Juliette Kayyem: The Change In Work Culture Post-Pandemic

Hannah Uebele is a producer for Under the Radar with Callie Crossley and previously worked as associate producer for Boston Public Radio. She graduated from Tufts University with a B.S. in English and Environmental Studies. She's a proud Delawarean but has found herself saying "wicked" more and more often, so the Bostonian metamorphosis is well underway.Contact: hannah_uebele@wgbh.org

May 20, 2020

Updated August 07, 2023

Homeland security expert Juliette Kayyem spoke with Boston Public Radio on Wednesday about returning to work culture post-pandemic.

"For offices and institutions that were able to perform basically the same from work from home, I don't see what the desire is to have people back," she said. "No one knows what the legal liability would be if you're going to bring people together, therefore exposing them to each other, and possibly then getting your workforce sick."

Closing was the easy part, Kayyem added, and now reopening is going to be a balance between the number of people we expose to risk.

"The idea of corporate culture is going to be so different until we actually get better management of the virus," she said. "The whole idea of what an office was, is now, I think, not accurate."

Kayyem is an analyst for CNN, former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and faculty chair of the homeland security program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.