Thriving in Hybrid Work Environment

Overview

The pandemic placed flexible work arrangements, especially hybrid work, in the spotlight. With all the states in India issuing stay-at-home orders and allowing only essential businesses to keep their physical locations open, unprepared employers were forced to implement flexible work options on the fly. 

As social distancing orders are lifted, employee requests for flexible hours and remote work arrangements continued. Now that many employers have tasted the success of telecommuting and developed the skill to manage work hours that differ from the typical 9-to-5 without injury to productivity, offering hybrid work arrangements to candidates has become more commonplace. 

Companies are becoming increasingly receptive that hybrid work arrangements can boost recruiting and retention efforts, supplement organizational diversity initiatives, encourage ethical conduct, and aid the organization's attempts to be socially responsible. Employers can see cost savings, greater attendance and productivity, and improved employee engagement.

See. Leveraging Workplace Flexibility for Engagement and Productivity

See. Reimagining the Office for the Hybrid Age

What Does the Hybrid Work Model Entail?

The term refers to a working arrangement that involves dividing work time between a worker's home or other preferred workspace and a traditional in-office workplace due to the rapid growth of telecommuting as well as the numerous cloud based real time collaboration tools that make it possible.

Even though not every firm is able or ready to adopt a hybrid work model, many have at least given it some thought as a strategy to minimize their office space investments while accommodating employees' demands for increased flexibility. Hybrid work can aid in achieving a balance between employee and company preferences.

The Three Hybrid Workplace Models

Remote-First Model

With a few exceptions, the firm's activities will mostly resemble those of a totally remote corporation under the remote-first hybrid model. Although most workers would like to work from home, others will only be given the same freedom if their position demands physical presence.

The basic tenet of remote-first is that the business should operate like a remote business, with staff members communicating online and working in various time zones while ensuring that productivity is unaffected.

Office Model

Some businesses who are not convinced about working remotely and are eager to return to the office for multiple reasons, such as not wanting to lose money on idle office space or not wanting to fall behind their rivals who have already brought their virtual employees back to the office. These companies may establish a hybrid model characterized as office occasional.

This model's premise is that workers visit the workplace a few times every week. Depending on the corporation's needs, this policy may be reasonably lenient or have stricter criteria. The fundamental aspect of this strategy is that the business chooses to maintain an office and requires people to work there rather than completely embracing remote work.

Remote-Allowed, Office-Preferred Model

Before the epidemic, the office-first, remote-allowed approach was a popular configuration for many businesses. Although the office is identified as the principal place to work, both office and remote work choices are maintained in this paradigm. Additionally, the company gives its workers remote work arrangements based on their needs. This strategy is viral when the whole leadership team works from the office, as the rest of the business will likely become office centered.

However, a disadvantage of this strategy can be that distant workers might start to feel inferior. They frequently also receive less respect from their superiors and fewer job possibilities.

See. In-Office, Remote and Hybrid Work Arrangements Policy

Merits of Adopting a Hybrid Work Model

For collaboration, productivity, and the employee experience, a well-structured hybrid work model can be optimal in which an average workweek includes a few days on-site and the rest remote.

In either scenario, flexibility is the key to hybrid work deployments which are designed to provide the best of both worlds. When executed well, a hybrid work strategy may offer numerous benefits:

1. Enhanced employee experience: While some employees like to work in a group setting, others prefer to work in solitary. A good employee experience for both groups can be delivered by hybrid work arrangements, encouraging an inclusive and self-reliant work culture afterward.

2. Improved productivity & efficiency: Flexible work schedules allows a welcome change of scenery which improves employees' concentration and creativity. Workers are more likely to manage their workloads, take ownership, and put more effort into their job when they have greater freedom at work. For instance, they may separate their tasks into team projects and individual projects. They can work on individual tasks while working remotely and work on team projects while in the office.

3. Worker retention and recruitment: The flexibility to work outside the office for at least some time is a key job perk as it cuts the time spent commuting. An organization offering hybrid schedules may be better equipped to recruit from anywhere and retain employees than one that does not.

4. Lowers operational expenses: This model requires less physical space with fewer people working in the workplace. The hybrid strategy thereby lowers the price of both real estate and office supplies. Lowering commute expenses also saves money for the workers.

5. Redefines collaboration: In order to engage, and support distant teams, hybrid work requires businesses to go through a digital transformation. Employees no longer need to be in a physical room to collaborate and come up with ideas. They can interact and work together from any location using modern technological tools.

6. Enhanced employee work-life balance: Working full-time from home or the office might be lonely or distracting.
   

7. Minimizing harmful impact on global ecology: Specific flexible work arrangements can contribute to sustainability efforts by reducing carbon emissions and workplace "footprints" in creating new office buildings.

8. Hybrid work allows business continuity during emergencies such as a weather disaster or pandemic.
   

What Challenges Does the Hybrid Work Model Pose?

For firms, especially smaller ones, lacking the critical mass of technology, funds, management, and competitive flexibility essential to the maximal use of flexible work arrangements, offering flexible work arrangements might require an evolutionary change.

Managers tasked with implementing strategic goals related to flexible work arrangements need to keep many things in mind:

• Keeping programs relevant to workers' real needs/wants.

• Focusing on the unique needs of workers without engaging in unfair treatment or discrimination.

• Allowing workers some choice and freedom while also knowing when and where the work is being performed.

See. India: What HR Is Grappling with on Hybrid Work Models

In addition, managing the change from a traditional work environment to one with more flexible work arrangements can throw a spotlight on various managerial trouble spots, such as:

• Upper management's resistance to change.

• Control issues, especially in terms of supervision of work.

• Proximity bias.

• Working as a team with far-flung members and highly variant schedules.

• Maintaining the safety and security of personnel and data.

See. Preventing Proximity Bias in a Hybrid Workplace

See.How to Collaborate with a Hybrid Workforce

Some of the significant challenges posed by the hybrid work model are:

1. Little interpersonal connections: It might be challenging to establish or sustain connections with co-workers in a diverse workplace. Poor interpersonal relationships might result from the fragmented workforce and the decline in in-person encounters. Organizations must develop and implement a hybrid work paradigm that supports rather than erodes employee interactions.

2. Burnout and overwork: A hybrid workplace approach may develop an overworked culture. Remote employees could put in more hours and take fewer breaks. They could fear that their supervisors think they are slacking off just because they are out of the spotlight, so they put in extra effort to show them they are not. Employers must inform their staff about harmful behaviors, including excessive working hours.

3. Poor coordination and communication: Employees who work in the office and those who work remotely may need to be in sync with one another or communicate poorly as a result of hybrid working. Employers must ensure that a hybrid working arrangement fosters both autonomy and cooperation, as this is one of the key benefits of hybrid.

4. Culture dilution: A distributed workforce may have varying opinions on company culture. The tricky part is ensuring that on-site and remote employees share and uphold company culture and fundamental values. Before implementing the hybrid workplace model, organizations need to re-examine their cultural philosophy and guidelines.

5. Increase in cybersecurity risks: Cybersecurity risks could be created by staff members working outside the office. They might connect to insecure networks or use home laptops for work. A corporation must ensure that all remote workers adhere to its security requirements.
   

Best Practices to Thrive in a Hybrid Work Culture

The most significant issue for most business leaders is how to preserve the corporate culture when some workers work in the office, and others work from home. As many businesses prepare for a hybrid workforce to persist, they need clarification about assessing and implementing their intended cultures when staff members are absent in person.

Office environments and face-to-face proximity have traditionally been the standard approaches for fostering employee connectivity. Because most employees feel corporate culture is crucial for them to be productive in their professions, the hybrid has eliminated that, leaving a void leaders must fill. Some of the best practices that can be adopted for successful navigation in a hybrid environment are given below.

Credit Source: Gartner

1. Hyper-personalized experience - Experiences create a lasting impression. Organizations must redesign their practices and policies by taking an integrated view of the employee life cycle to deliver a differentiated experience resulting in deeper engagement, alleviating stress and anxiety, increasing retention, and sustaining performance and productivity.

2. Technological efficiency - Digital savviness, talent upskilling, growth, and workforce mobility have witnessed a sharp rally in demand in all sectors. After the initial struggle of onboarding the workforce on digital collaboration platforms, organizations have integrated technology as a part of their DNA. Digital literacy, competence, and dexterity have become vital skills and pivotal points for talent decisions on hiring, performance, growth, internal mobility, and development.

3. Total wellbeing - Employee well-being has evolved as total well-being and a workplace's mainstream policy. Organizations impacted by the pandemic were quick to realize the importance of the total well-being of their workforce. Numerous organizations created a special purpose task force (EAP) with leadership oversight to take immediate care of their employees and their families' well-being.

4. Heliotropic culture: Adapting to remote work models - Organizations need to shift their strategy to accommodate the hybrid work model. When the strategy shifts, so do the culture to enable the success of strategic objectives. Remote working, a privilege, has become a normal differentiator for talent. Hence, it must be closely integrated with the organization's strategy.

5. Building a flexible work culture - A widespread realization by organizations to be agile and responsive to external triggers has been primarily observed. This involves building flexibility and responsiveness in workplace strategies, workforce skillsets, and decision-making processes.

6. Autonomy and empowerment - Getting work done in a virtual setting requires a totally different skill set. For managers, it meant trusting the employees to manage their time and task completion with minimal supervision. For leaders, it means creating a culture where employees experience autonomy and empowerment by being more conscious of their time and self-motivated to achieve business objectives. Empowerment is the centerpiece of delivering a heliotropic work culture.

7. Onboarding and cultural assimilation - While virtual onboarding through process automation has solved the problem of inducting new talent joining, the deeper challenge is assimilating talent into the culture. This entails a shared understanding of work ways, communication, and the adoption of organizational practices. Owing to remote working, new joiners need to interface with the physical artifacts and practices, which makes it difficult for them to experience the culture, a challenge that organizations have realized and are solving through technology. While such arrangements provide efficiencies in cost, organizations are also thinking about the induction of the Gig workforce into their unified ways of working. Advanced virtualization technologies like AR and VR provide employees with a near-physical onboarding experience. To supplement virtual onboarding, organizations blend in-person meetings of the local team(s) to accelerate talent assimilation.

8. Humanising connectedness - The human side of organizations came to the forefront during the pandemic. With the workplace getting distributed, there is a fundamental human need to connect with peers. Once established, this connection leads to trust between the employees and the organization. It also paves the way for seamless collaboration, learning, and knowledge sharing. The importance of physical proximity and empathy cannot be undermined.

9. Building relational capital to forge an employer-employee relationship - Some exciting practices of building social connections amongst the employees have been observed. Many organizations allow bringing children and pets to virtual meetings. This works to de-stress the environment and trigger social exchanges between employees resulting in relational capital. Other enterprises are driving connectedness through clearly defined KPIs for all employees. This enables autonomous working and role clarity, which is imperative when the workforce operates in a virtual environment.
   

Review The Current Approach To Cultural Shift

1. Determine the existing methods used by your company to engage people with culture. Make workers aware of the value their function brings to the business. Examine work procedures against your culture's values and belief systems to ensure they represent them.

2. Examine the working styles in which workers are most enthusiastic about their jobs and contrast them with the styles on which your current culture plan concentrates. For example- identify and consciously create the "moments that count" when employees are more likely to feel seen by others in the business.

3. Share the critical insights with senior leaders to determine their preparation level and build support for promoting culture via work and establishing emotional proximity.

4. Determine the managers and leaders who can promote deliberate initiatives to promote culture change.
   

How to Put a Hybrid Workplace Model into Practice?

1. Transparent and explicit policies: To adopt a hybrid workplace, flexible work regulations must be put in place in accordance with organizational needs. Guidelines must answer some relevant questions: What does this flexibility entail for staff members? Does this imply that individuals can choose to work from home one day each week? May they change their work hours to fulfill their obligations and yet have time for their personal affairs? Can they choose to work from home? Do they have to let the boss know when they are coming in?
   

   Clarity in workplace policies is crucial to preventing mismanagement while establishing a hybrid approach. Businesses looking to attract top talent must ensure clarity and transparency with flexible work policies.

2. Engage your teams: To effectively manage a hybrid workplace, managers must set aside time to engage with their staff more, provide personal updates, or even lead activities that encourage reciprocal care, respect, and trust.

   Managers may conduct virtual one-on-one meetings with remote staff and socially distant meetings with in-person employees. These meetings may be used to identify any difficulties staff members may have transitioning to the new workplace structure, and management can take appropriate action to address these difficulties.

   To keep employees engaged and productive, managers must inspire them with a sense of meaning and purpose and help them relate their work to the organization's more significant goals.

    

3. Learning and growth: Employee learning and development are anticipated to be continual activities by today's talent, especially with the number of complicated apps implemented by firms daily. Consistent training for the staff guarantees that they have the most up-to-date skills and fosters an environment where individuals are more open to trying new ideas. This is quite effective for businesses that want to continue to be creative.

   However, because only some employees would be at the office at the same time, standard training approaches like conducting group training are neither practical nor convenient for workers in a hybrid workplace. Another difficulty may be holding online training sessions for a geographically spread workforce that operates in several time zones.

    

   Self-paced learning is the key to resolving the issues with hybrid workforce training and enabling ongoing employee training. Employees may access learning materials and complete training at their convenience and at a pace that suits them best with self-paced learning.
   
   

4. Flexible desking: Managing the influx and outflow of personnel could be challenging since, under a hybrid model, different employees might come to the office or work from home on various days. Flex desks, where individuals reserve their workstations each morning before arriving at work, are one remedy for this. When needed, hybrid workers can reserve desks; when not, they can leave them available for other workers to utilize.

   Since only those employees at the office at a given moment require a desk, flexible desking maximizes the use of resources in the workplace. Supervisors may monitor the number of employees in each place, make plans for them, and more with the aid of employees' prior notification.

    

5. Adopt instruments that promote adaptability and accountability: In a hybrid workplace, people are expected to collaborate closely with their team rather than work alone. In order to enhance the collaboration activities of a physically scattered workforce, selecting the appropriate collaboration tools is, therefore, the most critical decision driving hybrid teams.

   Online (virtual) collaboration solutions are helpful for teams operating in a hybrid workplace since they need to interact, assign tasks, discuss projects, and share their expertise with other team members. They save time, money, and energy while enhancing the collaborative process and result.

    

6. Effective way to gauge workplace happiness: Organizations are often assessed basis of their ability to foster cooperation, problem-solving, and knowledge transfer when it comes to workplace satisfaction. Companies must be able to monitor results and make data-based choices in order to adopt a successful new-age hybrid workplace that benefits both employees and the company.

   Regular workplace satisfaction surveys, in conjunction with technology that collects hyperlocal occupancy data, such as identifying underused spaces for cost savings, highlighting workplace perks, and determining whether the intended function of a workspace aligns with its actual use, can aid in gathering valuable information. These kinds of data insights provide the knowledge required to match resources with demand and continually enhance the working environment.
   

In Conclusion

The post-pandemic workplace is now more dynamic, engaging, and social rather than just a collection of desks. A hybrid workplace allows employees to work wherever they feel most productive. Nevertheless, it is the responsibility of the employer to maximize employee potential by developing and implementing a living workplace plan that enables the company to expand and evolve.

Regardless of what "the office" is, the most crucial factor is how well your hybrid workplace supports your workers. Because keeping employees productive, connected, and engaged, regardless of where they work, is the most important goal of effective hybrid workplaces.