Managers are the glue holding together hybrid and remote work environments. But without the right support, even the most talented leaders can struggle.
On this episode of People Fundamentals, Ashley Litzenberger is joined by Ranya Nehmeh, senior HR leader, lecturer, and co-author of the upcoming book In Praise of the Office: The Limits to Hybrid and Remote Work. Nehmeh’s research challenges assumptions around remote and hybrid work, offering a data-driven perspective on how collaboration, trust, and innovation are affected over the long term.
Ranya explains how early-career employees are struggling without in-person guidance, why proximity bias is one of the most damaging — and hidden — risks of hybrid work, and how companies can think differently about promotions and manager readiness. She also shares practical advice for managers who want to build intentional practices for managers, ensure equity, and measure effectiveness in ways that connect directly to retention and business outcomes.
Listen in for actionable insights on how to strengthen your managers and create an inclusive, high-performing workplace.
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The hidden challenges of hybrid work
Ranya and her co-author Peter Cappelli wrote In Praise of the Office to provide a more balanced view of hybrid and remote work. While productivity rose in the early days of pandemic-induced remote work, the deeper organizational effects are harder to ignore.
“The picture is much more nuanced than a simple ‘remote good, office bad.’ … Because companies were so focused on output, they missed this silent erosion of trust, of mentorship, of informal feedback loops — all of these things that are very difficult to quantify but are really vital for sustainable performance,” Ranya says.
One area of particular concern is new employees. “The people who suffer the most in this are really new employees and early-career professionals,” Ranya explains. “When you’re in office, you learn by example. You learn from seeing things. But in remote settings, there’s no one to watch. You can’t ask for help easily.”
Hybrid organizations need to be especially diligent, she adds: “Their practices have to be more deliberate, more intentional, and really focused on how to include people who are at home and the ones in the office.”
Proximity bias and the dry promotion problem
One of the most damaging risks in hybrid settings is proximity bias, where visibility drives advancement more than actual contribution.
“Proximity bias is very real,” Ranya says. “It’s one of those very quietly damaging side effects of hybrid work. It’s the tendency to favor people that we see more often, not necessarily because they are better at work or the better achievers, but simply because they’re there, because they’re visible.”
Her advice: Managers need to shift their focus. “It’s very important that managers need to stop thinking about visibility as ‘Who’s nearby?’ and rather start redefining it as ‘Who’s contributing to these tasks? And how do I make sure, as a manager, that everyone is seen equally?’”
Traditional promotion practices often compound the problem by elevating star performers without measuring their leadership potential. This often leads to worse team performance, Ranya says, citing research from Alan Benson at the University of Minnesota. “We see that when we mistake performance here for leadership, we tend to put the wrong people in charge.”
The rise of “dry promotions,” where employees receive new responsibilities or titles but no pay bump, creates new risks. “On paper, a dry promotion looks like a step up, but in reality, it can really feel like a trap in the long term,” Ranya says. “If a manager suddenly goes from leading three people to 10 people but is still in the same grade or salary level, that’s really a red flag.”
How to make manager effectiveness measurable
Improving hybrid work comes down to enabling managers with the right tools, training, and measurement.
“Managers need to have regular check-ins and feedback conversations. In a hybrid environment, if it’s not scheduled, it just doesn’t happen, and that creates a risk of silence also being mistaken as alignment,” Ranya explains. “The key here is not just to tell managers to have more conversations with their people, but rather to enable fewer but more meaningful conversations.”
Feedback, goal clarity, and psychological availability are at the top of her list. “One of the main things I would say is feedback. I think we need short, quick feedback as soon as things happen, good and bad,” Ranya says. “Something else I would add is goal alignment and clarity. In hybrid teams, ambiguity kills the momentum.”
Ultimately, companies need to measure manager effectiveness as a leading business indicator. “It can tell you how well your team is being led before you start seeing things like turnover spikes or missed goals or employee disengagement,” Rayna says.
By focusing on intentional practices, addressing proximity bias, and measuring manager effectiveness, HR leaders can equip managers to succeed in today’s complex environments. The payoff is clear: stronger teams, higher retention, and a culture where employees feel supported and can do their best work.
People in This Episode
Ranya Nehmeh: LinkedIn
Transcript
Ranya Nehmeh:
Proximity bias is very real. It’s one of those very quietly damaging side effects of hybrid work. It’s the tendency to favor people that we see more often, not necessarily because they are better at work or the better achievers, but simply because they’re there, because they’re visible. And it’s very important, maybe it’s a mind shift, but it’s very important that managers need to stop thinking about visibility as “Who’s nearby?” and rather start redefining it as “Who’s contributing to these tasks? And how do I make sure, as a manager, that everyone is seen equally?” I think that is really important, to try to make it as inclusive as possible.
Ashley Litzenberger:
Hi, and welcome to Betterworks’ People Fundamentals podcast. I’m your host, Ashley Litzenberger, senior director of product marketing. Betterworks’ core belief in People Fundamentals revolves around helping HR lead through constant change by focusing on core values like fairness, support, balance, and enabling growth opportunities for employees. These tenets empower everyone in the workforce to strive for excellence, to foster creativity, and to acknowledge each other’s contributions. Betterworks believes that strategic HR leaders can translate these principles into action, shaping their workforce for the better and helping drive meaningful business outcomes. And in this show, we’re diving even deeper into these principles by listening to experts share how you can make them come alive at your organization.
In this episode, I’m joined by Ranya Nehmeh, senior HR leader, lecturer and author of the book “In Praise of the Office: The Limits to Hybrid and Remote Work.” In this conversation, Ranya shares new research that challenges assumptions about remote and hybrid work, offering a nuanced look at their long-term impact on performance, collaboration, innovation, and culture.
We discuss how early-career employees are particularly affected by the lack of in-person interactions, the quiet but damaging effects of proximity bias, and why promoting top performers into management can sometimes backfire. Ranya also explains the growing phenomenon of “dry promotions” and the risks that they create. She offers practical guidance for building intentional manager practices, ensuring goal clarity, and providing the training that managers need to thrive in hybrid environments. If you want actionable ideas for strengthening management effectiveness and creating equitable opportunities in today’s evolving workplace, this episode is full of insights you can start using right away. Let’s dig in.
Hi, Ranya. Thank you so much for joining us on the People Fundamentals podcast today. It’s great to have you here.
Ranya Nehmeh:
Thanks so much, Ashley. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Ashley Litzenberger:
Well, I am so excited for our conversation. We have a lot to get into around what the data is telling us about managers and employees, where they should work, and how we can support them. So, let’s go ahead and dive right in. I want to start with your latest research, which is “In Praise of the Office.” It’s a book that’s coming out, or is it actually, I think it might’ve already hit the shelves at this point.
Ranya Nehmeh:
Not yet. It’s going to be out September 30, but it’s available right now for pre-order.
Ashley Litzenberger:
Excellent. So, this new research is hot off the presses, about to come out. We get a preview of it. Tell me a little bit about your research, because I know that it challenges some of the assumptions around remote and hybrid work. So, what are the key insights that your data found, that convinced you that companies should maybe reconsider where and how employees are working?
Ranya Nehmeh:
Yeah. Thanks, Ashley. That’s a great question. So, “In Praise of the Office,” as you mentioned, it’s going to be out end of September. And the reason we wrote this book is really because we see a very, quite a one-sided conversation right now about remote work. So, as we will recall, when we were in the pandemic, and we had to make remote work work, it did work for the most part. And the perception straight after that was that it was working really well. And we also, these studies that showed then that it might even be working better than when we were in office. But now, we are five years on from the pandemic, and we really have better data, better statistics, better research, that shows what has worked and what has not worked.
And what we really see, the picture is much more nuanced than a simple “remote good, office bad.” And we see the impact now on things like performance, on collaboration, on innovation and culture. So, while productivity metrics may really have initially gone up in remote settings, the long-term organizational health took a hit. Because companies were so focused on output that they missed this silent erosion of trust, of mentorship, of informal feedback loops — all of these things that are very difficult to quantify but are really vital for sustainable performance.
And one more thing here is also, studies that we actually also mentioned in the book, show the impact on innovation. Because, for example, we had one study that showed the patent generation, which is a proxy for innovation, it fell by 20% during this period. So, you see fewer disruptive ideas than when you’re in the office. So, I think this was something that was also very striking.
Ashley Litzenberger:
That is really interesting. I know in the U.S. markets, I work in software, and so I’ve seen a lot of shifting in software companies bringing in a return to either a hybrid or a fully return-to-office approach because they did find that innovation started to dip. That probably does have something to do with the ability to have conversations across departments and with people while you’re getting coffee, while you’re having lunch, and being able to break through some of those barriers or shift the way that you’re thinking, to unlock a question or a problem.
But I want to double down on that question around losing those opportunities for trust-building and mentorship. Are there any particular workers who really struggle with that now, or who have struggled in their careers because they’ve been working in a hybrid setting or a remote setting for so long?
Ranya Nehmeh:
The people who suffer the most in this are really new employees and early-career professionals. Because, for them, I look at it as somebody who’s just graduated from university, they’re entering their first job. There’s a very big difference when you’re in office or when you’re remote. Because, obviously, when you’re in office, you learn by example, you learn from seeing things.
But in remote settings, there’s no one to watch. You can’t ask for help easily. If you want to ask for help, you have to obviously ping somebody, you have to message someone, and you have to book a call. So, it’s a very different setup than when you can just pop into somebody’s office and see how things are done quickly. So, I think they’re the ones who suffer the most. And this is also what our research showed.
Ashley Litzenberger:
Tell me a little bit more about where you compare that. How is the lack of in-person interactions really impacting that onboarding and early-career development? And when you did the research, how did you compare that to folks who had that opportunity to do that in the office? Was it anyone who was fully remote felt more disadvantaged, or were hybrid workers also struggling with the same issues?
Ranya Nehmeh:
Yeah, I think there is also a big distinction here, Ashley, between remote, fully remote, and hybrid. Because when a company is fully remote, then this is what they know, this is how they were set up, this is their framework. So, they have a different operating model than a hybrid. Typically, what we see in hybrid is that, initially, these companies were working all in person, and then from one day to the next, because of the pandemic, they were asked to go hybrid. But they never really had the right practices that go with that.
And that’s why we’re saying that the ones who are in hybrid, they really have to make it intentional. Their practices have to be more deliberate, more intentional, and really focused on how to include people who are at home and the ones in the office. Whereas when you’re fully remote, you never had to unlearn anything. So, it’s a very different way of operating. So, we make a distinction of that for sure.
Also, in the book, we mention a focus group that Peter Cappelli, my co-author, did with a colleague of his, where they, I think, interviewed like 700 people. And it showed that new hires often said that they got no response to pings when they pinged somebody for help, which was really a direct consequence of not being part already of an existing social network. So, here we see the importance of if you already knew people beforehand, it’s again a different relationship that you have, and you can get your work possibly done quicker than when you’re new, and you have to rely on these existing social networks that don’t yet exist for you.
Ashley Litzenberger:
So, something else that comes up in your book is proximity bias, where at times remote and hybrid employees can get overlooked for promotions or not thought about for particular projects where they could really shine or bring a lot of skills to the table. How can managers recognize and actively address proximity bias if it’s showing up in their teams or throughout their organization?
Ranya Nehmeh:
I think that’s a great point because proximity bias is very real. It’s one of those very quietly damaging side effects of hybrid work. And as you mentioned, it’s kind of the tendency to favor people that we see more often, not necessarily because they are better at work or the better achievers, but simply because they’re there, because they’re visible. And that visibility can lead to opportunities, more trust, and ultimately, more promotions. So, perhaps it is, I don’t know, human nature to advocate for the person that we see every day, but left unchecked, this really creates a lot of inequities. So, I think here, what can managers do to address it?
Well, first of all, they can make performance data-driven and not proximity-driven, right? So, really use clear, consistent goal-setting frameworks to track outcomes and not to make it a face time. So, it’s more about the outcomes, not face time. You have to use structured feedback and transparent goals to really reduce subjectivity.
A second thing is, be deliberate with visibility. So, make sure that remote or hybrid employees are really getting equal time in meetings. Ask yourself, who’s getting the stretch assignments, who’s presenting to leadership? And if the same names keep popping up, then really you have to think about it, and consider that maybe some people are being left behind.
And the third thing I would say here is to create intentional touchpoints. So, schedule regular one-on-ones with everyone, not just the people who are down the hall. Have these informal conversations because they often lead to growth opportunities, and remote team members need the same kind of access to that, even if it’s over Zoom. And it’s very important, maybe it’s a mind shift, but it’s very important that managers need to stop thinking about visibility as “Who’s nearby?” and rather start redefining it as “Who’s contributing to these tasks? And how do I make sure, as a manager, that everyone is seen equally?” I think that is really important to try to make it as inclusive as possible.
Ashley Litzenberger:
And this is, I think your point about creating clear goal frameworks where you have a source of truth, where you’re tracking what is the output and what is the quality of that output across direct reports? But also to your point around feedback, one of the things about being a manager is that you might not be working directly with your employees. Some teams are structured that way, where there’s tight within-team collaboration, or you could be in a more dispersed environment, where your direct reports are actually more frequently working with other people. So, finding a way to pull that feedback in, so that it’s not just the person who’s tasked on a project that you, as the manager, is on, you’re also seeing that full picture from other people who are engaging with your direct reports.
Ranya Nehmeh:
Absolutely. And also here, I think, Ashley, one more point to mention about, when we talk about proximity and promotions, is one more thing that we have seen is also, which is very much interlinked here, is that you are promoting the wrong people. And the reason you are promoting the wrong people is because, once again, managers are tracking what’s easy to measure. And what’s easy to measure is you being, perhaps, an individual contributor, I can measure your work there. And if you’re doing really well there, then I’ll promote you. But I don’t actually see how you are with other people, so I am promoting you for perhaps the wrong reasons. And we had quoted here also research that was done by Alan Benson, I think from the University of Minnesota, who basically found that promoting top individual performers into management often leads to worse team performance. So, we see that when we mistake performance here for leadership, we tend to put the wrong people in charge.
Ashley Litzenberger:
Your research on this is really interesting, because it does align with things that I’ve read in the past around, “Are you promoting an individual contributor based on their performance or based on their ability to actually shift into new management skills?” which is less around creating output around the work that you’re doing, but actually being able to lead and mentor and coach teams. And this leads me to something else that your research has been talking a little bit about, which is the concept of “dry promotions.”
Dry promotions, they happen when you bring someone into a role, or you give them a stretch role, or you promote them into someplace new with a title bump, but maybe not a pay increase. And this often happens during organizational restructuring, for a variety of different reasons. And in the short term, we know that this can enable companies to move a little bit more nimbly, and it can give employees the opportunity to grow into a stretch position. But I’m curious, your research also showed that there were some risks associated with employing a “dry promotion” strategy, especially over the long term. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
Ranya Nehmeh:
Sure. So, exactly that research that you highlighted, Ashley, it was an article that we actually wrote last year, both Peter Cappelli and myself, for the Harvard Business Review. And it was basically, yes, dry promotion is a phenomenon that has apparently been on the rise. And on paper, a dry promotion looks like a step-up, but in reality it can really feel like a trap in the long term. And how to spot that, that is becoming a problem. So, we had highlighted a few points for that.
So, first of all, if a manager suddenly goes from leading three people to 10 people, but is still in the same grade or salary level, that’s really a red flag. So here, regularly auditing span of control metrics can really help to surface this problem. Because obviously, when you promote somebody, and you give them so much more responsibility, it has to come with some kind of reward, otherwise it’s going to be very demotivating at some point.
You also can have pulse surveys that show a declining, for example, manager engagement, or low promotion satisfaction rate scores. Here, you can look for patterns, like our newly promoted managers reporting lower scores on well-being or clarity of expectations or support from leadership. So, these are all kind of questions that you can ask. Because if so, then it really may point to this as a dry promotion scenario.
There’s a study highlighted by SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management. In their report, it showed that employees who witnessed dry promotions, 23% of those, and those who experienced them personally, around 16%, report demotivation and resentment within weeks. So, this has really negative consequences as time goes by. We also see here increased turnover among newly promoted managers. So, if midlevel managers are exiting within 12 to 18 months of a promotion, then HR should really dig deeper. I mean, did they actually feel empowered by this promotion in this role or were they just completely overloaded?
Apparently, and this statistic was very shocking to me, is that 29% of individuals promoted without salary increases tend to exit within 30 days, compared to just 18% of those who receive full promotion packages. Which means that the turnover rate is quite high with dry promotions. And for companies who really know the cost of turnover, which is very high, this is something to really think about.
And finally, one point perhaps to add here is the lack of access to manager enablement resources. So, when you get promoted, you need help, sometimes you need coaching, you need training, you need mentorship. So, were these provided to you? If not, we’re kind of setting up people to fail otherwise. So, I think ultimately dry promotions really reflect a mindset problem.
Ashley Litzenberger:
I think this is really interesting because when you think about what drives innovation and what drives strong company success, it hinges on having top talent and having high engagement from your top talent. But if you’re hearing, or you’re getting signals from managers or different people in different leadership positions, that they’re dissatisfied or they’re disengaging or they’re disgruntled, that’s going to filter all throughout your organization. So, if they leave, you’ve lost top talent. But if they stay, they’re also going to be having a negative impact on your culture, which is also going to have a harmful impact on your organization.
Ranya Nehmeh:
Totally.
Ashley Litzenberger:
But I am really interested, you got right to where I wanted to go. When we talk about supporting managers or individuals as they’re growing in their careers, it’s not just about monetary compensation, it is about support and training. And so I want to dig into that a little more. Effective management looks different from being an individual contributor, and management looks different if you are in a fully in-office, in a hybrid, and in a fully remote organization. So, I’d love to dig into a little more about what specific manager behaviors or practices should companies measure more consistently to ensure they’re setting their teams up for success.
Ranya Nehmeh:
I think that right now, managers, they need to have regular check-ins and feedback conversations. These are, at the moment, I would say more critical than ever in hybrid settings. And also, as we see in the office, these happen more informally. You have the quick hallway chats, you have the coffee break, you have a nudge after a team meeting or even before the meeting starts, you have these catchups.
In a hybrid environment, if it’s not scheduled, it just doesn’t happen, right? And that creates a risk of silence also being mistaken as alignment. But it’s true that I think it can be very overwhelming for managers, as well, because they’re navigating right now distributed teams, higher expectations, and definitely more digital noise. So, I think the key here is not just to tell managers to have more conversations with their people, but rather it is to kind of enable fewer but more meaningful conversations.
And I think the organizations can support managers in several ways of doing that. You can embed it, embed structured, like very lightweight kind of check-ins into your workflows. We’re thinking more like 10 minutes focused, consistent, efficient, and that’s it. No need for these very long meetings that — they just carry on, they sometimes don’t even have an agenda, they have no real outcome. But we also saw this need for a meeting after the meeting, because everybody’s too busy multitasking during that meeting. So, what we’re saying here is just structured, lightweight, very focused, 10-minute catchups with your people.
I also think it’s very important to train managers on what good looks like, because that might be very different for different people. Many managers weren’t taught how to perhaps have these effective conversations, especially not virtually. So, I think here you have to give them simple frameworks. What progress are you making? What are your blockers? What support do you need? How can we help you? This will provide them with confidence and clarity.
And I have to say, this is an aspect that has also been very crucial in my experience so far, is a supportive manager. So, when they see that you are perhaps struggling or overloaded, they jump in, they try to really simplify your life. So, they don’t overload you more, but they find ways to take the burden off as well. I think that is very important.
Ashley Litzenberger:
So, if you are an organization that is in a hybrid or remote work environment, and they do have new managers coming in or they’ve recently made those shifts, what would you advise those HR teams to think about putting in place? Are there specific areas to focus on? Are there specific tactics or strategies that you’ve seen that are the most successful?
Ranya Nehmeh:
One of the main things I would say is feedback. I mean, it seems so obvious, but our managers really giving regular constructive feedback and not just in annual reviews, but really on an ongoing basis. I see so many times the problem, and I’ve seen that also in previous organizations where, if you want to say something to an employee, you go like, “I won’t say it now, I’ll wait till the performance review.” The performance review happens once, twice a year. So, are you really going to wait six months before you tell somebody what you should have told them in that moment?
I mean, I think that doesn’t really make sense to me, and this is not something that I would encourage at all. I think we need short, quick feedback as soon as things happen, good and bad. I mean, it has to be constructive feedback, but also when something did not work accordingly, you should not wait until the performance, the annual review to tell them, “Oh, by the way, you remember, four months ago you did this and this?”
But as you said, I also think that managers have to be trained for that, and many are not. So, I think this is really important, is feedback. Something else I would add is goal alignment and clarity. I think in hybrid teams, ambiguity, it kills the momentum. And we really need to track whether managers are in fact helping team members set clear goals and connect their work to broader outcomes, as well. I think here tools like objectives and key results, like OKRs, can really help and make this more transparent. And tied, perhaps, to what we talked about before is this equity of opportunities. So, our managers really distributing the stretch assignments equitably between remote and hybrid workers, and are they championing diverse voices? I think this is where you can really track who gets development opportunities and who doesn’t. And here you can, perhaps, also some statistics can help in that regard.
And finally, I would say, perhaps this one final point, is just psychological availability. I think, in remote settings, the role of managers is much more difficult, because you really have to — it’s not just manage the task, but you have to learn how to manage your people and try to read them and understand them, even though you’re not in person. And that is difficult to do because, in the office, you can see when somebody perhaps has a slump in their shoulders, and you can ask them straight away, “Hey, what’s up? Are you fine?” On screen, of course it might not be that obvious. So, you really have to understand how to have these conversations, how to listen better, and how to be present for your employees. And provide them with this kind of space to have conversations so that they feel they can also trust you. And here, you can also have pulse surveys, as well, or 360 feedback mechanisms.
Ashley Litzenberger:
Would you say that it is harder to be a manager in a remote or a hybrid environment, or that it takes more time or more emotional or mental load to be able to effectively manage a team?
Ranya Nehmeh:
Yeah, I do. I do. I think in hybrid settings, it is more difficult, because it’s a different kind of skill set that we need. And many of us have not been taught exactly how to do it, so we’ve had to kind of muddle through and figure it out ourselves. But I do think so because, and this is something that I read the other day, which is, in a hybrid setting, managers have to be the glue, they have to keep everything together. And if they don’t, then things can very easily fall apart. And so, I do think that. And that’s why we need these intentional or deliberate check-ins with your employees and management practices that are really suited for the hybrid environment.
Ashley Litzenberger:
And this, I think, is really where HR is situated to play a strong role, because if you leave it up to managers to build those cultures, some managers are great culture-builders and really lean into it. But it is incredibly helpful to have a companywide culture of having a performance conversation or a growth conversation or having set feedback templates for when products are completed, so that managers can just go in and they have something to use as a guide, as opposed to trying to figure out, “When do I have this conversation? Do I need to have this conversation? How do I have this conversation?”
And it also helps get ahead of that question about proximity bias, because it could be proximity bias or performance bias. You also hear anecdotes around, if someone is doing really well in their job, they almost get no feedback, because nothing’s wrong. But that also means that they’re missing out on that growth opportunity. So, creating structures, creating processes, creating expectations and giving managers templates to use to guide those conversations really reduces their mental load and builds that culture, so it’s not on them to make sure that they’re driving it or defining what it’s going to look like for their team.
Ranya Nehmeh:
I also think, actually one thing here is that you have to recognize and really reward behavior, as well. So, if we want managers to prioritize meaningful conversations, then we cannot just put it in there as a, “Oh, this is a nice to have.” No, then you have to integrate that as part of their KPIs and really track it, build it into their performance reviews, celebrate it when they do well. So, you really have to make that more intentional, as well.
Ashley Litzenberger:
That’s a really good point. If your manager’s only being assessed based on the output of their team, like how many things they’re producing, how many reports they’re writing, whatever the focus is, but you’re not measuring them against “How many growth conversations are you having?” they’re naturally not going to prioritize those. They’re going to prioritize the things that drive what they’re being measured against.
Ranya Nehmeh:
Exactly. Exactly.
Ashley Litzenberger:
Wrapping up, or getting close to the end of our conversation, we’ve been talking a lot about some of these practices, about some of the things that need to happen. If an HR leader wants to build a data-driven business case for investing in better manager training or support, what is the single most important metric or data point that they should focus on to clearly demonstrate the impact to senior leadership?
Ranya Nehmeh:
Well, if I had to choose just one data point to build a business case for, it would be manager effectiveness scores, especially when they’re tied to team performance and to retention metrics. Because, I think manager effectiveness is really a leading indicator, and it can tell you how well your team is being led before you start seeing things like turnover spikes or missed goals or employee disengagement. So, I think I would focus on that. And if you see that the scores are very low, then it’s not just an HR issue, then it’s really a kind of a business performance issue. So, then you would kind of know perhaps where to look into it.
Ashley Litzenberger:
So, what kinds of things would go into creating a manager effectiveness score? What would you pull together as different data points to inform that?
Ranya Nehmeh:
I think it would be things that — probably, I would add things that we discussed already, like perhaps feedback, these conversations that you have, the regular chats, the teams, how effective the teams are. So, perhaps a couple of these, I would add in that.
Ashley Litzenberger:
Yeah, I think that’s one of the challenges is, manager effectiveness, when you go into it, what do you measure? And that goes back into your company culture. Are you creating consistent conversations? Are you tracking goal alignment? Maybe engagement in and manager trainings, that can be an important part of it, too.
Ranya Nehmeh:
Exactly, exactly.
Ashley Litzenberger:
Really interesting. Well, thank you so much, Ranya. This has been a delightful conversation. I’ve really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.
Ranya Nehmeh:
Thanks so much, Ashley. This was lovely. Thanks for having me.
Ashley Litzenberger:
As we wrap up today’s conversation with Ranya, let’s think about a few things you can take back to your own work. First, be intentional about how you support employees in hybrid and remote environment. Ranya reminded us that long-term organizational health depends on more than just productivity. Trust, mentorship and informal feedback loops are critical for sustaining performance and culture.
Second, watch for signs of proximity bias and inequity. Whether it’s deciding who gets stretch assignments or who’s considered for promotions, managers need to focus on measurable outcomes, not just face time, to ensure all employees are seen and valued. Third, invest in manager readiness, from clear goal setting and regular feedback to lightweight, meaningful check-ins. The right training and frameworks can help managers lead effectively in any setting, and that directly impacts engagement and retention. By focusing on intentional support, fairness, and equipping managers to succeed, you can create an environment where people feel connected, supported, and really able to do their best work.
Be sure to stay tuned for our next episode of the People Fundamentals podcast. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube Music. And if you like what you hear, share us with your friends and colleagues. We’ll see you again soon.
