Discovering The Formula For Hybrid Work Employee Engagement

Hybrid Work

What does it take to master hybrid work? After an enlightening interview with Karl May, CEO of Join Digital, I believe we're starting to find some answers. And the key lies in employee engagement.

Join Digital, based in Silicon Valley, is spearheading a fresh approach to remote and hybrid work. They provide a comprehensive tech solution to Fortune 2500 companies, bridging the gap between technology and employee satisfaction in the hybrid work environment.

From advanced secure technology services to workplace analytics, Join Digital helps employers understand and tailor their work environments to employee needs. Their focus is on creating a tech ecosystem that enhances both productivity and satisfaction in the hybrid workspace.

What keeps employers awake at night as they navigate the hybrid work landscape? A key insight from my conversation with Karl May is the pressing need to create a work environment that caters to the needs of employees. And it's not just about being productive—it's also about keeping the workforce content.

May's experience mirrors the findings of my focus groups in the 23 clients I helped figure out their return to the office and hybrid work strategy. Many companies discovered that their office spaces were noisy and distracting, hampering productivity rather than fostering it. The perception of the office as a place for mentoring was backfiring; instead of nurturing younger employees, senior staff often secluded themselves, preferring the relative peace of their private offices.

May was quick to highlight how employee satisfaction often suffers from poor technology or subpar work conditions. The challenge for companies is to adjust their work environments to alleviate these points of dissatisfaction.

In the realm of hybrid work, not all tasks are created equal. Some work thrives in the office; other tasks are best performed remotely.

As May shared, collaborative tasks, problem-solving sessions, brainstorming meetings, and scenarios that benefit from non-verbal cues are typically more effective in an office setting. For these, being physically present adds an extra layer of interaction that can significantly improve outcomes.

On the other hand, work that requires laser focus and minimal distraction – such as reading documents or preparing for an interview – should be conducted in a quiet space, preferably at home.

However, these insights pose a thought-provoking question: If the high-stakes activities that are best suited for the office comprise less than 10% of an employee's time, why are many companies still asking employees to be on-site for three or four days a week?

Part of the answer, according to May, lies in the generational shifts within the workforce. According to him, his generation of Baby Boomer professionals has been indoctrinated with the idea of going to the office. He said that “Growing up in the Silicon Valley, we have always equated work with in-person interaction and spontaneous brainstorming sessions. Hewlett Packard, where I started my career, practically invented the concept of 'Management by Walking Around'.”

Many of the current generation of leaders have a perspective that weighs highly the value of impromptu brainstorms and chance meetings that can spark innovation—an element that's often lacking in a remote environment.

However, a whole new generation has experienced work differently during the pandemic. The question is, according to May: “have we lost three years of new hires that will never be able to catch up and integrate properly into our companies due to the absence of in-person mentorship?”

Now there's food for thought. It's like trying to whip up a gourmet meal without the main ingredients. These individuals graduating from 2020 to 2022 have not had the same experience of working closely with more experienced colleagues. It's like expecting them to fly a plane without a co-pilot.

That brings up another issue - the undeniable social element to work. While work and life balance is essential, let's not forget that work is a part of life. We cannot ignore the human need for social interaction, which often extends into our workspaces. The idea of being bothered by someone popping into my office for a chat about the latest binge-worthy show might seem intrusive, but it is these small, seemingly insignificant interactions that shape the human experience at work.

So, what's the final verdict? It's as complex as a Rubik's cube but equally as fascinating. Hybrid work environments bring their challenges, sure, but they also come with an array of opportunities. By understanding and prioritizing employee satisfaction and productivity, companies can create a working environment that caters to diverse needs. After all, our workforce is as diverse as a box of chocolates - each with their unique flavor and value. And the only way to make the most of this diversity is to provide an environment – hybrid, remote, or in-person – where each one can shine. To quote Shakespeare (a remote worker in his time, if you think about it), "All the world's a stage." Let's ensure we provide the best stage for our employees to perform at their best. The future of work is here, and it's hybrid. Let's embrace it.

The 10 best hybrid SUVs for 2023

See the best hybrid SUVs available today. Kelley Blue Book editors test drive and examine hybrid SUVs every year and rank them on factors like safety, fuel economy, driving performance, tech features, car value, level of comfort, and more.

Combined fuel economy: 40 MPG

The redesigned Honda CR-V is KBB’s Compact SUV Best Buy for 2023. It’s strong in every area that matters and should be at the top of any buyer’s must-see list. The CR-V Hybrid is especially attractive, delivering more power and even better fuel economy.

Starting price: $37,545

Expert rating: 4.7 / 5

Combined fuel economy: 34 MPG

Spacious and well-equipped, the 2023 Hyundai Santa Fe Hybrid 2-row midsize SUV amps up both fuel efficiency and power levels over its combustion-only counterpart.

Starting price: $38,015

Expert rating: 4.7 / 5

Combined fuel economy: 37 MPG

The safe and fuel-efficient 2023 Kia Sorento Hybrid delivers interior comfort and modern technology in a stylish midsize 3-row SUV.

Check out: The all-new 2023 Toyota Corolla Cross Hybrid hits the spot

Starting price: $28,815

Expert rating: 4.6 / 5

Combined fuel economy: 43 MPG

The 2023 Kia Sportage Hybrid is an all-new compact crossover with a fuel-efficient hybrid setup. Pricing starts at $27,290.

More: The 2023 Kia Sportage Plug-in Hybrid is stylish, practical and has stellar safety scores

Starting price: $32,560

Expert rating: 4.6 / 5

Combined fuel economy: 40 MPG

The 2023 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid compact SUV amps up its basic strengths with great fuel economy. Those strengths include comfort, space, reliability, equipment, safety, and strong resale values.

Starting price: $43,555

Expert rating: 4.5 / 5

Combined fuel economy: 36 MPG

The 2023 Toyota Highlander Hybrid brings exceptional fuel economy to an excellent 3-row midsize SUV renowned for safety, reliability, and strong resale value.

Starting price: $35,645

Expert rating: 4.4 / 5

Combined fuel economy: 38 MPG

The 2023 Hyundai Tucson Hybrid is a spacious compact SUV that turns fuel efficiency up a notch and comes with all-wheel drive as standard.

You might like: The safest new cars of 2023

Starting price: $35,955

Expert rating: 4.4 / 5

Combined fuel economy: 39 MPG

The safe and efficient 2023 Toyota Venza boasts excellent fuel economy, great resale value, and an upscale interior, making it an appealing choice in hybrid SUVs.

Starting price: $29,495

Expert rating: 4.0 / 5

Combined fuel economy: 39 MPG

The refreshed 2023 Ford Escape is a well-rounded compact SUV with a flexible interior, modern tech features, and some variety under the hood, including two hybrid options.

Plus: The 2023 Honda Accord has a new look and a hybrid option that’s front and center

Starting price: $38,355

Expert rating: 3.8 / 5

Combined fuel economy: 26 MPG

The 2023 Ford Explorer midsize 3-row SUV offers great engines, a wide range of variants, excellent safety credentials, and generous cargo space. But it’s due for an update, since the higher ground is now occupied by newer rivals.

This story originally ran on KBB.com. 

Test-Driving The Lamborghini Urus Performante

Performante is the latest evolution of Lamborghini’s Urus Super-SUV. Not a wild evolution, but it ... [+] adds aero tricks, it’s lighter, demonstrably quicker off the line, and offers other performance factoids to juice up the elevator pitch. Performante is the perfection of Urus. Pronounced Oooo-Rooos.

Performante is the latest evolution of Lamborghini’s Urus Super-SUV, which has been around since late 2017. At this mature stage in product cycle, Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelmann’s business plan comes into play, with subtle variants to buoy conquest sales and cycle early adopters into new vehicles. Performante is not a wild evolution of Urus, but it adds aero tricks, it’s lighter, demonstrably quicker off the line, and offers other performance factoids to juice up the elevator pitch.

Urus Performante’s twin-turbo V8 delivers 656 hp and 627 lb. ft. @ 2300-4500. Urus is built on the ... [+] longer 118-inch wheelbase offered by the MLB “engineering toolkit,” which ensures a roomy second row, making the Lamborghini Super-SUV the family friendly variant. And yeah, the press/marketing vehicle was white—hard to shoot.

Because Urus (pronounced Oooo-Rooos) is based on the MLB “engineering toolkit” shared with Porsche, Bentley and Audi, development in Sant’Agata has always been a matter of powertrain and suspension calibration, scripting differences, braking hardware, and of course a masterful reskin inside and out.

Performante has aero tweaks, but an SUV breadvan body architecture is no candidate for the sort of ... [+] wild active-aero rear wing of the Huracán Performante. Not needed, and it wouldn’t work. Note the big eyeball in the center of the grille.

In other words, beyond the bodywork that echoes design language from that fabled military recon truck of the desert, the 1980s Lamborghini LM002, Urus is all about the computer work and bolt-on subsystems. With shared engineering toolkits, the Devil is in the details, and details spell the difference between brands.

Interior is executed in Lamborghini’s luxo-technica-sporty style, carrying themes seen in Huracán ... [+] and Aventador. Seats have strong bolstering, with accent stitching in the Lamborghini hexagonal pattern. Everything inside messages “Lamborghini.” This is branding done very, very well.

Power comes from the highest specification of the VW/Porsche corporate twin-turbo 4-liter V8 that first saw light of day in the Porsche Panamera. Urus has 656 horsepower, a few more than the standard Urus and a few more than the same V8 found in the Porsche Cayenne Turbo GT, though this is perhaps a rounding error for marketing purposes. Torque is 627 lb. ft. @ 2300-4500 rpm, though to be fair it is not a perfectly flat plateau, more like a 170-degree arc.

Front discs measure 17.3 inches and are clamped with a 10-piston caliper. Out back, the discs ... [+] measure 14.56 inches with a simpler 1-piston caliper, which tells you the fronts are doing most of the work, as one expects. Urus Performante weighs 4760 lbs.

Boosty torque combines with quick, crisp yet smoothly buffered upshifts of the 8-speed automatic to exploit gaps in Los Angeles boulevard traffic or pull Performante strongly out of tight medium-speed corners on mountain roads. Performante can hit 60 mph in 3.3 seconds, and that’s with OEM manufacturer test procedures that usually include weight of a front passenger. Performante is several ticks quicker than a standard Urus. Performante is as quick off the line as supercars of just a few years ago.

This angle shows the graceful fall of the rear roofline. To achieve this Lamborghini roofline, the ... [+] longer wheelbase was used, 118 inches. Side benefit is this is the family friendly Lamborghini, as the rear door frame is tall and long. Easy to put children in or pull them out. Urus Performante, for the coolest dad at school transportation.

Full-tilt stoplight launches are hard on the equipment. Roll-on performance matters most, and Performante shines. From toddling-along boulevard speeds to triple digits is just a couple of breaths away. Throttle mashed wide open and revs climbing, the engine’s upper intake sings.

Not an active aero wing like on the Huracán Performante of the Aventador Super Veloce Jota. Just a ... [+] tidy bit of carbon-fiber above the hatchback hinges. Here, Performante does not mean serious aero engineering, just tweaks. Also out back, a neatly integrated but functional diffuser under the rear bumper.

Let the computer perform perfect upshifts, or Dial M for Manual for the added and satisfying driver challenge of clack-clacking the shifter paddles just before bouncing the rev limiter. Either way, Urus Performante leaps, impressive for a vehicle that weighs 4760 pounds.

This angle shows the pronounced rear haunches and arc of Urus Performante roofline.Ready to pounce.

With Bentley having gone Full Woke Greta, dropping their distinctive, brand-defining second-gen twin-turbo W12 to placate the Green totalitarians, Urus Performante and Porsche’s Turbo GT and e-Hybrid variants of the Cayenne are the three best and most distinctive performance options from this MLB and MLB-Evo gene pool.

Note the EGO lever. Strada mode is only desirable on long highway drives. Strada mode requires ... [+] manually canceling systems like the engine’s auto-on/off. Better to use the EGO menu to tailor calibration. Sport worked best for powertrain and steering, with suspension in Sport or the more comfortable Strada setting. Strada may be the default setting, but it is best suited to long highway drives like LA to the Bay area, or Atlanta to Savannah when Zen Time requires a smooth ride, soaking up hundreds of miles.

Urus’ competence on mountain 2-lanes combined with everyday utility reaffirms the argument that Super-SUVs are the successors to the big GT cars of the 1950s and ‘60s, filling the role of 2-doors like the Lamborghini Espada of the 1970s. Sure, sure, SUVs are 4-door “wagons” and not sexy fastback Gran Turismos like Espada, but they fulfill a similar driver mission and place in the market: big, fast, and competent with long-distance comfort. And thanks to all those 21st Century sensors and brake interventions, Urus is fully functional in the nightmare morning traffic of my native LA. I’m entirely in favor of Level 3 semi-autonomy for commuting in LA.

The office. Excellent range of adjustment in the seat and steering column position. Short or tall, a ... [+] comfortable setting can be found. Excellent assembly quality, nice Lamborghini luxo-tecnica materials.

As you’d expect from the VW and Porsche Groups, the man-machine relationship is excellent. Big as it is, Urus becomes an extension of oneself when on the move. Sightlines are excellent, the vehicle easy to place in a corner, or a steep, tight parking garage spiral, or a heavily curbed drive-through. Those gorgeous wheels will not end up scraped on a curb. Urus, the Super-Tallboy.

One assumes the Rally setting was added for the Middle East market, where the vehicles might be ... [+] flogged on red dunes or the Devil’s Plunge.

To achieve the quintessential arc of a Lamborghini roofline, peaking at the windshield header and sloping away like a Countach, Lamborghini adopted the longer 118-inch wheelbase of the MLB toolkit, then added the fastback coupé roof structure. Lamborghini’s design boss Mitja Borkert needed the extra length to deliver that graceful arc, leaving the shorter wheelbase to Porsche. The practical result is not only the right profile for Lamborghini, but also excellent rear headroom and a tall rear door frame. I’m over six foot and had no trouble climbing into the back seat. There’s ample leg, knee, head, and foot room out back for carpooling to the range with your oafish pals. Urus’ cargo area can swallow Bugaboo strollers, luggage for a family trip, or your range party’s deer rifles in hard cases.

Lean into the rear door frame to pull out a little one, and there’s no need to twist and contort, no concern about tweaking the lower back, and no risk of clocking the trusting child’s head on the doorframe. Just pull that munchkin right out, easy as she goes. A rapid sprint to school drop-off will set the tykes to giggling.

A properly outrageous color for a Lamborghini.

Lamborghinis should not be finished like this press/marketing vehicle, in Tiger Mom Cram School White, which is tough to photograph. Sure, the carbon-fiber exterior pieces help, defining many surface shapes, and it looks good enough in person. But a Lamborghini should be exuberant, downright berserk—a psychedelic jellybean. Urus options include a pearl capsule of green, orange, and yellow inspired by the colors of Countach and Miura of the Swingin’ Sixties and Groovin’ Seventies. The branded names are Verde Viper, Arancio Borealis and Giallo Inti. Better still, why not engage Lamborghini’s Ad Personam atelier and splash the body with Viola Parsifae. Lamborghinis are not wall flowers. They are not for the shy and withdrawn. Lamborghinis are not subtle. Embrace your Inner Crazy F#*K.

Another of the capsule colors, a suitably psychedelic yellow, Giallo Inti. Note the bold fender ... [+] tops, and front fender that mimics design language of the 1980s and '90s Lamborghini military recon truck, the LM002

Negatives? Likely due to the 23-inch optional wheels with massive Pirellis (285/35 front, 325/30 rear—man, that’s a lot of tire), on some cobbled and patched stretches of boulevard the vehicle can rock ever so slightly side to side, a wiggle that chassis engineers call “lateral shimmy.” No tramlining of the steering, but a shimmy. Call it the price of beauty. That said, not even 23-inch wheels harmed the Urus turning circle, no compromise of significance asked, as the vehicle proved wieldy in old parking structures and the odd twists and boundaries created by massive oaks along my gravel drive.

The only other “negative”? Upshifts are pure silk, but when manually downshifting with the paddles it’s clear this is a conventional torque-converter transmission and not a dual-clutch gearbox, as the powertrain harumphs slightly, not matching revs as well as a dual-clutch. It’s a sound familiar to old guys who’ve owned street rods, but is a non-issue when there’s so much brake capacity and also when the computer can handle downshifts.

After several years serving concurrently as CEO of Lamborghini and Bugatti—he transformed Bugatti from a limping drag on Group profits to a vibrant enterprise at the pinnacle of aspiration—Stephan Winkelmann is now solely focused on Lamborghini. Urus pushed Lamborghini total annual production over the 9000 threshold, a fact not lost on the boys down the road in Maranello, hence the Purosangue SUV. Urus constitutes 58 percent of Lamborghini’s annual global sales and 57 percent of sales in the U.S. Just like Cayenne and Macan at Porsche, Urus delivers profit, allowing Lamborghini to fund development of unique supercars that define the brand. Urus is also a spectacular everyday 4-door with supercar performance. Performante is the perfection of Urus.

The 4-liter corporate V8 may be reaching the end of its development potential for everyday road cars ... [+] like Urus, though with investment in valvetrain, breathing and more expensive turbochargers this engine could very easily produce over 700 horsepower and serve in the Revuelto-derived Huracán successor. It’s a wonderful engine that is docile and happy in traffic, but it sings when the hammer is down.