Hybrid Working

The current buzz word on the lips of every business in central London and to a lesser degree the rest of the UK, but what is it Hybrid Working and what does it really mean to me as an employer or more importantly how will it affect employees. 

Prior to the pandemic the norm for office workers was generally to work 9-00 till 5-00 in the same office and have face to face internal and external meetings in the office or other offices. The working week revolved around the geographic office, as did the working social life. Lunch meetings and evening drinks were all a standard part of the fabric of the working week.

Home Working

During the first few months of the pandemic of 2020 there was a common perception that Covid-19 accelerated pre-existing trends. However, this doesn’t really detail the collective disruption to office work. Before the global pandemic home working represented a small fraction of the office hours. By early summer in 2020 the figure was closer to 65 per cent.

Clearly this was enforced rather than chosen although most new home workers would say the change from the work office to the home has gone better than expected. Staff are working longer hours, but they report higher levels of happiness and productivity, although the counter argument from mental health statistics suggest this may no longer be the case.  As lockdowns lift, working from home is likely to stay but maybe not in the numbers seen during the height of lockdown, especially the younger workforce.

Is Hybrid working going to work?

Well yes, it is going to work but not in the office every day. Yes, it’s going to work, as the technologies that support home working have developed and accelerated applications to fit this adopted working practise.

The Hybrid working model means having a more flexible approach to attending the office. Since the global pandemic, the explosion of video conferencing technologies such as Zoom, House Party and the undisputed king of on demand video and audio-conferencing Microsoft Teams via Office 365 (O365)

Post Pandemic working!

There are many theories on what the post-pandemic work environment may look like, its general consensus is the average employee would like to work from home nearly half the working week.

A Hybrid model that supports 2 or 3 days in the office and the remaining days from home. The main concern with this way of working, is most staff want to work from home on a Monday and Friday. 

Employers are less keen with this model, but their expectation is at least 20 per cent of the working week will be spent at home, which is a big change from the previous norm. It also presents a huge opportunity for office-based workers, keen to be seen in the office and growing their internal and external network, which is easier to do within the office environment rather than from the comfort of the home.

So, what does the future workplace look like?

Most data shows the vast majority of returning staff are looking forward to socialising with colleagues in person, having those coffee breaks, lunch dates and evening drinks again. Looking forward to the type of joined up collaboration that feels like a team again.

In a recent survey conducted by Linked In, 69% of respondents said they were looking forward to collaborating with colleague’s face to face, and 68% said they wanted to return to socialise with others in person. More than four in ten workers were keen to return to the workplace for the ability to do focused work, as working from kitchen or dining tables or bedrooms wasn’t conductive to productive working.

However, an interesting item popped up during the survey, the prospect of meetings is a divisive one, with a split across the generations.

Millennial workers and generation X say having meetings where most participants are in the same room encourages them to return to the workplace, while baby boomers are only slightly less enthusiastic, with 45% citing it as a positive.

However, Generation Z are notably less positive about the prospect: only 35% say in-person meetings would encourage them to go to the physical workplace. And in fact, a slightly less proportion of Generation Z professionals (29%) say the prospect of meetings with most people in the room discourages them from returning to work.

Meeting for the sake of having meetings or having the old-style early morning meetings or late afternoon meetings as a way of control was a big factor.

Hybrid Working – Does it work for everyone?

The simple is answer is ‘No’ as certain businesses and industries require employees to be physically onsite such as Emergency services, manufacturing, and the service industry

There is also the need to educate and train new employees, remote learning makes it difficult to provide and promote a culture within a business.

From a personal point of view, I like to work in the office for the majority of the working week.

I like to spend Monday to Thursday in the office and work from home on a Friday, however some of my staff like the Hybrid way of working or what we like to call ‘flexible working’, so they come in on the days they want.

This way of fluid working provides certain staff members the flexibility to juggle the demands of their work life balance. The rest of the team work exclusively from home, mainly as their roles are not customer facing, meaning they can complete their day-to-day duties without the need to be in the office but have all the tools at home to work effectively and more importantly productivity isn’t affected.

So, Hybrid working will work for some but not everyone, having the technology tools to support all three modes of working Full time in office, Hybrid working or home working is key to having a happy an inclusive workforce. Being able to offer flexible types of working models to all employees is what will attract, retain or lose staff in the long run.