Event

Nicholas Bloom on how to make hybrid work approaches work

We spoke with Nicholas Bloom, professor of Economics at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, during our Return to Workplace Summit. You can watch the video of the session above. Among some of the takeaways from Bloom, who was in conversation with Charter's Kevin Delaney:

- Centralize decisions about which days people come to the office in a hybrid scenario, where employees split their time between working remotely and in person. Meetings are better when everyone is either all-remote or all in-person, it’s a more efficient way to use space, and it reduces the likelihood that women and people of color fall behind in terms of promotions and raises, said Bloom. “I generally used to be in favor of choice at the beginning of the pandemic, but I have changed my mind.”

- Take the “American in Europe” approach to hybrid meetings. “Whenever I'm in, say Germany, and there's just me and six Germans they always speak English because I don't speak German,” said Bloom. “So it's kind of like that with mixed mode. If there's one person at home, you really want everyone even in the office to join from their own laptop so it's a level playing field.”