Working Life Discussion; Remote Work, Hybrid Work, and Work-Life Transformation

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In the coffee room, there was such a request, which received likes and no opposition, so I started a thread after we had discussed it with the Forum’s administration team:

After the COVID-19 era, remote and hybrid work have become a permanent part of many of our daily lives, but practices, experiences, expectations, and rules vary enormously between employers and employees.

Due to work, workplace, industry, and many other different factors, some companies and people prefer on-site work, remote work, or the intermediate model of hybrid work. In the coffee room, people shared a wide variety of their experiences with these different options, so here you can continue with the same themes. Otherwise, this thread can be used to talk about working life, but this is NOT any kind of politics thread; there is a separate thread for that where you can discuss those topics.

Since we are understanding, polite, and smart people, let’s discuss these aforementioned themes smartly. In the coffee room, there were already many different personal experiences and smart thoughts from people, which highlighted, among other things, well-being at work, work productivity, and the reconciliation of leisure and work, etc. :blush:

Thanks, and let’s get some good, fruitful discussions going. :blush:

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Inderesin kahvihuone (Osa 10)
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I read an HS article about empathy and leadership → https://x.com/JuhaHaanpera/status/1999777918466318702/photo/1. According to Professor Timo Vuori’s research, a good and a bad leader can be distinguished from each other in just about 30 seconds. In that time, a good leader manages to identify and validate their subordinates’ feelings before moving on to justifications and solutions. That small moment seems to make a huge difference.

The research emphasizes the importance of middle management. They are squeezed between the strategic visions of top management and the everyday experiences of employees. Strategies often fail not due to technical solutions or poor plans, but because people don’t feel heard. When emotions are disregarded, resistance grows and change remains halfway.

According to Vuori, an empathetic leader does not dispute concerns with rational arguments, but first acknowledges them as legitimate. Only after that can the discussion be guided towards goals. This does not make decision-making softer, but rather more effective. When people feel heard, they commit and participate in making solutions.

Also interesting is the observation about stress. The more a leader pushes change forward in haste and under pressure, the weaker empathy often becomes. Stress narrows attention, and other people begin to appear as obstacles to goals. Yet emotions affect us all the time – memory, decisions, risk-taking, and how we interpret others’ intentions.

For me, this was a good reminder that empathy is not a personality trait that some people happen to have. It is a skill and a way of directing attention that can and should be practiced. In leadership and indeed in all collaboration, sometimes half a minute is enough to change the entire dynamic.

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Great start to your career. Congratulations! Although it might be nice in the moment, I would be wary of remote work if you have long-term career advancement goals. You miss out on building networks and leave many lessons unlearned outside of your own specific area. And people still choose people for positions of greater responsibility.

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I had to read that twice, like, excuse me, what?

Remote work, even if it’s not directly related to a salary discussion, is a perfectly valid form of work when managed and implemented correctly, just like any other. My own networks are broad and extensive, and they have been built almost entirely through remote work.

I haven’t needed to listen to the weekend stories of my workplace’s “extroverted workplace culture maintainers” in the breakroom or attend after-work drinking sessions to advance my career or my network. And I don’t believe anyone else needs to, with the possible exception of “salesman-type” professions, most of which have already shifted online anyway.

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You’re right, if you wanted the ultimate career-ladder boost, being an ambitious climber buzzing around the office would certainly help (up to a certain point). We have one of those “Elisa salespeople” types at our company too. I’m a social creature myself, so when I do go to the office 2-3 times a month, the days are spent having “hallway chats,” and it feels like enough to get things through and make sufficient progress in that area.

About 40-50% of the company’s senior staff work remotely from another city, so there’s no point in constantly hanging around the office coffee circle :smiley: Networking within the industry is marked as a development goal for me, so in practice, my manager tells me to attend every possible seminar, and I get to trot around Finland nicely and rake in those mileage allowances :smiling_face_with_sunglasses:

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Based on my own experience and observations, it really is the case that if you want to advance your career into a supervisory or management role, you should avoid remote work. Leading people is most effective face-to-face. I just heard that in some company, even performance reviews were handled over Teams—disgusting.

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