Lessons from the successful adopters of hybrid working

While hybrid work­ing is hard­ly a ground-break­ing con­cept, it’s still a rel­a­tive­ly new alter­na­tive to the office-based nine-to-five struc­ture that mil­lions of enter­pris­es have relied on for years.

Of course, the pan­dem­ic-enforced lock­downs gave the cor­po­rate world a taste of how it could work. Now that the Covid cri­sis is eas­ing, many com­pa­nies are con­vert­ing to hybrid mod­els. After all, in an era where work­ers have quit in their droves and firms are strug­gling to recruit and retain tal­ent – find­ing ways to bol­ster staff sat­is­fac­tion has become more impor­tant than ever to employ­ers. 

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, such arrange­ments are prov­ing pop­u­lar with employ­ees. Glassdoor.com named ‘hybrid’ as its word of the year for 2021. The recruit­ment web­site revealed that users writ­ing reviews of their for­mer employ­ers men­tioned the word 1,290% more times that year than they’d done in 2020. 

Sev­er­al promi­nent organ­i­sa­tions have adopt­ed hybrid work­ing recent­ly, includ­ing online writ­ing assis­tant Gram­marly, LinkedIn and the Bank of Eng­land, which is work­ing towards a sys­tem where­by employ­ees spend at least 40% of their time in the office from June. 

Gram­marly, a busi­ness found­ed in 2009 by three Ukraini­ans, was val­ued at $13bn (£10.5bn) at the end of last year. The firm announced its move to what it calls a “remote-first” mod­el in Sep­tem­ber 2021. Work­ing from home (WFH) is the focus, with its offices in Kyiv, New York, San Fran­cis­co and Van­cou­ver rebrand­ed as “hubs” for face-to-face col­lab­o­ra­tion.

Writ­ing on the Gram­marly blog at the time, CEO Brad Hoover explained: “We believe this bal­anced approach gives our team mem­bers the best of both worlds: plen­ty of focus time as well as in-per­son col­lab­o­ra­tion that fos­ters trust, unlocks cre­ativ­i­ty and accel­er­ates inno­va­tion.”

While some busi­ness­es sound as though they have hybrid work­ing nailed, new adopters may be con­cerned about how mak­ing the move could have an impact in impor­tant areas such as pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and morale. 

Jo Owen is the author of Smart Work: the ulti­mate hand­book for remote and hybrid teams (Blooms­bury Busi­ness, 2021). His first advice to them is: “Don’t pan­ic – every­one is fig­ur­ing out how to make hybrid work­ing work and every­one has teething prob­lems. It’s nat­ur­al.”

The week­ly drum­beat of one-to-one check-ins is a key hybrid work­ing rit­u­al of ours

The Covid lock­downs gave many busi­ness­es an unex­pect­ed oppor­tu­ni­ty to sam­ple remote work­ing, giv­en that they had lit­tle option but to try it. Organ­i­sa­tions that had pre­vi­ous­ly oper­at­ed exclu­sive­ly in the bricks-and-mor­tar work­place were forced to head online, with many soon real­is­ing that ele­ments of WFH were actu­al­ly more effec­tive than their tra­di­tion­al process­es. 

Soft­ware com­pa­ny Sales­force found that the num­ber of time-con­sum­ing emails sent by its staff each week fell by near­ly half, for instance, as its new­ly formed remote teams start­ed using col­lab­o­ra­tion tools such as Slack instead.

Ear­ly in the pan­dem­ic, the firm intro­duced staff well­be­ing sur­veys to help deci­sion-mak­ers “under­stand how our employ­ees were feel­ing and address ‘pain points’ as we moved from our offices to our homes and then to reopen­ing,” recalls Jen­ny Shiers, senior direc­tor of employ­ee suc­cess at Sales­force UK. “We learnt that near­ly half of our work­force want­ed to come to the office only a few times a month, but also that 80% of employ­ees want­ed to main­tain a con­nec­tion to a phys­i­cal space.”

Claire McCart­ney, senior pol­i­cy advis­er on resourc­ing and inclu­sion at the Char­tered Insti­tute of Per­son­nel and Devel­op­ment, con­curs. She would advise any firm that has recent­ly adopt­ed hybrid work­ing to go fur­ther and con­sid­er rou­tine­ly seek­ing the views of all par­ties that could be affect­ed by the move.

“The key is to obtain reg­u­lar feed­back and then update your approach to hybrid work­ing based on that infor­ma­tion,” McCart­ney says. “Gath­er it from your cus­tomers and clients as well. Check that they are all hap­py with arrange­ments and make any adjust­ments required.”

Sim­i­lar­ly, it’s cru­cial to keep an open mind, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing those impor­tant ear­ly few months, says Lizzy Firmin, HR direc­tor at Essex law firm Ellisons Solic­i­tors, which has suc­cess­ful­ly adopt­ed hybrid work­ing.

“Don’t set any­thing in stone. See how things go and keep talk­ing to peo­ple about it,” she stress­es. “If you need to make minor adjust­ments and/or give more clar­i­ty as you go, then do that. Peo­ple like to have some guid­ance, but the key is to pro­vide them with a frame­work with­out being too pre­scrip­tive.” 

Jen Scher­ler-Gorm­ley, head of HR in the UK and Ire­land for Cis­co Sys­tems, agrees that it’s impor­tant to be flex­i­ble and respon­sive when find­ing your feet. The tech con­glom­er­ate is a sea­soned expo­nent of hybrid work­ing, with half of its employ­ees already oper­at­ing remote­ly before the pan­dem­ic. 

“It’s all about the learn­ing process,” she says. “You can’t just cre­ate a one-off per­fect hybrid work mod­el. Cir­cum­stances may change in a few weeks, months or years. Keep your approach flex­i­ble, not fixed.”

If you’ve found that cliques are start­ing to form in parts of the busi­ness because of its adop­tion of hybrid work­ing, this may require some del­i­cate man­age­ment. Ill-feel­ing can arise between peo­ple who can work from home and those who can’t – or between those who want to and those who don’t. 

It can even be a point of gen­er­a­tional con­flict. A recent sur­vey of 4,000 pro­fes­sion­als pub­lished by recruiter Robert Wal­ters has found that, while flex­i­ble work­ing is impor­tant to peo­ple from gen Y, respon­dents from gen­er­a­tions X and Z tend to be dis­mis­sive of mil­len­ni­als who are “play­ing the fam­i­ly or long-com­mute card too much”. 

“One of the big risks of hybrid work­ing is the cre­ation of two tribes that will despise each oth­er,” Owen warns. 

But this risk can be man­aged. He rec­om­mends adopt­ing a “mid­dle-out approach. Let each team decide how they want to man­age hybrid work. Trust your teams to make sen­si­ble deci­sions. Most will. This ensures that every­one is com­mit­ted to the solu­tion and it cre­ates a lev­el play­ing field where it mat­ters most.”

Under­stand­ing what qual­i­fies someone’s role for more or less time in the office is also impor­tant, as is relay­ing this clear­ly to your team.

“Organ­i­sa­tions should cre­ate trans­par­ent poli­cies and prin­ci­ples about eli­gi­bil­i­ty for hybrid work­ing,” McCart­ney says. “It won’t be pos­si­ble to treat every­one the same way, but it is impor­tant to have some par­i­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ty when it comes to flex­i­ble work­ing in gen­er­al.”

She rec­om­mends that busi­ness­es con­sid­er hybrid work­ing as “one of many” pos­si­ble approach­es. Time-flex­i­bil­i­ty options should be made avail­able for employ­ees who aren’t able to make the most of work­ing from home. 

Whether your team is still test­ing out hybrid work­ing or has been doing it for a while, main­tain­ing a sense of com­mu­ni­ty is essen­tial. As Scher­ler-Gorm­ley notes, “you can’t just assume that con­nec­tions are hap­pen­ing organ­i­cal­ly”.

The key chal­lenge for sus­tain­abil­i­ty con­sul­tan­cy Evo­ra Glob­al has been “get­ting the bal­ance right”, says its co-founder and MD, Chris Ben­nett. The busi­ness, which start­ed devel­op­ing its hybrid mod­el after the UK’s final lock­down restric­tions were relaxed, has entered the “extend­ed roll-out” phase. 

“Peo­ple like work­ing from home, but rela­tion­ships grow in the office,” Ben­nett says. “It’s where those inci­den­tal con­ver­sa­tions hap­pen that help teams to devel­op. I want my staff to feel they’re in the best pos­si­ble place to be pro­duc­tive. Every­one is allowed to work from home, but many choose to come to the office. We have more than dou­bled our head­count dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, so we were meet­ing a lot of peo­ple for the first time when the office reopened.” 

Build­ing a sense of cama­raderie, espe­cial­ly between col­leagues who haven’t met in the flesh, is like­ly to require more work than a man­age­ment team might be used to in this respect. The oppor­tu­ni­ty to bump into some­one in the kitchen or bick­er over what to play on the office radio is almost non-exis­tent, mean­ing that engi­neer­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for team con­nec­tions might be required. 

“I think staff are hap­pi­er with the hybrid approach when it comes to work/life bal­ance,” Ben­nett says. “But, at a deep­er and more sub­tle lev­el, the forg­ing of social bonds is slow­er.”

A glob­al sur­vey of pro­fes­sion­als pub­lished in Jan­u­ary by recruit­ment firm Robert Wal­ters found that two-thirds of respon­dents were “high­ly like­ly” to leave their jobs in 2022 unless they received more face-to-face con­tact with their lead­ers. With this in mind, it’s vital that man­agers hold more meet­ings sim­ply to ‘check in’ with each of their team mem­bers and see how they’re get­ting on. Such straight­for­ward mea­sures can help to alle­vi­ate prob­lems rang­ing from career frus­tra­tions to feel­ings of lone­li­ness.

Scher­ler-Gorm­ley believes that the suc­cess of any hybrid organ­i­sa­tion relies on flex­i­ble, empa­thet­ic lead­er­ship. 

“The best lead­ers will get clos­er to their team mem­bers and con­nect with them reg­u­lar­ly,” she says. “The week­ly drum­beat of one-to-one check-ins is a key hybrid work­ing rit­u­al of ours. Employ­ees share what they loved and loathed about the pre­vi­ous week, what their pri­or­i­ties are for the com­ing week and what sup­port they need. Lis­ten­ing to your teams and under­stand­ing them as indi­vid­u­als should be a pri­or­i­ty in every organ­i­sa­tion.”

HR chiefs should keep an eye out for line man­agers who are weak in these areas and act accord­ing­ly, Owen advis­es.

“Man­ag­ing peo­ple remote­ly is far hard­er than it is in an office,” he explains. “The office is very for­giv­ing of mediocre man­age­ment. When your team is remote, man­agers must be more pur­pose­ful and delib­er­ate in what they do. The skills bar has been raised – and only the best man­agers will sur­vive.” 

Shiers believes that adopt­ing a hybrid mod­el makes it more impor­tant for an organ­i­sa­tion to treat each employ­ee as an indi­vid­ual. Employ­ers should demon­strate their under­stand­ing that peo­ple will always want and need dif­fer­ent things at var­i­ous stages of their careers, no mat­ter how they pre­fer to work. 

“We’re con­tin­u­ous­ly lis­ten­ing and evolv­ing to cre­ate a cul­ture that pri­ori­tis­es well­ness, flex­i­bil­i­ty and inclu­siv­i­ty,” Shiers says. “We are work­ing to ensure that every employ­ee can be the best ver­sion of them­selves, regard­less of their loca­tion. Their indi­vid­u­al­ism needs to be cel­e­brat­ed.”

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