How flexibility works at scale: Humana’s five work styles

Much of the talk about workplace flexibility centers around high-growth tech companies and the ways they tackle the workplace with creativity and innovation. But these companies rarely have more than 1000 employees, so the narrative is skewed towards smaller, leaner companies.

Brad Keller, Associate VP of Workplace Strategy at Humana, gave us an overview of what flexibility means in a company with 65,000+ employees. At Humana, their employees are divided into five different work styles:

• Employees who work in the field (20% of their employee population)
• Employees who work at home/remotely (56% of their employee population)
• Employees working in a “hybrid-home” model, where they are mostly at home but come into the office occasionally (7% of their employee population)
• Employees working in a “hybrid-office” model, where they are in the office by default but work remotely occasionally (5% of their employee population)
• Employees who work on-site, whether it’s offices or facilities like distribution centers (12% of their employee population)

Humana was flexible before the COVID-19 pandemic, and their dedication to making flexibility work has long been in the making. They focus on enabling every work style to develop ways of working that work best for them, reduce waste that comes with real estate, travel, and associated expenses, as well as redesign workspaces to make them more collaborative and experience-driven – with hospitality being the key theme.

Brad pointed out that many elements of the flexible workplace are yet to be solved, but approaching people and places with intentionality and measuring the effects of getting together on employees is critical for the evolution of the workplace.

“On the workplace side of things, we had to take all of our old metrics and throw them out the window. We don't look at square foot per person or a lot of those old metrics. One of the things that our team is most interested in is unique visits. How often did that person come in? What's the return visit frequency? If we got somebody back in, what's the chance they came back the following week? If you think about it, it's a very sales kind of approach.” - Brad Keller, Associate Vice President of Workplace Strategy, Humana

The impact of flexibility on DE&I: How Eventbrite focuses on culture

One of the biggest impacts of flexible workplaces is the effect it has on talent pipelines and talent pool diversity. For Maisha Gray-Diggs, VP of Global Talent, Inclusion, and Experience at Eventbrite, this is an essential element that helps companies move their culture forward and welcome more diversity into their employee populations.

When companies require employees to come back into offices, they really should think about why they are requiring people to be back and how they will take care of employees who need flexibility to thrive. In many workplaces, the in-office culture isn’t a safe place for marginalized and underrepresented communities, and RTO mandates can have a negative effect on them if the underlying culture isn’t addressed head-on.

For Maisha, focusing on how to make in-person gatherings inclusive from the get-go and creating playbooks that take inclusivity into account are two of the priorities for her team, especially as they aim to make all employees culture-carriers.

“We really needed to focus on culture and community because there's just so much newness to our 17-year-old company. One of the focuses is on creating that DIY playbook so that if I decide I want to have a pop-up and Taco Tuesday, how do I make sure that it is inclusive? How do I do that in my region? Part of it will be how we make everyone a culture carrier. So really, our focus is going to be on creating more culture carriers and ambassadors to this work.” - Maisha Gray-Diggs, Vice President, Global Talent, Inclusion, and Experience, Eventbrite

Key moments for bringing people together: How PagerDuty uses on-demand space

As a SaaS company that supports other distributed teams, PagerDuty embodies the values they preach and are a distributed team themselves. With 1,300 employees scattered across geographies, their approach to getting together in person is based on key moments for connection, collaboration, and socialization.

Post-pandemic, they’ve seen a rising need for their employees to come together for intentional events, whether those are all-hands meetings, functional get-togethers, or regional groups. For Nathan Manuel, PagerDuty’s Global Director of People, Workplace, and Employee Experience, using on-demand flex spaces is a lever and tool helping the company be flexible, respond to employee needs fast, and give time and space to employees in critical moments.

“For the first time in my life, there's been real data in regards to how we think about the workplace experience, how we think about the employee experience, and I always wanted the data about that thing. Well, now I have it, and I've got to actually do something with it. The responsibility of having that data. So we're thinking a lot about how to implement those ideas.” - Nathan Manuel, Global Director, People, Workplace & Employee Experience, PagerDuty

Bring your employees together with Gable

If you’ve identified those key moments for connections and in-person gatherings, let Gable take care of the rest. Whether it’s global flex spaces or your own offices, Gable makes it easy for employees to find and book workspaces for getting together while workplace teams get robust analytics, permission settings, and budget controls for their entire workplace strategy – all in one place.

Learn about Gable’s flex spaces offering, our HQ feature, and our reporting – and book a 30-minute demo with our team to get all your questions answered.