Introducing Hybrid Working: The Benefits

This week, in the second of our introduction to Hybrid Working series(for the part one, see here), we will look at the benefits of adopting a ‘Hybrid Working’ strategy.

For many businesses, the COVID-19 crisis hit in Q1 2020 signalled a sudden switch to ‘working from home’ with some adjustments made and a lot of uncertainty. Difficult as it may have been, companies and employees adapted, with many seeing positives from this.

Now, nearly six months later, businesses are looking at how to get staff back into offices, what changes are necessary to do so? and are there opportunities for long-term change? in order to explore this, it is worthwhile investigating the benefits of ‘hybrid working’ models.

COST REDUCTIONS

Possibly the most obvious and benefit, the transition from a large ‘classic’ office with space for every member of staff, management offices, meeting rooms, breakout spaces, kitchens etc. to a small, flexible space is clearly going to deliver significant costs savings.

As can be seen below, switching from a 100-desk office with additional facilities totalling 1,000Sqm to a 30 desk ‘Hub’ office could deliver a reduction in rental costs of up to 65%, which would significantly benefit P&L.

Some of these savings may be offset by costs incurred in moving, establishing the new digitised infrastructure etc. this sort of annual saving would be a long-term benefit to any business.

Additionally, intelliHub’s own research has found in 30% of cases that flexible working / working from home has a ￡$ value that workers are willing to offset against salary; this could contribute to a reduced salary bill for businesses, another significant contributor to P&L.

PEOPLE BENEFITS

Before the pandemic, working from home regularly was increasing in popularity with around 13% of UK employees doing so; a recent survey by LinkedIn found that just 24% of respondents were now keen to return to their office ‘as soon as they were allowed’, suggesting that the current situation could continue for some time, particularly as 60% of those surveyed cited continuing concerns over safety.

With this in mind, it is possible that we will see a shift in employment terms desired by jobseekers, with priorities shifting from financial to flexibility; businesses offering flexible working will not only become more attractive to talent but could find retention easier in the first place.

Regarding Talent Acquisition, another benefit for employers is increasing your catchment area for talent; when advertising an office-based role, a business is, limiting their geographical radius to a reasonable distance*. By reducing the frequency of visits to the office to 3 days/week you can increase your catchment by around 30%, and further reducing the frequency (e.g. 1 day per week or fortnight) or even less regularly could see you attract talent anywhere, even internationally.

Another people benefit although one with more anecdotal evidence, is increased productivity; removing the daily commute could open up the potential of people stretching their working hours (although it is unlikely that it would be by the equivalent 2 hours/day); equally, without having to commute, employees should reach their desk/kitchen table fresher, more focused and therefore more productive . 

RESILIENCE

Most businesses have disaster recovery plans, although many would have historically not have expected to need them; one thing that the COVID-19 crisis will have taught us, is that there is always the possibility that something could happen.

While a global (or even national/regional) pandemic is mercifully uncommon, other things are sadly seen more frequently including acts of terrorism, cold and flu seasons, and industrial action (on public transport), which could see a business’ operations reduce temporarily. Flexibility to work anywhere, with the infrastructure to support this will mean that regardless of what stops people attending the office, they are able to work from home for a day, a week etc. 

If the business has a hybrid working model, then on any occasion when staff are unexpectedly unable to attend the office, there will be no difference in their working day from a planned remote working day as the infrastructure will be optimised and ready to go.

Hybrid Working v 100% Remote

So far we have focused on the benefits of hybrid working over the classic model, however some businesses will now be considering WHF as a long-term solution, after all, if you are to base all your staff from home all the time, then the 65% savings in rent costs could rise to 100% cutting as much as millions from P&L, so why would you want to retain an office at all?

While the most obvious things that make businesses unique are their products and brands, less visible to customers/consumers but critical to these is their talent and company culture; the interaction of these two are fundamental to what makes the first two unique.

As anyone who has attempted to maintain a team/company culture ‘virtually’ during the pandemic will tell you, it becomes increasingly hard to keep the ‘buzz’ when people are apart for long periods. 

Business leaders are increasingly aware that this diminishing vibe is likely to harm critical activities particularly those of a creative nature such as product innovation and are struggling to find a way to replace the spontaneous, ‘physical’ interactions that made creativity flow, with forced ‘virtual’ activities. 

With this in mind, the most obvious thing to do is to get people back together in the same space; while current offices would provide the facilities for doing so, a flexible, intelligent ‘hub’ would allow a business to refresh and innovate in the space to get the most out of any time when it is in use by every function of your business (just to clarify, I don’t mean a room full of pinball machines and beanbag chairs – this isn’t W1A!)

So to conclude, a hybrid working strategy will almost certainly benefit your bottom line, but it has the potential to reset many other elements of your business’ operations; increases to productivity, changes to working routines to boost innovation, the potential to attract better talent over a wider radius and get the most from them in your business altogether make a compelling case in favour of adopting hybrid working the ultimate ‘flexible working’ solution.

* The UK average commute time is approximately 65 minutes (in London this rises to 84 minutes), Based on average commute times from Lloyd’s Bank ‘How Britain Lives’ study 2019.