Business travel’s new era of wellbeing and sustainability

[00:00:24.250] – Paul Miller
Welcome to Rewilding Work. I’m Paul Miller. Rewilding Work captures stories and examples of how senior leaders and changemakers are transforming the world of work across their organizations. Bringing a new natural intelligence into the workplace.

[00:00:41.610] – Paul Miller
Are you listening? I hope so, because today we are talking about the art and science of listening to your employees. And we’re also going to flip the switch and chat a little bit about business travel post pandemic. Why? Because our guest today is Kelly Flynn, Vice President, Strategic Communications at BCD travel.

[00:01:05.020] – Paul Miller
And while BCD Travel is not a household name in the consumer travel industry, it is in the business travel field with a 13,000 strong team operating in 170 countries. And BCD is the fourth largest travel company in the world.

[00:01:22.410] – Paul Miller
So please do subscribe to the DWG channel so you get alerted about each new episode. Now let’s hear from Kelly.

[00:01:35.230] – Paul Miller
Hi, Kelly. Great to be with you. So my first question is BCD Travel and you put a big focus on the voice of the employee. Can you tell me why that is?

[00:01:50.130] – Kelly Flynn
Yeah, I think, Paul, when you and I were first talking about the idea of doing this conversation, we were putting that in the context of the Rewilding Work that you’ve been doing. And it struck me that there is a parallel to be drawn to this idea of listening to the nature around us. I mean, as we look at a hurricane forming in the Gulf of Mexico, as we look at wildfires taking place across the western US and parts of Europe and Northern Africa, there is this sense that we need to listen to what our environment is telling us, if we have the courage to listen. And I think if you consider the workplace as sort of that kind of an equivalent biosphere where everything needs to be functioning in harmony, then there are benefits, I think, to the company speaking for myself, for my team, and for myself as an individual, to being sure we’re listening to the employees. So for our company, it is for BCD, that voice is a gut check, right? It’s an opportunity to validate the strategic decisions we’ve taken. For my team, I’m lucky enough to lead BCD’s strategic communications team, which is tasked with driving knowledge and content and experiences that inform and connect and inspire our people.

[00:03:11.790] – Kelly Flynn
So when we are working, for example, with executive stakeholders on messaging key initiatives, I tell my team we always have to have the voice of the employee in our head, the one that is asking all the tough questions, why is XYZ important, what’s in it for me, et cetera, et cetera. Because that’s really the only way to get to a final deliverable that not to be crass and transactional which achieves the goal of most communications, which is getting people to do what you want them to do or getting them to feel what you want them to feel. And then on a personal level. I think the voice of the employee keeps me humble in the sense that I’m lucky enough to have spent almost all of my corporate career with BCD. And I think when you’ve been with a company for a certain amount of time, there’s a risk to assuming that you already know the answers to a lot of questions. So I’m committed, and I ask my team to be committed to being ready to have our preconceptions challenged. I think that’s so important.

[00:04:10.670] – Paul Miller
Yeah, and I think you put it really beautifully, and you’ve almost said it in an environmental kind of setting. And I’m going to ask you for a few examples of what this looks like in practice a bit later, but it feels to me like this has been a really neglected part of organizations. The idea that an organization would listen to its environment, tune into its environment, doesn’t feel like it’s been part of the culture of the world of work. Do you sense that this is something that’s changing in the world of work because it’s clearly a change you’re wanting to bring in?

[00:05:00.130] – Kelly Flynn
Yeah, I think I would be inclined to gently challenge, certainly in the current workplace, the idea that employee listening may be neglected or undervalued. Certainly for our industry, the corporate travel industry, we’ve been marked by a really acute post pandemic war for talent. But I think we’re far from alone. So while companies may be at different levels of maturity in their ability to gather employee input, to analyze it, and to put that information to truly productive use, I think that in the quest to retain existing talent, to attract new talent, I don’t think companies can afford not to listen to their environment. Oh, I was just thinking about the fact that years ago I had a conversation with our Global Head of People and Culture, which is BCD’s term for what might be called human resources in other organizations. And he said something that has stuck with me ever since, which is that there is as much, if not more value in being interested than in being interesting. Now, as a communicator, the idea of being uninteresting sort of makes me shrivel up and die inside. But I think what matters so much in this philosophy is the notion that you have to truly understand what makes your audience, your workforce, tick, and you have to meet them where they live, that when you do try to engage them, you’re really speaking their language.

[00:06:31.610] – Kelly Flynn
And this is not rocket science by any stretch of the imagination, but sometimes common sense doesn’t quite get the attention it deserves.

[00:06:40.030] – Paul Miller
It’s sort of true in life generally, isn’t it? Really think of my own role when I was the CEO of the Digital Workplace Group. I think if I think back kind of earlier in my career, I probably kind of talked more, and I think there’s a place for talking for articulating, strategy, vision, kind of reminding people why we’re here, what we’re doing. But I think increasingly we’re needing to sort of let others have their voice. And I think there’s a greater expression being allowed in the world of work generally, almost at a kind of cultural level. And as you say, Kelly, if there’s also then a desire to get the best people, want people to stay with you, I don’t think you achieve that by kind of constantly talking at people versus listening to people. I mean, we’ve got somebody coming on the podcast in a couple of months time who’s a female CEO of quite a large consulting organization. And one of the things that it’s really struck me with her style of leadership is that there’s a lot of listening going on. So could you just give me maybe one or two examples of what listening looks like inside BCD travel and kind of what value that then brings for people who are saying, so what have we got from being a more listening company?

[00:08:26.930] – Kelly Flynn
Kelly like many companies, BCD does what you could call active listening through employee pulse sentiment surveys. This idea that we are regularly going out to our employee base to take the temperature, how are they feeling about different aspects of their physical workplace, their digital workplace, their career path at the company, just the entire environment, right, that biosphere in which they’re operating. And I think that is a form of listening that can bring benefits at many levels. For our executive leaders, it generates data that can help guide and influence and support policy and workplace decisions that are designed to influence employee retention. For individual managers, each manager has a dashboard that can help them pinpoint their team’s pain points and their satisfaction drivers so that they in turn can take action to mitigate the one and maximize the others. I think for the employees themselves, there is a sense of recognition that their voice matters, that their voice is being heard, that they can share their opinion, share their feedback, and get responses not just from their direct line manager, but going all the way up to the CEO. So that’s one example. I think. Of course, again, like in many companies, different teams across our organization are regularly reaching out to the employee to evaluate and assess the level of satisfaction with these services they provide, which is part of a continual process of taking sand out of the gears for our employees.

[00:10:14.440] – Kelly Flynn
So where can we make things easier? Where can make things smoother and better so that they in turn can be more engaged and more productive? And on that note, within my team, we’ve been doing some really fun, relatively new for us kinds of listening when it comes to our global Internet. Again, going back to this idea of taking the sand out of the gears, maximizing ease, minimizing frustration, as we keep working to evolve the intranet, make it more attuned to employee needs and behaviors. So we’ve been using tree testing to refine the navigation of the intranet, where we created a set of tasks for our testing group to complete. So find this, do that, look for this. And then we were able to literally watch as the employees did these tasks, which brings a new level of immediacy to understanding their behaviors and their needs. How do they navigate? What do they do that we didn’t think they would do? What do their choices and their decisions tell us about their expectations? And then how does that knowledge help us challenge assumptions that were in place when we first built the intranet and built the navigation?

[00:11:24.090] – Kelly Flynn
So it’s an opportunity for us to continually challenge what we may think may be the best way to do things and really bring that down to a level of engaged reality on behalf of the employee.

[00:11:39.150] – Paul Miller
Yeah. And you said you’ve been with BCD travel through a lot of your career, and how did the listening get deployed, if you like, during the pandemic? Because that must have been well, to call it a traumatic experience for somebody running a corporate travel organization is probably an underestimate. And I just wonder what stories have stayed with you from that time and what you learned through that experience?

[00:12:14.730] – Kelly Flynn
I think you hit the nail on the head, Paul. One of the things that has really will always stay with me is the memory of the and I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say the courage and the grace that our employees showed as so much of what had defined us as a company suddenly just stopped. Right. And then their resourcefulness and our resourcefulness as an organization in finding different ways, new ways to add values to our customer and to our client base. And technology as we sit here on Zoom was a big part of that. It meant that as an organization, within teams, within individual manager employee relationships, we needed to embrace technology to help maintain or even strengthen connections. Right. So getting to know colleagues, kids, and pets as they wandered on screen during a meeting, my cat was personally obsessed with our CEO. Every time he heard his voice in my office, he’d come running, and he’d sort of loom on screen and stare.

[00:13:23.890] – Paul Miller
He could tell that there’s somebody important had come into the virtual room.

[00:13:27.490] – Kelly Flynn
He was coming to listen right. He was asking.

[00:13:32.690] – Paul Miller
Yeah, sorry. And that’s kind of fascinating. One of the stories that stayed with me was a financial services company early in the pandemic, and they had people in China, and they were trying to, if you like, kind of keep telling people what to do, while the pandemic was sort of taking off in China, and people were just breaking down on screen, really traumatized. And the organization, I always remember senior leader there telling me, we just started to sit back and hear what people were saying, and it really changed. And I think it’s changed the organization. What state is the world of business travel, corporate travel in now? And how’s BCD Travel as a company adapting to that? Because I think we can all collectively say that work has been fundamentally altered. There’s a debate in which particular ways and how, but as I understand it, less business travel happening and how’s BCD Travel dealing with that

[00:14:48.570] – Kelly Flynn
Certainly the million dollar question for everyone in our industry. As the world emerged from the Pandemic, had we all gotten so used to conducting business from the comfort of yoga pants and our sofa that we’d never get on planes or check into hotels again? And I think the answer, which is clearly backed up by what we’re seeing in our customer base, what we’re seeing in the work that we’re doing, is no. Going back a year ago, I think there was so much pent up demand for travel that the industry as a whole was struggling to keep pace for a while. People recognized the value in face to face contact. You and I had the opportunity a couple of months ago to be face to face in a meeting with London. And there is a really inestimable value to that that companies and individuals recognize. I do think that there has been maybe not a shift, but a reinforcement, a long term positive impact where we see our customers really keenly focused on traveler well being and sustainability. So recognizing the stress that travel can cause to a person, to our planet and using that to think really critically about where travel is necessary and where you might be able to achieve the goals that you have in traveling, maybe there’s another way to achieve them.

[00:16:15.930] – Kelly Flynn
But we’re also seeing, I think, the emergence of a new category of travel which is directly coming from the shift that you were talking about. As during the Pandemic, companies either shrank their physical footprint or simply embraced remote working to the fullest. Maybe call it collaboration travel, which asks where and how do we bring people together to achieve kind of interaction, kind of innovation opportunities, the kind of listening opportunities that arose perhaps more organically when we were in a primarily office based culture. So it is really companies are asking how can we use travel to recreate some of what we might be missing now in this new normal?

[00:17:02.630] – Paul Miller
I think what you’re describing is it feels to me like a more mature approach, a more intelligent approach to let’s call it business travel. I mean, one of the stories I remember from the 90s with a large pharmaceutical company and I remember there was an executive there who twice in one week went on Concord from London to New York. And to me it sort of typifies the kind of craziness that was sort of acceptable. It was almost like, wow, you’re that important. But now we look back at that and it just seems kind of absurd. So there’s this more intelligent, more thoughtful. I love the idea that you’re thinking more sustainably, that you’re thinking about the well being. I know when I’m sort of looking at my own travel for next year, it’s like, what’s going to bring the best out of me of the organization? And we’re seeing definitely in our own clients, members, a lot more thought around the environmental impacts of travel, what’s necessary. And it is, in a way, getting back to where you started talking about the planet. It’s a way of starting to integrate, a more thoughtful way of approaching it.

[00:18:30.820] – Paul Miller
So before we end, Kelly, what haven’t I asked you that you’d like to mention or something else that’s on your mind?

[00:18:43.670] – Kelly Flynn
Excellent question.

[00:18:46.410] – Paul Miller
I’m trying to listen.

[00:18:48.170] – Kelly Flynn
And you’re doing such a good job, it’s very tempting to keep on going. I think that what I would like to maybe leave people with is the notion that, again, going back to where we started as communicators this is my native tribe, right? As communicators. The temptation to over communicate and to talk and talk and talk can be overwhelming. And we have an enormous role to play in making sure that we are listening as individuals, that we’re helping our teams listen, that we’re helping our organization, the senior leaders that we work with, that we help them listen as well, but then to do something with what we’ve heard. I think there’s nothing more frustrating to a person than feeling as if they’ve been talking at someone and that what they’ve said has not really registered. So I think we have a creation within the communicating, within the communities in which we’re operating to ensure that wherever possible, we can create positive action from what we’ve heard.

[00:19:59.310] – Paul Miller
Yeah. And what’s coming from what you’re saying, Kelly, to me is that when we think of either talking or listening, we’re thinking of a direction. But actually, really what is in between is the relationship and actually the relationship and the communication in relationship. And I think we all know that in organizations where or in any situation, any type of organization of any sort, it’s the relationships that sort of define the culture, the quality of the relationships. Kelly, it’s been wonderful to connect with you, to listen to you and to talk with you and to have this bit of relationship.

[00:20:41.470] – Kelly Flynn
Thank you very much, Paul. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you so much for the invitation.

[00:20:45.530] – Paul Miller
Thank you.

[00:20:52.290] – Paul Miller
Have we got two great pundits for you today. We certainly have. Ephraim julius Freed is the Customer Growth Manager for Reality Labs at Meta, and he works on VR for work.

[00:21:07.610] – Paul Miller
And Jila Bahri-Esfahani is the Head of Business Consulting at BJSS, a leading technology and engineering consultancy for business. So, Jila, can I start by just asking you what struck you most and what did you connect with from what Kelly was talking about?

[00:21:31.790] – Jila Bahri-Esfahani
So quite a lot, but Kelly used a phrase early on I think in the session where she said we need to listen to what our environment is telling us, if we have the courage to listen or to hear. And I just thought that was such a great statement because I really believe in that. One of the reasons why often organizations don’t listen as much as maybe they know they should do is that fear about what they’re going to hear. So that courage to listen was a really big piece for me because I do think it is one of the biggest challenges is that the more that you ask, the more that you get back. And there is that challenge in organizations, particularly in this post pandemic world of the pace of change doesn’t always align to the pace of what we’re hearing on the other side and what our team members are going through. And our ability to react to what we’re hearing may not always match all of the challenges that we’re seeing on the ground. So I really liked that piece of if we have the courage to listen. And that really struck a chord with me.

[00:22:32.930] – Paul Miller
Yeah. And that’s a really interesting point, isn’t it, Ephraim because once you start listening, you don’t really control what you’re going to hear. And the sort of concept of listening to the employees is all great, but what about the fact that organizations can then find themselves hearing things they don’t like and also why you’re kind of responding to that? I’d love to hear your own overall reactions to what Kelly was talking about as well.

[00:23:05.210] – Ephraim Freed
Yeah, well, I love what Jila pulled out know, when we listen, we think that we have to solve every problem that someone brings up or we feel as though we need to fix everything. And part of the role of listening is giving people the opportunity to express themselves. You don’t always have to solve the problem, but people do need to be able to explain what they’re feeling, what they’re thinking, give their feedback, et cetera. And so that courage is partly the courage to not have the answers, not have the solutions at every moment and be honest about that because there’s a vulnerability about that that in many cases leaders aren’t comfortable with. But the listening is still absolutely important. We know this from our relationships, right? Our spouses, our children, our friends. Sometimes someone needs to talk and just feel listened to. We’re not there to solve the problem for them. And it’s really the same at work. And so I love that Jila mentioned that. Another thing that stood out for me was when Kelly mentioned doing tree testing for their intranet. And Paul, you and I go a long way back. You know how much I believe in doing user experience research for employees.

[00:24:24.230] – Ephraim Freed
But follow me on this quick little journey. They say that listening is an act of love, right? And I really love that statement. Listening is an act of love. And love is empathy. A lot of the time. The problem is that often at work and with employees, we want to be empathetic but we don’t have the right tools. And what we need is the structure for empathy. We need to operationalize empathy and doing user experience research on your intranet, the way that Kelly talked about is actually operationalizing empathy, taking the desire to listen and bringing a lot of structure and specificity to it. So you’re listening in a very specific way and getting feedback and hearing things that you can act on. And that really stood out to me and is something that I think a lot of us can think about more is how do we operationalize empathy and our need to listen?

[00:25:23.990] – Paul Miller
No, that’s really beautifully put and Jila post pandemic. Do you think listening as an activity, as an operation perhaps inside the world of work has changed and evolved? And if so, how do you see that?

[00:25:45.070] – Jila Bahri-Esfahani
Yes, hugely. I think it’s had a great deal more emphasis. I think it’s a journey that I think organizations have had to go on in a way that it was easier to take the temperature, I suppose, of your organization, or think you’re taking the temperature by people who are physically around you, by the performance on projects or how people are doing in their own development journeys. And I think the pandemic brought that distance to how we connected with the rest of the workforce and we’ve been on real journey on actually that connection and how you gauge how people are doing and how people are doing as a general statement has changed in the world of work. And so to me it’s got greater emphasis listening post pandemic, but also the breadth of what we’re listening for has changed. So we’re not just keen to understand performance and development opportunities, there’s a greater emphasis put on well being, there’s a greater need to understand the whole of how an individual is operating, what support they need, what opportunities they’re looking for, but also kind of where they are at their own stage in their life. My personal experience, junior to senior people that I’ve spoken to in teams from a listening perspective, is that the more we ask, the more we hear and the more that people are willing to share from a personal perspective.

[00:27:11.430] – Jila Bahri-Esfahani
And that’s not the same for everyone, but sometimes it just means that we’re able to connect in a slightly different way and value the time that we have together, whether that’s in person or how. And that might be how Ephraim chooses to operate day to day and what switches him off during the workday or actually some constraints that we might never have known in a pre pandemic world. So I do think there’s greater emphasis and there’s greater value on what we’re hearing, but that breadth of what we are hearing as well is also just much greater.

[00:27:45.410] – Paul Miller
Yeah, and I wonder, Jila, whether you think that there’s an awful lot of talk about what has changed in work through the pandemic and we sort of point to perhaps the more obvious things, but I think some of these cultural changes are kind of less obvious but in a way more profound.

[00:28:04.320] – Paul Miller
I mean, the idea that an organization would have the courage, as you put it, Ephraim and Kelly put it, to listen to people. And I love this idea that just because you’re listening, just because you’re giving people the voice, it doesn’t mean you have to solve everything. I mean, I certainly as a human being try and understand that myself. It’s like just because you’re telling me how you feel doesn’t mean I need to be the knight in shining armor who’s going to come in with all the solutions. Is that a question, Jila, or did I just come up with a statement?

[00:28:38.630] – Jila Bahri-Esfahani
I agree with the statement or the I suppose the desire to hear more is greater. And I think in this post pandemic world, access to individuals who you may not have had access to before has been democratized and people are more willing to hear and learn whether that is through using tools. So my organization uses Slack a lot more. And I think in a pre pandemic world, a very junior colleague fresh out of university or not having gone through a university pathway wouldn’t have necessarily instant messaged a CTO. And that happens in today’s world. So I think there is that appetite and recognition to listen. And it doesn’t always mean that said CTO will take an action on what the junior person is saying or commit to something in that moment. But it’s about hearing or having the opportunity to say what you want and knowing that that is being heard. I think Kelly said recognition that an individual’s voice matters, that they are heard across levels is really important. And I really agree with that. And I think it’s about your point. It’s about collecting those data points and making people feel heard whether or not we’re able to fully act on it or not.

[00:29:59.310] – Paul Miller
Yeah. And the other thing that I wanted to talk to Kelly about just because she’s in the corporate travel industry and I’m just sort of quite fascinated by what’s happening with business travel is. And I thought it was really interesting what she talked about to do with more purposeful, a more sustainable approach. I mean, how has business travel changed for you in your work and how do you see that having changed through the pandemic.

[00:30:30.010] – Ephraim Freed
You know, what Kelly said really resonated with me that people are becoming more purposeful. And part of it, Paul, gets back to what you’ve been saying for at least a decade, that we should treat in person time as sacred time. We don’t just spend time together by default just because we can or we should, but when we’re together we make great use of that time and that’s what I’ve been seeing. So if we’re going to get together, if people are going to travel, let’s make sure that we’re having teams spend quality time together, both getting to know each other, getting clear on their strategy and goals. If we’re getting together with clients, let’s make sure that we have a really good reason to do it. And I think that also and I’m not sure if this had much to do with the pandemic, but there does seem to be more of a focus on the environmental impact of travel than ever before and I think that’s a piece of the intentionality there as well. So I’ve come to see that a lot with all the companies that I work with, and it’s something that I really appreciated.

[00:31:40.430] – Ephraim Freed
And we’re still also trying to figure it out because a lot of companies are returning to office more, a lot of people are getting back to normal. And we have record personal travel right now as well. So it’s still a thing that we’re figuring out.

[00:31:57.810] – Paul Miller
Yeah. And Jila, how has business travel changed for you in your work and how do you see it maybe in your own organization or the clients that you serve?

[00:32:10.810] – Jila Bahri-Esfahani
So that last piece on purposeful travel, I think completely resonates with me. And I think in consulting as an industry, let’s say four or five years ago, it was pretty standard practice to be on client side four days a week. I know that was my experience, including sort of traveling usually not to particularly glamorous locations on a Monday morning and coming back on a Thursday evening, which takes a toll, but it was all part of the deal and that’s obviously it reduced drastically during the pandemic. And for those, myself included, on COVID critical projects, we were working hybrid whilst other people were working remote. And then we’re now in a different shift. And what I see happening a lot is, particularly those who’ve been in consulting for a while, we have a habit of saying, oh well, your client’s asking you to go to site today, or your team is asking you to. You don’t remember what it used to be like. We used to have to do this all the time. And I think it’s that need to challenge ourselves because that’s not helpful. That’s not the experience that our newer, younger or just newer to the industry workforce have had.

[00:33:17.300] – Jila Bahri-Esfahani
And ultimately it’s not the experience we have today. That was the past, but this isn’t the world and the expectations that we’ve set out as organizations and I think as Kelly also said, it’s a really hot market for talent, or it has been, and people can choose. And you do have a right to say what your personal preferences? So business travel has really changed, I think both the expectations of what our clients need or our partners need, but also what our employees need. And I think it’s that healthy tension to be able to challenge where we are doing something purposeful to get together, or if it’s just actually something we should push back on for the well being of our individuals. I think to me it kind of comes back to what’s the cost and what’s the benefit? And when I say cost, what I don’t mean is money, although that’s obviously going to be a factor, but it’s the environmental cost. Is it really worth it? And even if it’s not worth, are we measuring it? Are we checking ourselves on what this is? Do we understand what that is and the time it takes?

[00:34:17.880] – Jila Bahri-Esfahani
That’s the biggest thing I hear is, well, if you’re asking me to be productive as a management consultant, I’m wasting one and a half hours each way when I come into the office. Could I be using that more productively? So that individual cost, that time, and also where people have made commitments, particularly through the pandemic, whether that’s family or moving house or changing their lifestyle, I think it’s all of those things that we have to balance on that. What’s the cost and what’s that benefit? Are we making travel and in person activities? Really?

[00:34:53.690] – Paul Miller
Yeah. And I really like the fact that what Kelly was saying about BCD travel is that while obviously they’re in the travel industry, that’s their business proposition, but they’re also evolving as an organization. I really like the way that that whole, if I can call it, sector is thinking in a more kind of agile, purposeful way. So, any final reflections or any final comments Ephraim?

[00:35:25.650] – Ephraim Freed
Well, there’s something that Jila said that really resonated. So, my daughter, Ella, she just started middle school. She’s older. The conversations kids are having are changing. It’s kind of a milestone moment in the US for a kid to go to middle school. And so we got her an iPhone and set a lot of restrictions around it because we’re concerned. But I recently was telling her, I have to remind my daughters sometimes to be really grateful for what they have. Right. And I was telling Ella, do you know how old I was when I got my first smartphone, my first phone? Do you know how old she has her own Chromebook, her own iPad now, right. Three devices of her own. And I was saying, do you know how old I was? But it really doesn’t work to compare someone, an eleven year old in 2023 with, let’s say, ten through 21 year old many years ago. Right. Because these are different times. We live in a different world. There are different expectations and standards. And to your point, Jila, telling people in the consulting world, well before the pandemic, you always had to be on site four days a you know, you shouldn’t complain.

[00:36:54.270] – Ephraim Freed
It doesn’t make sense. It is comparing apples to oranges. We can learn from the past, but it can be unhelpful to compare too much to the past. I think that kind of it’s a personal reminder for me that comparing my daughter’s current day to my history isn’t necessarily very helpful, but also it’s a reminder to look at what have we learned, what has changed, and why. And to your point, I think that the pandemic did humanize all of us, and we realized that the commute of an hour, hour and a half each way, each day, that was a lot of time for a person. They’re not working, they’re not with their family, they’re not exercising, they’re sitting on a trainer in a car, and we see the whole person a little bit better now at work than we did four years ago. And that’s a worthwhile change.

[00:37:50.230] – Paul Miller
That’s great. And Jila, any final comments that you’d like to make?

[00:37:55.210] – Jila Bahri-Esfahani
I think that last point really resonates with me. I think we’ve said lots of things resonate with us, but it’s that point on seeing more of a person, and the more we listen, the more we understand the whole and we can appreciate it and take it into account. I think those lines between personal and professional are just more blurred now. And if I think about something Kelly said so I think my closing thought here is you can’t afford not to listen to your talent is so true. And I think that part of it is being human, as you say, but also being transparent about things that are it’s not that you can’t necessarily change them, but some things are harder to change, and that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try and change them. But being open to actually some things are easier to do and some things are harder. And trying to get people involved on the journey to change some of those harder factors and understand why the constraints might be there will just help in terms of moving to that next new mode of working before we change again.

[00:38:58.250] – Paul Miller
Yeah, and I think if I look at some of the patterns through the episodes of Rewilding Work we’ve had this year, I think probably one of the key things I’ve picked up is this more kind of subtle, but really quite fundamental cultural change happening in work. And it feels very much like it’s work in progress, and we can sort of see some of the aspects of it. And I think this listening, this courage, this humanizing some of the practical considerations around travel are definitely part of it. But I think the story is still unfolding. And I know the technology that both of you are involved with in your day to day work is really key to enabling some of these changes to happen. So thank you so much. Efraim thank you so much. Jila, it’s been great to have you on Rewilding Work.

[00:39:48.510] – Ephraim Freed
Thanks so much, Paul.

[00:39:50.210] – Jila Bahri-Esfahani
Absolute pleasure. Thank you. Thank you.

[00:39:55.710] – Paul Miller
So here are my three seeds to plant, based on the interview with Kelly and the great conversation with Jila and Ephraim. Seed number one listening as a company doesn’t mean you have to fix every concern or issue that people bring up. I think there’s a natural human tendency to feel that if people are sharing concerns with you, that you’ve got to be the one to fix them. You don’t have to. Listening in its own right has its value. Seed number two, it takes courage to listen well, and it makes us all more humane, more human. So use the courage and listen well and know that it’s going to change you and other managers inside the organization. We become more human, we become more humane by listening, and it affects the culture of the organization. And seed number three is that business travel is becoming ever more purposeful. Finally. Haven’t we waited an awful long time for this? It’s a pandemic effect that business travel as an activity, it’s needed, but it needs to be thought through with intention, with more purpose, and with more respect for individuals. So when we do travel for business, we know why we’re doing it. So please do subscribe to Rewilding Work and like, right here, so you get alerted to each new episode. And I look forward to seeing you next time.