With talks that the workplace will never go back to what it used to be and with more companies adopting flexible working models, the Hybrid Work model is emerging as the one that will most likely become the norm in the post-pandemic world.
What is the Hybrid Work model?
There’s no clear description of what the Hybrid work model is. It sits in the middle between a remote-first and an office-first model and can be adopted in different variations. One setup can be that specific employees would be working in the office permanently, like for example the accounting department for security purposes, while others are working remotely. A different setup can be that employees only use the office for collaboration and team activities and work remotely the rest of the time, similar to what Quora and Dropbox have decided to implement. Another setup can be that employees come to the office a certain amount of days per week and work remotely for the rest of the week.
What is the best setup?
Each organization should adopt the setup that is relevant to their business while accommodating their employees. In order to reach that balance, the organization can test different setups, measure the performance and collect employees’ feedback at the end of each iteration. Delivering a consistent experience is also key for both remote and in-office employees. This can be done by creating guidelines that prioritize online communication over in-person communication for example or having everyone join meetings from behind their screens even if some of the team members are co-located in the same office.
To ensure the success of the hybrid working model, leaders need to think remote-first so they establish guidelines and policies that will not put remote workers at a disadvantage then choose a setup that will fit their kind of business, communicate it clearly to all employees and organize regular feedback loops so that employees can voice their concerns to better understand the challenges they may be facing and address them quickly.
This is actually the reason why we built AION teams, a tool that gives employees access to a shared calendar where they register information related to their working location and their daily mood. This allows leaders to track their office capacity when applying a hybrid working model and to establish an ongoing conversation with employees about how they are really feeling.
Learn more about Aion Teams and how to access it on this page.
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