Work is being reinvented: How government agencies can get the most out of the hybrid office

With Australia’s unemployment rate dropping to 5.8 per cent in February, our jobs market is in the best shape it’s been since lockdowns began last year.

This is a fantastic outcome for our economy and for Australians. But the thousands of people returning to work are also in for some big surprises. In the past 12 months, work has been decoupled from the physical office in a way that was simply unfathomable before COVID-19. According to Microsoft’s Work Trend Index, which surveyed over 30,000 people in 31 countries and analysed trillions of productivity and labour signals from Microsoft 365 and LinkedIn, this trend is here to stay.

What does this remote working revolution mean for Australia’s public sector? And what steps can government agencies take to help employees thrive in this new world of work?

The good, the bad and everything in between: The state of work in 2021

The headline takeaway from the Index is that hybrid work – where some people work from the office and others work remotely, according to their needs – is now standard across the public and private sectors.

This has some major benefits, the most obvious being flexibility. While self-assessed productivity has remained the same or higher for many employees during the pandemic, this trend is strongest among those with flexible working schedules.

Another benefit is the widening talent pool. The Index shows that remote job listings on LinkedIn increased five-fold between March and December 2020. With lockdowns changing the role of the physical office, many organisations began to look past geographical constraints to hire candidates they might never have considered otherwise.

But for every employee relishing their new-found flexibility, another is struggling with isolation or burnout. Like any new development, hybrid work poses some major challenges. And in my role, I’m fortunate enough to see how some of Australia’s largest and most progressive government agencies are tackling them.

Empowering every member of the hybrid workforce

When it comes to remote and hybrid work, we know that isolation can be a major challenge for employees. Aside from the social aspects of connection, people with weaker workplace relationships find it harder to think strategically, brainstorm in a collaborative way and come up with new ideas.

So, it’s worrying to learn that many hybrid employees are losing the connections they once had with broader networks of colleagues. The Index shows that, without the ‘water cooler moments’ of pre-COVID days, we simply have fewer opportunities to connect with those working in different locations or other departments.

Transport for NSW is one organisation that’s determined to reverse this trend. As the link between the state’s regional, remote and metropolitan areas, Transport for NSW is keenly aware of the value of cross-team collaboration. This is why, even before COVID-19 hit, the organisation was replacing its legacy communications system with Microsoft Teams. By moving employee collaboration onto the cloud, the department wanted to make it easier for staff to connect and share ideas.

Now, Transport for NSW employees can enjoy a first-class collaboration experience whether they’re connecting from Sydney headquarters, a regional office or their own homes. “As long as you’ve got WiFi, you’ve got a room fitted out,” says Richard Host, Group Chief Information Officer. “It’s broken down geographic barriers in a way that we hadn’t expected.”

This collaborate-from-anywhere capability obviously came in handy during lockdown. But it will continue to power the department’s hybrid working arrangements into the future. “Apart from making it through the pandemic,” says Host, “post-pandemic we are forever changed in the way that we collaborate.”

Using data to make the workplace smarter

Of course, government agencies like Transport for NSW aren’t the only ones using cloud collaboration to foster stronger connections. In fact, higher education institutions such as the Australian Catholic University are enlisting data from productivity and collaboration software in their battle to boost student engagement.

It seems counterintuitive to say that distance learning makes it easier to keep an eye on student wellbeing. But thanks to the records kept by Teams and other digital platforms, the university now has strong data on interactions, attendance patterns and participation levels for individual students.

By using Power BI dashboards to visualise this data and Azure analytics to extract insights from it, university staff members can more accurately identify the students who need extra assistance or may be in danger of dropping out. As a result, they’re better able to deliver the support students need to stay engaged in the hybrid learning environment.

The same principle can apply to the workforce too. By analysing engagement and communication data from Teams and other platforms, managers in government agencies can gain a better insight into how their employees are faring from afar.

We know that the risk of burnout has skyrocketed since COVID-19 began. Our Work Trend Index shows that the average Australian worker is spending 125 per cent longer in meetings than they did before the pandemic, while also sending 42 per cent more after-hours messages than they used to. Our public sector is certainly aboard this train, with government agencies holding 13,500 meetings on our GovTEAMS platform every week.

And as more employees begin to realise that hybrid work is here to stay, they are going to seek out employers who make their wellbeing and work/life balance a priority.

This is why we’ll see more government agencies follow the university’s lead, using data from collaboration and productivity apps to identify and provide proactive support to overworked employees at risk of disengaging.

Strong digital foundations + next-generation capabilities

The revolution in the way we work was, of course, made possible by the strong digital foundations that organisations had already built in the years leading up to the pandemic. Without basic infrastructure like high-speed internet, smartphones and email, none of these transformations would have been possible.

But these foundations were just the first step. The challenge now is to make sure that employees have what they need to thrive in this new world of work. And in many organisations, this will mean embedding new technologies on top of the existing digital infrastructure.

The exact nature of these technologies will vary. At Transport for NSW, cloud collaboration held the key to stronger connections among remote and hybrid employees. For the Australian Catholic University, advanced data analytics were the answer. In other government agencies, we might see increased investment in artificial intelligence, blockchain or Internet of Things technologies.

Whatever the exact nature of their investments, we’ll see more and more organisations asking themselves the same question: digital plus what will empower our employees to reach their full potential in the new world of work?