The 5 Keys To Successful Hybrid Work

Combinations of remote and onsite work have already started becoming the new normal yet paradoxically, there are also those who would like to return to the workplace. This has primarily been for the reasons of better peer interactions and the ability to meet face-to-face for solving situations.

The hybrid model is the answer to this: a working model that adopts the best of both remote and on-site working. As may be suggested, this effectively is a blended model where some employees return to the workplace, while others continue to work from home. But implementing this solution at a corporate scale brings its challenges. Bearing these in mind, there are five keys to successfully implement hybrid work.

Choice

The aspect of the model that where some employees work on-site , while others continue to work from home means that the first key to a successful implementation is providing the element of choice. Some employees may perform better while working full time in an office than others as opposed to a remote environment, and vice versa.

You need to offer the option to work remotely or fully on-site when transitioning to hybrid work. Regardless of the team involved, this needs to be offered on a per employee basis. Depending on the hybrid arrangement, you can also consider providing a choice range of which days to show up on-site, with the exception of the days that are exclusively dedicated to meetings or any forms of collaboration.

Transparency

Whether remote, hybrid or on-site, an organizational culture founded on transparency is key in order to be working efficiently and effectively. Not only does transparency facilitate collaborations via asynchronous communication, it also averts key information from the negative effects of silo-based management, and helps to keep everyone aligned on the same goals.

Trust

Trust is also key, and it goes hand-in-hand with transparency, and needs to go both ways. Obviously, you can’t expect your teams to trust you if you fail to reciprocate and set in place such a culture of trust. Making trust and transparency integral to your core means that you can invest less on-going effort into aspects such as regular check-ups, or worse, micromanaging.

People-first culture

Companies that already had cultures that were employee-centric prior to Covid found it much easier to make the transition into remote working arrangement. This is something that holds very much true for the hybrid working model as well.

The significance of good employee experiences has become far more during the course of the pandemic. In the case of successful hybrid work, another key element involved in the process is flexibility. Just because inefficient processes and schedules were the way of the times before, doesn’t mean they also have to be utilized for the present times as well.

With teams no longer fully in office together, and rising levels of asynchronous communication , super strict daily work schedules becomes an unfair demand. Of course, having some time overlap clearly marked out is necessary for easier collaboration, but not simply by mimicking the on-site schedule.