Food For Thought
Virtual Series:
Making Hybrid Working Work!
📅 27 August 2026
🕙 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM
💻 Online
🎙️ Speaker: Kelli Ng
Let's be real about the thing nobody wants to say out loud about hybrid work
If any of these thoughts have crossed your mind lately,
you're not alone:
You worry that your employees aren't working as hard as they should when nobody's watching.
You worry your newest hires aren't learning the way your best people did
— because no one's grabbing them for a quick "here's how we actually do this" anymore.
You worry that your team go quiet.
If even one of those hit close to home — that's not paranoia.
That's you noticing something real.
So you tighten the policy.
More mandated days.
More check-ins.
It feels like doing something.
Here's the problem: that's usually not what's actually broken.
What the Research Actually Says
On productivity & retention — Stanford (Nicholas Bloom), Nature, 2024
- Hybrid work: zero negative effect on productivity or promotions
- Resignations dropped 33% among employees moved to hybrid
On connection —McKinsey
- 72% of hybrid employees feel connected to colleagues
- Higher than fully in-office and fully remote workers
On innovation — McKinsey
- Only 47% of in-office workers report feeling innovative
- 51% of remote and 54% of hybrid workers do
What Actually Worked?
Kelli's own team is mostly remote. She's led it that way for years.
A while back, she came across a company called Menlo Innovations, through a book called Joy, Inc. What struck her wasn't just their culture. It was one specific habit. When their culture tours went virtual during COVID, she watched people hop between pairs using a simple shared sheet of Zoom links. No booking. No calendar invite. Just click, and you're in.
So on 1 September 2023, she tried the same thing with her own team: an all-day Teams meeting, sitting right at the top of everyone's calendar, open the entire day, every day.
Not a one-off session. A standing room.
She only meant to run it for a month.
That month became a year.
That year became several.
It's still running today, and she keeps extending it, because it works.
No one books a meeting to check something anymore. They just say, "hop into the room for a sec?" People who came into the office physically started hanging out there too.
It became the team's actual office.
Come for two hours
and you'll walk away with:
🚪 Why an always-open room beats any scheduled meeting
— for real connection, not just check-ins
☕ The early warning sign most leaders miss
— when the pantry talk disappears, hybrid is already starting to crack
🔄 Proof this isn't a fad
— how a one-month test became a four-year habit, and what that tells you about what actually sticks
Meet Kelli Ng
— General Manager, Certified LEAN Coach
Kelli helps leaders and teams put efficiency into motion. With expertise in LEAN, digital transformation, and project management, she empowers organisations to simplify processes, boost productivity, and create space for innovation.
What sets her apart: she believes better systems and caring leadership go hand in hand. Practical. People-first. Always with the human element at the core.
At Lynch Pin, Kelli champions one idea — Better Leaders, Better Culture, Better Business.
Credentials:
- LEAN Six Sigma Black Belt, GLSS, Sept 2025
- Certified 2 Second Lean Japan Experience by Paul Akers (Team 35), 2022
- Certified N1 Japanese Language Proficiency, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, 2015
- Certified Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, The Worldwide Institutes of NLP, 2017
- Certified Genovasi – Design Thinking Practitioner, Genovasi Malaysia, 2016
- Certified Practitioner, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Franklin Covey, 2016
If anyone's earned the right to tell you what actually works instead of what should work in theory, it's her.
One Thing to Remember
Hybrid working doesn't fail because your people are in different places.
It fails when connection becomes something you have to schedule, instead of something that's just... there.
Fix the room, not the roster.
This One's For You If...
You're a C-suite leader or part of top management, genuinely trying to make hybrid work
— not just look good on a policy doc, but actually run well, day to day, for real people.
Once you've registered, we'll email you the joining link right away.
If it doesn't appear in your inbox within a few minutes, have a quick look in your Spam or Junk folder—our emails sometimes like to hide there. 😊
To help you stay on track, we'll also send a couple of reminder emails before the session.
Tip: Add our email address to your contacts to ensure your joining link and reminders arrive safely in your inbox. 📬