Hybrid Work is a modern form of collaboration in which employees work together partly in the office, partly in the home office or mobile at an external location. Since the pandemic, hybrid work has enjoyed enormous popularity because it offers companies exactly the flexibility they need right now.
But the phenomenon of hybrid work is not new; even before Corona, it was becoming apparent that the desire for mobile-flexible collaboration was growing – and playing an important role in the choice of employer. This is shown by a large-scale study conducted by the University of St. Gallen. Between 2016 and 2022, the team led by Prof. Dr. Heike Bruch surveyed more than 93,000 employees in over 500 companies in the DACH region.¹
The results show that in 2021, 56% of employees were already working in a home office from time to time – and the trend is rising. The desire for flexible forms of work has also grown continuously over this period. Particularly in the younger generations X and Y, more than 80% are seeking modern and flexible ways to manage their time.
The authors of the study see the pandemic not as a trigger, but rather as a catalyst for a general shift toward “new work” – a new type of flexible collaboration. This upheaval is being driven primarily by two megatrends: digital transformation and demographic change.
While digitization is accelerating processes and making hybrid work technically possible in the first place, demographic change is bringing with it increasing competition for young, well-trained specialists. And the young generation’s demand is clear: Work must become attractive and flexible. Not least for this reason, the authors conclude, Hybrid work is not a transitional phenomenon, but has come to stay.¹
How many days per week employees should spend in the office and how many in the home office is something many companies still disagree on. In practice, a variety of different models can be found. They can be categorized into four types:
A survey by McKinsey & Company shows that more than half of executives want at least four days of office work per week, even after the pandemic.² While executives rate the work-from-home experiment as surprisingly effective, in the long run, home office would damage corporate culture and employees’ sense of belonging.
Among white-collar workers, on the other hand, only 37 percent of respondents would like to see a return to a pure office environment.² More than half of them consider the new form of hybrid collaboration to be significantly more attractive, almost twice as many as before the pandemic.
71 percent of those who prefer a hybrid work model would even be willing to change employers if they did not tolerate hybrid working. Among them, many are women and younger employees between the ages of 18 and 34.
A study on hybrid work in a Liechtenstein corporation examined the question of how many home office days are advisable for productivity and health.³ The results show that two to three days of home office per week is the ideal compromise. Performance, well-being and sleep quality were said to be best with this split. Both more and fewer home office days lead to poorer results.
Hybrid work is without alternative for many companies in the long term. Nevertheless, modern collaboration offers many advantages as well as some disadvantages. Therefore, it is all the more important that you use a good concept to exploit opportunities and avoid risks.
The following two scenarios show which advantages companies with a good strategy for hybrid work can benefit from and which disadvantages they can expect if digital collaboration is not well organized.
Hybrid work is more difficult to organize than pure office or remote work, because collaboration brings both technical and organizational difficulties. The following tips and recommendations will help you avoid the most common mistakes and create optimal conditions for hybrid collaboration.
Communicate openly and transparently to your employees what you expect them to do. Is remote work allowed? If so, how many days per week? Do certain core working hours need to be adhered to? When are you available? When should your employees be reachable and through which channels?
Only if you clarify fundamental questions right at the start will virtual collaboration function smoothly in the long term. You should also give your employees the opportunity to ask questions and contribute ideas. This not only benefits cohesion within the company, but often also productivity.
After more than two years of pandemic, many companies have now adapted to Home Office and Co. Microsoft Teams, Zoom or similar video conferencing tools have taken hold. Both employees and supervisors have found ways to work together virtually.
However, hybrid working brings with it some additional requirements. Teams are now no longer exchanging ideas with each other completely remotely; instead, some employees sit in the office while others work in the home office. Your office and conference rooms must be prepared to spontaneously connect participants online. Instead of headsets, conference speakers are needed for hybrid work. To ensure that all participants can see and understand each other, additional projectors, video cameras or sound insulation may need to be purchased.
Hybrid work can only succeed if your employees can complete all important work processes equally well in the home office as in the office. They shouldn’t have to rely on file folders or files stored locally on an office computer.
For virtual collaboration to succeed, two key requirements must be met:
The first point requires an online file repository that your employees can access. A shared drive on the company intranet, for example, is suitable for this. Better, however, is cloud software that links data and processes. No one is helped if your accounting staff can download an invoice template, but entering the items and approving the invoice requires countless mails or chat messages.
Appropriate enterprise software like projectfacts combines cloud file storage with digital workflows. It allows not only to access files and documents online, but also to work with them collaboratively
The more flexible the collaboration, the greater the need for coordination. Who is in the office when? Where can I work tomorrow? While small teams can still coordinate via chat, especially medium and large teams are dependent on an online tool.
The projectfacts enterprise software combines all important business processes with a tool for workplace planning. It fulfills two essential application purposes, so that your team can organize itself independently:
It is also important that regulations can be mapped directly online. For example, is home office only possible on certain days? Can individual offices only be booked in the afternoon? It should also be possible to store a standard schedule. This saves your employees having to make the same bookings over and over again.
Practice shows that hybrid work often fails because of the prerequisites. A lack of digitization is blocking the way for many companies. Get your company ready now for the hybrid collaboration of the future. Our consulting team will be happy to support you.
Header image: © fanjianhua – freepik.com (2022)
Sources:
¹ https://www.haufe.de/personal/hr-management/verbreitung-hybrides-arbeiten-entwicklung-und-perspektiven_80_562568.html
² https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/its-time-for-leaders-to-get-real-about-hybrid
³ Fürstenberg, N. & Bruch, H. (2022). Resilienz und Führung im Homeoffice: Zwischen Produktivität und Wohlbefinden. PERSONALquarterly, (2), 46-52.
