CLT Alliance Talks

CLT Alliance Talks: Future of Work, Part 1

September 30, 2021 Charlotte Regional Business Alliance Season 2 Episode 37
CLT Alliance Talks
CLT Alliance Talks: Future of Work, Part 1
Show Notes Transcript

As we navigate the impacts of Covid-19, we continue to gain insight into how organizations plan to manage back-to-work strategies. In this podcast, hear from Amazon, Ally Financial, Little Diversified Architectural Consulting, and Premier, Inc. about retaining employees during "the great resignation" as well as collaboration and onboarding in a hybrid business environment. Plus, our panelists describe the generational differences across industries as employees return to the office. This is part one of our Combined Talent and Research Collaborative Meeting on Sept. 22. Stay tuned for part two next week. 

This podcast includes:

  • Tara Beck, Senior Staffing Manager, Amazon
  • Kathie Patterson, Chief Human Resources Officer, Ally Financial
  • Lindsay Powers, Senior Vice President of People, Premier, Inc.
  • Phil Kuttner, Chief Executive Officer, Little Diversified Architectural Consulting
  • Moderator: Laura Stanley, Associate Professor of Management, Belk College of Business, UNC Charlotte

CLT Alliance  0:00  
Welcome to CLT. Alliance Talks, a podcast on business topics, information and tools focused on building an economy for all in the Charlotte region.

Laura Stanley, Associate Professor of Management, Belk College of Business, UNC Charlotte  0:09  
I'd like to welcome everyone to our panel on the future of work. I like to thank everyone for being here and also for the opportunity to moderate a panel. So I'd like to start out with a question about how we define the future of work. What changes are we envisioning? Are we thinking about changes in what we do, the nature of work, and how much we do, or where we do it, the location? And this may vary by organization. So healthcare organizations may describe the future of work very differently from retailers or from consulting firms or banks. A variety of organizations and industries are represented on our panel today. So I'd like to ask each of our panelists, how do you define the future of work for your employees and your organizations,

Lindsay Powers, Senior Vice President of People, Premier, Inc.  1:00  
I can jump in, I think that the future of work is going to be flexible. I think that is probably the word that sticks out most prominently, as we hear both from the employer side of the equation and the employee side of the equation. I think what's really interesting is that everyone has been able to experience this together. And each individual is experiencing it differently, and also settling into the things that they've identified personally, that they need to feel successful. And I think, as an organization responding to personal needs, so that each individual can bring their best self to work and provide the best support for the work that they do and for those that they serve; I think is the name of the game as we think about the future.

Laura Stanley, Associate Professor of Management, Belk College of Business, UNC Charlotte  1:48  
Excellent. Thank you. Thank you, Lindsay.

Kathie Patterson, Chief Human Resources Officer, Ally Financial  1:50  
I would agree with Lindsay. I do believe as we move forward, and I think we've seen it over the last 18 months, the keys to flexibility. You know, during this time period, I think employees have really grown to appreciate having autonomy over their work schedule, and balancing that on a personal-professional basis. So continuing to grow your leaders to be empathetic, understanding what that flexibility means, because what it might mean, an employee might look very different for an organization. So really, that balancing act, I think is where it's going to be a little bit of a challenge for the leader, in terms of when are those moments for command performance that need all hands on deck to the point on which you can pick and choose where you're spending your time. I do think the standard work week is going to look very differently. I also believe that one of the biggest challenges, I think, we're all going to experience is that work and personal lines are so blended, and I think there are benefits from that. But there's also a lot of drawbacks, because there's no distinction between when you should turn it off. I think you see it now with employees expressing concerns about burnout, and not being able to walk away from the computer. So I think that self care and helping employees established as work-around results.

Tara Beck, Senior Staffing Manager, Amazon  3:05  
So I agree with everything that's been said so far. Within my organization, though, at Amazon, we have a very different set of challenges when it comes to flexibility. My team hires thousands of people for 12 Amazon locations within the Charlotte area, and they're all frontline workers. So when we think about flexibility and safety, it has a very different context. And so for me, the future of work, and what I look at for my team, and those that we're hiring is that ability to help individuals find shifts and sites and jobs that make sense for their personal well being so that they can be on site and be their best selves, but also at the same time have that balance to be with their family as well.

Phil Kuttner, Chief Executive Officer, Little Diversified Architectural Consulting  3:55  
So I think my role on this panel is a little different. Rather than talking about our organization in particular, I'm going to share with you some things that we're seeing with an array of different organizations we're working with, and we have a we have a specialty in workplace strategy and interior design. We do have some clients who are doing some very creative and very proactive things to bring people back to work safely. But I don't want to sort of sensationalize that or speaking in absolutes, because we have a lot of clients, their leases are not up, they're not moving and they're choosing not to make physical adjustments to their workplace until they've got more data about what a post-COVID workplace needs to provide for its people. But the conversations we're having with clients who are in the midst of change have four sort of common threads. And the first one, I'll go into them generally and then if the conversation moves in that direction, I'll give you some more specifics, but one of them is that they're making robust improvements in technology and the apps that they're using to support a more mobile workforce. The second is that they're implementing new features to support wellness and well being, which tend to be sort of separate things. And some of those are physical changes that they're making and some of them are policy changes that they're making that support a healthier workforce. And then third, they're all as all of us are, I'm sure they're in various stages of developing more flexible attitudes about work. That's been a real stretch for me. But what they're learning is that as they give people more choices about how and when and where they're working, even within the workplace, you're not anchored at your desk anymore, they are having to provide more variety in the kinds of spaces and the tools they're providing for people. And they're working to make their office a bit more of a magnet.  So more branded spaces that extolled the virtues and the value or the values and the mission of a company trying to amp up engagement, because that's one thing that suffered as we've all been sort of separated from one another. And then lastly, is a pretty common conversation or consensus that the workplace is not going to disappear, because it's going to continue to be the place where people build friendships and relationships and where perhaps creative collaboration is at its best, where people are building sort of their engagement, loyalty to the organization. So it may not be as permanent a destination. But when you do go, it should be a really immersive experience.

Laura Stanley, Associate Professor of Management, Belk College of Business, UNC Charlotte  6:21  
Excellent, thank you, really, really insightful answers. An d I think this definition, how we redefine work, and what we're, what changes we're envisioning, and the future really is different for different industries and different people. And I think we're seeing that in the responses. So I wanted to talk a little bit also, you kind of touched on this and your answers, about keeping employees motivated during this this time. The pandemic has led to record numbers of employees leaving their jobs. We're seeing turnover like we've never seen it before. So much so that we even have a term for it now, "the great resignation." Based on recent global survey conducted by Adobe, enterprise workers and small business leaders are so dissatisfied with their time at work, they feel like they're spending more hours working on unimportant tasks. They're struggling with work life balance. They feel that technology is the missing piece to achieving productivity. During the pandemic, many employees who never telecommuted were able to do so in this what we academics like to call Quasi experiment, right. So the pandemic led to this Quasi experiment and work and telecommuting. Many discovered that working from home allows them to achieve work-life balance that they couldn't achieve otherwise. And they really enjoyed being present for their families while also working comfortably from home. And these employees may not look forward to coming back to the office full time. However, I've also heard from other people, that they can't wait to get back to the office. They're tired of the distractions at home, and they feel that this is very isolating. VPSs of HR really feeling this tension between meeting employee needs, which are very different, right? People have very different feelings about working from home and organizational needs. So my question for the panelists is, what are organizations doing to help employees cope with some of the demands created during the pandemic? And what are you doing to try to engage and retain employees during the great resignation?

Kathie Patterson, Chief Human Resources Officer, Ally Financial  8:26  
I'm happy to start, I think the first thing that we're trying to do is one, understand the continuum of emotions that exist out there. But probably most importantly, really encouraging employees to take that first step. We're doing a voluntary re-entry. We do recognize that every employee has sort of a different risk profile based upon family members eligibility for the vaccine, so we've tried to be very respectful for that. But we're also looking for ways that those employees that feel safe, come back into the workplace, just to exercise to get that muscle memory back.

And the thing that we've heard more than anything, we're probably most anxious about that return and not knowing what to expect. So I think we're trying to encourage baby steps. We've done a lot of work on wellness, bringing in professional speakers to help employees in terms of different types of tips, as well as emphasizing benefits that have always been there, but I don't think employees were aware of them until there's really a need to really emphasize human core psychological support during this time working through our wellness center. So it's the baby steps and I think we're trying to acknowledge where employees are, but also trying to push them to reconnect, coming to the workplace if you feel comfortable. Do the baby steps; come in for a day. You know, rearrange the office, get it back to the place where it was. And what we continue to hear from our employee group is it completely lost, lost sight of the value that they have those those interactions and the excitement walking around the corner and seeing a TV they hadn't seen in so long. During this pandemic, it's easy to maintain relationship, but it was really hard to build it. Re-establishing those connections, we've been trying to do baby steps. But if anything, trying to encourage people to take that first step.

Lindsay Powers, Senior Vice President of People, Premier, Inc.  10:18  
I'll expand upon that, Kathy. I think you make a really great point around the the balance of individual need, right, I think we've learned that the one size doesn't fit all. It was very employers and trick pre pandemic about where we worked, right, it wasn't really a conversation about where the employee wanted to work broadly anyway. And now we're realizing there are individual needs, and going back to not only where people feel comfortable and safe, but also productive. And so it's that balance between those things that we're trying to get a handle on through this. But it's also I think, we forget that it's not that we've just faced a pandemic, right, we also have faced a number of other things in our macro environment that have impacted our thought processes that have impacted our emotional wellness. And so we've created space, even virtually, and frankly, I think we've done it better virtually, because we needed to, at this time people needed support differently in the office than they did pre-pandemic. And so because there's all of these things happening at one time, and so what we recognized is that we needed to create space for people to have conversations that were different than those that they were having before in the office. We needed to create space for our teams to have conversations around the things that they were struggling with personally, that inevitably, someone else was struggling with as well. And we were bringing those people together to create relationships, to provide space to have dialogue about things that were impacting them, and ultimately, provide a supportive culture. We wanted to make sure that we not only focused on continuing to be productive, but also continuing to have an engaging workplace that supports it employees, their employees, and also shows that they they care deeply about their workforce. And so those are some of the things that we've implemented during this time that I think of really, this time gave us the opportunity to create and innovate around the ways we engage with each other. But of course, we too are struggling with how do we bring people back into the workforce when each individual really has different needs and different wants and different ways that they're most productive. And so we too, are going through pilots right now to test theories. We know that it needs to be as we mentioned earlier, flexible, we know it needs to be tech enabled. Laurie, you mentioned, the tech enablement piece of this and how that's so critical for engagement. And then also balancing what Tara and Kathy and Phil have also mentioned being the balance between that wellness and safety for the individual as well. And ultimately, what's going to make the company collectively successful during the balance of all of those things. It's a tough equation right now and harder than we've ever faced. And so the realities of that are playing out in what we're seeing in this, this environment deems the great resignation. We saw a flip; we saw a very highly engaged workforce, the beginning because of some of these things that we're doing, but we also know that a lot of these things that we've given access to can get stale and so we have to continue to reinvent.

Tara Beck, Senior Staffing Manager, Amazon  13:42  
From our perspective at Amazon, I've agreed with everything that's been said so far. And for us, we're against some really unique challenges, right, because all of our employees within our sites, our frontline workers. So we can't ship packages from home, we can't get them to your front door without every one of our team members being active and on site and helping us get that work done. And so flexibility for our teams looks really different. And I touched on a little bit in my introduction, but what we're doing is looking at different ways to make shifts and the number of hours worked per week or per month, work for each individual. And so for some of our sites, we have this flexible part-time model where as long as you're picking up three, four hour shifts per month, you get to maintain your job with us and you get to pick what days and what times you pick up those three shifts all the way up to a permanent 40 hour per week model where you have the same set schedule every single week and you know exactly what that is. And then we have other opportunities like volunteer time off or the opportunity to get extra time. So if you're an individual that likes overtime, we often have opportunities for that. Or if you're looking to work a few less hours, we have that too. And that flexibility allows our employees to be able to decide what works best for them and their families. So they can have a great career, and a lot of upward mobility, but at the same time, be able to support that balance. And it's a really interesting model that is definitely working for us right now.

Phil Kuttner, Chief Executive Officer, Little Diversified Architectural Consulting  15:26  
I'll speak a little bit to employee engagement from our company's perspective and into also sort of the generational differences in what people seem to need in our industry. I still feel that people need to feel like they're a part of something that matters. And right now I we're working extra hard to make people feel that they're part of something. And so from very early on, I was sort of impressed with the leadership team. Yhey said, you know, we're not going to stop our traditions. Instead of letting COVID be an excuse not to do something, we're going to find a way a creative way to do it in some kind of a virtual or hybrid format. So we've run now, at least, two United Way campaigns virtually, and maybe just one, and maybe it was two Arts and Science council campaigns. You know, we've continued to organize 5Ks. We continue have what we call our gallery meeting where people come together to announce people who are newly registered or having a child or just moved or just arrived. So we're having to find ways to do it virtually. I don't think it's quite as engaging, but people do seem to crave it, just that little bit of engagement with people they might not otherwise see in the course of their work that they used to just run into in unscripted ways. And then the generational piece of it is that in our industry, we have a lot of less-experienced young professionals, emerging professionals who need to learn as much as they can in the next three years in order to qualify for their exam and pass. And so they're taking the initiative when they can to come into the office so they can learn by osmosis. And I was pleased without any real push from us, more experienced people were coming in knowing that knowing they needed that resource and actively engaging with those people to help them along their career path. I'm sure every business is very different, but that's a unique need that we had that is sort of generationally unique.

Laura Stanley, Associate Professor of Management, Belk College of Business, UNC Charlotte  17:18  
Excellent, thank thank you for those responses. I wanted to to circle back to something that Tara mentioned, and then also come back to some of the generational differences that Phil mentioned. So Tara, you mentioned that at Amazon, you're focusing on fewer hours per week. That's how you're helping employees achieve that work life balance is maybe focusing on shifts, and maybe putting shifts back to back so that people can work maybe Monday through Thursday, which made me think of this push for a four-day workweek. So as far back as the 1950s, President Nixon was was talking about, this is something that we need to do. This is going to improve our quality of life, this four day workweek. And that really, you know, focusing on what we call deep work, like focusing on what are the most important projects and not some of  these extra things like constantly answering emails or attending meetings, will enable us to work fewer hours per week. And a recent study found that really, we do real work only about four hours a day. And we spend the other four hours answering emails and maybe attending meetings that we don't necessarily need to attend. So I'm really glad to hear that Amazon is focusing on helping their their employees work fewer hours per week. So I wanted to circle back to your comment about some of the generational differences. And I think this is what we're seeing. We're seeing that a lot of the the millennials are they're expecting more autonomy, they're expecting more flexibility. However, when we look at generational differences between people who are maybe wanting to come back to work face to face, and others or maybe wanting to continue working from home, there are a lot of millennials who are looking forward to coming back to work face to face. And so what my question for the panelists is, what are we doing in order to to help our employees during the the onboarding process? So for example, you know, recruiting and onboarding employees are two really important processes. And so if you have to do this virtually, how do you socialize new employees, if you're not everyone is not necessarily in the office face to face.

Lindsay Powers, Senior Vice President of People, Premier, Inc.  19:35  
I'm happy to jump in. We had very quickly transitioned all of our onboarding activities to a virtual setting. Ways that we've continued to engage new hires are by finding them a mentor in the organization that's not within their direct business unit. We have created these coffee chats where it brings people together in a more casual forum to talk about, you know, anything that's going on with them personally or work. So it creates just connection within the organization and across business lines. We also have intentionally brought groups of those that were being on boarded together back together so that they can talk about their experiences, so we can hear from them about what they need differently or more of in that virtual experience. And then also, of course, we are providing the opportunity on pilot basis to come back into the office. And I will tell you that it is consistent with what you mentioned, Dr. Stanley, and that millennials tend to want to be back in the office more so than I would say other generations. What I think is really interesting here on the generational piece, though, is we've seen a breakdown of behaviors, across generations as it pertains to virtual work. The virtual working environment has really, like I said, sort of broken down these traditional behaviors. And we've seen, you know, it really is more about the individual versus a group of individuals. But I think that the piece that everyone is looking for, to and to get better at whether it's virtually or whether we get back into a setting is the opportunity for growth. That's the greatest challenge that we have in this virtual environment is that people don't feel like they have the opportunity to be in front of the right people at the right times or that they're drawing the connections internally to define their growth path.

Kathie Patterson, Chief Human Resources Officer, Ally Financial  21:37  
I was going to say, very similar to what Lindsay said. We have done everything we could all the onboarding tools, everything virtually, that we would try to do face to face online and drawing those personal connections. We're really trying to get new employees immersed quickly. So it's getting their involvement in employee resource groups, looking for virtual opportunities for them to get back within the communities, happy hour DoorDash luncheons. So it's really, you know, we had to shift our thinking about, okay, don't have the face-to-face interaction. But what can we do to create the virtual interaction that gives the same sort of, maybe not perfect, but the same sort of powerful impact cross reference and meeting people. We've even done speed dating where it's a networking opportunity where people break out in small groups with senior leaders to hear about senior leaders' career paths. So those are some of the things we tried to do right out of the door to get employees feeling and touching our culture and getting exposed to things. The other part that I think we're doing fairly well, and employees appear to be appreciative of, is we're acknowledging that the world has changed. I believe a lot of employers have approached this that you want to go back to work, you want to go back to the office, and there's not an acknowledgement of everything that has occurred over the last 18 months. And I think that employees want to hear that the workplace is going to look different. While we might not have all the answers, I mean, but it's going to be different. And that's exciting. So we really tried to move away from the come back, and let's reestablish ourselves to where we were 18 months ago. We're, rather, acknowledging the fact that a lot has changed. And we want to continue to spread innovation, but recognize that flexibility.

Tara Beck, Senior Staffing Manager, Amazon  23:25  
Yeah, we too, have had to change a lot in terms of our onboarding process. Pre COVID, potential candidates would come into our office, and we would do full presentations and walk them through all the benefits of working for Amazon as a company, and then help them through the application process and finding them the appropriate roles and sites and help them download apps onto their phone. And through the pandemic, we've had to move a lot of that into technology. And so one benefit of that is that it takes a lot less time for a candidate to get through the process. And they have everything at their fingertips, and they can do it on their own time and not during a time where I have a team member on site that can help them do that. Now on the other side, it takes away a bit of that personal touch. And so when candidates do come to my office to begin their new hire paperwork their I9s and take their badge photo and their oral drug test, we want to make sure that they're having a really great experience because that's going to be their first time meeting with an Amazonian in real life. And so, it changes that relationship piece. So by candidates having a more of an online experience, we want to make sure that they've got more information at their fingertips. So we're providing more videos and easier to use applications and online trainings leading up to their day one so candidates can feel really prepared that when they come on site, as a true Amazonian that they feel comfortable and know what to expect from that experience.

Phil Kuttner, Chief Executive Officer, Little Diversified Architectural Consulting  25:06  
The only thing that is a little different than that, that I can think of that some people in the audience might share is that we have five offices. And we used to just naturally form project teams that are physically close together, by in large, at least. And so what we learned a couple months in was, wow, we can build these national project teams, and really get our best people in the right places at the right time. So people, all of a sudden, we're working with people they've never met before, you know, across the whole country. And so for the onboarding experience, it's now much less physically isolated. People are meeting folks from all around the company. I don't you know, I'd have to ask them specifically, is that making you feel more connected and more loyal? Or are you building friendships? But it has been a wrinkle that we've been able to, we sort of backed our way into and learned that people liked it.

Laura Stanley, Associate Professor of Management, Belk College of Business, UNC Charlotte  25:54  
Excellent, thank you. I remember when I worked for Deloitte, and we had this national, I guess, orientation where all of the new hires would go to Scottsdale, Arizona. And we would spend a week there. And it was just fantastic. It was it was wonderful socialization experience, because you were able to meet people at your level from all over the country. And you you kept in touch with those people. So you have this amazing network, it makes me really sad to think wow, Scottsdale may or may not happen anymore. We're really having to adapt to remote work. So Phil, thank you for your comments on teamwork and collaboration. And I think that's that's an excellent segue into one of the other questions I wanted to ask, which is about collaboration. So now that people are working remotely, how are we, how are organizations, engaging employees so that they're able to collaborate? You know, the research on creativity tells us that people tend to be more creative, in a face-to-face environment. There's just something about that face-to-face interaction, and, you know, seeing people and, you know, reading body language and facial expressions, that maybe we're not getting through Zoom, it's not translating. And so how are we helping our employees maintain that creativity? And this also has implications for the physical workspace, Phil, which you may be able to address.

Phil Kuttner, Chief Executive Officer, Little Diversified Architectural Consulting  27:21  
In spaces that we have in design, or in projects where we're doing renovations, we're finding that what used to be in person collaboration spaces, like soft seating in front of a whiteboard, we're now having to integrate technology into every single collaboration space, meaning monitors and cameras and audio, at least. Because we're almost always going to have somebody who's participating remotely, which wasn't really the case in the past, we tend to to get people together who could conveniently and sort of spontaneously gather. So that's one of the biggest ways in which technology, when I referenced that as a common thread with all of our clients, that's one of the most visible, probably most experiential ways that we're having to inject new technology into existing spaces to allow collaboration. I do think, in my experience, when we are partly in person and have a few remote participants, we're a lot better than when we're all remote. It's a lot easier to be all remote You know, we've had to get some new cameras so that we can Zoom in on whiteboards and things like that and actually see people's faces but you know, we're doing it as much as we can. I'm old fashioned enough that I I it's hard for me to imagine being as creative and dynamic as we want to be when we're not together to feed off of each other's ideas and build on each other's ideas are having to wait till it's our turn to speak and all those things. But it's a good hybrid because now people who are working remotely are not isolated, they're actually can still participate in a brainstorm or creative session.

Laura Stanley, Associate Professor of Management, Belk College of Business, UNC Charlotte  28:56  
Absolutely. Thank you for that. Zoom is certainly created a lot of interesting situations. I'd like to extend that questions to the to the other panelists, Tara, you know, at Amazon how, you know, what is Amazon doing in order to manage this, you know, the challenges related to collaboration and creativity? 

Tara Beck, Senior Staffing Manager, Amazon  29:16  
So it's a bit of what Phil's sharing, right? So when possible, I know being in person just being able to pop down and see somebody gives me a lot of energy that random just a moment to be able to spend time together. Hey, let me bump this off you, let me ask your opinion on it, is way more of a personal experience than sending someone a team message that says, hey, let me know when you have a second I've got a question and it makes it a lot less personal. But at the same time, the way that we're set up all of my personal peers are across the southeast. So I've got nine peers across the southeast, and we do a lot through instant message and collaboration that way or setting up video calls like this. I do have to agree though that in person environment where you can sit back and relax, and it doesn't feel uncomfortable to have an awkward silence, because you can see that everybody's thinking intently about sharing something provocative or important than just trying to fill the dead space because you feel like you have to on a zoom call, makes a big difference. So I think it's a personal thing. But it's also being strategic and making the space to do it. When you're in a remote environment, it doesn't come naturally, right, like it's a natural thing to walk down the hall and see somebody or pop by somebody's cubicle. But when you're remote, you assume that everyone's on calls constantly, or they've got family in the background that they're trying to manage. And so you don't reach out as much because you're afraid of overwhelming them with something. So making space to be able to have those conversations, I think is really important. And if you have direct team members checking in on them, if you haven't chimed with them, or, you know, sent them a message in a day or two, even if it's just hey, thinking about you, let me know, if you need anything, it doesn't have to be anything really impactful, or profound. And it just the fact that you're caring about those within your network, I think is really important.

Kathie Patterson, Chief Human Resources Officer, Ally Financial  31:31  
During this window of time, we've really looked at how we can do competition of future effects or items around access to trying to bring employees together and a fun sort of competitive way to solve a work-related problem. We've also worked with an outside vendor called exec online, where we've taken our high potentials through a series of development programs and having them work together virtually to solve on a work related problem and come together and create a pitch. So we've tried to look for those type of items where employees are still solving a problem. But we're sort of forcing that interaction in a very sort of, you know, time-bound period of time. 

Lindsay Powers, Senior Vice President of People, Premier, Inc.  32:14  
I'll offer a slightly different perspective in reframing what collaboration or innovation or creativity can look like. We were fortunate to have Adam Grant with us at our annual virtual values conference, we hosted values conference for employees over a year, year and a half. And it's really centered around individual growth and continued growth for the organization. Adam Grant, his recent book, "Think, again," it introduces this idea that maybe innovation doesn't happen in a group setting all the time. Right. So if you are given a problem, and you can individually, bring it back and think through options and opportunities. If you bring back the thoughts that you had individually to a group does it create a faster uptake to innovation. And so I think continuing to find ways intentionally to build that into your practices can help foster the innovation at a faster speed. And we also really subscribe to this idea of the growth mindset. And so the growth mindset isn't about collective, it's about individual right, so individually seeing the opportunities to continually get better. And so of course, we are a very collaborative organization. But I think also reframing to understand the individual impacts that can be seen in this environment as well helps us you know, think a little differently and not sit in the exhaustion I think we all feel by the screen. So it's just a bit of a reframe. And we do believe that collaboration is essential. And we do obviously I shared some of the ways that we're trying to intentionally put that into our practices, and continue to try new ways to engage but I also think there's some real value and speed to innovation in you know, giving the problem first to the individual and then bringing it back together.

Laura Stanley, Associate Professor of Management, Belk College of Business, UNC Charlotte  34:18  
Thank you so much, Lindsay.

CLT Alliance  34:20  
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