Hybrid work model! What is it about?

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Covid-19 the game changer!

A new working culture made its way along with the rise of Covid-19 pandemic which started as a work from home model. Soon after pandemic; working from office was not something that the employees were fond of anymore which eventually introduced this new flexible working model.

Covid-19 has pushed the buttons to make organizations to reflect on the new working culture, this changed the idea of how people wanted to work and made them move away from the traditional 9 to 5 working culture. This paved the way to the New Hybrid working model.

Organizations are now adopting the new norm willingly or unwillingly in order to keep their business running.

A Harvard Business School article on hybrid work states that Skeptical CEOs, such as the leaders of Goldman Sachs and Starbucks, say they need workers in the office full time to foster a collaborative environment. At the other extreme: Companies like 3M, SAP, and Twitter are letting many employees work from anywhere. Stuck in between: Employees quitting inflexible jobs as part of the “Great Resignation” and new hires feeling adrift without regular contact.

Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) illustrates that hybrid is the future of work. Denoting some key takeaways:

• Hybrid working arrangements balance the benefits of being in the office with the benefits of working from home.
• Before implementing hybrid policies, executives and managers need to think through the implications of how and when employees work remotely.
• Issues of equity and equal treatment need to be carefully considered in a hybrid work arrangement.

So with all these different notions, what actually is hybrid work model?

The hybrid work model is a mix of on-site and off-site (remote) working culture, it has emerged as a flexible work model, and however this can vary based on employee preference and job requirements.

Hybrid work is a people-first approach to managing the workforce that drives increased productivity and job satisfaction while addressing the major challenges of remote work, such as isolation and lack of community (WebEx, 2023).

Hybrid arrangements balance the benefits of being in the office in person — greater ability to collaborate, innovate and build culture — with the benefits of quiet and the lack of commuting that come from working from home. Firms often suggest employees work two days a week at home, focusing on individual tasks or small meetings, and three days a week in the office, for larger meetings, training and social events. (Bloom N, SIEPR, 2021)S

Benefits of the Hybrid Work Model

Accenture’s Future of Work Report, based on a survey of over 9000 global employees, notes that:

83% of workers identified hybrid as being optimal in the future…An important workforce segment is emerging: a group of people who can be productive and healthy anywhere, whether they’re remote, onsite, or both.

From an employee-centered perspective, the biggest strength of hybrid work is its capacity to combine the best parts of working from home with the benefits of working with an in-person team (OfficeRnD, 2022):

• It promotes a better work-life balance than fully remote or in-office work
• It promotes opportunities to collaborate, socialize, and network 
• It reduces the costs associated with commuting 
• There are benefits for employers, too. A hybrid setup may offer the opportunity to downsize and, in turn, cut down on the costs associated with maintaining a traditional office.

How do we adopt the Hybrid Work Model?

Now that we’ve cleared up the “what is hybrid work” question, the most important thing to remember about the hybrid work model is that it’s flexible.

Depending on the company culture, habits, and business needs, there’s no single right way to implement it. However, as companies move toward hybrid work environments, they should consider a few key steps to promote a smooth transition.

• Adopt A People-first Approach

It makes sense to talk to employees about the concept of hybrid work before creating a strategy. This way, you can identify workers’ challenges, opinions, and reservations about the topic.

• Mandate vs Magnet

Employers should approach the return to the office strategically by not rigidly enforcing employees to come back to the office, but rather turn the workplace into a magnet that attracts workers to collaborate and thrive together.

So are there any challenges in this model?

Similar to any other traditional models there are some hiccups with a hybrid working model. Hybrid work disorients the standard routines and structures that are normally associated with the face-to-face workflow, which can be challenging at first.

Here are three major drawbacks that can challenge hybrid working model.

Staying Connected: Collaboration tools are critical to keep things flowing smoothly in the hybrid world. As such, you’ll likely have to adapt to using new software and also ensure that you provide employees with adequate resources so that they can learn how to use it.

Taking Over Meetings: When part of the staff is onsite, and the rest is attending remotely, it can be hard to maintain a balance. For example, in-person attendees may inadvertently take over the conversation while remote participants fade into the background, observing but not fully contributing. This can have a negative impact on both company culture and employee engagement.

Mitigating Bias and Discrimination: You may or may not have strictly enforced and structured in-person attendance requirements. If this is the case, and if an employee chooses to work remotely more than they do in person, they may get judged for it. The judgment may not be overt, intentional, or even conscious – end of the day we all have biases.

In Conclusion 

Hybrid work model is the way forward. Though there are few flaws in the Hybrid work model it has been significantly welcomed by the employees.

To support further, analyzed scientific data leans more towards the benefits and positives of Hybrid work culture, a recent study done by Forbes illustrates the same (Dr. Robinson, Forbes Contributor, 2022) :

David Powell, president of Prodoscore said their data showed that if an employee was highly productive in-office, they’ll be productive at home; if an employee slacked off at the office, they’ll do the same a home. “After evaluating over 105 million data points from 30,000 U.S.-based Prodoscore users, we discovered a 5% increase in productivity during the pandemic work from home period,” he said. “Although, as we know, any variant of the Covid-19 virus is unpredictable, employee productivity is not.”

Research from Owl Labs found that remote and hybrid employees were 22% happier than workers in an onsite office environment and stayed in their jobs longer

A study from Ergotron sampled 1,000 full-time workers, the hybrid workplace model has empowered employees to reclaim physical health, and they are seeing mental health benefits, too. A total of 56% of employees cited mental health improvements, better work-life balance and more physical activity. Key highlights from the study include:

• Job Satisfaction, continuing to embrace flexibility is essential. Most employees (88%) agree that the flexibility to work from home or the office has increased their job satisfaction.

• Physical health, the hybrid workplace has empowered employees to reclaim physical health. Three-quarters of respondents (75%) stated that they move more frequently and have a more active work style when working remotely.

• Work-life balance, three quarters of respondents say their work-life balance has improved as a result of hybrid or remote working.

In the first study of its kind done by Prithwiraj Choudhury in a research for business leaders published in HBS Working Knowledge, analyzed more than 30,000 emails sent among colleagues experimenting with various work arrangements during the COVID pandemic in 2020. The researchers studied employee emails and attachments before and during a nine-week period using machine learning and textual analysis.

Hybrid is the right balance in all three categories. The hybrid group members outranked their peers.

• Number of emails sent
• Work-from-home satisfaction
• Quality of work product

Hybrid work resulted in 0.8 more emails sent per day, and office work led to a 0.5 increase, compared to the group that mostly worked at home. Also, hybrid work is associated with a 58 percent increase in the number of unique email recipients compared to those mostly working from home, a metric that indicates that workers in the hybrid category had broader intra-organizational email networks.

Reference

Published by Ben Rand (2022) based on the study done by Prithwiraj Choudhury (2020). 

https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/does-hybrid-work-actually-work-insights-from-30000-emails#:~:text=For%20employees%2C%20the%20paper%20says,to%20the%20other%20two%20groups.

Accenture’s Future of Work Report (2021).

https://www.accenture.com/_acnmedia/PDF-155/Accenture-Future-Of-Work-Global-Report.pdf#zoom=40

Published by Miro Miroslavov, OfficeRnD (2021).

https://www.officernd.com/blog/what-is-hybrid-work/

Stanford University | Nicholas Bloom, 2021 | Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research

https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/hybrid-future-work

Forbes.com | Bryan Robinson, Ph.D. Contributor 2022 | 3 New Studies End Debate Over Effectiveness of Hybrid and Remote Work. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrobinson/2022/02/04/3-new-studies-end-debate-over-effectiveness-of-hybrid-and-remote-work/?sh=51a1a9a159b2