, I love that. Um what are some other tips mitch that you have for being bringing people together in a meaningful way and what are some of the best practices to do that? Well, I think it's important that it's a pull, not a push people have to want to come back into the office, so they're gonna come in and sit in front of their computer, they may as well do that home and they're gonna get frustrated so you have to bring them in for the moments that matter and it has to also, those moments have to be things that reinforce your culture. So it's in a learning event, a lunch and learn, is it a wellness event around yoga or or healthy cooking, what is it that you can do to bring your people together? We just had a wildly successful talent show that was the perfect blend of virtual and physical, We had 300 people at the Brooklyn museum of our attending a talent show where we had our own live talent there, 10 acts, we had 2000 people dialed in because it was being livestreamed, We raised $250,000 for charity. So in one event we had people in person we had people engaged virtually. We did a great thing by raising money for our local charities. Those are the sort of events that actually pull people versus pushing them and forcing them to get involved. What should organizations be doing right now mitch to prepare for the future of long term hybrid working well, I think that this is you know, you really need to embrace the hybrid work environment versus fighting it right. This is a perfect opportunity to engage with your employees and really understand what works for them and build a new social contract. If they're involved in the blue printing of the new work model, they're going to be more likely to support it and more likely to advocate it. So what you should be doing now is really gathering data through your employees to understand what works for them and how do you make that work for your overall organization? Alright. That was Jeter's interview with mitch Berlin Ey Americas, Vice chair of strategy and transactions. And this segment brought to you by ey helping you realize your transformation through the power of people, technology and innovation, visit Ey dot com to learn more