Moving from ‘Working From Home’ To A Hybrid Work Experience: The Key Challenges

It’s no exaggeration to say our concept of what a “workplace” is changed dramatically in 2020. In one year we saw more change than most people have probably seen over their entire working life. Really, basic workplace dynamics – and by extension, most corporate cultures - in what we now call the knowledge economy, have changed comparatively little in 30 years. For as most of us can remember, we’ve commuted to work in town centers, spent most of our time at our workstations or in meetings, and forged professional and personal relationships with our co-workers through regular daily contact. For many of us, though, this isn’t the case any more.

It’s frequently remarked that those days now seem like a distant memory. Many of us are by now settled into home working routines, hopefully having managed to claim a spot that can be repurposed as a workplace, even if it does have to double up as a kitchen, playroom or kennel at times. But the challenge of adapting – not just to survive, but to thrive in this “new normal” and whatever comes after it - is going to take longer for organizations to truly solve.

The scope of this requirement for change was the topic of a conversation I took part in recently, hosted by Dell Technologies as part of their Transformation Tune-In series of webinars.

On a personal level, many of us have enjoyed the opportunity to build a better work/life balance that comes with eliminating the daily commute and fixed office hours. But having to mix work into the domestic schedule along with housekeeping, childcare and home schooling has also led to increased stress levels for some.

When listening to people talking about how they feel about this changed situation, a fairly common comment is that someone feels they are constantly “on-call” when working from home. Usually this is due to different expectations among bosses and managers, as well as the need to adjust to working in new ways.

On an organizational level, the challenges revolve around ensuring communication and collaboration are ongoing and unobstructed by technology barriers. This will lead to some fundamental changes to the way teams are managed and led, where new relationships based on outcomes and trust will be established.

Another key challenge is security – with everyone working from home often on their own tablets or laptops that may or may not be locked down and updated frequently, there is simply a wider surface area for attackers to scan for weaknesses. This is borne out by FBI data stating cyber-attacks increased by 400% during 2020.

With me on the panel was Mark Pringle, SVP Corporate Real Estate, Global Facilities and Environment, Health and Safety at Dell Technologies. As well as some great insights into how organizations are likely to change their thinking on how their physical estate is used and managed, he spoke about the “mindset” challenge created by different attitudes among managers and leaders towards working from home.

But with results backing up claims made by almost 90% of respondents to an internal survey that they were at least as, if not more productive at home as in the office, it seems that it’s this mindset that will need to change.

One thing the panel agreed on was that this is likely be made easier thanks to a shift towards results-based measurement of team members’ contributions towards company objectives – rather than assessing individuals’ contribution on how many hours they put in at their desks. At least within more forward-thinking organizations, it’s expected this will be true.

Panellist Kristine Dahl Steidel, VP End-User Computing EMEA, VMware, speaks about this as “the shift from monitoring input to a more outcome-based leadership model.” Everyone involved in the discussion had some great thoughts and ideas when it came to how to climb this particular hill, but they all centered on trust as a key component.

Some companies – such as Dell Technologies – were better prepared for the shock of 2020 and the atomization of their workforce, thanks to having already began to build strategies around flexible working in the past years. In fact, at the start of March 2020, 65% of Dell’s 165,000-strong workforce was already taking part in some form of flexible working. When this jumped to 90% by the end of the same month, it didn’t cause the extreme system shock that was felt at many other organizations.

The simple fact is that all the benefits that businesses were starting to see by moving towards flexible working initiatives pre-Covid will be just as relevant in a post-Covid world. This is why the “hybrid” model – an approach that attempts to offer the best-of-both-worlds of office and home-based working – is an attractive proposition, as companies set about rethinking their fundamental processes and operations from the ground up.

Imagine mobile workforces with the tools they need to do their jobs and communicate with their teams from anywhere in the world. How you split your time between home working, co-working spaces, and a central office headquarters will be decided by balancing the requirements of your role with your own lifestyle preferences. It’s possible now because technology has matured to the point that we can make these choices, and I firmly believe tools like virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) will soon be a fourth potential venue for us to work from. VR co-working is already a reality at some organizations, where teams can meet in virtual environments that enable far richer interactions than you can get in a Zoom or Teams meeting.

Nowhere is the importance of a well-plotted direction for the future more pressing than in the field of security. The fourfold-increase in cyber-attacks referenced by the FBI includes phishing scams and ransomware attacks, launched by perpetrators who know full well that we’re struggling to keep up with the changing security requirements caused by the exodus from offices and walled-in corporate networks.

In our conversation, Kevin Cross, Chief Information Security Officer, Dell Technologies, speaks about the importance of “intrinsic security”. This is about getting into the mindset of building security into every area of operations, from the moment of conception.

This basic requirement is very customer-driven – “Any engagement we have with customers, they’re always talking about security,” Cross tells us.

“Transformation occurs … and sometimes security is just left out or forgotten … it’s about trying to go beyond that and trying to get into the ‘intrinsic security’ mindset, where security is not just along for the ride but is embedded in everything we do.”

Technology can clearly be a huge help when it comes to tackling these challenges. Businesses that were already invested in cloud-based, collaborative working tools like Slack, Teams and Zoom were already at an advantage when the rush to WFH took place, just as those that had already begun to embrace secure, flexible working are.

Ultimately, the answers to these challenges lies with teams that are able to innovate to discover new ways of working, taking with them the good bits of the old days, such as close-knit workforces and collaborative environments, as well as the most exciting opportunities offered by emerging new technologies.

Within our organizations this is going to require coordinated efforts across all departments. As HR helps workers to find their place and grow, security keeps everyone safe from emerging threats, and management enables teams to embrace new models of working, everything must be tied together to ensure we all make the leap together successfully without anyone being left behind. 

Watch the webinars in full here:

The Hybrid Work Experience: shifting from ‘do it light’ to ‘do it right’

Intrinsic Security at the Heart of Transformation

If you would like to learn more about technology trends, then have a look at my new books: Tech Trends in Practice: The 25 Technologies That Are Driving The 4th Industrial Revolution and The Intelligence Revolution: Transforming Your Business With AI.

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About Bernard Marr

Bernard Marr is a world-renowned futurist, influencer and thought leader in the field of business and technology. He is the author of 18 best-selling books, writes a regular column for Forbes and advises and coaches many of the world’s best-known organisations. He has over 2 million social media followers and was ranked by LinkedIn as one of the top 5 business influencers in the world and the No 1 influencer in the UK.