Hybrid Office
Have we noticed how the ideal office plan design has changed significantly over the last few decades? Cubicles, Open Office and now hybrid offices?
Companies are trying to find the perfect balance between these two extremes: space employees can adapt to optimize their social interaction, autonomous work, and group projects. It’s called the hybrid office, which according to Fortune Magazine, “incorporates a range of spaces and gives employees the autonomy to move between them throughout the day.” HBR also talks about a Hybrid office as a place where individuals could get work done. As a result, employees will increasingly be working in what we call the hybrid office—moving between a home workspace and a traditional office building. The latter will become primarily a culture space, providing workers with a social anchor, facilitating connections, enabling learning, and fostering unscripted, innovative collaboration. When in the office, leaders need to model the kind of social behaviours that people ought to engage in. Opportunities for non-work-related rituals (such as meditation, yoga, and the plank challenge) are also a great way to nurture relationships and signal that the office is about connecting. When people from different functions and departments collaborate, they can solve complex problems and generate innovative new ideas. Such collaboration is usually triggered by chance encounters—in conversations around a coffee machine or a copier—in which people identify others they can get help from or work with. A successful hybrid office has versatile areas for solo work (cubicles, private offices, soundproof rooms, phone banks) and collaboration (open-plan spaces, coffee shops, huddle rooms, lounges). Hybrid offices can boost employee productivity and happiness – which leads to talent retention and overall well-being. Workers aren’t trapped in cubicles or overwhelmed by open-plan offices; they’re empowered to use different spaces based on their task, mood, or style.
Hybrid offices also utilize mobile technology and cloud-based software, which can make it easier for employees to have flexible hours or work remotely. This is often a benefit, encouraging better work-life balance. An effective hybrid office finds a happy medium between workplace flexibility and 24/7 office hours.
Some live examples wherein organizations have started implementing Hybrid workplace
Microsoft is one of them as they have reopened their headquarters from March 29 and are also implementing a “hybrid workplace” to allow some employees to continue working remotely, while some others come back to the office – where conditions permit.
Ford Motors has said it will allow 30,000 employees to work from home permanently and is “on track” to implement a hybrid work model where staff will only have to drop into the office only for meetings and team-building activities.
British Airways is considering selling its headquarters near Heathrow Airport as many employees switched to working remotely and “want to continue,” it said. BA said it will undertake a hybrid work model that “offers more agile and flexible ways of working” and suits the business.
American financial company TIAA is working on a “grouping model” to sort employees into four categories – fully remote, mostly remote, mostly on-site and fully on-site. TIAA’s “Work for My Day” approach allows 15,000 employees to create a hybrid work schedule that is a fluid mix of on-site and virtual work each week, Sean Woodroffe, chief human resources officer at investment giant TIAA told CNBC.
The Bombay Bar Association, in a letter on March 27, requested the Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court, to allow virtual hearings before the court’s principal bench – or at least permit a hybrid system of physical and virtual hearings to control crowds in courtrooms.