Return to the office and hybrid working

I confess I’m finding it fascinating to hear how companies are approaching hybrid working and their return to office planning. It’s clear from the press coverage, there is a huge range of views and approaches being taken here in the UK and globally.

In this missive I want highlight some of the push and pull factors involved and share the approaches I’m hearing about in the news and from my network. ?These range from the global one-size fits all, to approaches that are more nuanced, empowering employees to self-organise.

With a few notable exceptions, we’re now seeing employers wanting to encourage (or mandate) their staff to come back to the office. Some might suggest this push factor is driven from the need to make productive use of all that expensive real-estate and technology infrastructure. However, this would ignore the genuine need to sustain and grow corporate culture and identity, perhaps more challenging when everybody is working remotely.

Then there are the undeniable benefits of face to face collaboration, a welcome change after this enforced separation, that helps drive teamwork and innovation, supports staff onboarding, enables networking, drives efficiencies and is important for wellbeing. And while the vast majority of companies have responded incredibly to the challenges the pandemic has brought, perhaps some executives are also thinking that in the longer term, productivity, sales, customer service and effective management are still best driven from a workforce that is largely office based.

And then there are pull factors. Not everyone’s experience of remote working has been great. Being back in the office brings a whole different dimension to the working day, with your own focused workspace and in-person interactions whether informal chats, office banter, fun team sessions or just lunch with colleagues. There are also some conversations that are much better done face to face.

However, press coverage indicates that returning to the office, even when companies have hybrid working policies in place, is not universally welcomed by all employees and companies are having to think hard and get creative to encourage their staff back in.

With so much time spent working from home, reluctance or nervousness about returning to office working is understandable. We tend to be creatures of habit… people have got used to the home routine… change can be scary. ?And why spend all day in the office on zoom calls when this can be done very effectively from home? Haven’t we proved this over the last 18 months? Many of us have also saved time and money avoiding the commute, reduced our childcare expenses and enjoyed an improved work-life balance during this period. Do we really want to give these gains up and jump back onto the hamster wheel? Health concerns may also be a factor. Is it really safe stepping onto public transport or into a busy office? Lot's of potential friction points for organisations and employees to work through here.

It’s fair to say that the working from home experience has varied widely from person to person. Shouldn’t we also apply this insight as we think about flexible working and returning to the office? There is a great opportunity here for employers to engage their staff and discuss how best to embed future working models, rather than roll-out a top-down policy by decree. Models that drive employee engagement and loyalty, that in turn drive innovation, productivity, performance, employee wellbeing and ultimately profits.

Some senior execs of large financial institutions have gone on record to say that home working is not sustainable in the long term and are planning a phased return to full-time office working. Others are embracing flexible working, introducing a rotation-based model, where employees have a defined set of days or weeks in the office that are cycled through with remote working built-in (this appears popular in the USA). Others are mandating a minimum of 3 days a week in the office across the board with some flexibility on the days.

While there are benefits in having a fixed and rigid global model: yes it's simpler to implement, everybody knows where they stand, staff can plan accordingly, management processes can be standardised,?I do think these approaches risk missing benefits and opportunities.

As an alternative, some companies are recognising that not all parts of their organisation work in the same way and are setting out to empower teams to discuss and create their own working patterns to promote effective collaboration, teamwork and individual working. ?

For example, some teams benefit hugely from collaborating closely. In these cases a fixed number of days in the office every week (e.g. a 3:2 model) may be beneficial to support collaboration, run workshops, process handoffs, induct new joiners, facilitate on-the-job learning and matrix management etc. With flexibility offered for the other days, where employees can choose to come to the office or work remotely.

For other teams it may make sense to continue to work remotely for the majority of the time. This may be appropriate where individuals don’t rely heavily on team collaboration to complete their work, where interactions can be productively managed through calls, messaging and emails, or where people are spread across global locations. In this pattern, fixed office days can be mutually agreed each week or month to ensure teams get together in person to run team events, get in person feedback and strengthen team bonds. On other days team members are free to choose whether to work remotely or in the office.

Some teams are more event driven, where short intense periods of office-based collaboration would work well, driven by business need. This could also apply to teams with regular cycles such as month-end, tax-year end, reporting season etc, where collaborating in person will help drive productivity. With employees able to work remotely or choose to work in the office outside of these periods.

Agreeing a regular monthly office huddle is another approach, where team members spend 1 week of the month in the office all together for an intense 3 to 5 days, attending the office less frequently in non-huddle weeks.

The keys to implementing these more flexible models are open team discussions, facilitating technology and office space solutions. For this to be successful, it's important for team members to openly engage with each other and their management to agree what model works best for the team, individuals and stakeholders to achieve the goals that help drive the company forward. Innovative Technology and office space solutions are also needed to support hybrid working, with portable smart screens and bookable collaboration spaces in the office, technology to level up the experience of remote and office based colleagues in joint sessions, apps to help you find out who’s working where on a particular day, find your desk, or to simply know who’s in the office with you to arrange that face to face catch up.

Trusting teams to self-organise their work patterns could reap tremendous results.

Having a variety of working models within the same organisation may seem complex and require a leap of faith by the executive team. By establishing regular reviews, feedback sessions and reflection points, we can ensure the organisation learns, adapts and improves on this journey. Take it steadily, bring people along. This is a great opportunity to shape the future of work...