Advancing your hybrid strategy by leveling the playing field.

Hey everyone, the results of the Future Forum survey for this quarter are in and they are very informative. If you aren't aware, Future Forum is a research-based consortium founded by Slack, MillerKnoll, Boston Consulting Group, and Management Leadership for Tomorrow, and each quarter we survey 10,000 knowledge workers globally to better understand changes in work.

The big takeaway for me is this: with the world moving closer towards a normalized hybrid work experience (but not there just yet), we are seeing more clearly what issues employers need to prioritize now to make hybrid work in the long run. For future-focused organizations, the results are a useful resource in knowing what issues to proactively address.

I'd encourage you to read the full report , but here are three important highlights that stood out to me, along with some additional thoughts relative to what we're learning at MillerKnoll.

#1 - Hybrid working isn't just media hype - it's already begun.

It's clear that all of the attention about hybrid working over the last year isn't just lip service. Hybrid is the clear direction for both organizations and employees and the survey indicates that 68% of workers now say they prefer hybrid work and 58% of them are already splitting their time between the home and office. We expect that to continue to grow, and for all intents and purposes, the media debate over working from home or the office should be settled - the answer is both.

But as I shared recently , it would be a mistake to think that what we're experiencing today is optimal hybrid working. We know from conversations with MillerKnoll customers that many Covid-related restrictions are still significantly hampering office experiences along with the ongoing challenge of constant video meetings, which greatly hampers a person's ability to work flexibly. Commuting into the office and putting on a mask just to spend the day on video calls from a desk that's physically distanced from others defeats the primary value gained from coming into an office - to connect with other people.

It's worth noting that while employee experience scores have improved across the board since last quarter, the satisfaction scores of employees working outside of the office are 33% better than those working primarily from the office. I think this correlates with peoples' desire to not be forced back into pre-pandemic work arrangements combined with the challenges I cite above, but we also need to recognize the negative effects posed by dated and generic office designs on employee experience. We know from our previous survey results that 80% of all employees still want access to an office and other research supports that people wish to spend greater amounts of time in offices that are desirable and well-designed. To achieve this, employers can begin planning now how to improve their offices to better support new ways of working while helping employees to free up their schedules via asynchronous collaboration to enjoy experiences other than video calls while in the office.

#2 - The central priority of a good hybrid strategy is employee empowerment.

While many organizations might be tempted to focus their hybrid strategy on the number of days an employee is permitted to work outside of the office, organizations that want to attract, retain, and engage employees should instead focus on how to empower them with greater choice. This acknowledges that each employee faces different challenges in their work/life balance and will benefit from gaining greater autonomy over their work processes. By doing so, employees can level the field and to help everyone achieve their best.

We can see from the survey results that employees are pushing back on the traditional workweek, asking for more flexibility with where (78%) they can work, but even more so with when (95%) they can work. Employees feel that they have performed well throughout the pandemic while achieving greater balance in their lives and understandably want to continue contributing without backsliding on their personal commitments as caregivers, spouses, and community members. Since a majority of employees value flexibility over money , organizations that refuse to offer added flexibility will likely be forced to increase compensation to compete with employers who will.

The need for flexibility is especially pronounced among underrepresented employees, a topic we discussed in a previous update . Increasingly, organizations will need to understand the link between their future working strategies and DEI strategies, and offering flexibility and choice is an important component of both.

#3 - It's time to proactively address proximity bias

Speaking of inclusion, there is a significant increase - from 33% to 41% - in the number of employers who cite inequities between co-located and distributed employees as their top concern. If underrepresented employees, working parents, and those who live farther away from corporate offices find themselves excluded from critical conversations and overlooked for future career growth, then the added flexibility offered to them could prove counterproductive.

Addressing this very real concern is a complex and multi-faceted challenge, but personally, I think organizations should begin with strategic priorities that we've had the opportunity to unpack in Herman Miller's podcast series in 2021.

To begin, it's critical that organizations not rewind their digital transformation strategies as their offices re-open. In other words, the content and conversations that migrated to the cloud in 2020 can't find their way back to a specific physical location in which distributed members are cut off from them. This is a topic that we discussed with Darren Murph , Head of Remote at GitLab, in a podcast episode in which Darren reminds us that "remote" is really about untethering work from a specific location to make sure that everyone can be part of important conversations and equally contribute their ideas.

Next, managers need to be trained to be inclusive of distributed team members. Inequities often result from managers showing a preference for those with whom they are physically co-located, but I've also observed the same dynamic with managers who are distributed and feel a closer connection with team members who are more digitally active and proficient. I had the chance to unpack the need for Herman Miller's managers to reconsider their own inclusion practices in this podcast episode last year.

Finally, office experiences must be designed to be more inclusive so that underrepresented groups don't feel like working from home is their only option. This is a topic that analytics blog FiveThirtyEight covered after our last Future Forum survey update and appropriately noted that if we're not careful offices could inadvertently become older, whiter, and more male in an era of hybrid working. To expand upon this, Professor john a. powell, who leads the Othering and Belonging Institute at Berekely, discussed with me the imperative of making offices friendlier to people of color and other underrepresented groups in this podcast episode in November. While this might surprise some, the actual physical design of office space can play an important role in fostering belonging and promoting inclusion, and you'll hear more from MillerKnoll in the coming months as to how to make that happen.

So if you haven't read it yet, be sure to download and read the Future Forum report that we released last week. If you're still hungry for more, you can check out others who have further dove into the results in the following pieces.

• Wall St. Journal, Workers care more about flexible hours than remote work
• Axios, Hybrid work wins
• Bloomberg, Bosses admit to 'proximity bias' but want workers back in offices anyway
• HR Reporter, Leaders concerned about inequity of hybrid model
• Inc., Hybrid Workplaces May Put Some Employees on Unequal Footing. What to Do About It.
• Workplace Insight, Hybrid working is now the dominant business model for knowledge worker