What's your hybrid?

When figuring out what kind of hybrid working your organisation should implement, it helps to understand what the options are. Here’s the state of play from around the world...

Adam Gale and Chris Dyer

When the pandemic forced offices to shut, it cracked one of the cardinal assumptions of 20th-century management: that for work to happen, you need a workplace. After that, the long months of offices opening at minimal capacity, with some people in and some people out, in turn cracked another long-held belief: that people would work wherever you told them to work.

In fact, many people found that they preferred doing their jobs from home, or at least having the choice to do so. The prospect of being ordered back into the office put a new line in the sand. Talent began to walk. Amid the so-called “Great Resignation” – which saw four million people quit in the US in April 2021 alone – 47 per cent of British employees said they would leave their jobs if they were denied flexibility. TotalJobs notes that 10 per cent of job listings now mention remote working.

In response, most – though not all – organisations have indicated that they will not seek to return to the old ways once COVID-19 has passed, but will instead embrace some form of “hybrid” or “blended” working.

The problem is that when they say hybrid working, they don’t all mean the same thing. Some mean continuing some degree of remote working; others are hinting at a fully fledged version of flexible working where we can choose how, when and where we work.

Here’s the current lie of the land...

1. Everyone works from home

Although it’s rare, some employers – such as the five-person Business Travel Association, and the Chartered Institute of Public Relations – have eliminated the office altogether since the start of the pandemic. They join the select ranks of virtual organisations such as US-based PeopleG2 (see below) and The Hoxby Collective, a marketing agency that was founded to be entirely remote six years ago, and which operates a system of asynchronous work via channels such as Slack in place of meetings.

How we went totally virtual: the People G2 story

“PeopleG2 is a US-based leader in employment screening and background checks which I founded in 2001. From 2007 to 2009, the US experienced a significant recession, particularly in the mortgage industry – at the time our biggest source of clients. I was forced to cut costs, but I did not want to cut employees. By going virtual, I was able to cut expenses by 38 per cent, while eliminating 0 per cent of our employees.

“Since 2009, the company has been 100 per cent virtual – and successful. Here are some of our key learnings.

REFRAME YOUR THINKING

“As many learned during the COVID pandemic, going remote or hybrid is about much more than just sending some or all of your team home with a laptop. An effective remote or hybrid model should be a combination of philosophy, tools and talent leveraged in a deliberate way to achieve optimal outcomes. The key word in that definition may be ‘deliberate’.

“Whether hybrid or completely remote, you need to change your ways of thinking. I learned this the hard way. When PeopleG2 first went remote, I quickly realised that I had become a bottleneck, as employees were bringing the majority of decisions to me. It hadn’t been as noticeable in the brick-and-mortar office, but once these requests started piling up in my email inbox, the bottleneck was clear. Designing a new process involved delegating responsibilities and clarifying which decisions needed approval and which could be made by an employee.

“Hybrid models are different from 100 per cent remote ones, and actually require more thought, design and leadership. Certainly you want to avoid the pitfall of thinking that the onsite part of your model is the same as it always has been and that you’re simply ‘bolting on’ the remote part. Instead, you should view them as two new models and focus on adapting both to ensure strong integration.

START WITH PEOPLE

“Whether going fully remote or just hybrid, a lot of people think the first step is setting up the technology, but I disagree. The best sequence to follow is people, process, tools and technology. Bring in technology last, not first. Instead, start by considering your people. Who are they? What can they do? What can’t they do? What do they need to succeed?

“That leads to processes, which should leverage your people’s talents. Rather than being a burdensome checklist, processes should be a smooth flow that makes sense. Next up come the tools that people need in order to keep the processes flowing. Tools can be many things, from a laptop through to access to industry databases. With people, processes and tools in place, you can lock it all down with the technology.

“In a hybrid model, you will find that people, process, tools and technology are a little different for the remote team than for the on-site team. As you work through the entire transformation process, note the differences and brainstorm with the group about how to incorporate the differences while also keeping things as seamless as possible.

PROMOTE CULTURE AND EQUITY VIA MEETINGS

“In terms of resources and managerial support, the needs of remote employees will differ from those of on-site employees. You want to be sure to provide fair and equitable support.

“One way to promote and reinforce equity is in meetings. Meetings are essential tools for communication in all organisations, but in remote and hybrid models, they also are great ways to drive the culture. For example, you can start by checking in with each attendee to give them the chance to engage. This could be a quick update on a project or client. Regularly recognise successes and milestones and, as far as possible, recognise at least one person on the remote side and one on the on-site side.

“In hybrid meetings, there is a risk that the team on-site in a conference room will end up dominating over the virtual attendees. Meeting facilitators should be aware of this and ensure that the virtual team has the same opportunity to contribute. Another approach is to have everyone attend virtually, so that the on-site team members attend from their desks rather than in a conference room.

“Hybrid or completely remote, the new landscape of work offers both opportunities and challenges. If there is one point I hope you take away from this, it’s that leaders have to be deliberate and thoughtful as they adapt.”

— Chris Dyer is founder and CEO of PeopleG2 and co-author of Remote Work: Redesign Processes, Practices and Strategies to Engage a Remote Workforce (Kogan Page)

2. Downsized offices: some WFH required

Most hybrid models allow employees to work from home, but some more or less insist on it by virtue of reducing the capacity of their offices to the point where, by definition, some people will need to work at home on any given day.

At one point, this looked like it would be a major trend among larger organisations, but the predicted apocalypse in the commercial leasing market has yet to happen. A survey of CEOs by KPMG earlier this year found that just 17 per cent planned any downsizing at all.

BP is a prominent case, reportedly planning to halve its real estate footprint for its 25,000 office workers globally. It expects that employees will come in three days a week, although it notes that they can do so more often should they wish.

Other employers – just over half, according to Knight Frank – are focusing less on downsizing offices than on reconfiguring them to have fewer desks and more collaboration space. That’s what Lloyds Banking Group is doing, to accommodate the nearly 80 per cent of its staff who say they want to work from home substantially post-COVID (typically three days a week). Alongside cutting square footage by 20 per cent over the next three years, it is reimagining the remaining space into “hubs” that will primarily be used for group work such as project initiations, as well as team and client meetings.

Lloyds’ City of London HQ is one of many offices being remodelled for a less deskbound future

3. The mainstream: 3:2, 2:3 and half-and-half

The most common configurations of hybrid working to be announced so far don’t involve cutting office space, but do involve workers spending two or three days a week somewhere else. KPMG has said staff can work in the office four days a fortnight. Its rival, PwC, wants workers to spend 40-60 per cent of their time co-located with their teams, either in the office or at a client site. Meanwhile, magic circle law firm Linklaters allows people to spend up to half their time at home.

The biggest difference within this group is whether WFH days are determined flexibly or by rota. Apple, for example, expects workers to be in the office Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, while Google, which also wants most workers to be in three days a week, says “product areas and functions will help decide which days teams will come together”.

Those that give staff choice over when they work at home will find that they are likely to opt for Mondays and Fridays; a LinkedIn poll of 21,000 people revealed that 71 per cent thought those were the best days for remote working, against only 5 per cent for Tuesdays or Thursdays.

Will Google’s campus-style offices in Silicon Valley suit a hybrid world?

4. Fully flexible

lots of major employers have said they’re embracing fully flexible working, but in practice line managers will almost certainly still have a say on the matter. Flexibility also means slightly different things in different places. Nationwide and SAP have said employees can work wherever they wish, as have TUI and digital marketing agency Adtrak, albeit with a requirement to come in at least one day a month and one day a week respectively. Other companies with flexible models are building a little more structure into the equation. Salesforce, for example, is allowing employees to choose between three modes of working: office-based, fully remote or “flex”. Flex involves coming into the workplace one to three times a week in order to work on collaborative projects.

The likes of JP Morgan may end up leading the charge back to the office

5. Everybody in

Not everyone is on board with hybrid, particularly in financial services. Goldman Sachs already expects everybody in, five days a week, its CEO David Solomon having famously described remote working as an “aberration” earlier this year. JP Morgan boss Jamie Dimon seemed to agree, announcing in May that he would no longer be participating in Zoom meetings – a signal of disapproval if ever there was one.

They aren’t alone. A YouGov poll of 1,000 employers in August revealed that 19 per cent did not intend to allow any remote working – even one day a week – after COVID.

Illustration_Ben Kirchner