hi there i'm claudia hoskey from fed insider and on behalf of the george washington university center for excellence in public leadership and servicenow i'm pleased to welcome you to today's webinar adapting to hybrid workplaces the role of culture technology and hr please type your questions and comments into the q a pod if we don't get to them during today's webinar we'll share them with our speakers so they can follow up with you also take note of the resources tab on the left side of your screen to download today's slides and other reading materials we offer live captioning for all of our webinars to follow along with us use the hyperlink under the live captioning or cart tab above the slides we'll have the full transcript available in the next day or two and to earn training credit for today's webinar you'll need to answer all polling questions throughout and now let me turn over the reins to our moderator kevin brooks from servicenow to begin today's discussion kevin thank you claudia hello everyone and thank you for joining us today i'm kevin brooks from servicenow and i will be borrowing what i know will be a lively interesting discussion about a very lively timely topic the world's culture technology and hr the federal workforce and their leaders have been challenged in the past few years with a series of events that have tested their metal and the very fabric of some organizations it is fair to say that the shocks of the system over the last two years have accelerated the rate of change and created new challenges along the way how leaders navigate organizations and culture people operations and technology will be one of the most critical challenges in the coming years it is both immediate and enduring faculty time federal leaders and change agents and we have a diverse panel of four highly skilled guests with us today to talk about some of the opportunities so guests please say hello when i introduce you first off i'd like to welcome bj collin deputy office director for the environmental protection agency's office of mission support and office of administration and resource management hello good afternoon next dr rhonda jones director of planning policy and training division with an epa office of human resources hello also joining us today is melanie saunders chief of williams officer ford nasa hi everybody and last but certainly not least we have kathleen stefan associate director for management executive officer nih national institute of dental and craniofacial research and co-chair of nih strategic administration management advisory committee good afternoon everyone so thank you all for being here we have lots of interesting eyes to discuss regarding the future of work roles of hybrid workplace and well those roles the hybrid workplace will play in attracting and retaining employees job satisfaction and improving productivity and culture we have some amazing talented guests i just introduced you to so i want to take a moment to learn a little bit more about them so bj let's start with you and tell us a little about you and your role at epa excellent thank you so much and i'm happy to be here today uh so again uh as you stated my name is bj collins i'm the uh deputy office director i've said all the acronyms so i don't have to do that again um our office is responsible for managing epa's largest owned facility it's also its largest office presence outside of washington dc it's a 1.2 million square foot laboratory facility that also houses a lot of the agency's administrative functions so our organization is responsible for the management of that facility i.t management at that facility and then we also are home to one of the two shared service centers for hr operations we service a little over half of the agency's customers providing day-to-day hr support staffing classification benefits retirement counseling and then we also provide lar support our office also provides executive services support to all the agencies ses political and non-career ses staff as well and again i'm happy to be here today thanks bj uh rhonda same question to you well hello again as you said earlier i'm director of hr policy planning and training at the environmental protection agency so my division services all 15 000 epa employees and has been heavily involved in helping the agency with various components of the future of work including curating leading practices regarding hybrid work and i'm really delighted to be here thank you melanie over to you hi there so i'm in charge of a future of work and covid uh response at nasa and those two kind of dovetail um nicely together i keep joking that this in the past month or so that kovid's an uninvited guest every meeting and we keep trying to talk about future work and sometimes we get distracted by covid but we're making progress and now we're talking more about future work those two actually dovetail really nicely together i think most of the people have a a pretty decent idea what nasa does to advance the exploration of the solar system and the universe and advance advances in technology and aeronautics we have 10 field centers and we have about 17 000 civil servants we have many more contractors than that on the order of 50 60 000 but for the topic of future work this mostly affects our civil servants and uh we are working in a very exciting and energetic manner to get into the what we're calling an experimental phase where we're going to spend the rest of most the rest of the year experimenting on future work at nasa thanks great and finally kathleen thank you kevin um as you mentioned earlier i'm wearing two hats today i'm the associate director for management for the national institute of dental and craniofacial research this is one of nih's 27 institutes and centers and in this role i lead the business functions in support of the science for my institute additionally i have the unique opportunity to serve as co-chair of the nih strategic administrative management advisory committee known as the samac and we're charged with exploring and creating nih's vision for the future of work and developing nih-wide strategies and guidelines that reflect new and emerging realities due to covet-19 pandemic we've learned quite a bit during the pandemic about what we can achieve in alternative working conditions and to create this vision we're really working with a broad and diverse perspective and input from the nih communities and researching and benchmarking workforce trends in order to really create our direction where we're going with future work it's a very exciting opportunity and i appreciate you having me here today thank you thank you all for your feedback on your backgrounds and you know your history and what your agencies are doing i'm sure audience appreciates knowing that all of you are here working on these problems and they're looking forward to hearing what you have to say so let's attempt to cover a lot of ground today so we're going to jump right in um bj is your agency using digital or mobile enhanced are enabled approaches to support visitor processes reserving workspaces and service requests that might have been done face to face prior to the pandemic uh yes kevin um happy to answer that yes um we've kind of uh had to pivot as well uh so we had we've been in the microsoft environment for a number of years now and right before the pandemic we were in the process of transitioning to microsoft teams for most of our collaboration so since the pandemic we have been leveraging multiple platforms such as teams and zoom to host public meetings and interact with the public virtually teams is mainly our internal and then also government facing platform but we also use zoom for public meetings and then also to work with to work with other agencies that may use zoom rather than microsoft teams so we are increasing our capability to host hybrid meetings so we can have staff visitors in person as well as people on screen virtually we often host public hearings that are a part of the process when the agency updates its rules related to the number of laws that we're responsible for carrying out and we've heard from many of our state partners that they like the increased access to staff from virtual interactions so more often we're able to get together virtually whereas before it might be quarterly or even uh semiannually that we're able to get there together however most of our state partners are also looking forward to those fake returning to those face-to-face interactions especially as many states have already already returned to the workplace so it's clear that leveraging technology will allow us to be flexible and better serve the public as far as internally we are using teams and continually increasing our capabilities on that platform and leveraging the full microsoft suite for use with reserving spaces conference rooms and what will become our hoteling in a hybrid work environment so we anticipate using microsoft outlook to reserve and manage space for employees that may be teleworking but need to come in the office a couple days of pay period or that may be remote working but would like to come in for a meeting that they are able to reserve space and use uh use spaces while they're in in the physical workplace give it back to you awesome okay great that's that's that's good that's a very good perspective so amelia i wonder how is that aligned with or slightly different thumb what you guys are doing over at nasa sure well very similar to what bj described for um epa we also migrated to an office 365 microsoft office 365 in the 2019 uh time frame thank goodness because when the like most of you i'd never had a teams meeting until march uh 2020 and i pretty quickly turned to all teams meeting in march 2020 and ever since so we were able to really take advantage of the capabilities that that provided thank goodness we're also looking to that platform to continue to expand uh things like scheduling conference rooms for hybrid meetings uh which you know wasn't necessary for remote meetings but uh we're now in that process of course there's a little overhead there we have to go in and load uh load in the conference room and all those locations so we're in the middle of doing that and then we're also still trying to test several options for scheduling hoteling space at nasa centers and nasa sites we have a little less of a public uh interface than than the epa although we do spend a lot of time trying to inspire the the public and the next generation of space explorers but most of that is through multimedia events television webcasts podcasts etc so a little less of that need for the public input although we have uh continually like most agencies tried to make more of our visitor our processes as technology enabled as possible there have been restrictions on visitors to nasa centers during the pandemic frankly which were just now um seeing subside as we merge back into that 100 percent occupancy um allowed at nasa centers so yes we are using technology for all of those things okay can i follow up on that a little bit um so you mentioned the technology you're using to utilize the current space are you also using that to better design manage optimize workspace for the future of work not just the covet uh kovid response yes absolutely great question so i spent i felt like i spent last year most of last year standing with my arm spread trying to stop people from wanting to build hoteling space and i'm i'm really glad my instincts served me well because last year what people were thinking we would want in terms of hoteling space were these large banks of concentrated hoteling space as the year has gone on as last year went on and we got into this year it became apparent that what is really more useful for most employees is to have a hoteling space in their work work team neighborhood and so we are trying to focus on that right now we've had some people at different locations clean out their offices if they were wanting to be a remote worker they don't need an office on site we will that frees up some hoteling space in each of those office team neighborhoods that will allow people to schedule that we are planning to use the feedback from the scheduling software to tell software to tell us what the demand is i mentioned an experimental phase for future work that we're um in the middle of right now we're hoping that that will tell us if some of our assumptions going in were correct for example is four employees to one hoteling space the right ratio do we have that right we're planning to use uh feedback from the actual use um on those facilities to inform our bigger more significant investment decisions which we'd really like to get into in this fall hopefully able to fold it into the next budget cycle so uh we're definitely trying to take the data and feedback in some buildings and some nasa locations namely our headquarter building in washington we have badging in to the building and we have that at some of the other nasa facilities but in many cases people badge onto the site or may badge into a building but we don't have a way of knowing uh where they are in the building so really we will be but we will want to do that in some places for safety concerns for example if you've ever seen the gigantic vehicle assembly building down at the cape at the kennedy space center that's a building where you know if somebody's in that building because we have to because it's hazardous we have many facilities are not quite that hazardous across the agency but they're certainly ones where we wouldn't want to know where people are in cases of inclement weather or other emergencies so we're working through that i that's something that is important to us in our our safety culture great that's that's make stuff i love hearing that hearing the use of the data that you're gathering now for that future layout that's that's that's really impactful uh does anyone else have anything about that in the same lines that bj or melanie didn't cover okay great so rhonda we'll jump right into the next question for you um in effectively implementing a hybrid environment what are some of the roles that human capital officers are uh using to ease the return of the agency's workforce back to the office thank you for that question so at epa our mission is to protect human health and the environment and we view human capital officers as essential to that mission especially now as we acclimate everyone to the return to the workplace and ensure our employees feel valued and have the support mechanisms they need to thrive so in terms of some of the actions our hr specialists and officials have taken at epa i'll just go through a few of them one we've helped with policy we've revised our telework remote work and work schedule policies and conducted training for all 15 000 of our employees we're also collating training on it how to excel in a hybrid environment we don't want our employees just to be okay but we want them to thrive we've also curated training on empathic leadership and in terms of performance management we are we have training already and trying to get supervisors and managers to move from observation of performance to outcomes and impacts in the area of communications we've drafted and worked with others to direct messages for senior leaders supervisors to our employees so there is consistent messaging and again the fact that we care about our employees comes through in all of that messaging we've also partnered with senior leaders to ensure diversity equity inclusion accessibility and we've added b for belonging is properly incorporated and considered in all of our return to the workplace efforts so really as mentioned earlier epa depends on our human capital officials to keep up with hybrid leading practices to share those practices and help implement them so i could probably go on with many other things but we have other questions and people to get to so that's just a bit about what our human capital officials are doing to ease the return of our workforce at epa great thank you for that rhonda uh kathleen i will take it over to you and ask you how's that being handled at nih sure and to echo much of what rhonda has said our human capital officials are pivotal leaders and collaborators in every aspect of designing and easing the return of our workforce as an institute administrative leader i work closely with hr leadership at nih the role of the office of human resources it's multi-faceted always working in partnership with our scientific and administrative leaders to design the best approach for our workforce and always including the community and stakeholders in implementation of policy decisions so for instance our human resources office they were responsible for coordinating a return on site initially by developing an nih-y plan that was launched in the summer 2020 given the needs of our agency's mission and later coming into alignment with the broader hhs plan as other agencies started to return on site as well and in doing so our hr shop they were responsible for communicating to nih management about our return efforts so that we could turn effect and effectively manage our respective staff they provided guidance to leadership and management through this process and engaged us as partners to navigate each stage of the pandemic in addition nih has constructed cross-functional groups of leaders that are meeting on a regular basis to assess the current operations during the pandemic and keep while keeping an eye on post pandemic and ohr has a primary seat at that table with other scientific and administrative leaders because they're integral in developing nih's way forward and when i think about looking to the future our human resource professionals they they have the role to really help us promote a flexible and agile hybrid workforce to ensure that we're fair and equitable access and we open that up the workplace flexibilities to staff so at nih our hr team is heavily involved in creating the vision of future work and ensuring that it's a shared vision across their leadership as a biomedical research agency we have some employees that never stop reporting on site and others that have been backed for some time however we don't necessarily believe that everyone needs to return there are segments of our workforce that can continue to work from home either you know full-time or part-time and hr has been instrumental in helping to explore what this could look like our ohr staff provides support for the use of these flexibility through the development of policies and guidance and as a final note i do want to mention that our hr office they're partners with us and the other nih offices to really promote employee wellness resources around training opportunities and giving us additional support to help all of our workforce taking a more holistic approach as many others are as well to help our staff through this transition thank you very much for that one i'm going to stick with this topic a little bit but slightly uh to the you know a couple degrees that are right on this i think so pj can you tell me some of the approaches that you're taking at epa to ensure that effective communication reporting and process management as your hd brings back in we just heard about a lot of the things with the hr side of the house but how about those policy things that are much more i guess administrative and implementation centric that's a that's a great question kevin so at the beginning of this process working with the deputy administrator and the political team we were very conscious and working to communicate at every level of the agency so for instance the deputy administrator is committed to communicating weekly she either sends out a mass mailer or a video or hosts a town hall to provide updates on epa's future work and return to the workplace we also have internet information resources on all of our hot topics our our new hr flexibilities and telework remote work and work schedules updates and facilities uh questions about safety in the facilities updates on transit in the areas where folks are commuting from we also provided supervisory talking points to our supervisors and hosted multiple training sessions for supervisors on the return to work and the new telework remote work and workplace or work schedule policies so that they're prepared to work with their staff and then we've also hosted employee q a sessions with our union partners to provide employees an opportunity to ask questions directly to the deputy administrator so really focusing on consciously communicating to each level of the agency and over communicating when possible and as far as how we communicate i already mentioned some of the tools that we do use but we try to use more than just um you know the basics like email and microsoft teams we've uploaded tons of videos on how to you know using teams the different functionality how to host a hybrid meeting how to use microsoft teams with our existing cisco um televideo systems we've also provided uh separate sessions during lunch which would be a conversation with you know an individual that's responsible for a certain part of the process of returning and then as i mentioned we've also listed virtual listening sessions and then develop a multitude of technology quick reference guides that allow folks access to answering their questions as far as how to use the new technology how to work in a hybrid environment and how to interact in this new environment as we return to the workplace coming back over to you kevin thanks bj appreciate that um melanie can you give us insight into how you guys are handling that at nasa sure well not unlike what bj described very similar campaign going on right now especially as we go through this time where all our capacity restrictions are lifted and it really should be the future of work and people's preferences that determine uh how people work in the absence of those cova driven restrictions so we're doing i also work for the deputy administrator we've had the whole leadership team participate in town halls and various messages for the entire agency we're doing town halls about every six weeks we're doing supervisor sessions uh once a month and really the focus of almost all of them this year are related to the future work topic one we had this month earlier in april was about how to do remote and telework agreements which we've asked people to update in the near future and we have various other topics everything from performance manual management how to uh you know how to manage remote employees a little bit more about that how to characterize their performance plan we meet with our union every other week very similar uh to them we have put out various regular employee messages you really can't he's right you really can't over communicate on this so we gave supervisors talking points on how to have the discussion with employees about their preferences and and desires for telework remote work etc we also put out a really enhanced our website related to future work that everybody at the agency can access there's training and resources related to culture leadership mechanics everything from how to really include remote and virtual employees in a meeting how to the mechanics what type of it tools can be purchased very cheaply uh more like the thousand dollar type of item that uh that that is necessary for this year when we haven't been budgeted any real investment money for this all of this so those are all really important and then a series of brown bag sessions which um related some very similar to what uh bj described things like um tools and specific topics where people want to want to delve into more details we've also been sharing the information with our contractors since that comprises a very large part of our nasa family and nasa team and sharing with them what nasa is doing that's a little different the contractors are their employees so we have to be mindful of that but we're trying to share with them what we're doing and hoping that they will be able to offer similar flexibility we've also been doing a series of visits i meet with the the all of the officials in charge on a weekly basis so we can all be on the same page they can ask questions we can make sure they're amplifying the messages and then i've been going around to all the nasa centers meeting with their leadership teams meeting with their erg representatives meeting with their future work teams and we're also deploying a lot of surveys right now trying to get directly to the individual employee how's it going are you getting the flexibility is somebody will be able to figure out pretty quick if somebody is uh not uh not giving flexibility that that we've asked all the leadership to do so same very similar to epa we are really just it was it's a very intensive communicative time i'm still not sure it's enough frankly i don't know if you ever can communicate enough yeah i don't think you can but unless you're making you're making great strides and that's that's great to hear so we're going to stick with kind of the employee engagement um conversation but shifted just a little bit so kathleen employee engagement is growing in importance as we're seeing uh over the last two years probably it's been only forever but i think looking for new ways to use technology to engage in workforce is becoming top of mind you give us some examples how you all are doing that at your origins agency thank you for that question employee engagement it has been and continues to be at the forefront of what we do during covid19 you know during the pandemic the critical role that technology played amplified to ensure continuity of nih's mission and operations and the health and safety of our staff while nih quickly shifted to maximum telework for us that was about 50 percent of our workforce and about 100 percent of virtual meetings it became evident very early on that engaging our workforce was not only necessary but pivotal in designing the way forward this played out in many ways including you know regular and timely town halls providing updates through bi-weekly email communications to staff from nih leadership new internet sites with critical workforce safety operations information and pulse surveys just to name a few most recently nih leadership provided critical updates to staff at an nih return to work virtual town hall where staff were encouraged to submit questions in advance to make sure that they were really addressing the concerns of the community the nih also has shifted large engagement activities to virtual to reach a wider audience of staff these include activities like award ceremonies that have gone virtual which has created a more inclusive ceremony by having different organizations submit videos that highlight the culture of their organization and it also created an opportunity for more staff to be involved in the process and also allow for broader participation we also have upcoming take your child to work day at nih i mean for us here i i believe it's at the end of april we have over 150 virtual activities that reaches hundreds of children because we don't want to lose sight of how important it is to inspire and teach the children about the excitement of science also coming up public service recognition week i believe that's beginning the beginning of may we have many many virtual engagement activities planned we use crowdsourcing to get feedback from our community and nih continues to offer a wide array of resources to staff including health and well-being training and safety you know resource pages that include also emotional and social wellness toolkits just to name a few we have organizations and cross-agency groups that use platforms to engage employees share information look for best practices and problem solve and we're fortunate to have access as many of my colleagues on the call today to multiple platforms to engage staff in different ways depending on the size of the group the one thing i want to highlight is the part of being you know engaged is about taking care of the whole person taking care of a workforce we've learned quite a bit during this pandemic about what we can achieve in alternative working conditions and it's important that we learn from this experience speed creativity and teamwork were of the essence and our ability to innovate and quickly respond to the agency high priority needs over the last two years so our goal is to keep that momentum going and to expand our use of digital services all while keeping you know the mission and the workforce at the forefront wow that's quite a bit that's great to hear uh i mean i know if i were working with your revision i'd love to have those virtual interactions for for families that's that's that's really great so rhonda are you guys doing similar or uh parallel activities at the epa yes we are so in terms of technology we too have the usual tools teams for virtual meetings we have dashboards visual conferencing technology on site and so forth and i know bj has already gone over many of the technology epa uses to help our employees with engagement in addition we're encouraging our senior leaders to really think about technology in a hybrid work place a little differently than they have before we used a pretty concise model developed by the gartner group and so it has four different i guess um phases so to speak of working so there's working together together and you know you're in a group you're co-located then there's working alone together though so you are in a remote space but working together on a project or more than one project and then you could be working together you could be working together but apart and then working alone and apart so when we think about that what we're trying to do is say okay how do we have the technology to support our employees regardless of where they are co-located or not how do we help them work together when they're together work together when they're apart or work alone when they're together or alone and so using those four different models or ways of working has been extremely helpful in terms of technology and engaging employees if we switch specifically to employee engagement we probably do things that other agencies do as well a strong union collaboration we also have outreach to our hr community our first line supervisors advisory group our emerging leaders network and other similar groups across epa we rely heavily on guidance from our organizational development officer and our employee engagement team we have live and recorded all hands town halls training sessions also targeted senior leader videos and mass mailers we as i mentioned before we partner with our senior leaders and our communications offices to have one consistent voice in staff meetings and messaging also our administrator and deputy administrator have asked us to use data analytics to highlight trends in the federal employee viewpoint survey the omb pulse surveys and some of our own internal surveys and some qualitative data we've gathered to help address identify identify and address employee concerns and also use those to help enhance engagement and then like melanie mentioned for nasa epa has a future of work intranet site and we have tons of things listed there i'll go through just a few i think what is really of note is the first message on the page says our priority at epa is our employee's health and wellness and that goes back to the quote earlier that someone made about the whole employee and so on that page we have different work flexibility we have information on getting to work because we know that that's still a concern for employees how can they stay healthy and safe while commuting we have a re-entry schedule we have steps that epa is taking to protect our workforce and facilities we have those resources a lot of them linked to our employee assistance plan and other health and wellness activities we have which are very robust throughout epa and we also have a video library of our archived recorded messages from epa leaders on future of work so yes we are doing a lot of the same things that other agencies are doing them but we're putting our epa uh culture in there and our spit on things to just make sure employees are well supported and they continually know that thank you very much but within youtube that's a whole lot of stuff going on and i love to hear and i'm absolutely here for it so i'm glad to hear that sea federal agencies are taking a very proactive look to that stuff so we're going to stick with the employee experience and we're going to move just one step further and talk about a management challenge if you will so so melanie um as employees return to work are you seeing signs of hesitancy to return to the old norms oh yes absolutely i mean the world has changed in the past two years and uh we learned a lot during the the uh pandemic and we're trying to make sure that we capture those you know i think it was funny i can think of nasa as an agency of problem solvers i think we even impressed ourselves at some points because i we were we did things virtually that we were surprised about that we didn't really know things related to how we did research and an analysis and uh and things remotely or keeping people safe there were times certainly where people had to get in a clean room and be all together or where they were working on a the big sls rocket engine on the test down down at stennis so there were times when we just had to do things the old-fashioned way but we really really were able to come up with a lot of things i think the the supervisor who doesn't understand that um and doesn't doesn't really hasn't really internalized how much the world has changed and people's expectations with them it it to me i liken it to okay hey i know you've been using this iphone and this laptop for the past couple years and done a great job but now i want you to go back to using this wall phone and i it's really good because i'm going to give you a really long cord now you can reach the living room the all over the kitchen the laundry room the front hall but i want you to go back put down that iphone and we're going to go back to the wall phone it's that it's that absurd so we're trying to make sure that people really have internalized that that the world has changed people's expectations have changed and this is an important uh change that nasa needs to evolve and be be forward thinking and and make sure that we continue to attract and retain the highest talent the other thing we've really tried to focus on is managing expectations with regard to hybrid meetings so we've done all remote for the past couple years in many cases on a lot of meetings and we did that really well i was very proud of our team on how we did that hybrid has been a little bumpier and i will be honest about that even at nasa you know and it's going to be bumpy um you can train people after two years of the pandemic don't you oh we all roll our eyes at somebody when somebody forgets to mute their mic it's like okay really you know virtual meeting 101 but people remember to mute their mics but when some people in the room they don't always remember to mute the speakers on their computers if they're using the sound system in the room and then you get the never ending echo that goes and so just training people to the new things that are unique about hybrid and how to interact with the room you know i liken this i was in the space station team when we were building the space station and we learned a lot of things that we had studied i thought every problem that we expected to encounter but we didn't realize that if the solar array has been rolled up for quite a while sitting on orbit waiting to be unfurled when you start to unfurl it you get stiction that was something as a new word we created stiction was the solar roy's rays sticking together and they tore and we had to come up with a way to deploy these things that were way out the length of a foot football field out on the space station hybrid meetings are going to be like that there's things that you learn when you're building the space station and for the first time and living inside of it there's things you're going to learn about hybrid meetings and and we just have to be patient we will and trust that we will figure it out and so we're trying to really manage people's expectations there okay great um kathleen are there any things that you're seeing that are either the same or unique from what no one just described sure i mean i think very much in line with what melanie described i believe we're seeing a whole array of sentiments you know around returning to the physical workplace from those who have been full-time for let's face it over two years some are embracing the return while others remain hesitant our supervisors and managers are learning to lean into the flexibilities that are being offered at hhs and nih which is including a local remote option for the first time over the next several months we are considering it a time of experimentation with new and different schedules for staff and the use of hybrid meetings you know from the perspective of future work visioning this very much includes planning for these experiments as we re-enter the workplace and this nih recently transitioned from maximum telework posture to a safe return to physical workspaces we'll use this transitional phase to explore potential new working models that will support the future of science continue to make nih an employer of choice and and you know foster a positive and innovative workplace and culture i i mean i agree the reality is we're not going back to a pre-pandemic workplace and we know the world has changed and in light of all that we are strategically reassessing our priorities and plans with an eye towards the future and and new ways of working and technology will continue to be a force that brings people together as most organizations across government and industry shift to some form of a hybrid environment that's great um so i'm gonna bj i'll ask you the same question and then i'm gonna follow up um with another question after that so bj um how are you at epa taking a look at the hesitancy issue yeah i mean i think very similar to what melanie and kathleen described we have seen that many employees want to return to the workplace however they want assurances that it's safe to return and that they don't necessarily have to return to the same way we worked before so to this end we've worked hard with our union partners to ensure we develop safety plans that address their concerns such as ventilation cleaning and then flexibility and leave and working from home should someone be exposed to covet or potentially be exposed to cova we've also implemented a new remote work policy to allow those employees who work as truly portable the opportunity to work from home full time and then for those employees which at epa is a lot of them that have to come into the office some amount of time but would like more flexibility we have updated our telework policies to give maximum flexibility to telework um so that would be up to the maximum which is only coming in two days pay period but then also more importantly than that flexibility in uh situational telework so this is what we heard from a lot of folks is i don't necessarily want to work remotely but i would like the option to in the summer time work from somewhere else for a month so our new policies allow flexibility for employees to work from different locations for longer periods of time should their work support that and then the last piece of that is also the schedule piece so we updated our schedule our work schedule policy to allow employees the opportunity to work partial days in the office maybe they want to start their day at home finish their day in the office will the new work schedule policies allow employees the flexibility to do that it also allows folks to work around their busy personal lives or to commute during non-peak hours all of these are key and when we polled our staff last summer flexibility was the key word we kept hearing from employees so that's been our focus as we as we move back into the workplace um you know with that in mind leadership feels strongly that the inner office interactions and collaboration are crucial to carrying out the agency's mission so we're excited to welcome staff back but the pandemic has shown us that it does not need to be on the frequency and same schedule as before yeah what you're all saying is things are what i've been hearing throughout the federal space and it's really encouraging that um as a former fed that your agencies are taking a proactive approach to finding new ways to get the work done and still meet the employees where they are so i want to remind our audience that you can type questions into the chat window and we will get them if we can and i would want to miss the opportunity to ask these uh amazing speakers about how they're handling these challenges and so we're going to go into another question that's on the same thread but slightly different so rhonda um how do you think the future um how do you think right now in the future you're going to start tackling bringing in new hires that help with mission effectiveness that effectiveness but also get that connectedness when it's in a hybrid environment i mean so how do folks get the culture when there's so much distance that everyone isn't inside that is that is a great question so epa looks at this holistically and we go back to the employee life cycle for us it has several components so there's of course you know the recruitment and selection process and performance and you know transitioning the employee to something else's retirement whatever that people traditionally think of but we have embedded into the employee life cycle diversity and outreach employee engagement performance management training and development and also knowledge management and transfer and so in terms of this new work environment we know from the literature and the research that we've done that there are some generational differences in how our employees are experiencing what's happening virgin c they are typically are most impacted by workplace disruptions due to covet 19 and a higher percentage say the pandemic has made their education their career goals and their social lives more difficult when compared to millennials and gen xers for millennials we see that they're struggling a bit more than gen xers and boomers to get their work done and they worry about mentorship and career advancement the research says they also report higher levels of anxiety and sleeplessness than gen xers and boomers and then just overall all employees want flexibility but not isolation and one size does not fit all so epa has revised its onboarding process so it begins once an individual receives a job offer not once they come to the door but that job offer and it continues a full year after they're hired instead of just being a few days of training at the start so for pre onboarding supervisors are encouraged to invite new hires to team meetings and to other key events to reinforce the great choice they made to join epa and also to begin acclimating them to the epa family once on board we have a buddy system for them someone to kind of help them navigate the the new environment that they're in for people who are in a physical workplace for the first time ever we have police pals for them to kind of show them around and and make sure they're comfortable in their surroundings we have new higher surveys and we look at those for insight that's how we can better help our employees we also started a tailored employee employee engagement module so approximately 30 days after we hire employees we invite them to an employee engagement session our employee engagement team has an interactive module that spurs interest in the various ways they can have their voices heard and make a difference at epa we also have toolkits for our supervisors and managers really step-by-step guides templates for introducing new employees to the agency ensuring inclusiveness and meetings and awareness of our employee councils and affinity groups and we're also working on career progression and development fully integrating our national coaching program that program is moving under our chief learning officer and our learning and development branch so we're excited about that and then i think the probably last thing i would highlight is knowledge management and knowledge transfer we're not just waiting until employees retire you know that like okay see ya two weeks out i'm gone uh to start transferring knowledge we are doing that from day one and we're helping our supervisors and our managers just think of that as just the way of doing business the the culture of epa and that way we can make sure our employees stay engaged have room to grow and really see epa as their home long term so um yeah that's some of the ways epa is keeping our our new employees engaged that's great uh melania how are you all handling it at nasa or you know yeah well uh first of all i just want to compliment uh rhonda from the epa what you all are doing there is really a tremendous best practice for the entire government and i was taking careful notes and i plan to liberally plagiarize from that and use some of those we've been talking about the some of the same things like peer buddies you know how to how to get you know somebody who cannot just be a mentor having a mentor is really critical but having somebody have a peer mentor that can sort of be that guide to how to get stuff done especially in if somebody's in a hybrid environment or a remote worker we are seeing a real thirst for on-site presence from the entry-level employees and we have a number that started during the pandemic and have never really been on site very much if at all and so we're working through that so but very similar to what epa described trying to do that i love the one year onboarding process which i think really gets at some of the same concepts we've been struggling i've been encouraging people hey even if you doesn't make sense to do and do an on-site meeting for everybody at least plan some social events and and try and plan them at different times so the whole team can make it i can tell you when i was a mother of school-aged children i i when i three kids in daycare i stopped going to lunch because i was trapped between the daycare hours and had to get my work done then had no time in the evening i when they were school age i had the heavy activity years where i was off being an unpaid uber driver um in the late afternoon early evening so i couldn't go to happy hours there were things like that so trying to make sure that people offer a variety of ways for everyone to connect so that you can really get people to meet everybody i do tell people also you know teams is the first time that we've really had the ability to reach out directly to everybody in the agency it's as if i suddenly have everyone's cell phone and can text them and it's really really tremendous and it's really possible to do a lot of management by walking around uh using teams and so uh if you can't get there or find people in person or or you feel like you're you have members of your team that are in a geographically disparate area really encourage people to use the tools that that teams and and other virtual platforms offer to be able to reach out and do some of that one-on-one hey just wanted to chat for a few minutes how's it going uh what's going on so um that's something that that i really think a lot of people don't think about they get stuck in their mind that you have to do that only in person and i really see a lot of possibilities for using those virtual tools to do that that's really good stuff to hear right there and kathleen last word on this topic oh sure um first building on the many wonderful best practices rhonda and melanie shared i too am taking notes this is just a great forum today you know at nih equity and inclusion is it's a critical priority and focus of any new workplace models we create this is especially important with our new hires and hybrid arrangements where some people are at home and others are in the office the principles guiding these efforts should begin you know with the mission being first and forward looking while the strategies used to implement should be helping people stay connected and engaged no matter where or when they are working and making sure that we ensure equitable access to technology and resources and support so one thing i want to highlight is really the the concept of we need to be intentional it you know being intentional is a success factor here intentional about helping new hires establish connections with other staff and offices early on being intentional about creating opportunities for connectedness both with both virtual and on site staff at the same time and really creating a new norm where staff pause to ask themselves is everyone included who who should be included do i need to be pulling someone into this meeting or discussion we all need to be you know worry about you know out of sight out of mind um and i think that that's a culture that we're going to have to really focus on because someone isn't physically in front of me i need to be thinking of the whole workforce in the hybrid environment and one thing we learned over the last two years is really how technology helped level the playing field you know opening this access to to many but we need to keep in mind that there is a need to take into account you know standards and etiquette and technical core competencies and access for staff and continue to do that we've been doing that we need to continue to build on that as we move more into the hybrid environment and i also want to make sure that we focus a little bit on flexible work not just hybrid work you know for example doing hybrid well means moving away from the long-standing location-based models to the more human-centric models and what we need to keep in mind a location where someone works may not be flexible they may have you know we might have frontline workers or the nature of their work just isn't portable such as many of our scientific staff you know who are working in our labs so it's the overall concept of being you know making sure it's important and we're being inclusive of these populations and communities as we envision the future of work and and really shift to the hybrid models so thank you for that those all three of those that's i took names so uh because i talked to a lot of customers and you guys are all doing great stuff and and i love the the inclusiveness conversation there kathleen that's that's really a big part of of not just new employees but existing employees and uh and customers so we've got about five minutes left so we'll do a lightning round i'm gonna ask a question and i'll start with bj and give me in 45 seconds or less give me the first step that you would take and advise an agency that's just starting on their hybrid work journey jacob uh i would say the first step would be to survey supervisors and employees to see what they're looking for to help you develop a plan that works for both groups just to make sure that you are using any preconceived notions or any past biases as you develop your plans hope that helps absolutely that's great okay kathleen back to you well i would say you know adding on to those first steps is really the benchmark and check the literature out there there's so much uh done in this space there's so much to learn that you don't have to recreate the wheel and so if you're starting out you know reach out to your partners recheck the literature i think there's a lot to build on thank you melanie well um i would definitely do those uh same uh first two steps that bj and kathleen um describe but i would also pull the um the manager the leadership team throughout the agency on what does the work allow what what is possible given the nature of the job duties so that we don't end up with a big mismatch between employees expectations and hopes for flexibility in what is actually possible given the nature of the work so we're trying to uh leave that defining the range of what's possible in terms of telework or remote work to each organization because the work varies by organization and they are best acquainted with what what's possible and within that we've asked them to offer the maximum flexibility but really uh there is an element here of what does it take to get the mission done and get the to get the job accomplished so i would add that to those first two steps which i think are um absolutely first uh first steps and finally ronda i'll let you bring it on home well i will recap some of the things others have already said so be sure to do your research involve your human resources staff and keep stakeholders early on make sure employee voices are heard and one thing i would add though is to make sure that folks understand return to the workplace isn't the same as the future of work you need to think about both that's awesome that's that right there that is a very good way to summarize i think focusing on the future work being different than just return to work uh thank you very much for that so thanks all of you this has been a very enlightening conversation for me today and i've been engaged the entire time um you know it's it's uh it's wonderful to hear how you all are leading that in the federal space to try and bring parity to the workforce and and make credible service a place a desired workplace so uh with that i am going to say thanks one more time and now hand it over to fit insiders claudia koskovsky for some final thoughts for our audience thanks so much and thank you to all of our speakers for the insights today and for our audience thank you for your participation training certificates will be emailed after the webinar ends and remember to log back in in the next day or two to download a copy of today's transcript we have many webinars in the works so be sure to visit fedinsider.com to see what's coming up and to register for multiple events at the same time and while you're there you can check out our podcast beds at the edge and with that this is fed insider signing off