Is Hybrid Work right for your organisation?

For employees that work in an office based role, we have spent the better part of the last 2 years working from home. This has changed the landscape for businesses that have primarily worked in an office Monday to Friday. There are many managers that previously said employees couldn’t work from home as they weren’t as productive. When the option was taken away from them and the Government mandated working from home, managers had to ‘pivot’ the way they led their teams, motivated and supported their employees.

This created some challenges, especially for managers that were used to sitting next to their team and seeing what their employees were doing, to ‘trusting’ their employees were working and achieving their goals. Working 9-5 was often replaced with working hours that accommodated other commitments, such as home schooling. Meetings were on Zoom and connecting with teams became virtual.

Now that we are able to return to the office, what are your thoughts on the hybrid working model? We have seen media attention to Elon Musk’s mandate that all employees must work in the office 40 hours per week.

Employees that can work from home and are forced to return to an office full time may be at risk of leaving the organisation, especially when they may spend 1+ hours commuting to the office. For some employees they prefer to work in the office full time and remove the blur that happened during lockdown between work and life – where your computer was in reach at all times and it was too easy to just finish a work task late at night.

Employees have proven they can work from anywhere and be productive and manager’s saying they don’t trust their employees is no longer acceptable ! Offering flexible working arrangements is something organisation’s include on their website and job advertisements, how many organisations actually offer genuine flexible working options? From my experience, very few…

To maintain engagement and connection with the team, working from the office at least one day per week makes sense. Team meetings, supervision, social events etc can be scheduled on this day. It appears organisations are asking employees to work in the office 2-3 days per week and the rest of the time at home. Some organisations are offering paid lunches or social events once a week to encourage employees to return to the office.

My advice to managers is to have open and honest conversations with each of your employees about what works for them and the reason(s) why you want employees to work in the office and try to come to a mutual agreement about work arrangements. These arrangements can be reviewed in a few months to ensure they are working for both parties.

What is your organisation offering in terms of hybrid working arrangements?