Recently, lots of the reports done by different universities and consulting agencies told us it must implement hybrid work as it is the future working method.
However, only a few companies have been able to execute a seamless hybrid plan that everyone’s happy with, while others are still confused in implement hybrid working.
A Stanford economist told us that the major factor to make a hybrid working successful is “Organized hybrid“.
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So, what is hybrid work?
Before going through the expert’s comments, we need to clarify what hybrid work is first.
Hybrid working means allowing your employees to choose to work on-site or remotely. Some organizations may enable all employees to work part of the week on-site and part of the week remotely. Employees at other firms may work full-time remotely or full-time on-site. Others may allow a combination of the two of these styles.
If you want to know more, ONES Blog has a Full Guide to Hybrid Work which introduces all aspects you need to know.
Who still struggling with hybrid working
Haphazard implementation of hybrid work is useless, one of the examples is General Motors. They try to set a three-day-a-week in-office goal but then brought it back, saying their back-to-work program would not take shape until next year at the earliest.
Things aren’t much better at tech giant Apple, where workers have threatened to quit over the company’s hybrid work plan. The reason is that they do not fully understand what hybrid work is and lack a complete hybrid work arrangement.
Your Team’s Best Interests Matters
Nick Bloom, a Stanford economist and cofounder of WFH Research, told Fortune about the secret to implementing a hybrid workforce with some examples.
He cited three leaders in different industries that are getting hybrid work right: Salesforce, Lazard, and Elevance Health.
They all follow a similar hybrid model. He explains toggling between in-office and remote work on a team-by-team basis instead of a top-down approach.
Also, it is important to take care of teams’ and employees’ needs and interests. Bloom calls this model an “organized hybrid.”
…they (those companies) come in and realize their team is all at home, which defeats the purpose. They didn’t come in to use the Ping–Pong table, and there’s no point in coming in just to shout at Zoom all day.
Nick Bloom, William Eberle Professor of Economics at Stanford University
Social work wins
His research consistently finds that people return to the office, not for free snacks or plush couches, but more important to work together or gather with colleagues.
It’s what he calls social work, and it includes training, mentoring, and collaborative thinking that all companies try to center as the selling point of being in the office.
Apart from too many resources of entertainment, Bloom found that middle managers working hybrid report feeling less connected to their company culture than fully remote or fully in-office managers, and many recently called return-to-work planning lonely and confusing.
At businesses of all sizes, managers have struggled to get a handle on remote work, but the lack of face-to-face conversations still affects the development of company culture.
Moreover, some precautions and mask requirements restrict communication between employees when they return to the office.
4 Strategies for Building a Hybrid Workplace that Works
Bloom’s deep well of research has introduced four big ways that most companies—even those without Salesforce’s or Lazard’s resources—can follow for a seamless hybrid plan:
- Ensure your team comes in on the same days;
- Front-load those days with in-person meetings and events;
- Promote cross-office Zoom meetings and “deep thinking” work on remote days; and
- Relatively new hires should come in an extra day each week for mentoring.
Successful examples of hybrid working
Redhill, one of the top global communications agencies, has implemented hybrid working for a few years. Hybrid working helps them to attract many new talents to join them, and their workers are increasing to over 150 people now.
Citi Singapore allows the workers to not always be back in the office, and this leads they can redesign the workspace by reducing the unnecessary fixed tables and changing the tables to hot desks. Therefore, the saving area could be rebuilt as a co-working area for gathering or reducing it to have less rent.
Standard Chartered provides several types of flexible working modes, the modes are taking care of different employees’ needs, and they are people-oriented policies. They provide virtual meetings and hot-desking system to help employees adapt to the new environment.
What do you need for hybrid working
ONES is one of the famous all-in-one smart office systems that can help you to easily implement hybrid working at ease. You can easily perform virtual meetings, desk-hoteling, and digital office management with our Room Booking, Desk Booking, and Visitor Management features.
ONES Software now has a dedicated page to introduce a series of hybrid working measures to help you solve problems. You may wish to go to https://ones.software/hybrid-workspace/ for further reference.
Contact us: hello@ones.software, or visit ONES Software official website for more information: https://ones.software/.