Against the Herd with Denise Brouder

Against the Herd with Denise Brouder

Against the Herd is a podcast where I speak with contrarian leaders and visionaries at the cutting edge of the future of work—and living.?

I had an illuminating conversation with Denise Brouder , Founder and Head of Data & Insights at SWAYworkplace . SWAY trainers deliver hybrid work mastery at scale. Denise and I joked about how her hybrid-first preference compared to my remote-first one would result in a “professional cage match”, but in all seriousness, Denise’s desire and urgency to reimagine the way people work meant we had to find time to talk. Who learns anything from only speaking with people who unequivocally agree with??

Despite being an advocate for hybrid workplaces to allow everyone to live balanced and purposeful lives, Denise has a love/hate relationship with the word “hybrid”. She loves that it’s a huge conversation starter, but she prefers the word “flexible”. She thinks “hybrid work” is a transitional phrase that will eventually just become “work”—the new, given standard.

Denise explains that there is a distinction between the “hybrid what” and the “hybrid how”.?

The what is simple: Employers want to listen to their people who are calling for a work-from-anywhere policy.?

But how do we actually do that? Well, that’s where Denise believe it is still not a fully defined concept. How do we bring this to life in a way that allows people to drive their individual and team performance?

For Denise, the answer to that question hinges on creating an intentional in-office experience on the days employees go in. You should be collaborating and coordinating with each other during the times you're coming together—or else, the question becomes, “Why am I even here?” While I typically lean into that sentiment and believe that mandatory in-office days should be scrapped altogether, Denise offered a counterpoint: Work isn’t perfect by nature, so we cannot expect an incredible, satisfactory experience every day. Plus, many people do enjoy an HQ to act as their home base and offer structure.

When I asked Denise how data can be leveraged to create better work environments, she says that we should measure what we value… and that should be our people. SWAY measures how their clients’ employees are feeling toward their hybrid work environment. And then they take the employee-centric data and make it actionable for the leadership team and adjust policies and processes from there.

There are so many other great topics Denise dives into—from how she believes hybrid work can level the playing field and improve DEI initiatives to why she believes some companies are still so intent on returning back to the office full-time—but I want to wrap up my thoughts in a similar way to how Denise ended the podcast. With empathy.

We need to meet in the middle—myself and Denise and every organization. Leadership teams need to speak to their employees and figure out the friction points to meet both sides of the remote-first and hybrid-first approach. Mistakes will happen! Let’s learn from them so we can build consensus and operate well both individually and as part of a team.

To see for yourself Denise’s passion and advocacy for creating a better life, listen to the full Against the Herd episode here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2162318/13341417-denise-brouder-founder-at-swayworkplace ?

Vince Diaz

Customer Service Representative at Meesho

1 年

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Allan Vincent Pajo

Virtual Assistant/Lead Generation Specialist/Podcast Booker/ Customer Service/ Data Entry/ Email Management and Social Media Management

1 年

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Steve Fish

EMEA Client Care – Furniture Solutions

1 年

Love this. I share similar sentiments to Denise Brouder. I’m ALL for ‘Hybrid’, except the word! I’m looking forward to listening to the podcast.

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CHESTER SWANSON SR.

Next Trend Realty LLC./wwwHar.com/Chester-Swanson/agent_cbswan

1 年

Thanks for Sharing.

Justin Li

Product Marketing Lead at Productboard | Executive Producer of Gaming Wall Street on HBO Max

1 年

That one was a lot of fun - looking forward to more discussions!

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