Deciding where to work? Intentionality and purpose may be key

Amidst the ongoing global furore, organisations that continue to implement return-to-office (RTO) mandates are perhaps failing to ask themselves one critical question: Why exactly are you asking employees to come into a physical office?

Or more specifically, what is your intentionality in doing so, asked Jennifer Dudeck, Senior Vice-President and Chief People Officer, Red Hat.

Speaking with HRM Asia, she said, “You can’t really have a one-size-fits-all mandate because you need intentionality based on the individual – the work they do, the team they are in and the role they play. At Red Hat, we use intentionality to guide us when deciding where each employee works. This could be based on their role, their skills, and where they are at in their career.”

“At Red Hat, we use intentionality to guide us when deciding where each employee works. This could be based on their role, their skills, and where they are at in their career.” – Jennifer Dudeck, Senior Vice-President and Chief People Officer, Red Hat

This is not to suggest that Dudeck is an advocate of full remote work. On the contrary, she believes that it is beneficial for people to come together as communities in an increasingly fragmented world, where some of the ability to have dialogues, to connect, and to form relationships, are seemingly declining.

“We will continue to find opportunities to bring our associates together to reinforce the humanness of being part of a team. Otherwise, with technology and where the world is at, I worry that we will each sit in our little corner and lose our ability to collaborate, form relationships and feel a shared sense of purpose.”

This approach, Dudeck shared, is driven by the core principles of openness and transparency and trusting employees to be intelligent adults who can find the right balance between life and work. Regardless of where they work from, leaders should ask themselves: Have you set clear expectations of what you expect from employees in their jobs?

She continued, “If you start with clarity, employees will know what they need to do and be accountable for in their role. You then trust them to get the job done in the best way, no matter where they work from.”

Without clarity of intention, it is perhaps inevitable that people will form their own narrative, Dudeck cautioned. “If the real reason for wanting employees in the office is to improve performance, say it. If you’ve invested a lot of money in real estate and you want to get your return on investment, say it. It’s not just telling people you have decided they are more productive when they are in the office because that may not ring true in the different situations people are in.”

In building a culture of openness and transparency, Red Hat is also mindful of creating psychologically safe places where employees feel safe to speak up.

There may be times when hard decisions must be made, even if they are not universally popular. In such instances, having transparent and open dialogues not only allows employees to air their views; it also allows organisations to provide better understanding around decision making.

Dudeck explained, “You may think it’s a horrible thing the company has to do, but do you believe that we did it with the right intentions, the right mindset and with fairness of objectivity after going through every possible consideration around what is the best decision to make?”

To effectively create the conditions where employees can thrive without compromising on organisational needs, Dudeck circles back to the point of intentionality because, as she emphasised, this cannot be looked at as a mathematical equation.

“Everyone’s situation is unique and there isn’t an algorithm that’s going to apply to all employees. The best thing for any HR leader to do is to understand that an individualised approach, or at least a team-based discussion, is required. Understand what the team needs to accomplish and understand what the employee needs to accomplish.”

Leveraging AI to drive purpose for employees in 2024

With 2025 rapidly approaching, Dudeck is already thinking of innovative ways to give Red Hat associates purpose as the organisation stands at a key inflection point. Much of this effort, she revealed, will be driven by AI.

“Up to this point, large language models have been derived in closed environments by a set of people who’ve contributed the data, and some of these models are now proprietary and for-profit. Because of where the data came from, there may be bias because of a limited data set.”

IBM, which Red Hat is a subsidiary of, is now taking some of its large language models and putting them in the open-source domain and communities to make them non-proprietary.  This empowers Red Hat employees and its community to help grow and improve these language models.

“This is one of the ways we’ll give our associates purpose in 2025,” said Dudeck. “We will now be the company that is saying we will not have closed models; we will not have for-profit proprietary models that are not transparent.”

On a larger organisational scale, Red Hat is transcending its purpose beyond profits and exploring how AI can impact the world in the most inclusive ways.

READ MORE: RTO? Why Autodesk is championing a hybrid-first approach instead

“AI is going to be big in 2025 and anyone who thinks they can avoid AI do so at their own peril,” said Dudeck. “How can we, as an organisation, migrate through AI and what does that mean for our associates?”

“How do we ensure that every associate has the opportunity to continue to grow and advance their career with AI? Just like the RTO office, it comes down to very personalised solutions based on who you are, what your job is, and what you aspire to,” she concluded.