As business leaders, today we find ourselves in a place that’s all too familiar: the unfamiliar. Just as we steered our teams through the shift to remote and flexible work, we’re now on the verge of another seismic shift: AI. And like the shift to flexible work, priming an organization to embrace AI will hinge first and foremost on culture.

The pace and volume of work has increased exponentially, and we’re all struggling under the weight of it. Leaders and employees are eager for AI to lift the burden. That’s the key takeaway from our 2023 Work Trend Index, which surveyed 31,000 people across 31 countries and analyzed trillions of aggregated productivity signals in Microsoft 365, along with labor market trends on LinkedIn.

Nearly two-thirds of employees surveyed told us they don’t have enough time or energy to do their job. The cause of this drain is something we identified in the report as digital debt: the influx of data, emails, and chats has outpaced our ability to keep up. Employees today spend nearly 60% of their time communicating, leaving only 40% of their time for creating and innovating. In a world where creativity is the new productivity, digital debt isn’t just an inconvenience — it’s a liability.

AI promises to address that liability by allowing employees to focus on the most meaningful work. Increasing productivity, streamlining repetitive tasks, and increasing employee well-being are the top three things leaders want from AI, according to our research. Notably, amid fears that AI will replace jobs, reducing headcount was last on the list.

Becoming an AI-powered organization will require us to work in entirely new ways. As leaders, there are three steps we can take today to get our cultures ready for an AI-powered future:

Choose curiosity over fear

AI marks a new interaction model between humans and computers. Until now, the way we’ve interacted with computers has been similar to how we interact with a calculator: We ask a question or give directions, and the computer provides an answer. But with AI, the computer will be more like a copilot. We’ll need to develop a new kind of chemistry together, learning when and how to ask questions and about the importance of fact-checking responses.

Fear is a natural reaction to change, so it’s understandable for employees to feel some uncertainty about what AI will mean for their work. Our research found that while 49% of employees are concerned AI will replace their jobs, the promise of AI outweighs the threat: 70% of employees are more than willing to delegate to AI to lighten their workloads.

We’re rarely served by operating from a place of fear. By fostering a culture of curiosity, we can empower our people to understand how AI works, including its capabilities and its shortcomings. This understanding starts with firsthand experience. Encourage employees to put curiosity into action by experimenting (safely and securely) with new AI tools, such as AI-powered search, intelligent writing assistance, or smart calendaring, to name just a few. Since every role and function will have different ways to use and benefit from AI, challenge them to rethink how AI could improve or transform processes as they get familiar with the tools. From there, employees can begin to unlock new ways of working.

Embrace failure

AI will change nearly every job, and nearly every work pattern can benefit from some degree of AI augmentation or automation. As leaders, now is the time to encourage our teams to bring creativity to reimagining work, adopting a test-and-learn strategy to find ways AI can best help meet the needs of the business.

AI won’t get it right every time, but even when it’s wrong, it’s usefully wrong. It moves you at least one step forward from a blank slate, so you can jump right into the critical thinking work of reviewing, editing, or augmenting. It will take time to learn these new patterns of work and identify which processes need to change and how. But if we create a culture where experimentation and learning are viewed as a prerequisite to progress, we’ll get there much faster.

As leaders, we have a responsibility to create the right environment for failure so that our people are empowered to experiment to uncover how AI can fit into their workflows. In my experience, that includes celebrating wins as well as sharing lessons learned in order to help keep each other from wasting time learning the same lesson twice. Both formally and informally, carve out space for people to share knowledge — for example, by crowdsourcing a prompt guidebook within your department or making AI tips a standing agenda item in your monthly all-staff meetings. Operating with agility will be a foundational tenet of AI-powered organizations.

Become a learn-it-all

I often hear concerns that AI will be a crutch, offering shortcuts and workarounds that ultimately diminish innovation and engagement. In my mind, the potential for AI is so much bigger than that, and it will become a competitive advantage for those who use it thoughtfully. Those will become your most engaged and innovative employees.

The value you get from AI is only as good as what you put in. Simple questions will result in simple answers. But sophisticated, thought-provoking questions will result in more complex analysis and bigger ideas. The value will shift from employees who have all the right answers to employees who know how to ask the right questions. Organizations of the future will place a premium on analytical thinkers and problem-solvers who can effectively reason over AI-generated content.

At Microsoft, we believe a learn-it-all mentality will get us much farther than a know-it-all one. And while the learning curve of using AI can be daunting, it’s a muscle that has to be built over time — and that we should start strengthening today. When I talk to leaders about how to achieve this across their companies and teams, I tell them three things:

• Establish guardrails to help people experiment safely and responsibly. Which tools do you encourage employees to use, and what data is — and isn’t — appropriate to input. What guidelines do they need to follow around fact-checking, reviewing, and editing?
• Learning to work with AI will need to be a continuous process, not a one-time training. Infuse learning opportunities into your rhythm of business and keep employees up to date with the latest resources. For example, one team might block off Friday afternoons for learning, while another has monthly “office hours” for AI Q&A and troubleshooting. And think beyond traditional courses or resources. How can peer-to-peer knowledge sharing, such as lunch and learns or a digital hotline, play a role so people can learn from each other?
• Embrace the need for change management. Being intentional and programmatic will be crucial for successfully adopting AI. Identify goals and metrics for success, and select AI champions or pilot program leads to help bring the vision to life. Different functions and disciplines will have different needs and challenges when it comes to AI, but one shared need will be for structure and support as we all transition to a new way of working.

The platform shift to AI is well underway. And while it holds the promise of transforming work and giving organizations a competitive advantage, realizing those benefits isn’t possible without a culture that embraces curiosity, failure, and learning. As leaders, we’re uniquely positioned to foster this culture within our organizations today in order to set our teams up for success in the future. When paired with the capabilities of AI, this kind of culture will unlock a better future of work for everyone.

Leaders have often relied on physical cues, such as facial expressions and body language, to gauge and communicate emotions or intent. But doing so is more difficult in the remote workplace, where facial expressions and physical gestures are difficult to both read and convey.

Anecdotal evidence, as well as conversations we’ve had as part of our ongoing research into effective leadership in the digital age, is pointing to the growing use of emojis in the virtual workplace as an alternative to physical cues. They can help clarify meaning behind digital communications, as well as the type and strength of emotions being expressed. But they can also be an intergenerational and cultural minefield. For example, Gen Z’s are reportedly offended by their colleagues’ use of the smiley face emoji, which they see as patronizing. And cultural and geographical differences can mean that one person’s friendly gesture is another’s offense.

To lead in the remote or hybrid workplace, managers need to be aware of these pitfalls and need to understand how to use emojis effectively.

Using Emojis to Connect with Your Team

Based on recent research on emoji use in the workplace, our interviews with leaders who self-identified as using emojis for team management, as well as our own research into effective leadership, we identified four ways using emoji can help you connect with employees and enhance your leadership in a hybrid or remote environment.

1. Get deeper insight on how your team is feeling.

When employees at Danske Bank A/S, a Danish banking and financial services company, log on to join their remote management meetings, they share an emoji. “Our virtual meetings start with capturing the mood of the day. We each post a sticker with our name and an emoji that represents how we feel,” explains Eduardo Morales, a Danske Bank product owner. As these meetings usually are attended by more than 40 people, emoji sharing allows attendees to get a sense of each other’s moods, as well as the collective mood of the group, with just a single glance at the screen. “It saves time, and yet our interactions are richer,” Morales says. “Emojis allows us to reflect upon and express a broader range of feelings beyond the standard verbal response of ‘I’m fine.’”

The simple task of emoji selection gives team members a moment for self-reflection, which has been found to positively impact performance. And those with higher self-awareness become more thoughtful in expressing their emotions, which results in a better accuracy of emoji selection to represent their given mood.

2. Build your own cognitive empathy.

Your employees’ emotions are a data point that can help you understand what motivates them and how they experience their work.

“How do I as a leader understand what my team is working on and how they’re feeling about their work when everybody is remote?” asks Luke Thomas, founder of software startup Friday.app. He decided to start using emojis as part of his weekly check-ins. He asks direct reports to select an emoji to indicate how their week went, and then follows up with open-ended questions, such as: What went well this week? What was the worst part of the week? Is there anything I can help with?

Thomas explains that these updates allow him to have richer one-on-one discussions and then act on his employees’ needs. “I spend less time doing status updates and check-ins, and more time engaged in building better relationships, removing blockers and coaching,” he says.

3. Model appropriate emotions.

Emotions are contagious, and research suggests they may be even more amplified in the digital space. Managing your team’s emotional state and mood is a critical element of leadership, and emojis can help leaders express and role model emotional cues suitable for certain situations.

One senior leader at a global consumer products company explained that he uses emojis and GIFs to help motivate his team members and colleagues: “I use them as “pick-me-ups” to energize and to drive positive moods and behaviors within my team.” He described a recent example of how he used a humorous GIF and emoji to bring a moment of levity to a challenging financial discussion that was taking place on an online chat. The digital cue served as a transition, enabling the discussion to be steered towards a more positive orientation.

Leaders can greatly influence an organization’s emotional culture. Using emojis that represent positive workplace emotions, such as happiness, pride, enthusiasm, and optimism, is a first step for leaders looking to effectively role-model digital cues.

4. Reinforce your company’s culture.

Organizations have emotional cultures that can impact everything from employee satisfaction to burnout to financial performance. Emojis can both reflect and enhance the emotional culture of your organization in your daily communications.

“Our corporate culture is very fun and friendly — we hug a lot,” shares a manager at a global home furnishings retailer. After moving to remote work, managers at the company had to find a new way to express this aspect of their culture. “We can’t close a single department meeting without sending emojis and GIFs. A lot of them,” one told us. If the emotional culture is ebullient, as was true for the one described above, emojis can be used liberally and without necessarily having the leader set the norm.

In other workplace cultures, leaders use emojis to reinforce their organization’s core values. Take the example of material science company, DuPont. “We like to show appreciation and recognition for each other, so I often use the applause emoji to recognize people’s accomplishments,” explains Lori Gettelfinger, a DuPont global brand leader.

Take the time to gauge your organization’s emotional culture, which may be codified in mission statements, values, and daily behaviors. Then think about digital gestures, such as emojis, that can help reinforce it.

Minimizing Opportunities for Offense

If you are new or hesitant to using emojis in the workplace, we advise starting with simple emojis (e.g., thumbs up) rather than emojis that represent complex emotions (e.g. laughing emojis with tears) in order to decrease the likelihood that an emoji will offend.

Offense usually stems from a misinterpretation of a sent emoji or when someone uses an emoji that they think means one thing but really means another. For example, if a manager sends the emoji that features two hands pressed together, does it send a message of gratitude? A request for a favor? Or is it hands clasped in prayer? And is the emoji with the smiling face and two hands signaling a friendly wave “hello” or giving a hug? If you’re not sure, better to avoid using the emoji and to stick with something that is more straightforward and less open to interpretation.

Employees don’t check their emotions at the office door — or Zoom room. And when you’re leading in a virtual space, it can be harder to read how your team is feeling. Using emojis can help managers connect with their employees and strengthen their organization’s emotional culture.

Why are so many people quitting their jobs? According to a recent McKinsey report, employers believe that it is a problem with compensation or work-life balance. But the employees who are quitting tell a different story. Their main reasons for quitting are 1) not feeling valued and 2) not feeling a sense of belonging. And yet during the pandemic, the most productive companies actually broke this trend and improved employee job satisfaction by 48%. What do these successful organizations have in common? They practice five principles, illustrated in this article, that help their teams connect and thrive. As we reimagine work in the post-pandemic era, consider how these principles can help you create a sense of belonging on your team and show team members that they are indeed valued. Teams that deliberately practice these principles not only endure, but grow through challenge. These are the teams that people yearn to be part of. Build these teams, and their members won’t want to leave.

More than 25 million people quit their jobs in the second half of 2021. The so-called “Great Resignation” is in full force. And quitting begets more quitting — so much so that The New York Times coined a new term for it: quitagion.

Why are so many people quitting their jobs? According to a recent McKinsey report, employers believe that it is a problem with compensation or work-life balance. But the employees who are quitting tell a different story. Their main reasons for quitting are 1) not feeling valued and 2) not feeling a sense of belonging. And yet during the pandemic, the most productive companies actually broke this trend and improved employee job satisfaction by 48%. What do these successful organizations have in common? They practice five principles that help their teams connect and thrive.

To illustrate these principles, we’ll use the example of Michelle Taite, a CMO who was appointed to help accelerate the integration of two companies after an acquisition. As we reimagine work in the post-pandemic era, consider how these principles can help you create a sense of belonging on your team and show team members that they are indeed valued.

Put People First

When the conditions are right, people can accomplish more together than anyone could alone. In an ideal world, the more people give, the more they get. A win for one is a win for all. Achievement is a positive sum game. In this state, people feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves. Enjoyment heightens and productivity is elevated in turn. When a team does not achieve this, they enter a zero sum game, a state where everyone is motivated by their own self-interests, and the team as a whole suffers.

Foster a positive sum game by creating an environment where team members join together, rather than protecting themselves from the zero sum game. This happens when team members relax into a trusting relationship that they feel is not just transactional but based in genuine care. When that relationship is achieved, team members trust each other to have their backs and respect each other as individuals with needs, aspirations, and joys. Referred to as shared empathy, this state is a leading indicator of effective teams. Leaders and teams cultivate shared empathy when they learn and care about each other’s deeper experience and take interest in each other’s lives — celebrating birthdays and inquiring about people’s children, spouses, and hobbies.

When Michelle stepped into her new role, she introduced herself to her team first and foremost as a person. She shared pictures of her family, her interests, and her heritage. Michelle’s team created a Slack channel devoted to fun and people, letting their personalities shine. She posted snippets from her own life, like a weekend family photo or her child’s meltdown with the caption “sometimes mornings are interesting here.” Make time for humor and create room for personal connection. Open meetings with ice breakers like, “What made you laugh this weekend?”, “What’s your favorite candy?”, or “What was a highlight and lowlight of your week?”

Rally Around Shared Goals

Anyone who has ever been a part of a sports team knows that achieving together can be a bonding experience. Tapping into the desire for greatness, team members strive together and challenge each other to bring their best. The joy of learning and ultimately winning is magnified tenfold when shared with others. Challenges bond teams — but only if they share a belief that striving to win unites them.

Michelle and her team use the hashtag #BeatOurBest to galvanize themselves around bold goals as they strive to build on their greatest achievements. When defining their marketing goals, the team framed the conversation around two questions: “What must we do to truly serve the needs of our customers and fuel growth?” and “How might we #BeatOurBest?” The how encouraged teammates to learn, experiment, and push the boundaries in service of the greater goal. And they specifically use the hashtag to unify. Michelle signs off in her weekly email with “Let’s #BeatOurBest together.” The hashtag helps orient them to the shared experience of reaching into the unknown and discovering just how big their wins can be.

Model Humility and Curiosity

People bond when they share a set of values that make them feel like there is something special about their group. Humility and curiosity are two values that can supercharge bonding. Humility is the recognition of our limits. When a leader models humility, it opens up space for others to contribute. The leader is recognizing gaps that others can fill and also creating an environment where it is psychologically safe to give bold ideas and risk being wrong. Curiosity is the recognition that there is always more to learn. This fuels the excitement of experimentation and growth.

Recognize opportunities to show humility by responding to feedback with openness and curiosity instead of defensiveness. Lead with inquiry and be clear that your proposals are a starting point. This encourages divergent opinions and creativity. Michelle demonstrated humility and curiosity when she told her team, “I am going to ask a lot of questions. They might be stupid, but that’s okay. I’d really love to learn.” To encourage curiosity, show delight in moments of discovery directly and indirectly related to the work. In her weekly newsletter, Michelle shares insights and inspiration she gathers from her own reading, podcasts, and TED videos. These serve as thought starters for the team.

Celebrate Wins

Shared joy — especially the joy of team wins — reinforces bonds. The stress of hitting targets can drain the joy out of work. Celebrating wins together keeps the focus where it needs to be for a team to excel and bond through progress. In her newsletter, Michelle celebrates “Awesome Work of the Week,” featuring accomplishments big and small, recognizing the unique value that each team member brings to the greater effort. Her team has a “ka-ching” button they press whenever someone has an idea that unlocks the work. This reinforces diversity of input and marks small steps forward in a fun and lighthearted way.

Connect the Dots 

When teams understand their why, motivation and performance increase. Knowing that one’s work has impact and feeling that the work is meaningful are two of the top five predictors of a high-performing team. Always connect the dots between the work and the greater purpose or goal, and help every individual understand how their own work contributes to the collective success.

And remember that the why that matters to humans like no other is connection. Their work connects them to consumers, to other parts of the organization that depend on them, and most of all to each other. Teams that deliberately invest in these connections are unique. They not only endure, but grow through challenge. These are the teams that people yearn to be part of. Build those teams, and their members won’t want to leave.

 

In 2015, Laszlo Bock wrote Work Rules!, which laid out a set of guidelines for how to combine data analysis, academic rigor, and human resources best practices to create a world-class company culture, based on his time at Google. Six years later, he’s seen firsthand how experienced leadership teams are struggling to navigate the shift to hybrid work and maintain a culture of excellence. So he’s revisited what he originally wrote to identify the five new rules of hybrid work. This article shows how leaders can apply them to build great teams, even when those teams aren’t together in-person all the time.

 

As CEO at Humu, where we help Fortune 500 companies build world-class cultures, I’ve seen firsthand how experienced leadership teams are struggling to navigate the shift to hybrid work and maintain a culture of excellence.

• One technology CHRO told me that her 80,000 employees are pulsed weekly on how they are feeling, but admits her boss, the CEO, has no idea what it means when the scores move around.
• The CTO of a 30,000-person consulting firm told me the pandemic has been great for senior partners who no longer have to travel the world and are moving to low-cost havens like Bermuda, but miserable for associates who miss out on the coaching and apprenticeship of the “before times.”
• A CEO of a 50,000-person retailer told me they don’t think it’s fair that retail staff have to be in their stores while executives and senior managers work from home, but the office workers don’t want to come back and he’s afraid of losing technology and data science staff.

While hybrid is often presented as a new model, the fundamentals of what transforms a group of people into an exceptional team haven’t changed as much as we might think. When I was the senior vice president of people operations at Google, we had many employees, especially in engineering and sales, who worked from home a few days each week (even if we didn’t call it hybrid back then). And Google was named by Fortune as the best company to work for in the United States eight times.

In 2015, I wrote the book Work Rules!, which laid out a set of guidelines, based on my time building Google’s culture, for how to combine data analysis, academic rigor, and human resources best practices to create a world-class company culture. It included rules like, “Make work meaningful,” “Hire only people who are better than you,” and “Be frugal and generous.”

Based on my time at Google and now at Humu, I revisited what I wrote in 2015 to identify the five new rules of hybrid work. Some I’ve kept from the old guidelines: Meaning and purpose, for instance, matter more than ever in a hybrid model. But others are brand new. Here’s how leaders can apply them to build great teams, even when those teams aren’t together in-person all the time.

1. Make work purpose driven.

Purpose matters more than ever. Our research at Humu shows that people who don’t feel their work contributes to their company’s mission are 630% more likely to quit their jobs than their peers who do.

The way to help employees rediscover the purpose in their work is to make every task and project mission driven. For example, CommonSpirit, the largest nonprofit health system in America, starts important meetings with “reflections,” stories or videos recognizing how hard it is to be a health care worker in a pandemic while also connecting to all the good they do for their patients and communities. Managers can do the same by tying each team member’s work back to the bigger picture of why what they do matters to the world. When assigning tasks, managers should consistently outline answers to: Why is this project important? How will it impact others? How does it fit into the company’s broader mission?

2. Trust your people more than feels comfortable.

Encourage managers to offer direction, not directions. To help hybrid teams succeed, managers should clearly outline the milestones they’d like their reports to hit — and then let them figure out how to get there.

At Humu, in the midst of the pandemic, we decided we wanted to offer a product for mid-sized companies. Our leadership team set a clear timeline and success criteria, and then stepped back to let our product managers and people scientists take over.

It felt uncomfortable at first, but by giving our team the freedom to decide their process and work product, we ended up with a better end product — and were impressed by the innovative approaches that arose. Indeed, research from when I was at Google shows that teams that index the highest on trust and psychological safety are 40% more productive than those who are low on these areas.

3. Learn in the small moments. Send people — and yourself — nudges.

Hybrid work means it’s easier to miss out on the small moments that make teamwork magical and spark innovation. Google News, for example, was the result of a casual conversation between two employees standing next to each other in line for lunch. In an office, these types of interactions happen naturally; in a remote setting, they fall by the wayside and over time this is highly detrimental.

Nudges can offer an opportunity to spark these moments in a hybrid environment. At Humu, we personalize nudges based on a range of signals including individual learning goals, team focus areas, and job level. For example, if team members are eager for opportunities to learn and their manager would like to build mentorship abilities, we might deliver a nudge to the manager ahead of their next 1:1 that offers recommendations for how to have a growth-focused conversation with a report. After six months of receiving these types of personalized nudges, 90% of teams at a Fortune 500 company told us they noticed their managers making clear improvements.

You could send nudges encouraging employees to “Reach out to a team member today” or ones that explicitly communicate unwritten norms, such as “It’s okay to ask a lot of questions.”

4. Provide clarity. Be more decisive than feels comfortable.

While you should offer your people autonomy, you also shouldn’t shy away from putting a stake in the ground. When it comes to company direction, policies, and values, being clear is the kindest thing you can do — even if your decision is unpopular. When people know what’s happening, they can make the best choices for themselves. It’s ambiguity that is more punishing.

For example, rather than leaving it up to managers to determine when people should come into the office, bring everyone together on Wednesdays. Or Tuesdays. Or Thursdays. The important thing is to pick a day when the majority of employees will be together in person — and to not place even more burden on already exhausted managers. Imagine the poor manager who has to justify why her team has to be in the Glendale office each day when another manager allowed an employee to work from Hawaii. Suddenly her fiercest talent competition is from inside her own company.

5. Include everyone. Take a long hard look in the mirror.

Many leaders I speak with ask for ways to maintain their culture in a hybrid model. But most cultures could benefit from some improvement. Part of the reason people don’t want to come back to offices is likely that they weren’t inclusive spaces to begin with, particularly for people from underrepresented backgrounds, introverts, and newly hired employees.

Use the shift to hybrid as an opportunity to identify cultural gaps, and to set new norms to create a better, stronger culture. Encourage managers to take notice of who often dominates the conversation in meetings or receives the most recognition for a project’s success. Make the evaluation criteria for projects as clear as possible: The more explicit the rubric, the less room for bias.

Leaders today are operating against a backdrop of unprecedented uncertainty and amid nearly two years of teams being cooped up at home. Those conditions are not likely to change in the next 12 to 18 months — instead, leaders need to change. By following the five guidelines laid out above, they can support their workforces and create world-class cultures, no matter where their people work.