Though some organ­i­sa­tions have clung on to the belief that work­place mod­els will shift back to pre-pan­dem­ic norms for longer than oth­ers, few can now con­test that the pan­dem­ic has per­ma­nent­ly impact­ed how peo­ple want to work. It’s impos­si­ble to ignore the demand for hybrid work­ing among employ­ees. Defin­ing exact­ly what mod­el to land on, how­ev­er, is more com­plex.

Some 83% of work­ers told this year’s Accen­ture Future of Work report that they pre­fer a hybrid mod­el, but a vari­ety of fac­tors influ­ence what that means in prac­tice and their abil­i­ty to thrive in this new world. The stark yet sim­ple chal­lenge fac­ing com­pa­nies in March 2020 – enable remote work­ing, and fast – has per­haps led to an over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion of the step beyond sur­viv­ing a pan­dem­ic: decid­ing and imple­ment­ing a hybrid mod­el that stands the test of time.

Hybrid work­ing is not just a des­ti­na­tion com­pa­nies arrive at by allow­ing employ­ees to work a few days per week from home and deploy­ing some col­lab­o­ra­tion plat­forms. It’s an intri­cate, evolv­ing jour­ney organ­i­sa­tions must go through to reimag­ine how near­ly every part of their busi­ness oper­ates. Those that don’t begin with a broad, holis­tic view will miss the chance to max­imise this once-in-a-gen­er­a­tion oppor­tu­ni­ty.

“His­tor­i­cal­ly, it was sim­ply an argu­ment of remote work ver­sus on-site work,” says Kent McMil­lan, man­ag­ing direc­tor of tal­ent and organ­i­sa­tion strat­e­gy at Accen­ture, the glob­al con­sult­ing and pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices com­pa­ny. “Now, it’s a much wider con­ver­sa­tion than just giv­ing you a lap­top and send­ing you on your way. From peo­ple strat­e­gy, phys­i­cal and vir­tu­al work­space and dig­i­tal process­es all the way through to envi­ron­men­tal impact and cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, this is a fun­da­men­tal rethink of how busi­ness is done.

“Com­pa­nies need to con­sid­er the full busi­ness case of hybrid work­ing: rais­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, reduc­ing costs, attract­ing the best tal­ent — poten­tial­ly from any­where — and improv­ing employ­ee expe­ri­ence.

“While they will right­ly start there, they’ll very quick­ly face a num­ber of big ques­tions to make it a suc­cess. How do we lead peo­ple effec­tive­ly in this mod­el? How do we man­age our real estate foot­print? What work should be done where and where the tal­ent should be sourced from? How do we keep them con­nect­ed and engaged? How do we main­tain our cul­ture with a dis­persed work­force? How do we man­age tax require­ments and cyber threats? What about health and safe­ty when work­ing at home? A broad strat­e­gy needs to be con­sid­ered.”

Near­ly two-thirds of high-growth com­pa­nies have already adopt­ed what Accen­ture calls a ‘pro­duc­tiv­i­ty any­where’ work­force mod­el and 77% of CIOs expect sig­nif­i­cant shifts in work design, cul­ture and mind­set. But with hybrid work cre­at­ing chal­lenges across the entire work­place spec­trum, com­pa­nies must lay the foun­da­tions for an agile, resilient and peo­ple-cen­tered mod­el that address­es three core dri­vers: peo­ple, process and tech­nol­o­gy.

When it comes to peo­ple, com­pa­nies need to do all they can to avoid any fric­tion cre­at­ed by hybrid work dis­par­i­ty. They must also ensure they are chang­ing behav­iours with­in a dis­persed work­force, both phys­i­cal­ly and dig­i­tal­ly, in a pos­i­tive way. Train­ing, learn­ing and devel­op­ment still have a cru­cial part to play, but com­pa­nies need to design a blend­ed expe­ri­ence that tran­scends phys­i­cal and vir­tu­al work­forces. Cru­cial­ly, busi­ness­es must be able to address their employ­ee val­ue propo­si­tion and how they will main­tain their unique cul­ture in the hybrid work age. If they can’t, they risk los­ing the bat­tle for tal­ent.

Next to peo­ple comes the appro­pri­ate process­es to ensure lev­els of inno­va­tion and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty are main­tained when peo­ple meet less fre­quent­ly. These process­es include how peo­ple share ideas and inno­vate, reimag­in­ing front­line work­er inter­faces, rein­vent­ing ways of engag­ing with cus­tomers and accel­er­at­ing the company’s sus­tain­abil­i­ty agen­da. Both peo­ple and process­es, mean­while, should be sup­port­ed by the right tech­nolo­gies and secu­ri­ty that not only ensure peo­ple are col­lab­o­rat­ing safe­ly and effec­tive­ly but are also pro­duc­tive wher­ev­er they work.

With so many mov­ing parts, it’s cru­cial that dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers from across the busi­ness are work­ing togeth­er to achieve the desired work­place strat­e­gy. The pan­dem­ic improved this kind of cross-depart­men­tal align­ment and col­lab­o­ra­tion through sheer neces­si­ty, but organ­i­sa­tions should work hard to ensure it con­tin­ues. Who ‘owns’ work­place strat­e­gy will depend on the spe­cif­ic com­pa­ny – what’s most impor­tant is every­body is speak­ing the same lan­guage when it comes to redesign­ing how the organ­i­sa­tion works to sup­port the new con­text.

“I sus­pect HR leads will still be core to dri­ving this next sto­ry and they are cer­tain­ly the ones that CEOs are gen­er­al­ly talk­ing to about it. They can pro­vide the resources that peo­ple need to excel in the hybrid work­ing age, but they can’t solve this prob­lem alone,” says Anne MacRae, Europe mod­ern work­place lead at Avanade, the lead­ing provider of inno­v­a­tive dig­i­tal and cloud ser­vices, busi­ness solu­tions and design-led expe­ri­ences on the Microsoft ecosys­tem.

“From IT to line of busi­ness and beyond, and from the C‑suite down, all groups need to be aligned around one holis­tic effort to cre­ate and exe­cute a mod­el that works for every­body. If they don’t, and lead­ers don’t sup­port peo­ple in this envi­ron­ment, it’s just nev­er going to come togeth­er.”

In the hybrid era, Accen­ture and Avanade’s Work­place Expe­ri­ence frame­work, which encom­pass­es work­place tech­nol­o­gy and secu­ri­ty, dig­i­tal oper­a­tions and employ­ee expe­ri­ence, has become more rel­e­vant than ever. Work­place Expe­ri­ence – or WX – estab­lish­es the val­ue of a holis­tic work­place approach, bring­ing IT, HR and line-of-busi­ness lead­ers togeth­er.

“This is going to be one of those cir­cum­stances where if you make the first steps, you’re going to cre­ate dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion that makes your firm more attrac­tive than the pack,” says McMil­lan. “Don’t expect to get every­thing right, in terms of a hybrid strat­e­gy, from day one, but rather embrace data and insights to proac­tive­ly test new approach­es, learn, adapt and respond.

“With agili­ty, you can fine tune your approach over time. If you’re reac­tive, you’re fun­da­men­tal­ly going to lose tal­ent in a hur­ry. A col­lab­o­ra­tive and holis­tic approach that proac­tive­ly lis­tens and evolves your work­place will ulti­mate­ly set you up for suc­cess.

For more infor­ma­tion, please vis­it www.accenture.com/FutureOfWork

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The generational trade-off

Anne MacRae, Europe mod­ern work­place lead at Avanade, and Kent McMil­lan, man­ag­ing direc­tor, organ­i­sa­tion strat­e­gy at Accen­ture, out­line the human dis­par­i­ties that organ­i­sa­tions must address to be suc­cess­ful in the hybrid work age

How has the def­i­n­i­tion of hybrid work­ing matured with­in organ­i­sa­tions?

AM As we come out of the pan­dem­ic, there is no doubt now of the inevitabil­i­ty of hybrid work­ing going for­ward. There is a ten­den­cy, how­ev­er, for peo­ple to talk of work­forces as groups of peo­ple affect­ed by the same cir­cum­stances and with the same view­points. The real­i­ty is the pan­dem­ic has also ampli­fied the dif­fer­ent dimen­sions of hybrid work­ing expe­ri­enced by dif­fer­ent peo­ple. It means organ­i­sa­tions need to reframe the work rela­tion­ship with all employ­ees and find a way to make it work for every­body. Col­lab­o­ra­tion is not just about con­nect­ing peo­ple to make them more pro­duc­tive, it’s about look­ing across cul­ture, well­be­ing and the whole work design to cre­ate a work­place expe­ri­ence and oppor­tu­ni­ty that is acces­si­ble to every per­son.

Can you expand on how peo­ple have expe­ri­enced work dif­fer­ent­ly dur­ing the pan­dem­ic?

AM A lot of it is gen­er­a­tional. There is a whole gen­er­a­tion, Gen Z, that has only start­ed work­ing dur­ing this pan­dem­ic and they’re going to be very influ­en­tial as organ­i­sa­tions define what work looks like in the future. Gen Z work­ers are more like­ly to be sin­gle and liv­ing in shared accom­mo­da­tion or cramped liv­ing con­di­tions, with­out the abil­i­ty to cre­ate a good work­space in their home. Unlike oth­ers, this gen­er­a­tion is much keen­er to get to the office and embrace work­place norms. They are not get­ting the same sup­port that organ­i­sa­tions would tra­di­tion­al­ly pro­vide new starters and grad­u­ates in an office envi­ron­ment to help them feel part of the cul­ture and to max­imise their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty as they tran­si­tion into work for the first time.

How do their views dif­fer from oth­er groups in the work­place?

KM Gen­er­al­ly, those more estab­lished in their careers have enjoyed spend­ing more time out of the office. Many are even relo­cat­ing to places they would pre­fer to live, away from city cen­tres where accom­mo­da­tion is expen­sive, to improve their qual­i­ty of life. Organ­i­sa­tions that imple­ment a hybrid work­ing pol­i­cy that allows them to do that will be more attrac­tive to this — often senior — tal­ent in a way that organ­i­sa­tions being more pre­scrip­tive about return­ing to the office might strug­gle to.

Achiev­ing par­i­ty between office work­ers and home work­ers will depend on dig­i­tal­is­ing process­es to opti­mise how we all work

But, equal­ly, they need to ensure they are attract­ing the best young tal­ent into their busi­ness too. Clear­ly a trade-off is required because the ben­e­fits of hav­ing young tal­ent in the office – learn­ing from and mir­ror­ing the work of their seniors, and build­ing a net­work – are negat­ed if your expe­ri­enced lead­er­ship and teams are work­ing from home. Mean­while, there are some groups, such as health­care work­ers, that just can’t work from home. Cre­at­ing the best work­place expe­ri­ence and avoid­ing dis­par­i­ty will not just be about how to serve dif­fer­ent groups but how to bring them all togeth­er.

How do we main­tain col­lab­o­ra­tion with­in some employ­ees in the office and oth­ers at home or remote?

AM All organ­i­sa­tions will require dimen­sions of their hybrid work pol­i­cy that are thought­ful to gen­er­a­tional nuances. They need to approach it in a flex­i­ble, agile and exper­i­men­tal way, and we will sup­port them in that jour­ney. Inno­va­tion is one aspect. From an employ­ee expe­ri­ence plat­form and col­lab­o­ra­tion plat­form per­spec­tive, we work with clients to help them think about what more those plat­forms need to pro­vide. We also need to reframe how we net­work in a hybrid world, so peo­ple work­ing from home get expo­sure to the peo­ple who are in the office, and how we learn in this envi­ron­ment, mak­ing it much more dig­i­tal­ly acces­si­ble and con­tin­u­ous.

What will sep­a­rate the win­ners from the losers in this new land­scape?

KM Three things: tal­ent, well­be­ing and address­ing the ‘hybrid divide’. The organ­i­sa­tions that will be suc­cess­ful in the future will see the full busi­ness case and pro­vide the right per­son­al and organ­i­sa­tion­al resources for their peo­ple to be pro­duc­tive any­where. They will see the poten­tial with­in hybrid work­ing for increased diver­si­ty; it opens up the job mar­ket to groups that have pre­vi­ous­ly felt exclud­ed and there’s a whole tal­ent pool wait­ing there to be tapped.

And they will recog­nise that mea­sures of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty must be expand­ed to well­ness too. If man­agers are to sup­port their teams, they need insights into more than just pro­fes­sion­al per­for­mance. Are peo­ple build­ing focus time for them­selves? Final­ly, achiev­ing par­i­ty between office work­ers and home work­ers will depend on dig­i­tal­is­ing process­es to opti­mise how we all work. It’s impor­tant to rethink where you want to take your organ­i­sa­tion.

For more infor­ma­tion, please vis­it www.avanade.com/wx

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Pro­mot­ed by Accen­ture and Avanade