The new workplace landscape should allow employees to design their work time, says P&G HR Director

• Allowing employees to design their own schedules and redefining "remote work" will be key post-pandemic, said Procter & Gamble's Karl Preissner.
• P&G said it addressed gender and inequity biases by changing its parental leave policy.
• Working under the stress of finding new methods of doing things amplify bias and systematic inequities, says Preissner.

The post-pandemic workplace should allow employees to design their own work schedules and change the office environment, Karl Preissner, Procter & Gamble's HR Director of Global Equality and Inclusion, said on Wednesday.

"We [P&G] are really organizing around giving a team a decision of when they work, where they work, and how they're going to work," Preissner said at Insider's Workplace Evolution event, in a session hosted by Raman Sehgal, host of the "Modern Minorities" podcast. "Our office system will maybe have three days in the office, on average."

Other aspects that factor into a novel workplace landscape include bringing the right tools and technologies to change the office environment. But more importantly, the language around remote work also has to change, and that includes the unconscious biases and assumptions that come with it, according to Preissner.

People who are working at a different location are constantly referred to as working from home, making the office the only normal default, he said. People who aren't at the office shouldn't be labeled differently, he said.

"Everyone is remote 100%, whether you're in the office or not," he said. "The label we're giving to everyone is that you're all remote."

Preissner also said that inequities develop when everyone is placed under the "tremendous" stress of finding new ways of doing things and therefore narrowing the decision-making process, adding that "stress tends to amplify bias and systematic inequities."

To address that bias during the pandemic, P&G revisited its parental leave policy to improve the quality of time all of its employees have with their children.

"We believe that care for home and family has no gender," Preissner said. "In the middle of this pandemic, we have changed our policy as it was the only policy we had which had a specific gender bias."

P&G's parental leave policy now provides eight weeks of fully paid leave for parents, domestic partners, adoptive parents, same-sex couples. It also provides six weeks for recovery to others.

When it comes to addressing biases during the pandemic and going forward, Preissner advised big and small companies to explore systems of power and privilege and give up the interest in being right.

"When you give this up, we can start to see where the problems are really coming about and have a wider field of view where we can hear more input and collaborate in ways we couldn't, particularly as it relates to equality inclusion," Preissner said.

Going forward, P&G plans to maintain its wellness and inclusion development along with its relationship-based culture. Preissner described it as a "competitive advantage" that deeply connects with employees.

P&G has been remodeling its advertising over the years, creating teams to handle media planning and buying and creative works for different brands. In December, the company began taking programmatic ad buying for Pampers and Luvs in-house.