Work-from-Home, In-Person Work, or Hybrid Arrangements? A Classroom Exercise Utilizing Students’ Own Experiences to Guide Conversations about the Complexity of Work Arrangements

Keywords: Work Arrangements; Personal Experience; Reflection; Discussion; In-class Activity

Abstract: The activity presented in this session allows students to grasp the vast complexities in determining work arrangement policies. Students draw on their own experiences from both traditional, in-person learning and online learning, and then are pushed to engage in perspective taking from a managerial viewpoint, which often brings to light new considerations. Finally, students are asked to create a policy for work arrangements for a fictitious organization. Through these discussions, it is revealed that many “real-life” managers have enacted policies that simply reflect their own preferences with little regard for individual- and organizational-level outcomes such as attitudes, turnover, and performance. At a more abstract level, this exercise demonstrates to students that preferences are important individual differences, which need to be attended to in order to maximize both individual and organizational performance.