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The Catalyst by SoftchoiceAuthor: Softchoice
A documentary-style podcast about how IT leaders tackle high-stakes transformations.Each episode weaves together real voices, expert insights, and compelling narratives that reveal universal challenges and practical wisdom.Season 7: "Small Teams, Big Dreams" explores the human stories behind IT transformationsfrom AI adoption experiments to burnout crises, from toxic job markets to infrastructure decisions that matter. These aren't polished case studies. These are authentic accounts from IT professionals navigating the same impossible gaps between expectations and resources that you face every day.From Softchoice, a World Wide Technology company. Language: en-us Genres: Business, Management, Technology Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it Trailer: |
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The Mandate Episode: Why Return to Work is a Losing Fight
Wednesday, 1 July, 2026
If you read the headlines, you'd think nearly every major employer marched its workforce back to the office five days a week. The data says otherwise. And so does the human cost when companies push it anyway.In this episode of The Catalyst, Brian Elliott, CEO of Work Forward, an anonymous 30-year IT veteran and former Marine, and Softchoice's Lisa Walkden lay out what return-to-office mandates are actually about — and what they cost the leaders who issue them.Here's what you'll take away:Why only about a third of US companies actually went back to five days — and what's really driving the ones that didHow a 30-year tech veteran ended up quiet-quitting his job, and what that reveals about the real cost of a mandateThe reframe one Softchoice leader uses with executives weighing RTO — and the data that backs it upWhy the same companies still picking the RTO fight are often the same ones struggling with AI adoptionFeaturing: Brian Elliott, founder of the Flex Index and CEO of Work Forward; Lisa Walkden, Senior Manager of Workplace Experience at Softchoice, a World Wide Technology Company; and an anonymous IT leader who agreed to share his story on condition we don't name his employer.#ReturnToOffice #HybridWork #ITLeadership #WorkplaceStrategy #FutureOfWork #FlexIndex #TheCatalystGuestsBrian Elliott — Work ForwardFlex Index (Brian's data set) — flexindex.comLisa Walkden — SoftchoiceAnonymous — 30-year tech veteran and former US MarineResearch & Data CitedFlex Index quarterly reports — flexindex.com/reportsStanford Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes (Nick Bloom, WFH Research) — wfhresearch.comRichmond Fed Economic Brief No. 24-16 (May 2024) — "Return-to-Office Orders: A Survey Analysis of Employment Impacts" by Grey Gordon and Sonya Ravindranath Waddell — richmondfed.org"Return-to-Office Mandates and Brain Drain" — research from the University of Pittsburgh and Baylor's Hankamer School of Business (3M+ workers tracked via LinkedIn data) — hankamer.baylor.eduCBRE data on workforce-manager geographic distribution (cited by Brian Elliott in interview)More from BrianWork Forward newsletter — theworkforward.substack.comThe Catalyst by Softchoice is the podcast dedicated to exploring the intersection of humans and technology.
