By Joseph Morales

Imani Phillips is an account manager for the management consulting firm Griffin Consulting. She has worked for 15 years helping companies determine what steps to take to improve their profit margins. Imani has helped businesses do everything from better managing their financial resources to developing more positive cultures. Another core part of her job is overseeing projects and ensuring that other analysts also make strong contributions to solving problems for businesses.

Outside of supporting clients directly, she also researches common issues workplaces face so that the company can deliver better solutions to clients. Several of her previous research topics included changes in leadership and lack of communication in offices. Today, she was conducting surveys to determine how hybrid work policies impact employee retention at companies. Imani had been to several accounts where employees complained about needing to come to the office 3-4 days a week. They had claimed that they could easily work from home and their companies’ caused them to waste time commuting and have a poor work-life balance. Businesses often countered the argument by saying that employees needed to be in the office to ensure quality communication along with workplace productivity. Companies also often felt that their rules were generous considering that working from home was almost non-existent before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Imani was out to try and determine an answer to that question. She came to Union Square Park in the middle of Manhattan’s Union Square. It is one of the largest commercial hubs on Manhattan’s East Side and a very popular place for locals and tourists alike. Union Square includes a variety of major retailers including a two-floor Best Buy and the landmark Strand Bookstore.

The main attraction is the park with several unique features that lead it to draw the crowds Imani wants to possibly survey. This includes a greenmarket and vast green space that makes the park a prime hangout spot. These areas being present meant that there were likely to be people who were not in a rush and hence more likely to participate in Imani’s survey. Also, people seemed to take a liking to the street vendors that lined the front of the park closest to 14th St. Vendors there included chess players selling opportunities to play against them along with a variety of clothing and jewelry stands. Other stands included a podcast stand and another stand selling promotional merch for NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani. With this much variety, Imani thought for sure that people would be happy to contribute to her research project.

She felt more confident being here than the nearby Washington Square Park. That park was flooded with social media influencers trying to survey people for all kinds of things. Imani heard people say that they didn’t trust people there. Their reasoning stemmed from the sheer load of influencers or the social media-promoted snowball fight in February where police officers were struck by snowballs. Imani felt that her efforts would be more welcomed in a park without that reputation.

Typically for surveying, she would tell an intern what data to obtain and the intern would handle all the data collection. Imani would then just interpret the information and write the report or blog post. However, the company intern, Joshua, is currently on a weeklong vacation, leaving her to complete the entire project. Imani decided to work in the front of the park near the vendors and 14th St. With the vendors, busy street and subway complex, she was confident she would get enough people to survey.

She planned to ask everyone how many days they feel they should be able to work from home and how many office days would cause them to leave a company. Imani decided to simply walk up to people and politely ask if they would answer her questions. She figured it couldn’t be that complicated considering how often influencers and YouTubers do it in NYC and around the United States. Not to mention she was doing it to help solve an issue people care about rather than to post a video for entertainment purposes.

Unfortunately, things were not going as planned. People either ignored her or just replied a simple “I’m good” and did not even try to make eye contact with her. A decent amount even had AirPods in and didn’t seem to hear anything around them, much less her request given at a standard volume. There was a small group of people who stopped by and mentioned that they should always be allowed to work from home because they do not need to be in an office to do their work. However, it was not nearly enough to draw any conclusions or add significant value to her report.

Imani arrived at the office the next day feeling defeated. She was in front of her laptop and staring at a blank screen with nothing concrete to write down. One of her colleagues was walking past her cubicle and noticed her demeanor. The colleague, John, was a younger consultant and like most 30-somethings, spent a lot of his free time on social media. He asked Imani what was going on and she explained the disaster at Union Square Park.

“And you went up to them like a man on the street interviewer?”, John asked.

“What is that?”, Imani replied.

“Ok, that’s what it seemed like.” John says.

John went on to explain how people often did not like to speak to man on the street interviewers who ask random questions due to shyness and/or not trusting creators with footage of themselves. Many were also simply in a hurry and just did not want to be bothered. He also explained how there are a lot of man on the street creators in Washington Square Park and while they often produce cool content, they frequently run into those issues when trying to find people to record.

“Funny, but I didn’t go to Washington Square Park because I didn’t want people to think I was one of those.” Imani said.

“Well you did the same thing, just a seven blocks north.” John replied.

John was right. Imani chose to do her research in Union Square Park because she thought that people would see her distinctly from interviewers in Washington Square Park. However, it wasn’t productive to go to a different park to conduct her survey in the same exact way. She also found it important to conduct marketing activities in ways that were more cohesive to her company’s business. Hence, she did not want to continue doing these interviews the same way YouTubers do them for entertainment purposes.

“So, what do you recommend?” Imani asked.

John explained how he thought Imani should get herself a table with the company logo to make herself look official. He also recommended that Imani print out her survey questions into a paper format to give people multiple ways to answer them. John justified it by saying how Union Square Park was full of tables representing various well-trafficked businesses and how she could just be one of them.

Imani thought it was a great idea as it could help her get survey participants and maybe even serve as a way for the business to put itself out there more and get more clients. She also had another idea to make the survey even more accessible to people. Imani suggested that they add a QR code version of the survey so that people could complete the survey later if they couldn’t do it at the moment. John advised against it, as people could open it and then forget about it without filling it out. He said that she was better off possibly losing a few participants completely than taking that risk.

“So, sounds like a plan.” Imani said in a positive and emphatic manner.

“I can use the company backdrop and the table from the conference. I think we can do this in a very cost-effective manner. Great thinking, John.”

“Of course.” John replied.

With that, Imani went back to the park the next day with a plan. She arrived at the park at 3PM in order to set up before a rush of people got there after work. Imani had always believed that early was on time, on time was late, and that late beyond that was just unacceptable. That had always helped her to be successful throughout her career and was certain it would help her today. Imani had the paper surveys on the bottom left in a neat pile and she was behind the center of the table with the company backdrop behind her.

The survey was a massive success, with people lining up at times to fill out the survey and talk about their workplaces. People overwhelmingly seemed to favor hybrid schedules so that they could avoid commuting five days a week and still be able to communicate in-person with colleagues on critical matters. There were some that favored all in-person or all remote policies for various reasons. However, the overwhelming majority of participants still went for hybrid schedules with a desire for the best of both worlds. As far as her core question went, she found that most people would look for other jobs if their company had a four or five day in-person work requirement. Imani also got spirited takes on the issue from some participants.

“We should definitely not have to come in five days a week! I don’t want to commute an hour to do computer work from another desk.” One person said.

“I want flexibility, I like hybrid.” Another one added.

The next day, Imani had a plethora of viable information for her blog post. She discussed the preference for hybrid work and how people enjoyed the benefits of going to the office for interpersonal things while still having the flexibility of some remote days. Imani was getting ready to publish when John walked by.

“How’d everything go?” John asked happily, seeing Imani probably was having success with the blog post.

Imani mentioned how it went excellent and how she was hoping the blog post would be informative and possibly help encourage companies to do business with them. John explained how engagement can take time, but the post should help to build credibility and lead to opportunities over time as Griffin Consulting publishes more posts and serves more clients. Imani was thrilled with her work and was looking forward to what was next. Whenever there is more research though, she’ll probably have Joshua do all the data collection.