A crisis always contains the seeds of a better future. Prior to the pandemic, how many organisations would have consented to have their employees working from home? However, in an incredibly short timeframe, they have adapted to the realities of the new normal.
With office buildings nearly sitting empty, home workplaces have come alive with online collaborations and virtual meetings. The energy once squandered by the employees in battling traffic now goes into pushing significant tasks forward.
Organisations have adapted outstandingly to the change, but planning for the future requires enduring efforts. Looking at the post-COVID future, some organisations are already considering a new working model that blends remote work with in-office hours – Hybrid Workplace Model.
What is the Hybrid Workplace Model?
Essentially, the Hybrid Workplace Model supports both working from the office and remote working, be it a home, a café, or a coworking space, enabling individuals to work in their full capacity without confining them to a specific spot.
Hybrid work will, in general, allow more freedom around ‘when to work’ just as much as ‘where to work from’. It allows more freedom for employees to schedule work around the rest of their lives as opposed to the other way around. For organisations, it means they can leverage some of the benefits of remote working and ensure the safety of their workers simultaneously.
Indeed, it’s the best of both worlds: structure and sociability on one hand, and freedom and flexibility on the other.
Hybrid Work offers the best of both worlds - structure and sociability on one hand, and freedom and flexibility on the other. Click To TweetA survey done in May showed that 55% of office workers want a mixture of home and office working.
Rightly so, the tribe of existing hybrid organisations is certainly expanding since the pandemic. Actual presence may be needed for orientations, group-building, and task kick-offs, yet not much for any other work, if proper communication channels are set up. Even for the businesses that rely on a lot of fieldwork, some of its departments like accounts, customer service, etc. can shift to remote working and adopt the hybrid model in its real sense.
Top Benefits of a Hybrid Workplace:
The following are some of the noteworthy benefits of having a hybrid workplace:
- Opportunity to work from any place
- Easy to maintain health and safety standards
- Result based work instead of hour-based
- Boost employee confidence
- Ability to employ individuals all over the globe
- Lower operational as well as infrastructure cost
A Basic Framework: Reengineering for the Hybrid Workplace
1. Challenge the Norms
Workflows have gradually evolved for several decades, streamlining for physical workspaces. Accordingly, various processes and workflows have become cherished as “how our organisation works.”
While employees return to the office conditions, organisations must prioritize wellbeing and health measures above even several workflow concerns in this hybrid workplace scenario.
The move to a hybrid working environment is a brilliant opportunity for pioneers to cut down on unnecessarily high expenses, uplift employee cooperation and efficiency, guarantee staff wellbeing and security, and eventually boost productivity.
2. Seize the Moment
The most remarkable adversary of genuine change is complacency. The current crisis has led to a record-low organisational latency and all-time high flexibility. Organisations have adapted quickly to change.
This is a golden opportunity that will enable working frameworks to easily deal with priority representative transactions, joint collaborations, insights as well as rapid information exchange.
3. Adopt Technology
The road ahead is a road that merges with technology, and if you want to stay on course, you have to adopt the technology. Communication plays the most important role in any organisational structure, in a hybrid workplace with a scattered workforce, all the more so.
Right from recruitment to performance, automation is making every work process more efficient. Microsoft or Google Suite tools and cloud technology needs to be leveraged to collaborate and coordinate at every point.
This empowers organisations to start estimating and adjusting their operational simplicity to promote representatives’ reception of new remote working cycles.
4. Invest in Building New Muscle
Hybrid working is not an end in itself. It is evolving and will see a lot more transformation over the years. So, it makes sense to invest in new developments and become future-ready.
Over the long run, organisations can build:
- Airy, sunny, and eco-friendly spaces with greenery.
- Build separate sections for specific functions only, and avoid close, cluttered seating arrangement.
- A profoundly streamlined omni-device experience conveyed on a smartphone, tablet, and work computer with a virtual assistant.
- Speed, adaptability, and reusability within the current workflows.
- Capacity to gauge and adjust by utilising advanced change management abilities and instruments.
- A truly global workforce is now possible to achieve and afford for businesses of all scales.
The era of absolutely physical offices was already blurring before the pandemic started. Building a perpetual, practical, and sustainable work environment — a genuine advanced organisation that guarantees the employees’ experience is at the core of each decision — is presently the most critical administration change to get right.
Focus on infrastructural changes, modify the working ways, and stay abreast of the latest technological advancements and keep adopting the same. Because the time to take a step toward the future is now.
