#collaboration

After years of productive remote work, I was dragged back to the dog bone farm, and let me tell you, it’s been a total letdown.
All I see are groups of people clustering together, chatting away in their own language, and yapping on their phones right in the middle of work hours. Meanwhile, the rest of us are trying to focus and get stuff done, but the constant noise and exclusionary vibe is overwhelming.
It’s disappointing and downright discouraging. How are we supposed to collaborate or feel like a team when it’s all cliques and distractions? Anyone else dealing with this?

With the push for FAs to share office space, there are FA teams merging to combine AUM into one-book partnerships. All of the "book" will be evenly divided among each FA.

What will the success rate be of these partnerships?

Does EJ have all of the partnership arrangements worked out (legalities) or have these situations been patched together (which is a possibility because management is discombobulated, to say the least)?

I've heard of one branch that has 4 "partners."
2 veteran FAs, an AFA and a brand new college graduate that hasn't passed testing yet (already considered a partner and included in talks).

Curious what the success rate of a set up like this might be? Family members sharing a book sounds like it could be successful, but with 4 distinct unrelated individuals (friends) sharing a book......I am skeptical on the success rate.

Curious what your opinions are on this new EJ drive to "share one book" equally among FAs."

Would enjoy hearing your thoughts on this matter.

https://careers.massmutual.com/job/springfield/global-workforce-management-director/724/89713009728

The Opportunity
The Global Workforce Management Director will be responsible for leading the development and execution of Operations’ global strategies to enhance organizational performance. Establish and implement workforce management standards and best practices to promote strong communication, collaboration, and engagement across onshore and offshore teams, ensuring the organization operates efficiently and effectively in a global environment.

The Team
The team is comprised of Strategic Consultants responsible for developing, implementing, executing, and overseeing global transition initiatives across Operations. Your individual role will have an impact on ensuring we have effective remote working standards, hybrid working guidelines, cultural competence, work location recruiting and engagement strategies, etc.

The Impact
You will be accountable for driving the strategic vision, planning, and management of global workforce transitions, ensuring alignment with organizational objectives and operational effectiveness. As the Global Workforce Management Director , you will partner with senior leaders, business units, and external partners to identify, plan, and execute transitions that optimize the global operating model. This will include communication, change management and readiness considerations.

Key responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Lead and Develop Team: Manage and mentor a team of Strategic Consultants focused on global transition activities, ensuring coverage across all operational teams. Ensuring the team maintains effective coordination, communication, and appropriate confidentiality in the work they perform.
• Strategic Roadmap Execution: Develop and drive the execution of the global workforce transition strategy, including the creation of transition roadmaps and governance standards.
• Stakeholder Engagement: Consult with senior leadership and business partners to identify transition opportunities, provide recommendations, and facilitate decision-making.
• Transition Management: Oversee the identification, planning, and execution of work transitions to global partners (e.g., MMI, external vendors), ensuring seamless handoffs and operational continuity. This includes establishing new offshore engagements, modifying existing engagements and coordinating corrective actions for underperforming engagements.
• Vendor and Partner Oversight: Maintain and enhance relationships with external partners, manage contracts, and ensure business satisfaction through regular performance reviews and issue resolution. This includes monitoring SLA’s and operating results, taking the lead on coordinating performance improvement and corrective action planning as needed.
• Governance and Reporting: Establish and oversee standards, KPIs, and reporting mechanisms to monitor the performance and impact of global transitions.
• Enterprise Coordination: Work with the MassMutual Global Business Services (GBS) team to maintain alignment on short- and long-term planning, execution, reporting and governance of offshore activities. Ensure the Operations GWM and MassMutual GBS teams maintain alignment on their activities and avoid duplication of efforts.
• Continuous Improvement: Identify and implement strategies to enhance productivity, mitigate risks, and continuously improve the global operating model.
• Change Leadership: Lead organizational change initiatives, fostering a culture of agility, accountability, and inclusivity.

The Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree or 8 years of experience in operations, strategy, global or workforce management.
• 5+ years of experience in strategic consulting, operations, or managing large-scale transitions.
• 5+ years people management experience or commensurate leadership experience

Let's see if Dario's new role can pay dividends for Big Blew or if this initiative just dies on the vine.

https://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/doe-announces-genesis-mission-collaboration-agreements-with-24-organizations/

Three times a week.

I go in to the office three days a week, I have a short commute and I don’t mind because the gym and stores are on the way so I just get errands done I’d do otherwise. However the office remains unchanged from my remote setup. I collaborate with my team in different time zones including India and customers scattered across various time zones . I’m an Eastern Time employee located in a hub location, my office is mostly deserted every day. People are coming in late and leaving early. Collaboration here is minimal; people are either too busy or stuck in their own silos, making it difficult for collaboration and I don’t think my Director would even want me to just start collaborating with other departments just to do it. We are already busy enough. I find it better to just collaborate with AI, which can be done from home.

But how can we measure success? I recall hearing about company savings when employees worked from home. Shedding costly Realestate. Do we have a measure for the success of the collaboration? In these though times for VZ, how much are we truly saving by having staff onsite? After all, we want to cut CapEx, right? I feel the leaner, scrappier, thing to do would just be to better monitor remote employees to save $.But maybe someone will show me the numbers proving how RTO helps the new strategy.

https://imgur.com/a/4AB5EjR

On LinkedIn, a Verizon Alumni Network Group has been created. This an opportunity for us to connect, collaborate, and share resources for the next stage of our careers.

https://www. linkedin. com/groups/16066009/

Please feel free to join and share with others who have been impacted.

New Chevron slang and acronyms are coming out that are good.

Its truly the change that we need and the things we need to be saying as a company to collaborate and work more efficiently. So here they are:

Going forward if you need to take a number 2 its called taking a MW.

Take a number 1 is a MN.

Start using these to bring us together!

Associates being able to collaborate across time zones and optimize their productivity with flexible hours is especially relevant for global organizations.

Work-from-home can indeed reduce commute time, improve work-life balance, and potentially increase efficiency—provided the right communication and collaboration tools are in place.

I find the ask to wfh next week really icky. What happened to all that talk about connection and collaboration? These are layoffs. There are real people that are going to be affected. Not just another headline.

Starting 2026. Need more collaboration ..

I was laid off years ago from a different company and felt like I did something wrong,
but it wasn't me it was a company much more dysfunctional than CMCSA.
This was not your fault.

However...
Some observations from a former national engineer who lead a team that built a system intended for divisional and DCF usage;

1. Other national and 2 of 3 divisional teams HAD to build their own instead of collaborating with national and all divisions.. e.g. Power hungry.
2. Upper management permitted this to happen. Heck, the west pretty much encouraged it.
3. DCF rolled out new systems with poor naming strategies and a ~70% ability to match names in existing systems.
4. Cable is dying !! And Brian Roberts has realized that the monopoly is over and hired a co-CEO since the next 10 years will determine if CMCSA survives.

Point is, we had too many people building the same system(s) and management let it happen. Upper management was all about power and not about cooperating.

I was at 12, granted my attention was not full.

#collaboration

How does XOM reconcile the narrative of "we need to collaborate and work next to each other" with the design to have remote support teams staffed with people who have no industry knowledge or communication skills? I don't question the case for change but its hard for me to see how moving professionals to Edmonton fixes anything when we already can't set up customers or pay vendors.

So I witnessed to following: I was in WHQ, in an open space on one of the floors. The area had 4 small collaboration tables and an area with workstations. A group of 3 workers sat at one of the collaboration tables to hold their meeting. A man, who was working at the workstation got up, approached the group and told them to leave. He said that they were disrupting him and he couldn't concentrate. The group got up and left but one of the joked about not being able to collaborate. The funniest part is that, within a few minutes after the group left, the man got up and left for about an hour (I assume lunch). I wonder if this goes on all the time.

Isn’t the stated point of return to office that we collaborate with our team in person?

It looks like our team will be divided up across the building. We don’t even sit by each other.

12 people our team. 3 are global. The 9 of us in office are still using Teams like we did at home for our daily team con calls. Only now we sit 3 feet from each other and echo over our headsets (and each other) and that awful feedback and delayed sound. Plus it smells like dirty socks on our row. #collaboration