Key Challenges for the Hybrid Workplace

What's keeping HR and Workplace Experience professionals up at night in the changing world of work??

After months of lockdowns, it's no wonder companies and employees are itching to get back into the office, albeit not full-time. Hence the trend towards hybrid work – with McKinsey reporting that 90% of companies are looking to embrace hybrid.

Going from a traditional workplace to a hybrid one means introducing a ton of challenges that companies usually don't have the know-how, skills, resources, and tools for. We've been speaking to many leaders in Vietnam and beyond about this, so I thought I'd put together an overview of the key challenges:

1.THE HYBRID OFFICE

a. Going from assigned to hot desks means a need for booking policies and tools.

b. The best hybrid offices are designed differently (image: Gensler) and continuously improved based on usage data.

c. When people can work from anywhere, why would they come to the office? The right workspaces, incentives, events, and activities that attract people are often lacking.

Companies don't have the tools, know-how, and resources to tackle any of these challenges.

2. PERFORMANCE & COLLABORATION

a. Most companies have used employee in-office attendance as a measure of employee performance. In the hybrid workplace, companies need to move to output-based management and rely on data to monitor and manage performance.

b. Collaboration doesn't happen automatically anymore and needs to be incentivized or otherwise promoted.

3. TRUST & COMMUNICATION

a. Building and maintaining trust between employees and employers become more challenging when employees see their leaders less. Increased communication is key but companies are not used to it.

b. Disseminating information that previously was done in formal and informal meetings means a more structured approach to documentation and policy drafting and sharing is needed.

c. This in turn creates communication overload, another issue that needs to be resolved with more targeted and segmented messaging tools.

4. CONNECTION & COMMUNITY

a. When people don't connect and bond simply by being in the office at the same time, connections between coworkers need to be created and sustained more purposefully and programmatically. Companies have never had to do this, and need guidelines, tools, and programs.

b. To drive employee retention, community becomes even more important but companies have little experience in building community.

5. COMPANY CULTURE?

A lot of the rituals and ceremonies that build and sustain company culture were tied to the physical office. The office and its design and amenities were a driver of culture as well. Culture suffers when employees are spending less time in the office and have less face-to-face interaction with each other and their leaders. Their connection to the company's mission and values lessens over time without a purposeful and programmatic approach to culture in the hybrid workplace.

6. DIVERSITY, EQUITY, and INCLUSION

DEI is already an important agenda item for many companies. But more flexibility results in less equity, for example between in-office workers and home-workers. And in remote work, much-needed empathy and kindness for people’s personal circumstances often take a toll. To solve this, companies need to purposefully create more equity between all employees and be more proactive to ensure inclusion.

7. WELL-BEING

Well-being greatly suffers when work is always-on in the shift towards hybrid and remote work. Lack of work-life balance is one of the most often mentioned struggles for hybrid workers. Companies need more explicit ways to drive employee wellbeing.

8. GROWTH, LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT

In a typical workplace, the majority of learning & development happens 'on the job' and in-person. As Personal and Professional Growth can be a key driver for employee engagement and retention, companies will need to make some serious shifts. Continuing on existing trends, learning & development should primarily be done online or at least work as well for online attendees as offline ones. This also creates an opportunity for on-demand learning, making L&D as asynchronous as hybrid work itself. Finally, it also creates the opportunity to personalize L&D efforts much more – increasing its effectiveness.

In Summary

The hybrid workplace has the potential to give employees more flexibility and autonomy, while driving diversity, equity, and inclusion, improving well-being, and all the while saving companies cost on real estate making them more agile. But only if done right.

The overarching theme seems to be intentionality - moving away from things happening by default just because people work together in an office. Now, the same outcomes (and better) are still possible but take more effort and purpose. Companies will need to acquire the know-how, tools, and resources to execute a winning hybrid workplace.

In addition, companies will need to constantly improve their hybrid workplace. This will require them to continuously measure, learn, and optimize – the opposite of how workplaces typically were treated. The best companies will take employees on this journey, incentivizing them to together help make the hybrid workplace a success.

I'm very curious to hear your thoughts on this. Especially if you have hands-on experience shifting to a hybrid workplace. Leave your thoughts below and I'll put together an update version of the above challenges.