Remote, hybrid, office? Which will be your ‘new normal’?

After 18 months of enforced home­work­ing for many peo­ple, it’s dif­fi­cult to fore­see a future in which remote and hybrid work­ing won’t fea­ture. How­ev­er, many busi­ness­es are keen to coax staff back to the office at least for part of the week – Covid-19 restric­tions per­mit­ting – while oth­ers have spo­ken out against work­ing from home, includ­ing Gold­man Sachs CEO David Solomon who called it an “aber­ra­tion”.

So, is hybrid work­ing like­ly to last, or will there be a snap­back to old oper­at­ing meth­ods? Here, three experts debate whether ful­ly remote, hybrid or office work­ing is the best option for the future.

Fully remote working

Dar­ren Murph has writ­ten the man­u­al on remote work­ing, lit­er­al­ly, pub­lish­ing Liv­ing the Remote Dream: A Guide to See­ing the World, Set­ting Records and Advanc­ing Your Career in 2015. Four years lat­er, in July 2019, he was appoint­ed head of remote at tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny Git­Lab, one of the world’s largest ful­ly remote organ­i­sa­tions with more than 1,300 employ­ees spread across 65 coun­tries.

For Murph, the past 18 months have proved that remote work­ing is the future. “The pan­dem­ic has forced organ­i­sa­tions to grap­ple with real­i­ty: dis­trib­uted work is here, it’s hap­pen­ing, and it’s no longer a choice or an argu­ment for the vast major­i­ty of indus­tries,” he says. “Covid-19 accel­er­at­ed a trend that began decades ago, as soci­ety lever­ages the inter­net to live bet­ter lives while dri­ving busi­ness results. The ben­e­fits are many – to the employ­ee, the employ­er and the world.”

Some of the advan­tages, Murph argues, are a more diverse and inclu­sive work­force, greater effi­cien­cy in work­flows and a broad­er glob­al cov­er­age in ser­vic­ing clients. He also believes being ful­ly remote makes busi­ness­es more resilient and more able to pre­serve con­ti­nu­ity regard­less of whether the office is open or closed. 

“Busi­ness­es will be bet­ter equipped to weath­er future crises by empow­er­ing results that are decou­pled from geog­ra­phy. They’ll find it eas­i­er to hire diverse teams and ele­vate intro­vert­ed voic­es that have his­tor­i­cal­ly been squashed,” he says.

While Murph acknowl­edges that “all-remote isn’t for every­one” and can make onboard­ing recruits more chal­leng­ing, he believes the pros far out­weigh the cons. “Knowl­edge work­ers have proven that they can dri­ve results with­out the crutch of the office,” he says. “Rather than employ­ees need­ing to jus­ti­fy why they should work from home as opposed to the office, we’ve entered a world where employ­ers must jus­ti­fy exor­bi­tant waste in terms of com­mute time and real estate to accom­plish dig­i­tal tasks.”

Offer­ing his three top tips for busi­ness­es seek­ing to opti­mise a remote-work­ing mod­el, Murph sug­gests the first step is to hire a ded­i­cat­ed remote-work leader. “Com­pa­nies need to realise this is a full-scale organ­i­sa­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion and, if you want it done well, it can’t be a part-time job,” he says.

Murph also rec­om­mends that com­pa­nies audit their val­ues and doc­u­men­ta­tion hygiene to ensure both are ready for a dis­trib­uted work­force. Final­ly, he sug­gests start­ing to shut down office spaces. “Noth­ing sends a clear­er sig­nal that your future will be dri­ven by how not where work hap­pens than a shift away from offices,” he says.

Hybrid working

Saman­tha Fish­er is head of dynam­ic work for Okta, an iden­ti­ty and access man­age­ment com­pa­ny. Explain­ing what dynam­ic work­ing means at Okta, she says: “It’s about per­son­al­is­ing the work­ing expe­ri­ence and enabling employ­ees to work in whichev­er way makes the most sense for them. It’s not just a case of where employ­ees are locat­ed – at the office, home or else­where – it’s about work­place design, peo­ple engage­ment, tech­nol­o­gy, tal­ent acqui­si­tion, morale and com­pa­ny cul­ture.”

At the start of the coro­n­avirus cri­sis, 30% of Okta’s 2,400 employ­ees were already work­ing remote­ly. “We found that this flex­i­bil­i­ty increased empow­er­ment, sat­is­fac­tion and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty,” says Fish­er. “The pan­dem­ic accel­er­at­ed the need for more flex­i­ble frame­works. Over the past year or so, employ­ees have ben­e­fit­ted from a bet­ter work-life bal­ance and reduced com­mut­ing costs, as well as greater auton­o­my which has led to more empow­er­ment.”

Appoint­ed Okta’s first head of dynam­ic work in Jan­u­ary 2021, she was tasked with build­ing organ­i­sa­tion­al cul­ture more broad­ly, anchor­ing equi­ty, social con­nec­tion and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and enabling employ­ees to work from any­where suc­cess­ful­ly. “I spend a lot of my time work­ing with cross-func­tion­al teams, think­ing about the pro­grammes, ser­vices and expe­ri­ences we offer while in the office and how we can trans­late these for a hybrid envi­ron­ment and/or repo­si­tion ser­vices in a way that enhances expe­ri­ences at any loca­tion,” she says.

Fish­er stress­es the impor­tance of “com­mu­ni­ty build­ing”, explain­ing that the work­place is a vital part of the busi­ness ecosys­tem and a key ele­ment of organ­i­sa­tion­al cul­ture. “I look at devel­op­ing cre­ative and holis­tic solu­tions that aug­ment tal­ent strate­gies, opti­mise tech­nol­o­gy enable­ment and sup­port shifts in work­force oper­a­tions,” she says.

Okta’s The New Work­place Report: A Busi­ness Bal­anc­ing Act – pub­lished in June 2021 and based on a sur­vey of more than 10,000 office-based work­ers across eight Euro­pean coun­tries and 12 indus­try sec­tors – found 42% of respon­dents want­ed a mix of home- and office-based work­ing, 17% want­ed to work from home per­ma­nent­ly and just 16% want­ed to work in the office five days a week.

But what’s need­ed to make hybrid work­ing suc­cess­ful? “For organ­i­sa­tions to pro­vide flex­i­bil­i­ty and equi­ty in their work­place envi­ron­ment, you need exec­u­tive sup­port, invest­ment in tech­nol­o­gy, a focus on cul­ture and expe­ri­ence, and lead­ers to build and dri­ve long-term strat­e­gy,” says Fish­er. “It’s a ful­ly cross-func­tion­al ini­tia­tive and requires both pas­sion and heart to curate a dynam­ic work­ing envi­ron­ment.”

Office working

Chris Gra­zier, an office agency part­ner at Hart­nell Tay­lor Cook and pres­i­dent of the Bris­tol Prop­er­ty Agents Asso­ci­a­tion, is con­fi­dent that office work­ing will thrive again. But he urges organ­i­sa­tions to be smarter with their work­spaces rather than using the trend for hybrid work­ing as a way to down­size and, ulti­mate­ly, cut over­heads.

Gra­zier admits that the democ­ra­ti­sa­tion of video con­fer­enc­ing dur­ing the pan­dem­ic has been “a rev­e­la­tion for all busi­ness­es”, includ­ing in the prop­er­ty indus­try in which he has oper­at­ed for almost three decades. “The flip­side,” he says, “has been staff iso­la­tion, the effect on team­work, the inabil­i­ty to men­tor junior staff and the loss of cre­ativ­i­ty that springs from face-to-face or group work­ing.”

Now, after a year and a half of Zoom calls, there is a col­lec­tive crav­ing to return to the office and to net­work and col­lab­o­rate with­out an awk­ward time delay or mis­tak­en­ly being on mute. “The office is where busi­ness cul­ture is formed,” says Gra­zier. “It’s both good for the employ­ee, who can build some sep­a­ra­tion between home life and work, and it con­nects employ­ers with employ­ees in a way that a Zoom call nev­er can. And despite head­lines tout­ing that the home is the office of the future, over the past few months we have wit­nessed busi­ness­es return­ing staff to the work­place.” 

Indeed, data show­ing the floor space tak­en up in Bris­tol city cen­tre in the past three quar­ters, includ­ing Q2 this year, reveals more ‘Grade A offices’ – high-qual­i­ty work­space, refur­bished or new – have been occu­pied than non-Grade A spaces. “This is a com­plete rever­sal of pre­vi­ous trends, and it hints that busi­ness­es are focus­ing on less but high­er-qual­i­ty space for their new offices than they did for their for­mer ones,” Gra­zier says.

Echo­ing con­cerns from busi­ness lead­ers about track­ing work­ers’ pro­duc­tiv­i­ty away from the office, Gra­zier believes that by invest­ing in smarter work­spaces, staff will want to return. “I’d rec­om­mend that organ­i­sa­tions use less space but improve the qual­i­ty,” he says. 

Gra­zier also points out that many organ­i­sa­tions are emerg­ing from the pan­dem­ic with a decent bal­ance sheet, thanks to gov­ern­ment sup­port, offer­ing them a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to upgrade their offices. “Don’t try to save mon­ey if you are mov­ing,” he advis­es. “Try to spend that mon­ey more wise­ly by cre­at­ing an envi­ron­ment that draws on the strengths of team­work­ing and pos­i­tive cul­ture.”