Hybrid Working: What’s Changed in 2023?

In early 2022, when the UK was emerging from a pandemic, Kindred embarked on a piece of research to understand how organisations were tackling the big questions around returning (or not returning) to the office.?

We spoke to HR and people leaders across a range of sectors, who represented historically office-based workforces ranging from around 500 to more than 100,000, in both UK-only and multinational organisations. ?We found that, while all the leaders we spoke with had adopted hybrid working as the model for their organisation, there was a high variability in what that looked like in practice.?

Through more recent conversations with the same companies, we’ve compared people’s attitudes then to their attitudes today.?

Here’s what we found:?

• The conversations have shifted from productivity to cost?
• The focus has changed from weathering the storm to long-term performance?
• The approaches have moved away from being centred on individuals to being centred on the collective?

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Let’s take a look at each theme in turn.?

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From conversations about productivity... to conversations about cost?

When the pandemic started, discussions were mostly about how we must try to maintain productivity through individual decision-making. At this stage, remote working was considered best for work that required periods of intense focus, offset by periods of collaboration face-to-face. But no one was certain how this would operate at scale.?

Fast-forward a year and the focus has shifted. ?Against the backdrop of inflation and flat economic growth, organisations are placing a renewed focus on managing costs across the board - and under-utilised property can feel like an unaffordable luxury. ?Leaders are now getting to grips with office utilisation and making decisions to either reduce or make use of underused office space.?

These risks create tension between optimising hybrid approaches for individual productivity vs overall workplace investment. ?

A common finding of our research was to hear of offices crowded on Tuesdays and Wednesdays but nearly empty on Fridays. While this may be conducive to prevailing working patterns, it’s antithetical to managing costs.?

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From a focus on weathering a storm… to a focus on long term performance?

In 2022, there was a consensus that we, as a society, had undergone a period of unique challenge and uncertainty due to the pandemic. The general view was that changes to the working environment were required to maintain business operations and manage the immediate impacts.?

In 2023, the focus is less about handling a temporary shock and more about dealing with tighter long term economic conditions. ?As such, performance is coming under greater scrutiny. ?Concern for employee satisfaction and talent attraction has given way to considerations around collective purpose. ?With increased distance between team members, new leadership focus has been placed on connecting people to the wider vision and strategy and rallying them around during moments of organisational challenge.?

HR leaders, are increasingly being required to strike a balance, driving greater in-person engagement in the interests of overall effectiveness, whilst not falling into the old traps of presenteeism or ‘productivity paranoia’.?

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From approaches centred on individuals… to approaches centred on the collective?

In early 2022, many organisations grounded their approach to hybrid working in individual autonomy, in the belief that people making decisions on when and where to work would lead to collective benefit.?

However, a year later, we’ve found that this approach is creating some disharmony in managing at a team level, where people set different priorities for their own working patterns. ?Making face-to-face time happen is increasingly hard and a high volume of meetings are required to mix virtual and in-person attendance. ?In addition, early careers and new joiners are experiencing less of the organic learning and absorption that comes from sharing the same space. ?In this regard, individual decision-making is thought to be having a detrimental impact on the broader, often less tangible, role that an individual plays as part of the collective. ?

Leaders have since responded by setting clearer expectations on remote versus office working, with particular focus on ensuring middle and senior management maintain these standards as role models for the organisation. Another response has been to use ‘pull’ factors such as town halls and social events to encourage office attendance where it has most value.?

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Looking forward?

The shifting context around hybrid working has kept it high on the agenda for organisational leaders. Managing working models amidst the context of controlling costs, performance pressures and acting in the collective interests continues to require ongoing responsiveness. Hybrid working is no longer considered as simply a component of the ‘people strategy’, but instead plays directly into (and sometimes comes into tension with) commercial, organisational, and technology strategies as well.?

Whilst managing the complexities of hybrid working is highly contextual, there are common things that might help and which we’ve talked about previously. Defining the future role of the office, renewing the social contract so that there are clear expectations on how work gets done, reshaping the working week to become more efficient and effective, and embedding self-management practices to manage complexity are some ways that business leaders can be more deliberate in managing their hybrid working approaches.?

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What do you think is in the cards for hybrid and remote working in 2023??

Let us know in the comments below.?