We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to transform employment models to be more inclusive. It is our responsibility to act now.
We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to transform employment models to be more inclusive. It is our responsibility to act now.
Hybrid working could present a breakthrough in equity within organisations, but a systemic shift is required to unlock the opportunity.
The Issue
The pandemic has radically changed our working world. Changes that we expected would take decades to be implemented, such as greater flexibility of where and when we work, have been adopted overnight. At the same time, an ambition that is important to many organisations – creating a more equal and inclusive workforce – is under threat of stagnation or even reversal.
According to the World Economic Forum, the impact of COVID-19 has increased the global gender gap by a generation from 99.5 years to 135.6 years. In the US, 2.5 million women have left the workforce since the pandemic struck (in comparison to 1.8 million men). Kamala Harris, Vice President of the United States, has called COVID-19’s impact on the female workforce a “national emergency” that puts decades of progress at risk.
The investments which organisations have made in new infrastructure, and the shift in mindsets that has been required to maintain business through the pandemic, present us with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rethink our employment models. Embracing hybrid as a future way of working rather than a contingency plan will enable organisations to claw back some of the losses and optimise the benefits that hybrid has to offer for workplace equity.
The opportunity
According to a January 2021 study from the University of Southampton, 73% of employees would prefer to work from home some of the time. EY’s March 2021 Work Reimagined survey (covering c.16,000 global employees) demonstrated that 67% of UK employees who would prefer hybrid working are women and are most likely to be Millennials – i.e. aged between 25 and 40.
Organisations cannot afford to be rigid, and need to rapidly rethink their employment models to (i) retain, attract and promote diverse talent; (ii) respond to what is a broad shift in expectations; and (iii) improve business performance driven by improved employee engagement.
Candidate numbers show the increased demand for hybrid roles, indirectly shaping the labour market. But change shouldn’t solely be driven by the employee base; it should be consciously developed by leadership. Ensuring hybrid working isn’t a personal preference but a shift in the system, and avoiding marginalisation further down the line, demands a strategic approach by management to drive lasting D&I change.
When thinking about new employment models, it is not only the question of where we work, but when we work that should be shaping future job profiles. Ensuring greater flexibility of time and place will open up the labour market. Women with caring responsibilities are one employee group that could benefit from this change, but this opportunity is not limited to women. To establish a truly systemic shift, a rethink needs to be applied across the whole workforce and built into our working DNA. The pandemic has been a stark reminder for many of us of how important a healthy work/life balance is and the need to flex work around life rather than vice versa.
Hybrid could also be a key contributor to overcoming barriers that have prevented organisations achieving their targets to date. For example, rethinking our traditional 9am-5pm working schedule could allow customer needs to be met 24 hours a day, as well as providing greater flexibility to employees.
The challenge
Undoubtedly, there can be friction between traditional and hybrid models – not least because some employees and employers do want a return of the pre-pandemic status quo. Organisations that capture the opportunity will be those that ask not how we accommodate hybrid within existing models, but how we optimise our hybrid models: we have to overcome structural and cultural challenges.
Structurally, we need to accept that hybrid is not a quick fix, requiring as it does a thoughtful transition from an employee, environment and leadership perspective. Key questions to consider include: How do we ensure the end-to-end employee experience from hire to retire is reflected in the new model? If our ways of working change, so too does our working environment – what will these new spaces look like? How do we manage hybrid teams, where some roles have constraints on when and where they work, and others don’t? And what impact does this have on our service delivery model?
A cultural shift is needed to ensure a sustainable transition and embed the structural change. With greater flexibility of where and when we work, how do we build a sense of community? How does our leadership and communication style change to ensure a sense of belonging? In a working world with disappearing boundaries, how do we guarantee employee wellbeing is at the heart of the new working model?
The roadmap: 4 steps that will allow your organisation to transition into a more diverse and inclusive hybrid working world
While we are transitioning into a new working world, we need to consciously design our ways of working and employment models with inclusion at front of mind. The following four steps will help your organisation to successfully lead the way, by recognising individual needs which are underpinned by a strong organisational framework and driven by clear business objectives.
1. Engage employees to understand internal demand for flexibility. We must understand what our current employee base and future talent needs are, in terms of hybrid working.
2. Assess the opportunity to redesign roles for flexibility. We can’t just “lift and shift” current processes and structures, but need to consider the changed end-to-end employee experience across all roles in the organisation before we start the redesign, to ensure talent equity for all.
3. Pilot, test, learn. The hybrid working world will continuously evolve, reflecting the changing personal and organisational needs, therefore quick iteration will be an essential part of implementation.
4. Identify and address cultural barriers. A successful transition depends on strengthening our people management skills, i.e. ensuring wellbeing is front and centre, supporting our people and sustaining performance.
Co-authored by Shaun Scantlebury, EY UKI Workforce Advisory Partner and Lillemor Wortley, EY PAS Manager.
The views reflected in this article are the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the global EY organisation or its member firms.
This article is part of a series we are publishing on Work Reimagined, and how hybrid models are helping us to reimagine the way we will work from now on. Others in this series include Sara Hirsch and Michelle Evans on Communications and Engagement for a hybrid world.