Bill Detwiler
| June 20, 2021 — 22:00 GMT (23:00 BST)
| Topic: Digital Transformation
ServiceNow’s Chief Customer and Partner Officer on how to build a hybrid workplace that works
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Despite Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman saying he wants workers back in their New York City offices this fall, and Bank of America chief Brian Moynihan saying he expects vaccinated workers to return to the office after Labor Day, many organizations around the world are working to reimagine the office environment and indeed the entire workplace experience. And with good reason.
Research has shown that many workers want and expect remote work to continue after the Covid-19 pandemic ends. A March 2021 survey of remote workers done by Caprelo, a work relocation company, found that 87% said being able to work remotely would be a part of their future employment decisions. Likewise, an April 2021 report published by the global staffing company Robert Half found that as many as a third of workers may quit if they were asked to return to the office full-time. The number of employees likely to leave their job if remote work is taken off the table is even higher among working parents. An April 2021 survey of over 1,100 working parents conducted by FlexJobs found that 62% of respondents said they “would quit their current job if they can’t continue remote work.”
ServiceNow has been going through a transformation itself and helping its customers do the same. I recently spoke with Lara Caimi, Chief Customer and Partner Officer at ServiceNow, to talk about these issues and the future of the office. The following is a transcript of the interview, edited for readability.
No one wants to play office anymore
Bill Detwiler: All right, so at a ServiceNow’s Knowledge 2021 event, I had a chance, with a lot of other media and analysts, to speak with Bill McDermott [President and CEO of ServiceNow]. And I got a great quote from him, that I love, when I asked about this new normal of sort of work from anywhere, and the rise in a hybrid and remote working environments, which was, “No one wants to play office anymore.” And I thought that was just a great quote because it embodies what I’ve heard from numerous executives and it was also blunt and to the point.
I’d love with you to start there because I know you just took over a very large organization and are doing it completely remotely. But also, from your perspective, what are you hearing from ServiceNow customers around how they’re designing kind of this new normal?
Lara Caimi, Chief Customer and Partner Officer at ServiceNow
Image: ServiceNow
Lara Caimi: Yeah. Well, I also love that soundbite from Bill. Leave it to Bill. He will always be direct and blunt and memorable, for sure. Yeah, I mean, I think it’s absolutely true. There’s no question that the world changed dramatically. And what’s so interesting is because of the nature of this global pandemic, we went through this change that ultimately, anybody that would have been talking about change management, like before the pandemic, would have said, “Never possible. Never possible.”
And we absorbed so much change all at once globally, and it lasted for a significant amount of time, right? They talk about it takes at least four months of something to build habits. Well, we’ve been in this thing now for a year and a half. We’re still in our homes, and I’m here in mine. It’s dramatically changed the way our work and lives operate, and I think it’s definitely here to stay.
I completely agree with Bill. We shouldn’t have been playing office before, and certainly no one wants to play it now. What I think the reality is, hybrid is the new normal, and it’s really all about flexibility and choice, right? And it’s not just a shift in like location policy, which is I think what a lot of people focus on, and that’s a huge part of it, but it is much broader of how we’re going to make sure that we drive this in a healthy way going forward. That it is truly, we’re allowing folks to be empowered in a new way that is much more appealing and that I think is going to drive significant productivity.
I think it’s a super exciting time to be leading an organization, frankly. And yes, I took over an organization where I still haven’t met in-person, as their boss, the people that work for me. And yet, we’ve defined a strategy, we’ve come together as a team, we’ve got a healthy and productive organization, we’re delivering on our numbers. In all of this, we’re sort of managing to do remotely.
I think it’ll be interesting. And honestly, and of course, let’s be very blunt, I think the world is still very hybrid because it’s in very different places. You mentioned Knowledge ’21, I’ve spent a bunch of time talking to partners and customers globally. And it was amazing how different, given the state of the pandemic in different countries, people are in very different situations. And so this is going to kind of take a while to get to something that is normal, and it’s going to look different in different places. And it’ll still be, I think, a little bit up and down. But the idea of moving to something that is a little bit more flexible, that does have choice, that does have options, right?
We were talking before we started this about the excitement of actually having a business dinner. I think it’ll create sort of a new set of dimensions that are going to be really healthy for folks.
SEE: Working from home: The future of business is remote (ZDNet/TechRepublic special feature) | Working from home: How to get remote right (free PDF) (TechRepublic)
How to build a hybrid workplace that works for employees and employers
Bill Detwiler: Let’s dive down on that a little bit, because you mentioned you taking over this organization. How do companies build an environment that’s flexible as people go back into the office and they want to have those in-person experiences, but then again, they also don’t want to give up some of the flexibility that they’ve had with not having a commute, either from your own perspective in how you’ve had to do it over this last year, and everybody has had to do it? Or going forward, how do companies sort of build an office experience that really does meet the needs of the organization and what workers expect now?
Lara Caimi: Yep, yep. For sure. Let me start with the real basics behind this, which of course we’ve all learned is health and safety, right, of our people; and so it really starts with that. We know that the pandemic, there’s going to be evolutions, we’ve already seen ups and downs of opening and closing across companies, there’s different vaccine rates, et cetera.
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Bill Detwiler
| June 20, 2021 — 22:00 GMT (23:00 BST)
| Topic: Digital Transformation