Why Employees Reject Managers, Return-to-Office Rules, and Even AI Rollouts with Matt Bertman, Nick Bloom and Ram Srinivasan

Welcome to the Future of Work podcast where we explore what's next in work, workplace and the human experience. I'm Nova, your AI host. Today you're listening to a Future of Work expert Insights, a special format where we bring together the most thought provoking insights from our top guests around a single topic. Shaping the future of work.

This episode of the Future of Work podcast, we're exploring the human side of workplace transformation. From leadership effectiveness and employee trust to hybrid work strategies and AI adoption. Our guests examine the forces shaping how organizations operate today and where they're headed next. Together, their insights reveal an important lesson.

Technology and workplace policies may evolve, but success still depends on people. Lets begin. Leadership books are often written by executives, entrepreneurs, athletes or public figures. But what happens when we ask employees themselves what they want from their leaders?

Matt Burtman is the director of Leadership development for Rentokil Terminix and the best selling author of the insightful discover your blind spots through the eyes of employees. With more than 25 years of experience in leadership development, talent management, learning and employee engagement, Matt has spent his career helping organizations understand what effective leadership looks like from the employee perspective. What did your research reveal about how employees truly feel about their managers and what does that tell us about the future of leadership?

In the research that we did, in the interviews that we conducted, we recognized that rarely has there been leadership books that have taken the perspective from employees. As I mentioned a few minutes ago, oftentimes the books are written by leaders themselves or written by politicians, famous sports athletes, things of that nature. We wanted to take it from the lens of employees and we were fascinated, as you also said, by the findings that we had uncovered where when asking employees how they truly felt with regard to the relationship that they had with their manager, we asked them a very flat out question.

If given the opportunity to quote, unquote, kind of virtually sort of fire their boss, wave that magic wand. Well, first 44. First 44% responded that they would take the opportunity to do that. We then did a post Covid survey.

This was pre Covid. We did a post Covid survey and we found surprisingly the number went up over 66, you know, up to about 60% the research. It was a fascinating kind of inflection point to your very element. Our theory was actually going to be, it was going to go, it was actually going to reduce and I'll tell you why we thought initially thought, oh, 44% post Covid.

Maybe we've gotten to a kinder, gentler, corporate, you know, corporate America and things of that Nature, Yeah, back to those elements. And surprisingly, the data, like you said, proved itself to be worse. And you know, we asked, you know, a few of those questions on why that may be. Some of those were exactly what you had just shared from that, you know, from that element.

The other thing though is, believe it or not, you think about the future of work, some of those dynamics with regard to, you know, a hybrid or remote workplace, employees themselves kind of welcome those opportunities. And now what we're seeing is, is a lot of retreat, regard, you know, we have kind of short term memories. And so some of that, if you will, flexibility that was afforded to individuals during that time of, you know, the pandemic, you know, has sort of casted its shadow and that has since gone away and people are asked to go back into the workplace.

Now one other component I'll leave you with on that is that, and you may be going there in the same way. I think from an employee lens, they like the flexibility from that element. In the same regard, what they miss is the, the connection they have face to face with their employees as well. So it's sort of a trade off there.

By not being in the office, you're almost kind of working against the dynamic of a good manager employee relationship. Matt's research highlights a growing challenge for organizations. Employees want flexibility, but they also want stronger connections, better communication, and more effective leadership. Those same tensions are playing out in one of the biggest workplace debates of the last several years, where work should happen.

Up next, Nick Bloom explores why return to office mandates continue to face resistance and what organizations are learning about the realities of hybrid work. Nick Bloom is a Stanford economist who has spent more than two decades studying remote work and workplace flexibility. As co founder of WFH Research, he has advised business leaders, policymakers and and organizations around the world on how employees work most effectively and how companies can adapt to changing workforce expectations.

Why have so many return to office initiatives struggled? And what does the data reveal about how people actually want to work? The same thing. You have to figure out whether it's worth it.

Forcing folks in five days a week, four, three days a week, because it costs the business. It costs the business, as you say, in space, and it costs it because you basically have to pay people more money because on average they don't want to do it. And it really ultimately depends role for role. So I'm involved in some startups and some of them are hybrid and some of them are fully remote and some of them are mostly imposters.

So my experience is it's really driven by the task and the person. I mean, the task is kind of obvious. The person is interesting. What you tend to see is folks in their early to mid-20s are pretty keen on coming in because they want to get mentored.

They typically want to socialize, and they often don't have great places to go at home. I mean, they're sharing an apartment for other people. Folks in their 30s and 40s in particular tend to be keen on remote because they have or at least more home days. They've got young kids and then kind of, you know, I'm 52.

My age upwards tends to be more return to the office a bit because, you know, they start to become emptiness, you know, so people are much less likely to follow the rules or they don't agree with them. So it's very hard to force stuff top down. So one reason RTO is fail is employees just are not on board and they're basically resisting from the ground up. So if it just does not make sense to anyone as to why you should be in five days a week, it's hard to persuade people and you get coffee badging and managers are in compliance, et cetera.

A second problem is example what you saw at Amazon was just getting the logistics right. So Amazon calls everyone back to the office for five days a week, but then it turns out there's not enough paper parking space, there's not enough desk space. People are coming in and claiming there's nowhere to sit. I think the final reason is what's the, you know, the underlying logic.

I've spoken to many people that say, look, I'm part of a team and no one else in my team is in my local office. There's just no point going in. And they find it intensely frustrating. They may go in for, you know, a month or two because they're being observed and monitored, but then they just move on and find another job.

So generally what you see, if you look at the Fortune 500, as I mentioned earlier, they're 70% hybrid. That seems to be kind of where things have shaken out, interestingly, from talking to companies that collect data and even the companies that supposedly are back five days a week, compliance rates are like 60, 70%. Nick's findings suggest that successful workplace strategies aren't built around mandates alone. They're built around understanding employee needs, work patterns, and the realities of how teams collaborate.

As organizations continue adapting to hybrid work, another transformation is accelerating across every industry. Artificial intelligence. Next, Ram Srinivasan explains why organizations that focus exclusively on technology may be Overlooking the most important factor of all. As AI adoption accelerates, organizations are racing to implement new technologies.

But according to Ram, success depends less on the technology itself and more on how people experience the change. Ram Srinivasan is an Executive Management consultant, AI Adoption leader at JLL and a leading voice on the future of work, artificial intelligence and digital transformation. Drawing on extensive experience advising Fortune 500 organizations, RAM focuses on helping companies integrate emerging technologies while ensuring that innovation remains aligned with human needs and organizational goals.

What are organizations getting wrong about AI transformation and what should leaders focus on to drive successful adoption failure? If you think business problem first and then technology likely you'll meet with success. And the second area I would say is thinking exclusively technology. This is not a technology transformation.

If ever there was a point to say that this is a human centric focus for transformation. This is change management. This is mindset shift. Those people elements of the problem are magnified counterintuitively because of AI.

And if you're able to think people first and mindset first, the implementation and adoption cycles get much, much higher. Where in fact there are surveys that are showing that the resistance is so high that employees are sabotaging these projects. So there's that element that's coming into play as well because they just don't see the value or they fear being replaced by the technology. So bringing them along for the journey people first, change management, human centric thinking, those are elements that we should magnify as part of this transformative change.

As today's conversation revealed, the future of work is ultimately a story about people. Matt showed us that employees continue to place enormous importance on leadership, trust and meaningful workplace relationships. Nick demonstrated that workplace flexibility remains a defining force shaping how organizations attract, retain and engage talent. And Ram reminded us that even the most sophisticated technologies are will struggle to succeed without employee trust.

Effective change management and a human centered approach. Taken together, these conversations reveal a common theme. Whether organizations are addressing leadership challenges, workplace flexibility, or artificial intelligence, success depends on understanding how people respond to change. The future of work will not be defined solely by where employees work or which technologies companies adopt.

It will be shaped by leaders who can build trust, create connection, and help people navigate change with confidence. Because in the end, every workplace transformation is a human transformation. First, thanks for listening to this Expert Insights episode of the Future of Work podcast. If you found it insightful, share it with a colleague, leave us a review, or check out our show notes for links to each guest's full interview.

Until next time, keep asking not just where we work, but how we work better together.