Getting the Hybrid Balance Right
Our Co Founder, Kristal McNamara shares her insight.
For employees who are able to work from home, the hybrid balance is still complex for many organisations to get right. What is the right balance? How can we remain competitive and keep hold of our talent? UK workers are going into the office an average of 1.5 days a week, suggesting an average daily attendance of 29% according to a recent Advanced Workplace Associates survey, surveying 43 offices in the UK, representing nearly 50,000 people (BBC, 2022).
Implementing Hybrid policy and frameworks has been seen by some organisations as unnecessary. Instead choice is given to some employees about when to come in. But we still see many employees reluctant to return to the workplace, thinking ‘why commute in to work to do the same work I can do from home?’
Planning to ensure a good workplace experience
Without any planning of who is coming in, when and why, employees can have a poor experience in the workplace. Some of the biggest challenges pointed out by XpertHR include old fashioned ideas around productivity and location of workplace causing friction (McCulloh, 2022). Of 292 organisations surveyed, almost all operate a hybrid model. For most organisations, staff generally spend between two to three days working from home each week. However, more than a third of staff reported being unhappy with this split and would prefer to spend even less time in the office. Nearly all of the organisations said they’d experienced challenges with implementation of hybrid schemes.
Reason when and why to go to the workplace
Habits and attitudes have developed over the pandemic that have helped us excel in the way we work, but also that may hinder us, such as our tendency to isolate ourselves from work and the attitude we can collaborate separately. To overcome such negative habits and attitudes, a clear strategy, supported by a change programme can help organisations and their people transition.
However what is clear is that humans need and want social interaction, when we engage with teams about how and why they want to come together the response is always that they want to interact, engage and socialise with their colleague and that they miss this interaction.
Employers and their teams are starting to come together in their way of thinking. Some research shows that for those able to work from home, the gap between the time they want to spend working from home (just under 2.5 days) and the time their employer does (just over 2.5 days) is shrinking. This suggests that about 50% of the time working together in person is becoming the norm (WFH Research, 2022). However this research also shows that the desired amount of work from home (especially fully remote work) increases with age.
Being consistent – if you have a hybrid plan, manage it!
We have heard that some employees are not fully complying with their employer's request to return to the office, with research showing that 35% of respondents say their employer would probably do nothing if they or their coworkers failed to come in as many days as requested. 17% said their employer would do nothing if they consistently failed to complete work on time. (WFH research, 2022)
This may be why the research we have highlighted conflicts between actual average attendance of around 1.5 days a week, and employer policy (which is unenforced) mandating 2.5 days a week.
If you have a hybrid plan or policy, it needs to be managed just like all your other policies. If employees see a lack of implementation, an inconsistent or unfair approach across the organisation, this can quickly erode your culture, morale and lead to people leaving.
How to implement hybrid working
So, how can employers help to encourage employees back to the office? And how can employees have a good experience when they are there? If an employer trusts its team to set their own policies, agree how they will maintain each other’s trust, share information and when it’s okay to say no, workplace attendance could increase to 41%. (Forbes, 2022)
Prescriptive policy that states a 50% split hybrid working requirement or certain fixed days in the office does not work. The answer lies not with your managers but with your teams.
A team level approach, reviewing individually and then collectively the ways in which the group can and want to work together is key,
When, where and how are they going to come together to collaborate, when and where is best for focused working and so on.
The whole team needs to take a step back from their diaries and recurring meetings and truly engage with the idea of planning their time more effectively, this will be an empoiwering process.
Once this process is complete and a team level agreement in place, employees will have a better ‘in office’ experience as they will have planned their time and have the colleagues they need with them, in order to complete their work.
They will hold each other accountable through agreed team values and this empowerment will help to improve productivity, wellbeing and retention.
Workwell PCS work with our clients to build robust new ways of working, through our Hybrid Working toolkit, to step through these processes in a simple and autonomous way, check out some of our projects.
Our recommended first step in all our projects is getting to know you and your organisation and understanding the challenges you face, check out how we work.
Get in touch to find out more.
