Transcript of a discussion on the drivers and opportunities to get the future of hybrid work right as soon as possible.

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Hybrid Work is the Future, and
Innovative Technology Will Define It
Transcript of a discussion on the drivers and opportunities to get the future of hybrid work right as soon as
possible.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Citrix.
Dana Gardner: Hi, this is Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, and you’re
listening to BriefingsDirect.
We’re all now part of a massive worldwide experiment about the very definition of work.
Remote, in-office — or tightrope walking along some sliding scale between the two? How each
business and each worker finds the next new work-life balance remains an ongoing "work in
progress."
In the post-rapid adoption of remote work world -- a full two and half years after the onset of
COVID -- there’s no definitive answer on which approach to hybrid work works best. And the
technology tools and solutions — many designed for an earlier in-office era — are not
necessarily up to the task.
The perceptions and preferences of bosses and workers alike are in a seemingly unending
transition. Nothing quite seems fit for the new, still-to-be-defined purpose.
So, what is the eventual end-state of hybrid work? Will the process of finding it provoke new
forms of innovation, opportunity, and technological success? Or will productivity and work-life
balance suffer amid a period of tension, power plays, and years of seesawing trial and error
approaches to hybrid work?
Stay with us now as we explore the drivers and opportunities to get the future of hybrid work
right -- perhaps sooner rather than later.
To learn more about what makes hybrid work move to an arc of opportunity, and not wallow in a
trough of complexity and confusion, please join me now in welcoming Amy Haworth, Founder
and CEO of Nobody Makes it Alone. Welcome back, Amy.
Amy Haworth: Thanks, Dana.
Gardner: We’re also here with Tim Minahan, Executive Vice
President of Strategy at Citrix. Good to have you with us.
Tim Minahan: Thanks, Dana. I’m excited to be part of the
dialogue.
Gardner: Amy, there seems to be an interminable debate
nowadays about the future of work. The previous models
don’t give us a lot to easily fall back on as precedent for
Haworth

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hybrid models. Companies are struggling to find the best fit for them and their employees.
So, are most workers going to be fully remote? Mostly in the office in the nine-to-five, five-days-
a-week model of yesteryear? Or will there be some yet-to-be-defined golden mean, or
equilibrium, between the two sides of the equation?
Employees opt for hybrid-work options
Haworth: I’m so glad we’re having this conversation because you’re right. Companies are
struggling. We’re seeing that in headlines every day about which employees are being called
back into the office full time as a reaction that’s becoming a top-down mandate.
That’s been the trend. Companies are trying to figure this out. Do they work fully remote? If they
do go hybrid, are they mandating a certain number of days in the office versus allowing
employees the flexibility to choose?
And I love what you said about the “arc of opportunity” in comparison to a “trough of
complexity.” It feels like that’s becoming the choice. Are companies going to hang on the arc of
opportunity versus those that are returning to what they perceive as more certain, which really is
the model of yesteryear.
Citrix recently did a global survey and the results to me are fascinating. They started by asking
employees what they preferred. The data shows that 57 percent of employees prefer hybrid
models that allow them to work remote or in the office. And 69 percent, that’s a big number, 69
percent said they’re going to leave their job if they aren’t given that option.
This tells us, from an employee point of
view, that demand for flexibility is clearly
there. And I hope companies realize, if they
haven’t already, that to truly attract and
retain talent for the long term, they’re going
to have to figure out how to make this choice
an option and make it a permanent part of
their workforce strategy.
Gardner: Looking at some of the other findings, it seems that the hybrid work model – even as
it was foisted on us -- does work well for many people. I see that 69 percent of the hybrid
workers surveyed said they feel “productive,” compared to 64 percent of remote workers, and
59 percent of office employees.
So that flexibility is paying off from their perception. Also, nearly 70 percent of hybrid workers
say they feel “engaged” compared to a much lesser degree, 55 percent of remote workers, and
51 percent of in-office employees.
So why is there ongoing tension? Why do we have this demand to return to the past when the
current new hybrid state seems to be working for so many people?
Companies [need to] realize ... that to
truly attract and retain talent for the long
term, they’re going to have to figure out
how to make this [flexible work model]
an option and make it a permanent part
of their workforce strategy.

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Haworth: There’s an interesting dynamic I’m starting to sense. Typical human behavior is that
in times of great uncertainty, the human brain tends to latch on to that which feels certain. And
so even if we think about the macro environment outside of work, there’s still a lot of uncertainty.
For example, we thought we had hit our uncertainty high during 2020 when COVID peaked. But
what’s come at us is more and more uncertainty. One hypothesis is that this is an organizational
reaction to try to control what feels uncontrollable.
But there’s a real risk because the impact on
outcomes, results, and costs is driving outcomes
and accountability within the ethos of an
organizational culture. Going backwards -- to
dictate how we work, almost like a parental order
– is perceived as a top-down ruling. But the cost
to workers is going to come in the form of a detriment to well-being, both physical and mental.
When we look at the results from the Citrix survey, 70 percent of hybrid workers say they have a
strong emotional connection to their organization and leadership team. That’s compared to 60
percent of fully remote workers, and 58 percent of in-office employees. Similar numbers show
up when it comes to well-being, with 70 percent of hybrid workers report good well-being,
compared to 61 percent of fully remote workers, and 60 percent who are only in the office.
What struck me about all these numbers is in-office employees scored lower across all of these
categories: productivity, engagement, emotional connection, and well-being. We really need to
pay attention to both what’s not working and to also dive into what is working. Clearly something
is working across all these domains for the hybrid worker. And that’s really important, because
being inspired by our work, as we know, drives performance. It drives commitment, it drives
loyalty. It drives innovation.
Organizations need to be asking the big question -- not necessarily which model is right, but
which drives the best outcome for organizations and people. And from there, we can figure out
how to make this work.
Gardner: Tim, given these findings, why are so many
companies still resisting flexible and hybrid-work models? It
seems as if what we saw over the past year and a half is
backtracking. Why do you think that’s the case?
Trust is a must
Minahan: People like to label of a lot of things. It’s not a
remote-work issue. It’s not a return-to-office issue. It’s not a
quiet quitting issue. What we have here is a trust issue.
Despite clear findings from countless studies -- from Citrix,
from PwC, Journal of Economic Perspectives, and
countless others -- showing that remote work yields measurable improvements in productivity
and retention, leaders -- including those that tend to pride themselves on being “data driven” --
are just ignoring the facts by pushing employees to return to the office.
Minahan
Going backwards – to dictate how
we work, almost like a parental order
– is perceived as a top-down ruling.

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In fact, our latest research at Citrix finds that nearly half of managers, despite all the evidence
and experience they had in their own companies during the pandemic, just don’t trust
employees to get work done when they’re outside the office.
In a recent study we did, 48 percent of managers reported using tracking software on their
employees’ machines to measure their keyboard time when working remotely. I know, Dana,
we’ve had conversations before on best practices for hybrid work, and during those, I warned
that the biggest risk to getting all the benefits that Amy talked about by embracing more of a
hybrid-work model was creating policies and culture and a technology stack that gave
employees all equitable access to the applications, the information, as well as career
advancement opportunities -- regardless of where they work, in the office or remotely.
Unfortunately, some leaders are now valuing face time over business outcomes. And you know,
researchers have labeled this dynamic as proximity bias, and at its core is really a lack of trust
and outdated ways to measure employee contributions and engagement.
Gardner: Of course, Tim, trust is hard to measure in a data-driven world. Do you have any
sense of how trust can be measured as a business success indicator?
Minahan: The orientation is all about productivity. For example, The Journal of Economic
Perspectives researchers ran an experiment in which they selected an unnamed NASDAQ-
listed company and they randomly assigned call center employees to work from home and had
a control group working in the office.
They found that working from home not only
resulted in a 13 percent increase in productivity
-- those workers working remotely actually were
more productive than those in the office -- but
they had a 50 percent lower attrition rate. When
you think about dynamics like that, especially in the tight labor market that we have right now,
there are real business benefits and real ways to measure the benefit of embracing a much
more flexible work environment.
Gardner: Amy, you’ve been coaching a lot of companies that are working to find the right work
balance. What is top of mind for you when it comes to the keys to hybrid work success?
Connected workers create better business outcomes
Haworth: Piggybacking on this idea of trust that Tim brought up, what I’m hearing is a needed
emphasis on trust and connection. Sometimes what we’re going for and what we’re trying to
explain -- and what my clients are trying to explain – revolves around connection or trust.
What is that secret sauce to attain that? If we step back, and think about our lives outside of
work, what creates trust and connection between people? It far exceeds anything we’re doing
organizationally, but it can absolutely be put into our organizational structures.
There are real business benefits
and real ways to measure the
benefit of embracing a much more
flexible work environment.

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Think about that. Why do you decide to trust someone? Most likely, it’s because you found a
place where you shared something, perhaps a vulnerability, and it’s been reciprocated and held
in a safe and shared space. Or you connected because you found some sort of similarity.
I’m seeing organizations having a knee-jerk reaction because they’re sensing that this idea of
connection, which is fuel for trust, is missing. And so, they’re putting the workplace as the proxy
for building that. The challenge is that in the last couple of years, we’ve distributed our
workforce. If we’re using workplace as the proxy for connection making, we are leaving out, in
so many cases, people who are not in the office anymore. That is one of the challenges with
hybrid.
If companies are mandating that employees who have the
option to be in an office, come into the office a certain
number of days, they’re actually going to start to find that
unless they teach organizations how to create
connections, that they’re fueling disparity. And they need
to be focused across-the-board on new ways of creating
connection. How do we make it okay to not have our
meetings be all about getting things done? We know that
this style of working drives productivity, but we also need
to be thinking about how it can drive connection -- and not just for one group who has access to
an office, but for everyone.
The key is to help organizations be successful by naming what is missing in their culture, and
then to set up focused efforts to build that capability so that there is fairness, safety, belonging,
and connection for everybody.
Minahan: Amy and I have had this discussion before. It really boils down to those companies
that are most successfully leveraging this moment to create entirely new work models that
benefit both their organizations and their employees. It means delivering meaningful work,
giving employees the tools, information, and assignments needed to drive innovation and
creativity and the business outcomes for the company.
Certainly, there is a value in bringing employees together, that connectivity that Amy mentions.
The ability to do strategic planning, the ability to collaborate in certain ways, and the ability to
meet with customers. It’s about creating social networks with your fellow employees, so you see
them as humans rather than, you know, a bodyless face on a video call. All of that has value.
But for those companies that are figuring out the secret sauce, it boils down to providing
meaningful work and purposeful office time.
Gardner: As we talk about meaning and trust, that strikes me as closer to a relationship than a
transaction. Much of the technology has been developed around transactions. Technology is
inherently transactional. It seems to me that we need to look differently at technology as a way
to increase the richness and value of the relationship between the employee and the employer.
Amy, is that the case? Are we not using technology appropriately? Do we need to think
differently about the use of technology to foster better relationships that lead to more trust that
then can deliver higher productivity?
Companies need to be
focused across-the-board
on new ways of creating
connection. How do we
make it okay to not have
our meetings all about
getting things done?

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Technology to enhance human-work interactions
Haworth: Technology has a huge opportunity to be a catalyst to help create better connections
in the way we see and experience each other. At its core, it’s about human experience. People
need to be seen and heard.
There are some exciting innovations when it comes to the
tools, even in my world of the human resources (HR) stack.
We’re starting to see an amplification of recognition tools, of
coaching platforms, of new and exciting ways to learn that
are leveraging mobility and looking at how people want to
work and to meet them where they are, rather than saying,
“Here’s the technology, learn how to use it.” It’s more about,
“Hey, we’re learning how you want to work and we’re
learning how you want to grow, and we’ll meet you there.”
We’re really seeing an uptake in the HR tech space of tools that acknowledge the humaneness
underneath the technology itself.
Minahan: During the pandemic, we introduced new tools to allow employees to execute work in
the most efficient way possible and collaborate in a more virtual sense. I believe we’re now
getting to the point where the metaverse is blending with the workplace.
When you think about tools that companies embraced during the pandemic out of necessity --
communication and collaboration platforms such as Slack, Teams, and Zoom – they were
emulating the physical world and physical collaboration environments. That includes things like
digital whiteboard tools, and content collaboration tools, for redlining and sharing, and all of that.
But right now, one of the top priorities for IT executives everywhere is creating the optimal
hybrid work stack. And that stack has multiple layers. One certainly is the collaboration layer, as
we talked about. How do I bring together all the collaboration tools necessary to allow
employees to work effectively, execute work effectively, and collaborate effectively when
working remotely or in a distributed way?
The second layer consists of the business applications we’ve come to know and love. Those
include HR apps, business applications, supply chain applications, and financial applications, et
cetera. Certainly, there is a major role in this distributed work environment for virtual application
delivery and better security. We need to access those mission-critical apps remotely and have
them perform the same way whether they’re virtual, local, or software as a service (SaaS) apps
-- all through a trusted access security layer. And then finally we need a suitable device layer,
ensuring that employees can work across any device and location.
In our experience at Citrix, in working to bring some of those virtual environments into the
physical workspace, for example, we’re retrofitting all of our conference rooms to be team-
centric. No matter where anyone is working, they are part of a teams-based collaboration
activity because we recognize that in most cases our meetings are going to involve a hybrid
model.
Some employees and stakeholders are remote, and some are physically in the office. We’ve
therefore also retrofitted our environment with circular cameras so that everyone has an equal
We’re really seeing an
uptake in the HR tech
space of tools that
acknowledge the
humaneness underneath
the technology itself.

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box on Teams, we put cameras on the whiteboard so that everyone can be included in every
part of the conversation, and they all have equal access to the shared information. We’re not
alone in that. A whole host of our customers are examining those environments too, including
bringing that metaverse approach into the workplace.
Gardner: Amy, even with all things equal in getting the right technology in place, it seems to me
that there’s another part to the equation. Some organizations just foist the technology on their
people, and it remains the workers’ job to be the integrator, to find the right process mix among
all the different applications.
I wonder if that’s the best way because this isn’t just about accommodating all remote or all in-
office work tech; it’s also about the process innovation. Are there some lessons in your
experience about how to better deliver technology as part of a business solution?
Are your clients recognizing that workers are not systems integrators and that just logging into
umpteen disjointed SaaS apps isn’t going to work if you don’t provide some other ways to help
people work with the technology -- rather than be overwhelmed by it?
Keep it simple, secure, accessible for all employees
Haworth: Yes, Dana, I see a new hybrid work stack emerging. It’s about unifying, simplifying,
and securing the work without an employee needing to figure out how to make that happen. The
last thing we want is for the employee to feel like they are part of the IT department.
Instead, we want to rely on our IT counterparts to do what they do best. And then the
employees across the organization can focus on what they do best, which is to fulfill their roles
using the skills they were hired for.
I believe employees are going to continue looking for what
unifies the technology, so there aren’t 60 SaaS logins. How
can they work securely without carrying that burden? We need
to make sure the work is simplified, and -- where possible –
employ machine learning (ML) or virtual assistance to augment
what they’re capable of. It amounts to guiding and automating
the work so that the employee is free from that tech friction or
noise and can perform at their best.
Gardner: Tim, we’ve been talking about how this impacts employers and employees, but how
does this impact the IT people? It seems to me, based on what Amy said, that there might need
to be a rethinking of IT. It might be along the lines of instead of them being systems support,
they’re actually work support, in that they’re in the business of helping people work.
Minahan: You summed it up, Dana. IT’s number-one priority should be creating an equitable,
consistent, and secure work environment for their employees so that employers and employees
have the luxury of testing out different and flexible work models. That includes allowing
employees to have the flexibility to work remotely using new collaboration tools, new work
execution tools, and new tools in the workplace, ones that provide a seamless experience and
involve everyone across these distributed teams so they can collaborate and execute work
efficiently.
It amounts to guiding
and automating the work
so that the employee is
free from that tech
friction or noise and can
perform at their best.

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And then the last part is a mission-critical need today, and that’s who does the work. Prior to the
pandemic, we had a global shortage of medium- to highly skilled talent. In fact, McKinsey
estimated that we had a shortage of 95 million such workers. And that was most acute in those
most-in-demand-skills necessary to digitize, advance, and modernize your business.
Well, that hasn’t gone away. It’s only gotten worse. But smart companies, having proven the
model of hybrid and remote work, are now using that as a platform to reconsider their workforce
acquisition strategies. This includes being able to tap into distributed pools of talent, blending
contractors who might have a unique expertise around things like multi-cloud, security or
artificial intelligence (AI) and bringing them together with full-time employees in work groups that
are connected by a hybrid work stack that IT is creating to optimize employee productivity,
experience, and engagement.
Gardner: Amy, when we redefine the objective or the mission of IT and the business around
getting work done in the best way -- fostering the best relationships and trust between the
players -- it seems that where they’re doing this all becomes far less relevant. And yet we’re
hung up on location or proximity bias, as Tim pointed out. Do we need to further shake the bush
and ask people why they’re hung up on location instead of why they’re not focusing on the
quality and a new definition of the most effective work?
Change is hard, but necessary and worth it
Haworth: Absolutely. Dana, I think you’re getting at the big challenge we’re facing right now.
And that is, are we asking the right questions? Are we solving for the right problems? Going
back to your “arc of opportunity” statement, we need to be very realistic that massive disruption
is going to continue across the world.
Companies are going to need to figure out how to strategize, plan, and implement ways to build
agility and create new organizational and workforce structures -- as well as IT structures -- that
not only allow them to respond quickly to change, but actually allow them to thrive when they
do. At the heart of this is massive risk mitigation. Unless organizations are thinking about
disruption as a potential risk, they’re going to miss the mark. Putting more structure around
where people work is the opposite of agility.
We need to be thinking about how we
leverage everything that we have
learned in the last two to three years
and make it a foundation to build
upon -- versus taking everything that
we have learned and then going back
to 1992. We need to be planning, to
be strategic, and to expect disruption.
Then we can build both the technology capability as well as the human capability to thrive
during disruption -- and that means overall agility. As Tim said about who’s doing the work, that
will continue to ebb and flow. How can we react in a way that makes how we work ongoing
more dynamic? And we need to get away from trying to answer the wrong questions, quite
honestly.
We need to be thinking about how we leverage
everything that we have learned in the last two
to three years and make it a foundation to
build upon – versus taking everything that we
have learned and then going back to 1992.

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Gardner: Before we go to our crystal ball and predict how things are going to unfold, even in a
very disruptive period over the next year or two, I’d like to look at this through a different lens.
We’ve been talking about the softer metrics of productivity and trust, but there are also hard
metrics around the underlying economics of hybrid work.
As organizations look at their total cost of employee ownership, if you will, that has to include
big office buildings in very expensive cities. It involves hour-long commutes in each direction on
public transportation that’s probably aging and inefficient, or sitting in a car in traffic.
Tim, are there some purely economic reasons why companies should be more open-minded
when it comes to location of workers? It seems to me that there’s more than just productivity,
that there’s actually a bottom-line indicator here that flexibility and hybrid work pays.
Minahan: Yes, absolutely, Dana. In fact, there were
countless studies done during the pandemic
indicating that there are real business benefits to
remote work. You mentioned key ones around real
estate reduction, despite companies looking to get
employees back into the office in some cases.
Almost every employer is looking at right sizing their real estate needs in new ways, particularly
in major metropolitan areas.
Secondly, you mentioned commuting. Commuting costs certainly put benefits back into both
employers and employee’s pockets, if they’re working remotely, even part of the time, especially
in light of the current prices of energy. There are major sustainability benefits as companies look
to reduce their CO2 emissions by adopting cloud, reducing their real estate footprint, and
reducing the necessity for employees to do two-hour commutes every day.
But I don’t see the benefits around improved productivity and business outcomes that our
employers are trying to achieve as soft at all. They should be accelerated and enhanced by
embracing a much more flexible work model, including hiring those hard-to-find skills because
you can reach them in a remote fashion.
A good example is a hospital network right here in the Boston area, Dana, that during the
pandemic saw their telemedicine visits go up to over 200,000 per month from 9,000 per month
or a 27-times increase.
Well, guess what? Coming out of the pandemic, they’re not rotating all the way back. They’re
increasing their telemedicine experience. They recognize that they can use that same platform
to find in-demand talent around things such as oncology and can staff them not in the Boston
area where it’s highly competitive and highly costly to hire them, but remotely in the Midwest or
elsewhere. These are the types of real business benefits that have come from people
embracing much more flexible work models.
Gardner: Tim, how do you see things playing out in the year ahead? Are we going to continue
to have this back-and-forth debate over remote work’s value, or is there a new end state or
settlement of this discussion?
There were countless studies
done during the pandemic
indicating that there are real
business benefits to remote work.

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Employees expect meaningful, secure, shared work
Minahan: I think natural market factors will balance it out. Employees, including those very top
employees who want to do meaningful, creative, and innovative work -- but in a more self-
serving flexible work model -- will vote with their feet. We’re already seeing it from the great
resignation and the like. And despite the blustering at the top level around getting folks back into
office, the reality is that companies are recognizing the critical importance of employee
experience.
In fact, the study we just did of 10,000 IT leaders, 60 percent said they’re investing more in
internal innovation projects to improve the employee experience. They said they are investing in
digital workspace technology to support consistent and reliable access to the applications and
information employee’s need across any device and location to ensure security.
And so, in short, after years of investing to
digitize and enhance customer experience,
companies are now giving some much
needed and long overdue attention to
enhancing the employee experience. Those
are the people, after all, who are responsible
for innovating, creating, and improving the
customer satisfaction levels.
I think the market is going to balance itself out, with companies making these investments in
order to appear more attractive to needed workers. And as part of that, it’s not just about the
hybrid stack for technology for hybrid work, it’s also about the policies and cultural changes
you’re going to need to make to support that hybrid work model to make you an attractive
employer of choice.
Gardner: How does this new stack shape up, Tim? What are some of the major components
that people should be looking for?
Minahan: We covered a good portion of that before, Dana. We see a number of layers to the
stack. Certainly, the newest one that’s getting the most attention is the collaboration layer. The
need to invest in new tools to foster greater work execution and collaboration in a distributed
model. Those would be things like the communication collaboration tools that we use, like
Teams and Slack and others.
There’ll be some of the new kind of turning physical work methods into digital work methods like
a digital whiteboard such as Miro, etc. And bringing those into your stack where a few years ago
they probably didn’t really exist or weren’t used at scale as they are now.
The second layer refines and modernizes your traditional business applications stack. All those
tools you can use to run your business, your enterprise resource planning (ERP), your business
applications, et cetera. So, employees in functional layers can execute the work they need to
get done, can execute those transactions.
There is also the rising importance of ensuring that you have a virtual desktop and security layer
in there, one that leverages those mission-critical applications and virtualizes them at scale to
After years of investing to digitize and
enhance customer experience,
companies are now giving some much
needed and long overdue attention to
enhancing the employee experience.

11. Page 11 of 13
your employee base, whether they’re full-time employees or contractors in a very quick and
efficient way, and then wrapping that in a zero trust security layer.
Finally, the last layer is around the devices, ensuring that employees can have equitable access
to applications and information regardless of what device they’re using and regardless of what
location they’re accessing from.
Gardner: Amy, what does your crystal ball tell you about how things are going to shape up in
the coming year or two?
Haworth: There’s going to be a realization that we need to continue to learn and experiment. I
would love to see organizations and employees both set that as the expectation. So rather than
swing all one way at an enterprise level, that there are parcels, pieces, incubators for innovation
when it comes to both technology and ways of working. These incubators are generating
insights, and those insights are fueling future decision making.
So, a really important aspect of this is that we don’t give up too soon. We have come so far, and
what is taking place is a continuation of transformation. Transformation inherently means
ambiguity. Humans don’t love ambiguity, but rather than abandon and go back to where we felt
“certain” back in 2019, we need to push forward and lean into these spaces of uncertainty. That
way we can continue to experiment, learn, try new things, innovate, solve real problems, and
mostly not give up.
Gardner: And you know, Amy, I always like to ask about examples and real-life results. When
you look at the new hybrid work stack, as Tim described it, and from the number of
organizations you’ve been working with, any early adopters? Has anyone understood the need
for this new approach and put in place some of these improvements to foster trust and
relationships? What’s working? And when you do this right, what do you get?
Learn, innovate, motivate
Haworth: I am seeing some new best practices, and I love that idea of leaning into the bright
spots. So rather than target what’s not working, let’s talk about what is working. One
organization in particular is investing in their manager layer.
Throughout the last two or three years, we’ve heard how
much middle managers have taken the brunt off of
supporting teams and people. And one organization in
particular is investing in their managers at unprecedented
levels because they understand that employee experience is
dependent upon manager experience. And they’re seeing some really good results so far.
They’re early in the game.
Another place is in the startup community. Organizations that are building fresh right now are
making choices both in the technology and in workplace best practices. There’s a lot of good
learning to be had there because they’re looking at how are people motivated today. You know,
it’s not, “We have to bring everyone into the office for a learning event.” What this organization
is doing is thinking more about how much being in a work community and serving the
Employee experience is
dependent upon
manager experience.

12. Page 12 of 13
community leads to feeling a sense of motivation and commitment -- not only to the team, but to
their work and the solution overall.
So, they’re coming together in person with organizations in their community to do service
together, versus coming together just for strategic planning. That is not to undermine strategic
planning. It’s more about getting out and about seeing an impact in big ways is feeling a sense
of loyalty and commitment as a result.
These are some non-traditional ways of stepping back and saying, “What do people need
today? Where are we today?” It includes being willing to let go of the things that worked in the
past in favor of something new and fresh.
Gardner: Tim, any examples of what the new hybrid work stack is capable of, particularly when
companies recognize that it’s work that’s their mission and not about location?
Minahan: Yes, but I think it’s important to say that this stack isn’t just about enabling traditional
work models. It’s about embracing new ones. And a very good example is Teleperformance SE.
As one of the largest business-process outsourcers in the world, they are optimizing and
focused on providing contact-center services for some of the world’s largest enterprises.
They recognized that this is a moment for them to be able to scale their business and to
embrace new work models that simultaneously allow them to attract more talent and lower their
costs. They’re using the hybrid work stack -- not just the collaboration tools we mentioned, but
specialized tools related to call centers. They have been able to virtualize that as well as using
their voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) services to enable a hybrid call-center model through
which they can equally as well recruit remote workers, stay-at-home workers, to support contact
center efforts as well as in their physical call centers. And that allows them flexibility.
Some of our customers are fully embracing the home-
based force. They are able to, in this case, staff the call
centers with the best talent possible anywhere and at the
lowest cost. We have other customers who are saying,
“Hey, no, I still want to have a physical call center in one
of our major locations.” And they have the flexibility now
to use hybrid models to deliver a higher level of service at
a lower cost with a much more engaged and retained
workforce than they could pre-pandemic.
Gardner: Tim, there’s so much new research and information. And people are thirsty for new
insights dealing with these unprecedented issues. Where can they go to find out more to best
continue their journey?
Minahan: I recommend they go to Citrix Fieldwork, our thought leadership platform where they
can find much of the research that both Amy and I referenced today.
Gardner: Amy, how can Nobody Makes It Alone help? Where are your resources located? How
can people learn more about finding the right path to a successful hybrid work?
Haworth: I’d love to connect with anyone on LinkedIn. I also author a newsletter on LinkedIn as
well as the website, nobodymakesitalone.com and look forward to being a thought partner and
They have the flexibility now
to use hybrid models to
deliver a higher level of
service at a lower cost with a
much more engaged and
retained workforce than they
could pre-pandemic.

13. Page 13 of 13
helping to understand what’s going to make organizations successful no matter what happens in
the world outside.
Gardner: I’m afraid we’ll have to leave it there. You’ve been listening to a sponsored
BriefingsDirect discussion on finding the most productive approach to hybrid work. And we’ve
learned how new forms of innovation, opportunity, and technology stack solutions can both
empower workers and reward their employers with higher productivity, satisfaction, and
innovation.
And so, a big thank you to our guests, Amy Haworth, Founder and CEO of Nobody Makes It
Alone. Thank you so much, Amy.
Haworth: Thanks, Dana.
Gardner: And a big thank you as well to Tim Minahan, Executive Vice President of Strategy at
Citrix. Thank you so much, Tim.
Minahan: Thanks, Dana. Looking forward to speaking again soon.
Gardner: And a big thank you to our audience as well for joining this BriefingsDirect future of
hybrid work discussion. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host
throughout this series of Citrix-sponsored discussions.
Thanks again for listening. Please pass this along to your community and do come back next
time.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Citrix.
Transcript of a discussion on the drivers and opportunities to get the future of hybrid work right as soon as
possible. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2022. All rights reserved.
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