Hybrid Work Is Here to Stay – Here’s How to Make It Work
Add bookmark
Hybrid work is here to stay. Now it's time to make it work.
Some disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to U.S. businesses have been largely mitigated; others have proven more durable.
One of the most disruptive pandemic developments, impacting nearly all organizations, has remained stubbornly difficult to resolve: work from home (WFH) and return to office (RTO) policies.
After a daring, nearly economy-wide experiment in remote work, the position of business leaders today is well-known: Leaders want team members back in the office, and they cite a range of arguments and datapoints, mostly anecdotal, to push the point.
Individual contributors, however, have often resisted, citing improved productivity, well-being, and work-life balance. A recently published paper by José Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, and Steven J. Davis, titled, "Why Working from Home Will Stick," shows that not only are there fewer fully remote jobs overall than what workers want, employees already working remotely, at least part of the time, want to work from home more regularly than their employers expect. Certainly, most organizations will end up deploying hybrid work strategies, neither fully remote nor fully in-person.
WFH v. RTO - The Rift Between Us
In our research with U.S. credit unions, we found a significant disconnect between executive managers and individual contributors regarding the organizational need for RTO. We also identified an undercurrent of distrust – which may have existed pre-pandemic and certainly was exacerbated by it –with both leaders and staff questioning the other’s motivations for their WFH and RTO positions.
Stuck in the middle — facing both up and down the organizational chart — are managers, who must mediate between leaders and individual contributors. While managers might appreciate the benefits of remote work, they also are charged with carrying out corporate RTO mandates, however ill-defined.
This disconnect between people at different levels inside an organization is the biggest barrier to the successful implementation of a hybrid work strategy, and it often leads to leaders, managers, and staff talking past one another. A thoughtful, well-functioning hybrid strategy is not, "Everyone be in the office on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, and we’ll be checking badge reports." Instead, it will be the result of a conversation and negotiation among executives, managers, and individual contributors – one that considers each role and its specific needs.
Building Up Trust Again
As such, there are insights from research on business negotiation, such as the classic book, "Getting to Yes" by Roger Fisher and William Ury, that can help organizations navigate this conversation more effectively:
- Lack of trust increases the cost of agreement for both parties, and if trust was degraded during the pandemic, it must be repaired first.
- Focus on interests (what the other side cares about) vs. positions (what the other side asks for).
- Turn single-item negotiations into multi-item negotiations, as multi-item negotiations create more – and potentially more creative – opportunities for compromise and collaboration.
What HR Leaders Can Do
Without trusting relationships, negotiations over hybrid work policies will fail. So leaders must start by evaluating the trust levels within your organization. Don’t shy away from candid conversations and embrace the opportunity to be vulnerable. Trust is challenging to build and easy to break, but the best way to establish or repair trust is to invest in transparent dialogue about workers' needs and expectations, alongside organizational priorities and goals.
REPORT: State of HR 2023
A thoughtful hybrid working arrangement needs to be a holistic exercise led at the corporate level in collaboration with managers and individual contributors. The need for in-person interaction or work should be dictated by the demands of the role, not a rule. The key is consistency in the evaluation: Our research shows team members value flexibility but also want clear guidelines. A 2021 Gallup survey found, for example, that 60% of workers want employers, managers, and teams to set clearer direction for being in the office.
It also is essential to support middle managers, as they are where the rubber meets the road. You can have the most thoughtful, creative hybrid strategy in the industry, but if your managers don’t understand it and feel equipped and empowered to implement it, that strategy will fail. Involve your managers in crafting a role-based approach and then overinvest in training and communicating the plan across the organization.
Supervising and supporting individual contributors in a hybrid environment requires even more of middle management; this is an opportunity to help managers become better leaders as they must engage staff regularly, individually, and with intention. Ensure that executives are modeling the behaviors that support the hybrid strategy.
Ultimately, the future of hybrid work will not be determined by organizational policy but by organizational culture – and culture is the ever-evolving outcome of relationships among people throughout the business. Cultivating and caring for those relationships is the most important thing you can do to ensure an effective hybrid work strategy.
Photo by cottonbro studio for Pexels
Join the HR Exchange Network community
Join HR Exchange Network today and interact with a vibrant network of professionals, keeping up to date with the industry by accessing our wealth of articles, videos, live conferences and more.
Join Now
