According to data from Gallup, 53% of employees with remote-capable roles expect to work in a hybrid office arrangement in the future based on what their employers have communicated.
Many business leaders have indicated that they will use hybrid work models as their future work models. Here are some great suggestions for organizations to optimize their hybrid workplace for 2023.
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What is a hybrid workplace?
The hybrid workplace combines in-office and remote work, and the workplace facilities provide flexibility for employees to switch seamlessly between the two work styles. When remote workers enter the office as needed, productivity is not reduced due to adaptation issues.
Meanwhile, the features of a hybrid workplace are improving employees’ productivity and optimizing work quality for employees.
At one end of the spectrum is everyone in the office, nine till five, so both restricted time and location. And then at the other end of the spectrum is anywhere around the world at any time. So no restricted time or location. A hybrid is anything that sits in the middle of that.
Harriet Molyneaux, managing director of HSM Consultancy
Examples of hybrid workplace
Some hybrid workplaces provide friendly work environments with special designs to enhance productivity and retain talent.
You may ask how to create the best hybrid workplace in 2023. Let’s see two successful examples of large enterprises how implementing their hybrid workplaces: LEGO and LinkedIn.
Example 1: LEGO
LEGO’s new headquarters in Denmark has no permanent workstations and that is essentially a large desk-wheel community. It is a “mini-city” that offers facilities, such as a gym and theaters, for colleagues from different departments who can socialize or relax in these areas after a hard day’s work.
The LEGO Group said that they focus on creating a free and caring environment and aim to promote recreation and productivity.
Example 2: LinkedIn
The new headquarters of LinkedIn were guided by inclusive design principles, there have rooms that may be used for rest, attention, collaboration, learning, and socialization.
One of the most significant changes LinkedIn made to the pre-pandemic headquarters design was to replace the traditional workstations, which made up about 40% of the space, with a number of seating areas, each of which served as a distinct “neighborhood” for a different team and was arranged to accommodate their typical activities.
The reason is hoping to increase the connection among each colleague and then create a great workplace culture to retain their talents.
Approaches to optimize your hybrid workplace
The latest survey by HP Teradici, “Hybrid Work 2022 Report: The Strategic Role of the Digital Workspace”, identifies the problems encountered in hybrid work environments and suggests some approaches to optimize your workplace for 2023.
Approach 1: Improving the technology for remote work
Some remoting systems or collaboration tools are providing bad quality at work, including virtual connection delay and less collaborative work functions. Therefore, these issues affect remote workers’ productivity.
Based on HP Teradici’s survey, 59% of respondents said the first challenge is performance or user experience issues, such as latency and pixelation. Also, 32% said the implementation process for remoting technology was too complicated, and 25% of respondents reported that staff adoption of remoting technology had been a hurdle.
The solution is to choose a great functional collaboration tool for your employees, such as Microsoft Teams, to prevent these problems appear.
Microsoft Teams provides a stable collaborative work connection and is a simple platform for workers easy to use. And allows your employees to have real-time windowed conversations and virtual meetings.
Also, it supports Microsoft 365 and provides excellent collaborative work. Until January 2022, Microsoft Teams had already over 270 million users.
Approach 2: Creating or revising a work-from-home policy
If employees can follow some work guidelines for hybrid work, this can ensure they have positive work performances.
In HP Teradici’s survey, 85% of respondents said existing company policies have already changed to reflect the new hybrid working environments, which means including setting some hybrid work guidelines for employees.
For the most important computing issues to address to enable hybrid work, half of the respondents say companies should create or revise a work-from-home policy for hybrid workers.
40% of respondents expect their companies to procure additional hardware for staff, while 37% of respondents would like companies setting up a VPN for employee access to the corporate network.
Approach 3: Providing mobile office configuration
Flexibility is very important for employees. And providing employees with mobile equipment in the office can give flexibility in their work. Thus, they can work in a flexible location.
According to a report from Omdia, 48% of the total workforce will work in a mobile or hybrid fashion over the next 2 years. The reason is employees think that working in a flexible workplace makes them happier at work so improving their work quality and productivity.
More than half (54%) of organizations believe employee productivity has improved with the move to more mobile and hybrid work styles. A hot desk is a mobile equipment that can be found in a hybrid workplace.
Hot desking is also an organizational workspace system in which desks are used on an ad hoc, first-come, first-served basis by different people at different times. Most business leaders use hot desks to replace lots of fixed desks, therefore this can reduce the size of the workspace and prevent paying high rent or operation costs.
Approach 4: Implementing office management systems
One of the HR challenges is management procedures and 15% of respondents agree on this point, according to HP Teradici’s survey.
The reason is the admins usually take much time for monitoring the staff’s performance or manage office resources, which makes the admins can’t focus on their work and difficult to maintain good performance.
Therefore, business leaders should think about how to optimize their employees’ work process and Omdia’s report suggests organizations should plan and deliver technology to help their workers be productive from wherever they are.
One of the best solutions is for companies should implement some office management systems, for example, meeting room booking.
A Meeting Room Booking System is used to reserve conference rooms and boardrooms, and also provides multi-room bookings in a second. Some studies have shown a 73% increase in the need for meeting rooms in hybrid office spaces so it is very suitable for hybrid workplaces.
Thus, the admins can manage the resources easily and ensure the rooms will not be misused. Also, they can maintain their productivity at a high level as they have more time to focus on work.
The best setup to optimize your hybrid workplace for 2023
A hybrid office should use a comprehensive office management system, which helps your employees use office resources efficiently, such as rooms, desks, and office equipment, and support them have remote work and virtual meetings with their colleagues in the office.
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/.