What is hybrid work and how does it impacy your business

What is Hybrid Work and How Does it Impact Your Business

NINA IVARSEN, CHAIR VEFF

WHAT IS HYBRID WORK?

As the world moves on post-pandemic, companies are trying to figure out how to adapt to the new normal when it comes to where their employees will work. Many organizations are grappling with whether to return to the office, stay remote, or explore a combination of the two with a hybrid work model.

Known for its flexibility, the hybrid work model enables employees to work across multiple environments while allowing for in-office collaboration opportunities that business leaders crave. As you’re evaluating whether to return to the office or not, it’s beneficial for you to understand the benefits of hybrid work and how it can impact your business. Before we dive into the details, let’s discuss how other companies have adapted to the hybrid work model.

HYBRID WORK MODEL EXAMPLES

According to Microsoft’s 2022 Work Trend Index: Annual Report, 38% of employees say the biggest challenge is knowing when and why to come into the office. As we move into this next phase of work, many of the top businesses across various industries have all chosen a different approach.

At Apple, employees are returning to the office for a set number of days, with some teams expected to be back in the office full time. One reason Apple gives for bringing employees back two or three days a week is that innovation is often unplanned and can occur when people bump into each other and discuss ideas.

Other companies, like Tesla, are requiring employees to return to the office full time while Google announced that remote US employees could be subject to a pay cut. For some, this decision is based on the belief that remote work negatively impacts productivity, which points out one of the biggest challenges to hybrid work — the disconnect between executives and employees.

On the other side, Twitter and Airbnb are actively encouraging employees to work from wherever they feel most productive. This could be working from home indefinitely, in-office full time, or simply showing up at the office when it makes sense for them. Meanwhile, Dropbox is remote-first or “virtual-first,” meaning that offices will be more like co-working spaces.

In addition, UBS recently announced their Virtual Worker Framework, giving certain employees the option to work remotely 100% of the time if they choose to. This flexibility is partially inspired by the new approaches to engagement they discovered while adopting hybrid work.

While your options for hybrid work are endless, you need to figure out what makes the most sense for you, your employees, and your business.

“The way we have adapted to working during the pandemic has shattered antiquated assumptions about work design.” Gartner, 2021

BENEFITS OF HYBRID WORK MODEL As the past few years have shown us, there are many benefits to the hybrid working model. Not only do employees

prefer flexibility, but businesses are also seeing positive impacts on employee engagement, collaboration, and productivity, especially when done with intention. With 63% of high-growth companies adopting a “productivity anywhere” workforce model, here are a few of the benefits of hybrid work:

BUILD MORE SUSTAINABLE OPERATIONS

Hybrid presents the opportunity to be strategic about costs, time, and energy and, with the right approach, it can generate meaningful savings in a short amount of time. In fact, Cisco reported that between 2015-2020 the reduction in real estate footprint enabled by hybrid work saved the company around $500 million.

Not only does a hybrid work model help with overall costs, but it also makes your organization less vulnerable to stoppages and disruptions that can happen in an office environment. And from an employee’s standpoint, not having to commute helps save both their time and mental energy. With the average employee losing 2.7 work hours per week due to travel disruption and delays when commuting for work, it’s a win-win to give them more flexibility.

Taking that a step further, with the right approach to hybrid work, the environment can benefit, too. A recent study found that our personal emissions can be reduced by up to 80% when working from home versus commuting daily. And if your company is looking to impact your ESG (environment, social, and governance) initiatives, the move to a hybrid work model is a great place to start.

“Employees value flexibility and wellbeing, and this creates an opportunity for organizations to reimagine work-life integration as a win-win.” 2022 Work Trend Index: Annual Report

IMPROVE EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE

The more time that passes, the clearer it becomes that employees want flexibility.

An effective hybrid work model can give employees better balance and support while creating an environment that is trusting, autonomous, and collaborative. With 76% of employees wanting flexibility in where they work and 93% wanting flexibility in when they work, hybrid is a no-brainer.

For workers who are raising children, taking care of sick family, or balancing other obligations, hybrid work allows them to structure their time more individually.

In a hybrid work environment, employees might be given the opportunity to take advantage of what helps them to be productive, including things that would be difficult or impossible in an office (such as keeping non-traditional working hours, or working next to your cat).

By focusing less on where employees work and more on how they work, outcome and impact can be emphasized over output and activity. This mindset is currently emerging from many hybrid office cultures.

That’s because outcome over output helps employees focus on the “why” of their work, encourages strategic alignment, and places more value in their creativity, which in turn amplifies innovation and adaptability.

For all these reasons and more, forward-looking companies that set their hybrid work models up for success will be more likely to attract—and keep— top talent.

“With the right resources people can be productive anywhere.” Accenture Future of Work Study

EMPOWER MANAGEMENT

Managers are the connection between employees and leadership. They are the key to bridging the gap between the company’s highest-level priorities and the day-to-day execution, enabling everyone to achieve their goals along the way.

In addition, managers are crucial for helping foster working relationships and connections in a hybrid workplace. They are the ones implementing practical change as teams develop their own best practices for sustainable collaboration across borders, time zones, and screens.

It’s vitally important that managers are empowered to practice the healthy habits introduced to employees during the shift to hybrid work, while mentoring employees in how to adapt to their roles and thrive in a hybrid work environment.

These “culture-keepers” are in the right place to mediate differences, decide what’s essential and what’s not, and experiment with turning the weaknesses

of the new normal into strengths. The potential of hybrid work may very well lie in the good discretion of empowered managers.

PROPEL DIVERSITY

The ability to hire remotely opens new possibilities for the diversity of your enterprise.

According to McKinsey’s workplace diversity report, four out of five companies in the top quartile for genderdiverse executive teams confirmed that flexible work was a critical component for improving their diversity.

One way the hybrid work model impacts diversity is by enabling your organization to have people work together across languages, countries, and time zones. At Gtmhub, for instance, we’re remotefirst and have employees in more than 15 countries, which means speaking with people all over the world who have different backgrounds, experiences, skills, habits, beliefs, and approaches to success.

A hybrid work environment can also help remove certain obstacles presented by the conventional in-office model to groups like mothers with young children, the elderly, the disabled, and the neurodiverse, as well as those who are unable to afford commuting right away.

The ability to recruit without borders also allows organizations to maintain 24/7 operations and can be a gamechanger for companies recruiting for scarce or highly in-demand skill sets, allowing them to tap global job markets and remote regions.

“Work is a thing you do, not a place you go.” Sir Gus O’Donnell, economist

HYBRID WORK CHALLENGES

The benefits of the hybrid work model mean that it’s here to stay, and the case for a permanent switch is a powerful one. Despite this, many companies have yet to fully commit to hybrid work. The issue is that while the challenges involved are understood, they are not easy to solve.

THE STRUGGLE TO ALIGN WORKFORCE WITH STRATEGY

Communicating your mission and strategy to your workforce and keeping them aligned isn’t easy for leadership under normal circumstances, especially in large organizations with layers of hierarchy and international operations.

A hybrid workforce only adds to the communication challenge of keeping everyone aligned with strategy. Employees may not understand how their work fits into the bigger picture, making it

As LinkedIn Chief Economist Karin Kimbrough noted, “Companies in major cities can hire talent from under-represented groups that may not have the means or desire to move to a big city. And in smaller cities, companies will now have access to talent that may have a different set of skills than they had before.”

more difficult for the organization to scale their efforts and achieve strategic agility.

ISOLATION, DIVISION, AND INFORMATION OVERLOAD

In the office, it’s easy to consult with nearby teammates and managers, but being remote, we take this informal, often non-verbal communication for granted. Without easy access to information in today’s fast-paced business environment, staying on top of team, company, and process developments becomes a real challenge.

Consequently, for new employees, remote working means it can take them longer to acquire the knowledge required to get up to speed and become productive. In our new working environment, onboarding may be done completely remotely, which means employees are learning more on their own.

For remote workers in general, the sense of isolation can give rise to feelings of dislocation. It can even leave them feeling secondary to their officebased counterparts, which can culminate in a divided workforce.

Unfortunately, trying to compensate with more meetings and increasing the information flow can backfire by adding more distractions and the danger of burnout rather than mitigating the problem.

THE TRUST ISSUE

According to a recent study, 80% of employees say they’re equally or more productive after going remote or hybrid, however, 54% of leaders fear that the opposite is true.

In fact, Harvard Business Review notes that managers who cannot “see” their direct reports can sometimes struggle to trust that their employees are indeed working.

Negative attitudes lead to negative perceptions of employees, including questioning their competence, knowledge, and essential skills.

These negative perceptions can lead to micro-management, with leaders sowing seeds of self-doubt in their employees.

Accountability assumes competence. For leaders, it’s necessary to hold staff accountable, especially as employees get used to working with more autonomy. Being accountable to their own work also helps employees connect to their purpose within their role and develop good habits, which benefits the company.

However, when an employee’s competence, knowledge, and essential skills are questioned, this core lack of trust leads to inevitable disengagement, lack of focus, and decreased productivity.

EXECUTIVE-EMPLOYEE DISCONNECT

To say there’s a disconnect between executives and employees’ desire to return to the office is probably an understatement. While 44% of executives would prefer to come back to the office every day, only 17% of employees feel similarly.

For some people, the switch to hybrid work helped shift work-life balance in a positive way, giving them more freedom and autonomy to better prioritize their family, health, rest, and passions.

For others, hybrid work led to more night and weekend hours, as well as the pressure or expectation to be on-call as often as technology allows. On average, meetings, chat, workday length, and after-hours and weekend work have all increased over the past two years.

With the pressure and difficulties of guiding their teams through massive uncertainty, leaders have certainly felt the weight of these imbalances. The challenge for leaders continues now, with the mandate to configure their organization’s standard working model in the new normal.

Simply wanting to see employees back in familiar spaces may also partially explain why so many leaders want to return to the office.

IMPLEMENTING YOUR HYBRID WORKFORCE MODEL

As the world adapts to the new normal, there will be plenty of challenges as well as opportunities to re-imagine what work looks like for your organization. When it comes to implementing a sustainable hybrid work model, it’s necessary to choose a system that will benefit and adapt to the uniqueness of your business.