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Dear HBR: · Harvard Business Review

Introducing New Here: Office Etiquette

November 30, 2023·26 min·2 clips
HBR interns Hansali and Maddie reveal their stress over invisible office etiquette rules, from emails to blazers.
Dear HBR is still on hiatus. Alison uses the pause to send listeners to a New Here conversation for young professionals trying to build careers without pretending the office comes with a manual. Eleni Mata leads the episode with Sarah Cooper, a writer and comedian who used to work as a designer at big tech companies. That background gives the conversation some bite. Cooper talks about office etiquette as something people pick up by watching what gets rewarded, forgiven, or quietly held against them. Tech comes off as more procedural. In the workplaces Cooper describes, clear subject lines and complete information carry weight. Entertainment sounds more social and more slippery. The emails may be casual, even warm, while the memory around names matters a lot more. Forget a name there and it can say more than you meant it to say. In Cooper's view, people may read it as proof that you were not paying enough attention. The advice stays useful because it does not pretend there is one workplace rulebook. Notice the local customs before assuming one norm travels everywhere. Alison's setup also matters. She frames New Here as a guide for early career listeners who want the workplace decoded without being talked down to. Eleni widens the lens to Slack, video calls, and small on screen moments, where etiquette keeps changing. Cooper does not give a universal script. Her point is simpler: read the room, because formality, warmth, and memory do different jobs in different industries. Alison closes by pointing listeners to New Here's first season, with episodes on networking, interviews, layoffs, bad bosses, and first raises.

As heard by us

Etiquette here is about the unwritten rules of a new job, not surface polish.

Office etiquette emerges here less as polish than as a lesson in the unwritten rules of starting a new job. The episode moves through email, meetings, and the shift from face-to-face cues to Slack, video calls, and other digital signals.

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Why you'd press play

Need help decoding the unwritten rules of a new job before the room starts speaking in side-eyes?

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