Are Remote Employees Becoming Less Engaged?

HR Famous

On episode 113 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Jessica Lee and Tim Sackett come together to discuss Chat GPT and Tim’s utopian view if remote employees are more or less engaged and how we should be doing holiday parties.

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2:00 - Tim said he needs to add stretching to his New Year’s resolution list.

3:15 - Tim is extremely fascinated by Chat GPT (which may or may not take over this podcast). JLee tested it with her husband when she asked Chat GPT to write a Thank You letter after a job interview.

7:00 - JLee thinks it’s really fascinating when Chat GPT is looked at as a tool as a Kickstarter for writing in a business format. Madeline mentioned in a previous episode how editing and revision might become more important in the future instead of writing.

11:00 - On a basic level, JLee thinks there will be a behavior change from talking to an AI/chatbot as a “machine” to talking to them as you would a normal person.

15:00 - Tim has a utopian hope of the world with AI. He thinks it will be able to free us from our work and give us back time to dedicate to our families, ourselves, and our world.

17:30 - Harvard Business Review released an article (with a very bad title, according to Tim) titled “No, Remote Employees Aren’t Becoming Less Engaged.” They pulled data from Teams and Outlook and found that remote employees have more meetings, and thus, they’re more engaged.

19:30 - JLee loves HBR and still gets HBR in the mail. She thinks that engagement being defined by meetings is a silly proposition.

21:30 - Tim says that everyone will fall differently on the productivity spectrum in regard to remote work. He thinks you can’t make a sweeping generalization about whether it’s more or less productive to work remotely.

24:00 - JLee notes that she’s been focusing on “meeting fatigue” and how to get creative on who needs to be in meetings and how many meetings actually need to be happening.

26:15 - The holiday season is right behind us, and many companies have recently gotten through layoffs. Tim notes that office parties and bonuses have been things on the chopping block. Tim asks the question, “can we have good employee experience events without spending a lot of money?”.

28:00 - JLee says that it comes down to what employees really care about. Do we really want holiday parties?

31:20 - Tim asked Chat GPT if employees like holiday parties. It gave a pretty good response!