Talking Drupal #513 - Back To The Office

Nic: This is Talking Drupal, a weekly chat about web design and development from a group of people with one thing in common. We love Drupal. This is episode 513, back to the office.

On today's show, we're talking about working from home. Heading back to the office in the current state of remote work with our guest, Kaleem Clarkson. We'll also cover Microsoft 365 connector as our module of the week.

As the Chief Operating Officer, Kaleem ensures all of BlendMe Inc's services and programs follow the strategic plan and the vision of CEO. With nearly 20 years of strategic operations and event planning experiences, passions have always revolved around the stakeholder experience.

From concert and conference attendees to professional development programs for distributed remote and telecommute employees, welcome back to the show and thank you for joining us.

Kaleem: Oh, talking Drupal. We back baby. We back. Nic, John, we back Baby John, that sounded weird. I didn't, that didn't even feel right.

John: Who is John? Hey, listen, you'll, you'll get, you'll get there, you'll get there eventually.

Kaleem: Okay. That it came,

John: my, it didn't feel right. Is John not your professional name? I mean, it's, it's what I go by on most legal documents. Okay.

Kaleem: Nice to meet you

Nic: John.

I'm Nic Laflin, I'm founder at nLightened Development and today my co-host are joining us for the next four weeks as guest host Rich Lawson, rich is the associate Director of Technology at Evolving Web located in the Chicago area.

He has over 16 years of Drupal experience. Welcome to the show. Yeah. Thank you. Nice to meet everybody. And joining us as usual, John Picozzi, solution Architect at EPAM. Hi, it's me.

And now to talk about our module of the week. Let's turn it over to Martin Anderson Clutz, a principal solutions engineer at Acquia, and a maintainer of a number of triple modules and recipes of his own. Martin, what do you have for us this week?

Martin: Thanks Nic. Have you ever wanted your Drupal site to integrate with Microsoft 365?

So users can log in with their Azure AD credentials and then have direct access to shared files, see recent emails and more. There's a module for that. It's called Microsoft 365 connector and was created in July of 2019 by user Imre, though the most recent release is by Boris Berg, who goes by Batta Gox, both of finalist, a Dutch Drupal shop.

Now it has 5.0 0.2 and 5.1 0.0 beta one versions available. The latter of which supports Drupal 9.4 10 and 11. It is actively maintained and has both security and test coverage as well as not one, but two documentation guides available. It has 18 open issues, one of which is technically a bug, but closed, or, sorry, postponed waiting for more info.

Both of which are pretty good considering the site is officially in use by coincidentally 365 sites according to drupal.org. Now this module integrates with, integrates your Drupal site with the Microsoft Graph, API A, unified API that provides a single endpoint for accessing data and intelligence from Microsoft 365 services, including Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, and more Micro Microsoft 365 connector includes more than a dozen submodules, each of which provides specific capabilities like single sign-on syncing data to Drupal user accounts, sending teams messages from within Drupal and more.

You can also use this module to do things like automatically add an event node to your Outlook calendar and invite other people at the same time. It's worth noting that in the documentation guide, the submodules are named Office 365, which is probably what the module was named until around five years ago when Microsoft retired the Office 365 name.

Finally, setting up this module requires registering app in Azure ad, so it's not for the casual user, but if you're working on an intranet or similar collaboration platform for an organization that is heavily invested in the Microsoft 365 Suite, this could make for a compelling integration. So let's talk about Microsoft 365 connector.

John: So when you first started talking about this, I was like, no, I would never, I would never integrate with Microsoft 365. Like, that sounds like a terrible idea. And as you started describing it and talking about the features, I was like, all right, I can see how this would be wildly useful. So yeah, I mean, I, I don't know.

This sounds, this sounds, I won't go out there and say it's great, but it sounds like a really good way to integrate with your with your Microsoft Suite, especially if you're looking for that Azure ad single sign-on connection for, for Drupal. That sounds, sounds like a winner. And you know, I, I mean, I don't know.

I think right now, like getting an Azure API key or app, app id, you know, is, is pretty, pretty easy. I think most users can handle that. I don't know if you need to be that, that advanced to be able to do that, but but maybe.

Martin: I would say it's not so much a question of being advanced as having sort of the role with the permissions to do that.

Ah there is a documentation page in the guide that sort of walks you through the exact steps. So as you say, it's not, it's not complicated. It's just not, not every person has the access to go ahead and do that. So

Kaleem: yeah, the average, average create users right away. Does it create users right away? Right.

When you sign on, what do you think?

Martin: So, at least according to the way the documentation is written, it will actually create users as they sign in through single sign on.

John: Oh, that's pretty cool. I used So you like that back in, back in the day? Old school. Old school Drupal, I remember like the LDAP module that used to do kind of the same thing to connect to active directory.

And that would basically. There was a setting there where you could create the user and then, and then link it, link it to to their, their ad and then pull in even roles via their ad roles. If, if that was, that was in there. So, very interesting. It's good to see these things evolving. Like I think the teams, the, the teams integration, that's pretty cool too.

I'm like, oh, I could see definitely some very useful in you know, things coming outta that, especially maybe with ECA, where it's like, oh, post a team message when this, this node gets updated or an event gets added, or something like that. So definitely some some pretty useful useful stuff there, I think.

Interesting. We gotta, we gotta, we got a, Hmm, interesting. From Nic, which, you know Yeah.

Nic: Microsoft. So I, I have, I have some clients who integrate pretty heavily with both teams and Slack, and we usually use third party. Systems to integrate those, but it, it'd be interesting to connect directly to, to Microsoft.

Might streamline some things.

Kaleem: Go download it, go check it out. Module week.

John: There you go.

Nic: I definitely don't have permission to create an app in the Microsoft organization for that client. So

John: you gotta go up the food chain for that one. I think

Nic: several levels, but yeah, it might be worth exploring. So I'll, I'll be, if I, if I do use this, I will, I'll report back to our listeners.

Alright, thank you Martin. How can folks connect with you if they want to suggest another module leak or just chat about one from the show?

Martin: We are always happy to talk about module candidates for module week in the talking Drupal channel of Drupal Slack. Or folks can reach out to me directly as man clue on all of the Drupal and social platforms.

Kaleem: Awesome. You guys should have maybe smart dates sometime as a module. The week. I mean, I don't know. Oh, I mean there's just, just throwing it out there. It we're big fans

John: of Shameless self-promotion here. Have you ever listened to our show? I don't know what you're talking,

Kaleem: I have no idea. I just said I think it'd be a good idea.

Maybe 'cause I think it's a cool module. So check that out. Check that out.

Martin: It actually was covered as modular week, ironically, I think back in episode 365. So there you go. It all comes full circle.

Kaleem: Freaking 365. Get, get Away from Microsoft Ever.

Nic: It that, that was the, actually an episode that you were on Kaleem.

It was the last time we were on the show.

John: We're bringing it all together. Mar Martin, if nothing he's, he's all about the Easter. Easter eggs.

Nic: Alright, thank Martin. Appreciate it. See you next week.

Kaleem, before we jump into the topic today, can you remind our listeners what Blend Me Inc. Does?

Kaleem: Yeah. So we work with small businesses and we provide fractional HR leadership. So if you do not have an HR department or you do not have an HR person we have contractors that can serve in that capacity on a part-time basis.

And our contractors have experienced and have worked at companies such as Google, Amazon Tesla. Okay. What's the other one? In ey. So yeah, that's what we do. We, we specialize in remote work people operations. So we started in 2013, so we've been talking a lot about remote work for a long time.

And yeah, that's what we do.

John: So. Needless to say, you're a you're a subject matter expert on, on remote work and the current state of you know, back to office and, and all things, or almost all things hr, right? Yeah. So let's, let's talk, let's dive into the remote work topic, right. And I'm, I'm super excited to have you here because I've, I have so many questions about the current state of remote work and, and like, I don't know, just how companies are kind of like dealing with the whole thing.

And we have a whole slew of questions. We'll get into those. But first, like, my impression of kind of like the remote work landscape, right? Is that mm-hmm. Like, it feels a little uneasy right now. Is that, is that accurate? Would you agree with that assessment?

Kaleem: When you say it feels a little uneasy right now, specifically, what are you, what, what are you kind of asking.

I

John: mean, I guess, I mean like in in general, like the, the, the appetite from a, from a corporate standpoint for remote work feels like, feels like people are like, kind of reversing their position. You know, a lot of companies would be like, yeah, remote work, we do remote work, we do hybrid, we do this, we do that.

And now they're kinda like, no, you gotta come to an office, bro.

Nic: Yeah. And it just feels

John: kind of like, I don't know, uneasy is the best way I can describe it right now.

Kaleem: Yeah. I, I would say that, that is a good word. I would say conflicting opinions is, is a good word. I would say conflict is probably a better word, I would say.

Feelings versus data-driven. I would say so, yeah. Right now we're, we're seeing a lot of return to office mandates but we're not seeing a lot of data accompanying those return to office mandates as far as. The purpose. I think right now, I think where you're seeing a major divide is between the employee who, geez, 2025.

It's insane. I think the pandemic was five years ago, going on six years, you know? So people are, are frustrated with leadership because it's like, man, we've been doing this for a lot of people, John, I mean, we all know many of us Drupal families have been doing this remote work for a really long time, where I learned a lot of my remote work concepts and strategies from, so for some people they've been working remotely for over a decade, maybe 15 years.

And they're like, well, what are you talking about? Like returning and very successfully,

John: right. They've been, they've been doing it very well. Right.

Kaleem: So yeah, I would say de definitely divided opinions for sure. I think, I think there's a lot of headlines returning, we gotta get back to work, but then yet you're also finding.

Employees equally as frustrated. So I'd say frustrated probably is another, another term. A lot of people are frustrated.

Rich: So that's that's really insightful claim. A question that I had is, what, why do you think, you had mentioned that you don't really think it's data driven so much, but you, you know, what do you think is driving the, you know, what's the motivation for companies to bring employees back to the office?

What do you think they're thinking about?

Kaleem: Yeah, I mean, this is, this is a real, you know, tough one. You know, because everyone is different. Everyone has different feelings and I think that's, I think if you come out of the pandemic and you wanna ask what do we learn from that situation? Is, is that people's experiences are, are vastly different in there.

The situations are different. So how they want to work varies. So that's why we didn't see all remote 100% of the time, and now we're not seeing all in office because, you know, people have different flows and, and different desires. So when you talk about why are we seeing people come back to the office, every organization's different.

You may have a leader who feels that's the best way to work because that's how they were brought up. That's how she shook hands on the golf course. Or he shook hands on the golf course or whatever. That's how they, that's all they know. So you, you see some of that. And then you're seeing just pressure.

You have government pressure, now you have the federal government. First thing they do, they come in and say, everybody must return to the office. Although there's plenty of data, including their own research within the government saying how productive. Remote work is they're ignoring that and saying, you gotta go back to the office.

So you have some political pressure there. Then you have some local political pressure. Some of these cities and downtowns you know, San Francisco, they, they call it the, what is it? The Salesforce tax, they call it. You know, these companies get huge, major, major tax breaks for putting their offices in downtowns to spur economic development and people going downtown.

So you have some local people, some pressure. And then last but not least corporate real estate. We are, we're very concerned. This is something that I think the market is very concerned about and you're not hearing a lot about it. There are a lot of loans that are coming up, billions of dollars of loans coming up on real estate.

The question will be, will companies, you know, renew their leases? So now you also have commercial real estate. The commercial real estate industry, generally people who are investing in commercial real estate are very wealthy in the C-suite. Their portfolios are attached to it. So now you have that. So, whew, sorry that took me so long.

But there are obviously a lot of different facets outside of productivity. Notice I did not say, yeah, productivity.

Nic: Yeah. Pro productivity is, is definitely not one of them. I, I, I think there's one of the reason too, that you didn't highlight Gleam. And I wanna talk about the productivity thing in a second, but let's be real too.

It's a way to get people to quit. You know, if they want to downsize right down saying that they're downsizing, thank you Nic. They, they know that people want to work from home. You force 'em to come back to the office. You gonna get, you're gonna lose a percentage of your workforce and you can, you can just call it people quitting, not, not a downsizing.

John: Nic, you you took the question right outta my mouth. I was gonna say like, is this a tactic to reduce headcount? 'cause it sure does feel like it to me. 'cause I know plenty of people that are like Absolutely is. They're like, oh, my company's forcing me to go back to work. I'm looking for a new job. And I'm like, oh, okay.

Absolutely.

Kaleem: Hundred percent of this. Yes, you were hundred percent right. And by the way. Do you know what you're saving if you, if someone quits versus, you know, layoffs?

Nic: Yeah. I mean, well, it depends on the company and what their benefit packages are, but it's compensation. You quit.

Kaleem: Yeah.

Nic: Yeah,

John: yeah. A lot of times you saving, you, you give up on a potential severance if you if you quit.

Right.

Nic: Exactly. Yeah. And then, and then talking about productivity, I mean, companies have shown, I mean, every study that's looked at it has shown that remote work is, is as productive, if not more. I mean, there's exceptions obviously, right? You can't get run a restaurant remotely. And I'll contend even the job that we do, web development, this kind of thing, there are things that are just more efficient in person.

Right? Certain brainstorming activities, blue, blue sky design, like that kind of stuff. Or like user experience stuff, being in person for those types of things, which can be done on like a retreat or something. The Yes, those are way more efficient, way more productive in person. It, it takes more work to make those types of.

Projects successful remotely, but 100% the vast, vast majority of jobs that people do in the tech space remote is more productive. I, I like a lot of it's preference. Yeah. It, it's what people wanna do where, where, like me, I can't work in an office. There's, there's too many distractions, right?

Kaleem: Yeah. Yeah.

And then when you own a company like it, I have been trying to go a little bit easier on, you know, leaders of companies, especially in the small business. I'm, I'm trying to be a little bit more empathetic because can you imagine you create this company and you just love it so much because like that's, I think that's for huge corporations.

Let's just leave them out of it a little bit because I feel like they're getting all the headlines and it's not really showing the true numbers. You know, we'll dive into some. How flexible society really is because we're a lot more flexible than we ever had been. I just kind of feel like these leaders, they don't know any other way.

So just imagine yourself, you built this entity, you love this entity, and you enjoy going into the office. And there's nothing better than going into your office and seeing a whole bunch of people working and high fiving. And that connection is something that you can't replace. And I think when people talk about we need to bring people back to the office because of our culture, they're really talking about connection.

They're really talking about that feeling that when you walk into that feeling that you're getting, just hanging out, talking to people. Has really, very minimal to do with productivity. And yes, it's very important to be more connected to your employees. I'm, I'm like a huge proponent of that, but that is the thing that you can't replace.

And I think CEOs and owners of companies, they created that excitement and that energy, and it feels horrible. It feels awful walking into a, an office that you created this type of feeling and now that feeling is gone. I mean, it, I get it. I know the business is about making money, talking about, no, not even that.

Not

John: even that, but like if I'm the creator, I'm the CEO of a company, right? Like. Yes, I have a, I have an obligation to like, make money and if I'm a public company, I have an obligation to stockholders and I have an obligation, but like, maybe, you know, equal or maybe even above that I have an obligation to my employees.

Right. And if I build a company, and let's go back to that small business model, right, that you were just talking about, right? Mm-hmm.

Nic: Mm-hmm. If

John: I build a company, like my goal is to make a workplace where people love coming to work. Not, and like, you know, personally, my, my belief is that like, that doesn't, that doesn't pertain to a, to a building, right?

It doesn't pertain to me having to watch people do their jobs, right? Yeah. I like social interaction.

Kaleem: Yeah. I like to, but John, I logically you're speaking logically. That's what I'm trying to say. Like some of like emotion is not logical and you've been working remotely forever. We're all Jada, let's just start this off to say, Hey, we all enjoy remote work.

We're very good at it. We've all been probably doing it from, you know, 20 years. Like, it's cool, but I'm just trying to talk about that person who, like, I'm just trying to be a little empathetic because I agree with, you know, like, come on, what we talk about here. Let's treat people like a gulp and people don't wanna go to the office.

Do that thing, but yeah. All right. The people that are forcing people back to the office trying to get side of their heads, what could it be? A lot of it is emotional and emotion is sometimes irrational.

John: So when you're, so you approach it with empathy, which is great. You should approach everything with empathy, right?

But like when you're, when you're advising CEOs, right? Yeah. Are you, are you, and, and these, these creators, founders of companies, right? Mm-hmm. Are you like. Is your first question, like, okay, why, why do, why do you feel like people need to come back to work? Like are you trying to, like are you trying to understand or figure out what that that thing is?

Kaleem: Great question. Great, great question. Well, the answer to your question is we don't work with those organizations. Fair enough. Because the reality, because like what we were just talking about is you cannot convince somebody who firmly feels, and that's what you're hearing, Jamie Dylan from JP Morgan, even Amazon, Jamie, Jamie Diamond, right?

Nic: I feel

Kaleem: Jamie Diamond, right? Yeah.

Nic: Yeah. Even Amazon.

Kaleem: Even Amazon. I feel like we do better work. Look at the words. We just do better.

John: All right. Together. So the answer to my question is like CEOs that, that are like, Hey, tell me why I'm wrong, aren't coming to us, knocking down our door for us to do that. Right.

And both, we wanna

Kaleem: work with those because like, like the reality is, is if you're not a culture driven organization already, if you're not a people first company already, there's a good chance you have not required your people to come back into the office five days a week at this point. Like, how can you, how can you come out and say, Hey, we care about our people.

We're a people first organization. And then you just said, yeah, we're a 100% knowledge based business, meaning that 75 or 80% of our work is done behind the, behind the computer screen. And we just decided without surveying people doing any type of anything, getting data and letting the data speak, we're saying that we want all our people back five days a week in office.

Oh, and by the way, we're people first. Those, those things cannot go together, in my opinion. I mean, do any of you all disagree?

John: No. No. I think you're, I think you're right on.

Rich: So one, one of the things I've been thinking about is that I had a situation where, you know, I was working, you know, in the office and then we kind of moved to a hybrid model.

And then ever since the pandemic, I've been working remotely. And so one of the things I was thinking about is that there are some connections and some interactions that you just are really difficult to try to replicate. Like you can have like in person, you know, meet meetups and, and company retreats and things like that.

But I think that one of the things that kind of stood out for you, me, and I know we're gonna be talking a little bit more about this, was just kind of like maybe, you know, being open to like more of a hybrid approach, you know, for, you know, the, the different companies where they do wanna get people together.

But yet, you know, it's not. Trying to, you know, advocate for like a five day a week, you know, in the office every day, sort of a schedule. So anyway, it's just, you know, it, it, I do think that when we were talking about like there's the productivity aspect of it, but then there are some of these interactions and like these moments where you're just kind of chatting a little bit and it has an impact and it's, it can be difficult to, you know, try to capture that remotely.

So just thinking out loud a little bit about that.

Nic: That is something that you have to be intentional about, and I think that that's something that Kaleem company helps with, right? That's Absolutely.

Kaleem: Yeah. So I, I think the first, the first thing that you have to do is exactly what you were just talking about, and that was kind of taking an an assessment.

Of kind of your connection. We call that a social connection strategy. So what we firmly believe is that as an organization, you should be aware of what your connections are like, or how connected your organizations are. And we actually group those in the three different buckets. So lifestyle connections, which are, you know, your, your, your, your hobbies, things that you do, professional connections, you know, your colleagues, you know, professional associations, Drupal Association, my Drupal friends, right?

And then intimate, even like intimate connections like religion and politics, even romantic partners, like that's an intimate, those are intimate relationships. So, you know, I'm not saying that you should have date night. You know, a company shouldn't create date night, but they should be aware that people need these types of connections to be just a healthy human being.

And if I'm a healthy human being, mentally, then I can produce, if I'm depressed. If I'm saddened, then I can't produce at your company. So you have to be aware of those things. Right? So back to, you know what Nic was saying, you're 100%,

the, the, the thing that you have to do in a remote company and what we help people with is, is like you have to be intentional to ensure that you're having those ti those connection moments. So those retreats, those planning retreats, going to, in Drupal terms, going to Drupal camps and bringing your team there.

I learned this, I've seen this from like the media account folks. I mean, you remember this, you guys would go to conferences and I remember way back in the day, Dave Terry would, he would schedule his offsite. Retreat two days before Drupal Camp Atlanta and fly everybody in and have their, you know, company retreat that day.

So it, it would make more sense because they're already going to Drupal Camp Atlanta that way. So 100%. We, we sit with organizations, we ask what are their frequencies of times that they get together? What are the purpose for their, their times to get together? What is it that they're trying to accomplish?

There's a great book called The Art of Gathering that we base a lot of our meetings on. It's, it's basically you want to be outcomes driven for your meetings. Like what are the outcomes that you want to result from getting together and then plan. But the key thing is, is it's all intentional.

Nic: So, so moving back to the, back to the office, you said that the, moving back to the topic of going back to the office, if you see a company mandating back to the office, just like across the board, is that.

Poor management structure, is that, I mean, is that something you can work with at all, or is that just a red flag?

Kaleem: So you're asking the question was, if a company's mandating a return to the office, would Blend me Inc. Consult with that company? No,

Nic: no. I, I meant that more general, like, is it a red flag for a company to just have a back to office mandate period.

Is that something that you think can be worked on from a cultural standpoint? Is that something that people should try to raise internally or is that like, hey, if they're doing that, they're, they have other management issues probably too. Yeah. Like is it like a symptom? Symptom? Not a, not a cause,

John: right?

Like does it, does it identify management? Issues. Right? Because a lot of people say, and I, I've heard this myself, like

Nic: mm-hmm.

John: You know, oh, I and from managers, I need this. I need people in the office so that I can, I can make sure that they're doing their job right. Which to me, literally signifies that as a manager, you don't have trust in your employees that they're getting their stuff done, or you don't have the ability to, to, to validate by some other means.

Them watching them work that they are actually doing their jobs.

Kaleem: Okay. Yeah. So from a couple different perspectives, I'll answer. So from a potential employee like me applying to a job, a mandate would be a red flag that they're not necessarily committed to, to making data-driven decisions. Hmm. Right, right.

Like, like yeah. I would have to read what their requirement was. Now maybe this is a company that is maybe a food, you know, a restaurant, software company, and they need to be more in the restaurants, you know, so maybe there are reasons, right? Like, so you, I would have to investigate, but generally speaking, like, you know, we just wanna say software company, like a company that we know doesn't necessarily have to go back to the office.

I think as an employee, that would, that would signal something for me, for me there, right? As a manager, like would in the company even, I would be concerned there because it's like, okay, well I am, you're gonna make me enforce this policy, but how am I going to explain to my employees the reasons why this policy is being implemented?

So now, like I would feel like you're putting me as a manager in a really bad position. 'cause you're not giving me like. You didn't do a, a company wide survey. So is there a way to roll out a return to office? Yes, there is a way to do it, which is respectful, which is knowledgeable, right? And that is survey.

People have the groups on simplifying this, right? But it's getting input from your employees, your asset, the thing that you're changing, right? You're changing how your employees work and interact. You should probably ask them their opinion, right? Ask them their opinion. Now, if all of this was collected, and then the president of the company, mind you, the president, not you know, and HR person, the president of the company is showing the data like, hey, 60% of you wanna be in the office more often for real intentional reasons.

And we're going to do that. And that's why we're adding this mandate that is a thoughtful. You've solicited feedback, you've provided it, this is why we're gonna do it. You could roll it out that way. But for the most, most people, they're not going out that way.

John: It, it feels like a lot of extra work and a lot of extra steps and, and oversight to, to like have a back to office mandate where we're like, you have to come back to the office.

Right. Feels like a flipping ton of like, busy work for, for somebody in HR or somebody in management. Right. I'm wondering like. What benefits do companies see by forcing people back to back to the office? I mean, obviously we talked about, you know

Nic: Yeah.

John: Towns getting people, more people into their downtowns.

Mm-hmm. Spending more money on lunches and, and commuting and all that stuff we've talked about you know, it being used as an effective way for companies to reduce head count if that's what they're trying to do. Mm-hmm. Right. I'm wondering though, is there, like, is there a legitimate benefit to the company for them to say, like, you have to come back to the office?

Kaleem: Yeah, I would say there, there definitely is, and it would be around connection, John. It would be around that again, that, that thing that you can't put your finger on that thing of just feeling that thing of, you know, hey, I really just love being around the excitement of getting the work done no matter what.

You can't. You can't emulate that. And I think that, you know, we talk a lot. There's all sorts of little things you can pull out as we're talking, but I, I would say that's the big piece of advice that I, that I give to, to our clients is you cannot actually emulate in-person work with remote work.

John: Okay. So I, and that's

Kaleem: what people are trying to do.

John: I agree with that. Love workshops, love getting with clients in a room and like figuring something out, like very energetic, very very positive. That's it, right? Get that. But like, so like to me that feels like, hey, instead of forcing some sort of back to work mandate, we're gonna go to a hybrid policy where you have to be in the office up to two days a week or something like that, right?

Like, and you can pick the days. We don't care. Like, just make sure you're in the office. Make sure you're scheduling onsite meetings like. Right? Like, am I, am I, am I wrong here? Like, that feels like a better solution to me, right?

Kaleem: Disa disadvantages. So, so the, the fully remote, the easiest, fully onsite and easiest, those are two easy work models.

'cause everybody's exactly the same. You can approach everybody exactly, somewhat the same when you're talking about work modality and where you're, when you get into hybrid, it's the most difficult. And I think that's why we're seeing the return to office by so many people. Because John, there are so many different variations of what you just mentioned.

So I often lean towards trying to figure out if you're not gonna be hybrid by choice. So there's hybrid by choice, which means there's no requirement, whatever. Not even like monthly, it's just hybrid by choice. That works, right? Only if. You are also putting on these intentional gatherings. 'cause the, the reasons why people may wanna go on another office is to connect.

And then if you go into the office and no one's there, then you're not connecting. So now you're not, you're not getting the benefits of being in person. So is that hybrid? Is hybrid by choice actually accomplishing the goal of connecting? Not quite sure. In a lot of cases, no. So then some people say, Hey, we're gonna do Wednesdays in-office requirement for everyone Now, is that good?

Yeah, it might work for connection because people are there, they know other people are there, but it might, might not be good for flexibility. What if I have a doctor's appointment on that Wednesday? I have to pick up my child. So now you're sacrificing some of the flexibility. So I think to answer your question, John, the benefit of, of your original question, what's the benefit?

It is connection. That is the benefit of being in person.

John: And you raise a good point there too. 'cause I, I honestly never really thought of like, if you're looking to go to the office because you want that connection with other people, unless you schedule a like predefined meeting. Right. That's intent intentional, right?

Yep. Like, like you're not gonna get that feeling if like you go to the office or like two other people there and chances are they're like the two other people that you don't actually wanna talk to. Like, correct. You know what I mean?

Kaleem: Right. Yep. And then, you know, and then when you get into a little bit bigger company, maybe in that, you know, 500, 300 to 500 range, a lot of your team isn't, maybe your team isn't in one location, so like you, you might go into the, your designated office that they have for you, but like the other team members might be in a whole different location, like different part of the country.

So yeah, I think, I think it's just a really difficult scenario. Hybrid's difficult. I would like my preference. If I were gonna advise someone, I think hybrid right choice is, I think that's the best scenario because you're being true to yourself, you're being true to people first. But as far as connection, you're gonna do hybrid right choice.

You really have to spend some money and some intentionality on saying like, maybe we're coming in at the first or second of the month. Everybody, like, you have to put some sort of consistent monthly or in-person something. What I like doing, I think for smaller businesses, which are easier, is probably just if you're gonna do hybrid and you're gonna have some sort of office and setting, just pick one day, not, not a Monday, not a Friday to come into the office.

And I think it's just easier for people's minds. They can schedule around it every week. The people wanna, I think the predictability people enjoy. Right? I gotta go into the office on. Wednesday. Okay. It's a little bit easier mentally.

Rich: Okay. So you had mentioned that like obviously, you know, you've been taking into consideration how happy employees are.

You mentioned flexibility, like if they need to go somewhere. So you were thinking that hybrid by choice is probably the best option. And you also mentioned that one strategy that you've seen that seems to work pretty well is like picking the day everybody has a consistent day where they're coming into the office to build those connections.

Are there any other sorts of hybrid models that you've seen that work? Like whether it's a variation on one of those or others?

Kaleem: Yeah, that's a good question. I've seen a interesting, there's been some really cool ones. Like I've seen what was it like was it one, one total week? I've seen. Just one full week, which is interesting in the whole month.

John: Oh, like the, like the firefighter model where like you work like, you know, 14 days on, five days off or something like that. Right.

Kaleem: I guess. But like you have to pick one full week to work on site. Oh. Like, that's it. That's interesting. You pick one, you pick a full week. I, at first I was like, oh, that's kind of, I don't know if I like that, like, but in a weird way I was like, oh wait, like if you get your mind right, I'm just gonna commute for 1, 2, 3.

And I think their full week was four days too. So it wasn't like they were going five days, they just went Monday through Thursday for like the last week of the month. And they like. You know, put a lot of their meetings books in. Interesting. That, that also interesting idea,

John: probably widens your your ability to hire too.

Because like as an employee, I could probably live further away if I know like, Hey, one week a month I'm gonna fly into the office. I'll be there in person and I'm stay at a hotel and then I'm gonna fly home. And like,

Nic: that's

John: it for me. Right.

Nic: I mean, I, I worked with a guy at a, I mean, one of my clients had a guy that worked there, that lived in Denver and was in the office every, like two weeks in, in Boston.

And I thought it was, yep. Yeah, early on

John: before, before the pandemic, I actually looked at a job and that was kind of like, the deal was like, Hey, you need to be in the office once a month, and like, you would have to fly in. And I'm like, eh, all right. Like, I can, I can deal with that, right? Mm-hmm. Turned out it was like, it was like all the way across the country, so I was kind of like, eh, a little bit less keen on it, but like I could see, you know, New York is a couple hour train ride from here, so like I could see doing that once, once once a month.

No problem. Yep. Yeah. I, I, you know, I've seen

Kaleem: the once a month requirement. I think that's pretty, I think some of the real flexible companies have done that, who have an office. I think the once a month is a kind of a common one. Like, Hey, you have to come here once a month. And then there was another one, I'm, I'm trying to think if it was like, I feel like they said like three weeks out of a three weeks.

Or something like that, which I thought was also another interesting one. And I've seen also, oh yeah, the last one. Last one, the one I've seen was a full month. I've seen a full month. Year. So a full month? A quarter,

Nic: yeah. Oh, a quarter. Okay.

Kaleem: A full month. A full month, a quarter. Which is, which is, you know, that would kind of agitate me honestly, a full month, like Right.

You start getting in the groove of every day,

John: like,

Kaleem: okay,

John: you're not gonna see dad for the whole month of February, but don't worry, I'll be back in March. Right, right. Yeah.

Kaleem: Yeah. So, yeah, that's good question.

Nic: Yeah, it's, it's interesting. So have you seen, I mean, we all know that there's exceptions for certain levels, for policies always, but have you seen kind of significant variation in these policies applied depending on kind of what level in the company you are?

Is it more like, Hey, if you are. A level one employee, then you're, you have to come into work all the time. If you're management, you have to come in three days a week. If you're senior vp, you come in once a week, and if you're above that, do whatever you want. Do you see significant variation depending on kind of your seniority level, or is it kind of global?

Kaleem: Yeah. You know, I'm glad you brought that up because people who are good at their job, they don't have to listen. I'm just, I'm just telling, I'm just telling them, look, I'm listening to everybody. Like, look, the reality is, so some of the biggest, I don't know these stats. I wish I had all these stats in front of me so people get off to Google these, but Google, like how well people are abiding by the policy.

It's not very well enforced at any of these companies. You know, like, oh, return to work, we're back to the office. Even like, so, so it's

John: more of a like, Hey, we're gonna say it, and then you just do whatever you want. But at least we're, we said it,

Kaleem: if you, if you're balling out, if, listen, especially in sales, sales, sales, just, you know, salespeople can do what they want if they're balling out.

If, if you are out there making sales and you have a return to office policy, I'm pretty sure the top sales person isn't even listening to policy. You

Nic: know,

Kaleem: it's

John: funny, it's funny because I know, I know of a small company where it was the exact opposite. Like the director wanted everybody in the office all the time.

Mm-hmm. And it was, you know, again, I think it goes back to like management practices and poor management practices, but like, they wanted them there to be able to say like, oh, I'm watching you work, I'm watching you do your job. But I agree with you, like, you know, most good, good salespeople if you're, if you're selling the hell out of things, like,

Kaleem: yeah.

So back to your question, Nic. I would say like high level executives. They can't hide as much. I think high, like in some companies, the high, high level executives are kind of working remotely, although there's a, you know, company wide policy. But for the most part, like those, the VP level, they all have to kind of implement the policy.

So a lot of them are kind of follow in suit, you know what I mean? But when you go in between and you're looking at people that are just high level performers, I mean, we're top developer just crushing your tickets and there's a full, you know, I'm pretty sure, yeah, some of the Amazon AI folks and some of the, you know, even the, the Twitter AI folks, although he, he's saying they're all 100% in office.

Actually, I think I've even read, he's kind of pulled back on some of those requirements because like, I'll just, I'll just jump to Anthropic. I'll jump to Facebook. You see, they're paying people for ai, so if you're, if you're performing well on your job, I'm pretty sure you can negotiate with your boss. I

Nic: mean, what I'm not, wasn't Facebook paying like 10 or $15 million in stock bonuses to these people?

Yeah. Like,

Kaleem: yeah, I'm pretty sure that that person's not gonna have to go to the office to Facebook five days. Could, could you imagine

Nic: hiring somebody for. You know, a developer. Yeah. Not, we're not talking C-Suite or anything. Can you imagine hiring a developer for $50 million a year and then being like, oh, sorry you didn't come to the office.

You're free to fired.

John: So I wonder, you said one thing, Kaleem like, you know most of your C-suite, right? They're not in the office anyway, right? Because they're traveling here, they're traveling there, they're meeting with clients, they're doing right. So like they're, they pretty much already get, and, and like this, I'm generalizing obviously, but Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They kind of get, they kinda get a get outta jail free card. Right. I'm wondering though, like as an employee coming in, have you heard of people kind of negotiating work, work from work from home or, or hybrid as part of their like compensation package where they're like, eh, you know, I see you guys like force people to come to the office.

I'll come to the office like two days a week. I haven't, I

Kaleem: haven't necessarily dealt with that situation personally, but yes, it's definitely happening. Especially in this climate. I would say if you're like, as a, as an employee, and again, we don't work with individuals on how to be better remote workers or, you know, we only train organizations on how to manage their remote employees and how to be, you know, better, better people first companies.

But I would say as just the potential employee, like I would want that in my letter. Right? Yeah. I would want something written. The thing that stinks though, as a person who has to like, you know, also do the people op stuff, it doesn't matter what they put in it because they could change it. Sure. Right.

They can in certain, lemme lemme be clear on that. On monetary, on, in certain states. Yep. You know, they put a little caveat in there so they can update their, their thing as needed. So

John: like, when you're sleeping, we're gonna change this. So before we let you go, Kaleem, I, I wanna, I wanna try to avoid the political angle here.

Nic: Yeah.

John: But a lot of companies are kind of cutting their, their DEI initiatives and I'm wondering like, why are they doing that? Is it another cost cutting measure or is it you know, is, is it something else? Fear. All right. Yeah,

Kaleem: yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll, I'll answer that pretty, pretty easily. I think it's fear, you know, there are, with the way the laws have passed, some of the laws have changed federally.

Some of these DEI programs are at risk of being you know, legally people trying to sue. So companies are trying to reduce their risk. Yeah. So like the laws change, like you can't if you have too many things. Out there, there on your site. So all government, all government sites have scrubbed any type of we're looking for culture add.

We're looking for diversity of thought. Diversity of opinions. I see you can't, you can't now have that stuff, or you could be open to a reverse discrimination lawsuit, which did open up the floodgates. It, it, I think the case won. And again, please do not quote me on this. Like, we always suggest, we do not do employment law.

We always have an attorney. We always suggest that all of our clients get an employee. I mean an attorney, attorney, an appointment attorney. But yes, that, that is what's happening right now. So, so organizations are kind of reactive in fear. Now, I will say and like, especially if there's big mergers we've seen, like for example, T-Mobile.

They just scrubbed. 'cause there was a big phone company merger. Who was t Me Who were they merging with? The US Cellular? I can't remember.

Rich: It was started with an m or something. I, I can't remember. The huge company supposed to be the C Well,

Kaleem: department of Justice held that one up. So like, not to get too political, but Department of Justice held up the merger.

So they scrubbed all, they scrubbed all of their DEI stuff and now the merger's approved. So interesting. You can kind of see that. But back to something positive organizations that are not scrubbing all their stuff, they're sticking True. There's plenty of them out there. Yeah, kind of talked about it's, it's not the same thing as this but I, I, I kind of posted a, an article about what does it mean if you do not provide Juneteenth as a paid holiday off.

What does that mean? How does that, how does your company perceived. Now some people don't care because you're gonna have a faction of people that don't mind. But then you're gonna have a faction of people that do mind. And I'm pretty sure Target has realized since the target ban from the black community.

Nic: Hmm.

Kaleem: How how removing diversity programs can impact your employer brand. And I kind of wanna end this to talk about your employer brand. If you require people to return to the office and you are not providing your employees a federal holiday that you know celebrates the last day of slavery, you're not providing, those people will notice and people will see because your employer brand, that's about how you treat your employees.

That's about what it's like to work at your company. That's about what your values are. By not doing those things, it kind of articulates what your values are and those things spread over into your customers. So yes, there are diversity programs being cut, but those are gonna have lasting impacts on their employer brand.

Nic: Yeah, and you

Kaleem: know what? I'm pretty sure certain companies I know that I would probably not apply at a job that didn't provide me juneteenth to off, let me just put it that way.

Nic: Yeah. Yeah. It, I, I think it one, in general, one of the things that companies forget is that a lot of these things are social contract between the them and their employees and them and their customers.

It's not just, you know what, whatever policy we're talking about, right.

Kaleem: Social contract. Thank you, Nic. That is the word of the phrase of the day. You are in a social freaking contract. All the stuff that we talk about at Blend, it has to deal with the relationship between you and your employees. I love that, Nic.

It is a social contract and no, it's not on the books as a, a true number. It's not a true expense. We were talking a lot about feelings. Oh, talk about feelings. Guess what? Feelings

John: and people, I mean, people go back to the economics of it. People buy with their feelings. Like if they know, Hey, company acts, company X has done this terrible thing or does not support this, this type of person.

Like, well, I'm gonna go to company Y because company Y does do that and they're gonna get my money. Strike

Kaleem: the target. Strike is a perfect example. I, I'm talking, I think it's a billion, I don't know what the numbers is, but it's, they lost a lot of money. A lot of money, so much that they, they're begging the black community.

Please come back. Please come back. Oh, please. So anyway, good stuff. So love talking with you guys. I gotta run. Yeah, it was awesome.

Nic: Well thank you Kaleem, as always. It's a pleasure chatting about workplace culture and and what you do at Blend Me.

Kaleem: Really appreciate it man. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Check us out. Check me out on the socials at Kaleem Clarkson everywhere. Definitely LinkedIn. And don't forget to check out the website. Blend me inc.com.

John: Awesome. Do you have questions or feedback? Reach out to talking Drupal on the socials with the handle talking Drupal or by email with [email protected].

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Nic: You can promote your Drupal community event on Talking Drupal. Learn [email protected] slash td promo.

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Nic: And thank you patrons for supporting talking Drupal. Your support is greatly appreciated. You can learn more about becoming a [email protected] and choosing become a Patron. Alright, Kaleem, I know you just said it, but if our listeners weren't get in touch with you, what's the best way to do that?

Kaleem: Ha. Okay, follow me on all the socials. LinkedIn at Kaleem Clarkson on the Instas, on the tiktoks, on the Facebooks. Check me out and don't forget to go to Blend me inc. Do com and

Nic: it's built

Kaleem: on Drupal, of course.

Nic: Perfect. And, and Rich, how about you,

Rich: Reach out to me on LinkedIn. I think that's probably the easiest way.

Nic: Great. And John, how about you?

John: You can find me [email protected] on all the social media and drupal.org at John Picozzi, and you can find out about EPAM at epam.com

Nic: and you can find me pretty much everywhere at Nsan, N-I-C-X-V-A-N.

John: And as always, if you've enjoyed listening, we've enjoyed talking. Have a good one, everyone.

You guys next week, peace. Bye. Thanks. Nice. Thanks fellas. Good stuff. Hey, thanks for joining us. A great conversation. Can't wait to listen. I'll talk to you later. Hey, have a good one. You later.

Nic: Thanks. Bye.