The Hybrid Workplace: Defining the future of work

​Businesses throughout the world are gradually returning to the office. A hybrid or blended workplace may be the best option to sustain the businesses. With the world seeing repeated lockdowns in the last few months, a work arrangement that blends remote work and office time and balances individual workers' requirements with their capacity to interact and be productive in a common physical place is the way of the future.

Employees in a hybrid setup come into the office for collaboration on special occasions. However, generally, they perform their duties from home. The need for a flexible and adaptable workplace is also motivated due to the mindsets of the employees because they have shifted in the face of fears of a new pandemic wave.

About 98 percent of individuals expect future meetings will include remote participants. An estimate shows that about 57 percent anticipate working ten days or fewer per month. The cause of concern is the 97 percent of individuals who asked for COVID-19 free/safe office environment to get back to their offices.

Hybrid working environment

A hybrid work environment supports both in-house and remote staff. As a result, it allows an amazing collaboration and workflow between the two work types. It's a concept that applies to both real and virtual workspaces.

The purpose of a hybrid workplace is to accommodate different work styles and employees. It is especially true when the two work styles are used at the same time. You can minimize common meeting difficulties. It is also possible to optimize work environments with agility and create more productive workplaces. You can create workplaces where everyone is connected with the team, whether they are working in the office remotely. You can provide a first-class experience to your teams with intelligent workplace solutions intended for hybrid work.

So, try to identify the true meaning of the office and get the technology to support it. Always aim to assess and address the remote work difficulties. Choose to invest in the proper collaboration platform that provides the greatest solution for the new world of work.

What are the benefits of hybrid working? 

Enter your teThere are numerous benefits of a hybrid work environment. For example, a hybrid work environment puts the employee first and promotes a better work-life balance. It can also make employees feel more at peace about going back to a public workplace or on local transportation. This is crucial for individuals who have weak immunity.

A hybrid work environment is relatively more cost-effective. Organizations can save money by reducing their dependency on large-scale offices.

It boosts productivity 

You can use a hybrid work environment to provide flexibility while also empowering people to work and give their best. Consequently, it will boost productivity in the organization. You can motivate the teams to achieve a good balance of creativity and cooperation. It is possible to do it by promoting a culture that thinks of remote work as a beneficial alternative to completing deep-focus tasks in the office. Some employees prefer to work in peace and quiet to concentrate. While others thrive in an office atmosphere, so you can find a balance with a hybrid workplace and provide a place and time when they are most productive.

The organizations that saw the most increase in productivity during the epidemic promoted the use of "small moments of engagement." They planned to include training/mentoring, idea sharing, and collaborative work during these engagements. You can ask managers to redesign some processes and take note of how workers may flourish at work can lead to an increase in productivity.

Improvement in organizational culture and employee satisfaction 

Employee satisfaction hinges on autonomy. So, the happiness and satisfaction of employees will rise if you give your team members complete autonomy and decision-making power to decide whether they want to work remotely or in an office.

The same can be said about on-site employees. Employees who return to the workplace after more than a year of determining their own schedules are supposed to be confident in their ability to complete tasks without the presence of a boss.

Learning opportunities 

Most of the organizations are performance-driven, yet this also means that workers cannot get enough time for learning. High production can disguise a fatigued staff. Likewise, if your organization is focused on production only then, you cannot achieve long-term development of your workers.

Therefore, you need to be modest enough to know that learning isn't limited to classrooms. Create opportunities for learning and reflection on a daily basis. It's impossible for anyone to produce enough mental capacity to think or comprehend information when their workweek consists of back-to-back meetings. Motivate your workers to invest in their own growth, learning, and reflection.

Improvement in collaboration

You may have noticed that virtual meetings can become overly important in a hybrid workplace. For example, the employees now spend more time chatting (45% increase) and online meetings (148% increase). Thus, we need to create new, more efficient ways of working that don't require long meetings every day.

You can adopt a facilitator's attitude to accomplish this. Always try to think about how human connections operate and create work processes that are tailored to team members' habits and needs. Facilitating discussion on how teams might collaborate promotes understanding, deepens relationships, and improves communication.

Employee wellbeing

Have you ever thought about employees' wellbeing? One out of every five individuals in global surveys believes their boss is unconcerned about their wellbeing.

It is true that work and life are rarely perfectly balanced, but work-life balance is an important part of every good workplace. On the other hand, in a hybrid workplace, each employee needs to strike a balance in their professional and personal lives. Ultimately, it will reduce burnout and stress.

Consider this: you are always trying to meet the deadlines, but you barely go out to live your life. So, you should allow employees to go outdoors and enjoy the good weather and tell them to get back to work later.

Hybrid work model examples

Most of the companies are developing hybrid work models of their own. Many of their leaders have explained how they came to their ultimate decision. So, it can be a useful resource for deciding which hybrid work model is right for your team.

On-site work with some remote employees​

Part of your employees would work entirely on-site, while the other would work entirely remotely in this model. This is the easiest of the hybrid possibilities, but let's look at an example to see what it could look like.

For instance, a pharmaceutical company wants to expand its talent pool. To have access to the tools and resources they need to be productive, 30% of its workers can work full-time on-site. Most of the employees can do their work from their computers, so 70% of employees can work remotely full-time. By following this, a company can decrease its real estate footprint and save on overhead expenditures.

Dividing the working days between on-site and remote work 

This is possibly the most well-known hybrid work model. Your employees can work on-site part of the week and remotely the remainder of the week under this approach.

Here is an example to see how this might work. New York, San Francisco, and Denver are all offices for a retail corporation. The corporation implemented this hybrid work paradigm after the COVID-19 pandemic, during which all workers worked from a remote location. Workers in all offices have the option of working remotely on specific days. However, they are required to work on-site on other days.

Combination of the above-mentioned two models

This model allows members of your team to work on-site on some days and remotely on others. The remaining workers are either completely remote or completely on-site.

You can consider this example to understand this hybrid workplace model. The offices of a manufacturing company are in California, and the manufacturing factory is in Beijing. Employees in California report to work on specific days. They work from a distant location, such as a cafe or their home office, while they are not on-site. Employees in Beijing work full-time on-site. A section of the company's employees is located in different parts of the world and works remotely full-time.

Remote working moving forward

Portugal was the first European country to change its remote work rules in January 2021, learning strong lessons from the pandemic. They made remote working a mandatory option and pushed companies to provide the necessary tools to employees.

Now, they are taking it a step further with their new remote work laws. It'll now be illegal to text employees outside of working hours or monitor them while they work from home! There's also great news for working parents.

AmEx announced a few weeks back that they will adopt hybrid working where employees can WFH for 2 days/week — Mondays & Fridays.

To further work flexibility, they are now planning to introduce full remote for a certain % of employees and a lucrative 'work from anywhere' policy for everyone!

Conclusion 

For many businesses, hybrid work is still a relatively new style of work. However, they need to realize that a hybrid workplace can increase productivity, employee engagement, and collaboration. Leaders in the workplace should consult with employees to choose the best course of action. It could be a case of proving a model with a small number of teams or locations at first, then scaling up once things get smooth.