As we near the end of the first full year after the Pandemic’s return to work in a lot of locations and organizations, we have entered a certain amount of stability in the week-in and week-out office environment and a clearer vision of the future workplace.
For many employees, returning to the office creates a historical sense of normalcy, the chance to reconnect on a more personal level with their colleagues, while others will dread the move back to the office and give up their comfy home-based offices and all the perks that had provided.
But one thing is clear: We’re not returning to the same workplace we left. And employees with the ability to work remotely are largely anticipating a hybrid office environment going forward — one that allows them to spend part of their week working remotely and part in the office.
What exactly hybrid work will look like for each organization is just beginning to take shape, and the ensuing lessons will define our work lives for years to come. Ultimately, how this new hybrid era unfolds will depend on the types of hybrid experiences employers create and how managers adapt.
So, what should organizations really concentrate on right now to ensure their relevance as it relates to employees in the future? We have identified 5 major questions organizations should be analyzing when and how they decide their future office environment.
- Where are employees working now, and where will they work in the future?
- What happens if organizations do not support remote flexibility?
- Why do many remote-ready employees prefer hybrid work?
- What will the future workweek look like?
- How can we make hybrid work more productive and engaging?
1. Where are employees working now, and where will they work in the future?
Approximately half of the U.S. full-time workforce — representing about 60 million workers — report that their current job can be done remotely working from home, at least part of the time. We refer to these workers as “remote-capable employees.”
According to a Gallup survey, Prior to the pandemic, few remote-capable employees worked exclusively from home (8%), while about one-third had a hybrid work arrangement.
As of February 2022. Most remote-capable employees continued to work from home at least part of the time, but the mix became a nearly even split — 42% had a hybrid schedule, and 39% worked entirely from home.
When asked where they plan to work long term — according to the plans their employer communicated — remote-capable employees confirmed that a hybrid work schedule will be the predominant office arrangement going forward. About 53% expect a hybrid arrangement, and 24% expect to work exclusively remotely.
This shift in the office environment from Pre-Pandemic to now has resulted in nearly doubling the number of people who will be working remotely at least part of their week.
Most employees prefer these changes and currently, nine in 10 remote-capable employees prefer some degree of remote-work flexibility going forward, and six in 10 specifically prefer hybrid work. Proving that most employees have developed a preference for remote-work flexibility that has grown into an expectation for the future. While permanent plans for remote flexibility are certainly trending in their favor, there are still a fair number of employees who will not receive the flexibility they desire due to leadership’s desire to return to where an organization was historically.
2. What happens if organizations do not support remote flexibility?
Currently leaders and managers prefer hybrid work – due to the hesitation to have employees maintain a fully remote schedule. Most leaders want to honor the flexibility that employees desire, but areaare concerned about sustaining team performance and culture if team members work primarily from home, long-term. For this reason, leaders have begun to restrict remote-work options going forward.
Mass scale, fully remote work has yet to be studied to determine the long-term effects. We know from prior blog posts that keeping employees engaged and maintaining a good work-life balance is essential and forcing employees to work from a location that doesn’t best suit their needs wreaks havoc on many aspects of employees’ lives as well lead to poor overall work-product.
In fact, when employees are required to work fully on-site, but they would prefer to work hybrid or fully remote, employees experience:
- significantly lower engagement
- significantly lower well-being
- significantly higher intent to leave
- significantly higher levels of burnout
As pointed out in earlier blogs, work locations and policies are not the sole determinants of the employee experience. Companies must cultivate thriving workplaces through a holistic and relentless commitment to employee engagement, wellbeing, exceptional managers and a strong company culture.
However, attracting and retaining top talent amid today’s “Great Reshuffling” of the workforce will require addressing the remote-work question.
3. Why do many remote-ready employees prefer hybrid work?
So, why do our people prefer to work in a Hybrid work model? Here are the 5 most common responses:
- To avoid commute time
- It is better for my well-being overall
- I need flexibility to balance family needs or other obligations
- The option to work-in-person with coworkers
- I feel more productive and connected to my organization
The No. 1 reason employees prefer hybrid work is to avoid commute time. People are not in a hurry to add back the time, and expense, it takes to get ready for work, travel to the office and return home every day.
Furthermore, if you look at the top three reasons employees prefer hybrid work, they represent a strong desire for more personal freedom to work when, where, and how it best suits them. Their demands for better well-being, work-life balance, and flexibility represent a new “will of the workplace” — one that won’t accept the traditional office going forward.
Employees’ fourth and fifth reasons remind us that in our increasingly digital world, they still need to feel connected to their coworkers and their organization. Connecting with their team and feeling that they are part of the company culture is, for some, simply easier to experience in person. In other words, although fully remote employees enjoy their flexibility, four in 10 would give up some of that time at home to have in-person office experiences.
Overall, the top reasons people want a hybrid work arrangement center on having the flexibility to manage their week while still feeling connected to their organization. These sentiments align with recent articles we have written showing that gaining work-life balance and improved personal wellbeing are top reasons people would change jobs.
4. What will the future workweek look like?
The most frequent questions leaders and managers ask about hybrid work are:
- How many days per week should my team come to the office?
- What type of scheduling policies should we have?
According to a Gallup poll (in the above bar chart) 4 in 10 people want to be in the office 2-3 days per week and 3 in 10 want to be in the office 1 or 2 days per week.
Unfortunately, employees don’t offer a clear consensus about their preferred remote-to-office ratio. Four in 10 employees want to be in the office two to three days per week — but that certainly isn’t the majority. Another three in 10 employees would prefer spending roughly one or two days in the office each week.
However, according to the trend most employees agree that a moderate amount of time in the office is important, and research has consistently shown that work flexibility tends to be optimal for engaging employees and reducing burnout.
Nonetheless, employees’ preferences on office hours will be an important metric to watch as workplaces transition and adjust to hybrid work.
So, how can leaders and managers choose the right work environment for their organizations a starting place? We must look at two factors, how interdependent the teams and conversely how independent those same teams are. Teams that are highly interdependent rely on one another to do work, hand-in-hand, real-time. The more interdependent they are, the more explicit managers must be about when people need to be on-site together, when they need to be available to their teammates, and how handoffs will be handled. These teams require a certain amount of control and more face-to-face time to keep everything moving cohesively.
Conversely, when people work independently — doing tasks that require less real-time collaboration — they can be given more autonomy and flexibility over work schedules because they primarily complete their work individually and asynchronously.
In a hybrid environment, highly independent teams need to double down on communicating, over communicating, being accountable for performance outcomes and finding time for team-building. Their biggest risk is working in isolation for too long or at the wrong moments. Highly independent teams also risk culture erosion and the neglect of remote-working coworkers.
While hybrid work schedules should look different by organization and team, it is universally important to keep assessing, adjusting and reassessing how the current arrangement is working.
In the end, employees and organizations alike will need clear answers to why people should come into the office and how they should spend that time together or opposing will be rampant and cancerous.
5. How can we make hybrid work more productive and engaging?
With so much uncertainty, many organizations are trying to create solid ground for their new normal. Even so, it can be easy for organizations to get bogged down in policies and rules concerning hybrid work. Based on our analysis, the new hybrid workplace needs to provide three things:
- Productivity: Getting the work done efficiently and effectively
- Flexibility: Allowing personalization so people can thrive at work and home
- Connectivity: Encouraging the partnerships that support teamwork and organizational culture
Productivity
- Shape hybrid strategies around productivity, not just policy compliance. Now is the time to redefine what high performance looks like for teams and how to best work together to achieve that vision. Ensure you are focused on the right performance outcomes and have the right tools for tracking your progress. Assess which team activities are best on-site and which can be done remotely.
- Consider the interdependency of the work. As mentioned before, when teammates are more interdependent on one another, they need more coordination of schedules and time in person. Many workers are responsible for a mix of interdependent and independent work. These individuals should consider where they can best focus on their individual assignments and when they should be in the office to boost collaboration and team culture.
Flexibility
- Allow for flexibility. There is likely no single hybrid work policy that will be ideal for all teams and all workers. Allowing managers some authority to individualize practices is likely necessary, given the different kinds of work and life circumstances across your organization. It is also necessary to set boundaries for when employees are and are not expected to be available.
- Flexibility and autonomy can create ambiguity and coordination issues. Managers tend to communicate less frequently and effectively when employees spend more time working remotely. However, hybrid team engagement can far exceed on-site engagement when managers proactively check in with their employees multiple times per week. As flexibility increases, managers need to increase communication about work priorities, progress and handoffs between team members.
Connectivity
- Think virtual first. When team members working in the office behave as if everyone is working remotely, remote workers are more likely to feel like part of the team. For example, bringing laptops to all meetings so everyone has an on-screen presence can create a more inclusive experience. Also, taking time to learn together is a great way to grow into a hybrid team. Try scheduling training that teaches your team to collaborate more effectively in a virtual setting.
- Give people a compelling reason to come to the office. A policy is not an answer to why people should come to the office. Leaders need to develop a compelling value proposition that represents the culture, benefits and interactions employees will experience on-site.
The future:
Creating an effective Hybrid work environment is much harder than simply setting the policy. Without a doubt, hybrid work will present different challenges for managers that did not exist historically. Flexibility for workers makes coordination more challenging. Remote workers can feel neglected. Technology requirements must change. And hybrid work raises questions of trust, accountability, and measuring productivity — even equity and access to hybrid opportunities.
“Hybrid” is not just a work schedule or employee perk — it’s an entirely new way of working together.
Crafting an exceptional hybrid work experience will be worth it — if you put in the hard work to make it worth it. Exceptionally led hybrid teams tend to have more engaged employees, more intentional and meaningful interactions, and, ultimately, better flexibility to integrate work and home life.
All signs indicate that a hybrid option is fast becoming a new expectation of the workforce. The next chapter of this great global work experiment will be written by how employers respond to the opportunities and challenges afforded by two years of learning to work differently.