As we find ourselves two and a half years into the pandemic, scarcely a day seems to go by without a thought leader or frustrated CEO insisting that we’ve all had our fun, but now it’s time to go back to the office—and it’s time to start thinking about how to design a hybrid workplace.
Last month it was Elon Musk; this past week it was Malcolm Gladwell’s turn to vent his frustration from his lofty perch.
The American worker, however, begs to differ. Study after study has made it clear that tens of millions of Americans, and millions of workers in other countries, have no interest in resuming their daily commute.
In April, for example, the payroll giant ADP reported in its annual global survey of work that “two thirds (64%) of the workforce would consider looking for a new job if they were required to return to the office full time.”
This perspective also overlooks an essential fact: remote and hybrid workplaces are not new. At Navalent, our entire existence has always been a remote operation. And we’re far from alone.
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Between 2005 and 2017, the percentage of employees working remotely increased by 159%, with 4.7 million people doing so at the end of 2019. By 2030, when more Generation Z are part of the workforce, demand for remote work is expected to increase by 30%.
All of which is to say, whenever the post-Covid dust (finally) settles, a significant portion of the American workforce will still be working from home, whether they’re fully remote or in some sort of hybrid arrangement working from home a certain number of days a week.
Given this reality, it’s worth spending some time thinking about your hybrid leadership and how you plan to design a hybrid workplace. If you have the foresight to think things through when you still have the luxury of time, you—and your employees—will be far better off.
With that in mind, here are five steps you can take to design a hybrid workplace that works.
Step 1: Assess the Situation
How are things going? Is your present hybrid approach working for you, or causing a whole new host of problems? Maybe you have no idea. (If that’s the case, don’t worry too much—you’re definitely not the only one.)
The answers to these questions point to the value of conducting an assessment. There’s really no better way to help you understand the short and long term consequences of adopting a hybrid model, both positive and negative.
Consider, for example, the experience of a CEO we worked with last year to develop a hybrid work model. The CEO, whom we’ll call Rob, works in financial services. As part of his assessment, Rob’s task was to note where his company was succeeding and where it was failing. He found that daily online “standup” meetings that kicked off each day were a big hit.
These daily connections ensured team members stay informed about work tasks, yes, but also helped them create new relationships. Some employees used the time to initiate (offline) happy hours, while others were inspired to start a Slack channel for homeschooling best practices.
On the flip side, Rob also noticed that some employees were struggling to remain productive in a remote work environment. Some of his managers asked for more guidance on holding people accountable when the majority of their interactions took place via screen, not by stopping by an office.
"One of the secret benefits of using remote workers is that the work itself becomes the yardstick to judge someone's performance."
– Jason Fried, Basecamp
Others wondered about successfully managing employees with young kids at home while both parents worked.
This is just a sample of the issues that came up. Obviously, the shift to a hybrid office space had important consequences outside the company as well. So to help Rob truly understand where his company stood, we asked him to create a list of short and long-term consequences of shifting to a hybrid workforce.
Then we reviewed his list and bucketed them into some high-level categories:
You can use this as a template when you’re ready to design a hybrid workplace of your own. It should help you clarify where you stand and what you can expect to change, hopefully for the better.
Step 2: Select Your All-Star Team
Next, we worked with Rob to select a hybrid leadership team to help evaluate the impact of shifting to a hybrid workplace, including the overall design and the transformational process. We encouraged Ted to create a team with breadth and depth, one made up of members who understand not only the high-level impact of their new hybrid approach but its implications for clients, investors, and day-to-day operations.
We also suggested that one of the members be highly tech-savvy. They should understand the mechanics of going all-in on a hybrid model, and what it would mean for the company—right now, and in the future, when things were more settled and new opportunities could be seized.
After careful consideration, Rob drafted his team. He understood that the goal of the transformation was to empower team members to stretch as they step into a leadership team, serve as role models on collaboration, and drive an initiative in a hybrid environment.
Rob wound up recruiting six people to join the Hybrid Transformation Team (HTT): a managing director, two financial consultants, the head of HR, the head of IT, and the head of facilities.
To get the ball rolling, he sent a personalized individual email to each team member and explained the project and why he selected them to be on the team. He described the time commitment required and asked if this was something they wanted to tackle.
Step 3: Establish Guidelines
While Rob was working through these conversations, we worked with him to set up guidelines to keep the transformation team more focused in their efforts—essential for leaders considering a transformation at the organizational level. We posed the following questions to help steer his thinking:
Transformation Criteria Questions:
1. What impact do we want the transformation to have? For example:
- Does it impact organizational culture (values and beliefs), or communication?
- Does it prevent potential disruption from the external environment (e.g. customer needs/expectations, physical constraints of people’s home office environments)?
- Does it require significant technology investments?
- Does it require renegotiation of leases?
- What other resources might be impacted?
2. Are there any significant risks or issues to discuss during the virtual transformation?
3. What types of implementation challenges do we want to avoid?
After considering these questions, Ted came up with the following criteria and constraints for the HTT.
The Hybrid Transformation Should:
- Ensure an excellent client experience, and help existing clients gracefully transition to new ways of working while we continue to onboard new clients
- Identify which positions may be hybrid or remote and for what portion of their work
- Determine how to link remote and on-site colleagues as seamlessly as possible
- Foster an environment that supports mental health and the intellectual agility needed for remote work
- Build key capabilities necessary to execute in a hybrid environment as identified by the HTT
- Configure the organization more effectively and efficiently [Eliminate overhead costs by 10%; enable purposeful charters and ensure clear management of virtual teams (accountability, governance, performance management, the cadence of touchpoints – all-hands gatherings? In-person connections?)]
- Clarify decision-making rights for how remote team members will be engaged in the decision process
- Support talent development (feedback, coaching, L&D) in remote settings
Constraints:
- Must be headcount neutral
- Current office lease in place through October 2022
Step 4: Start Sprinting
If you’re like most organizations, you probably feel like you don’t have much time to spare. (Or, more accurately, any time at all!) So whether you call it a sprint or not, your transformation will inevitably be fast and furious.
That said, if you’re a rare organization that does have plenty of time to design and implement a hybrid workplace, you can still benefit from immediately stress testing your changes. Use all that sweet extra time to perfect your processes.
There are lots of different sprints to choose from. Here’s one we used with Rob and his hybrid leadership team.
For this sprint, hybrid teams work to evaluate how they coordinate their efforts across departments or teams, and between remote, hybrid, and onsite work.
When we worked with Rob’s organization, this meant working with the HTT to connect links between the organization’s teams and departments: current linkages, missing ones, and changes proposed by the HTT.
As you can see from the graphic below, there are a variety of linkages among the categories we came up with: hierarchy/structure, governance, processes/systems, and informal organization.
Step 5: Monitor Progress
Once the team is up and running in the future state proposed by the HTT, Rob and his hybrid leadership team had to continue monitoring their transformation and make tweaks as needed.
The changes ranged from minor adjustments to major modifications enabling people or processes to run more smoothly. In either case, corrections are to be expected, especially considering the volatility of the market while adjusting to a hybrid setup. One point to keep in mind is to monitor the integrity of your design so it’s not compromised when tweaks are made.
Tip: Creating a hybrid setup for a six-month period during a pandemic is one thing. Determining if it’s a viable and permanent organizational design is another matter entirely. It demands careful consideration and an intentional approach.
From a practical standpoint, progress can be monitored through key metrics and pulse checks across the organization (e.g., start-up sessions to launch new teams, training, and ongoing workshops).
After walking through the high level overviews of the transformation sprints, Rob felt confident he had selected the right team. They brought a unique but relevant skill set, as well as an open mind and tolerance for uncertainty—two soft skills that can’t be underrated when it comes to designing a hybrid workplace or any other frustrating, transformative process.
As part of our role we helped facilitate each transformation sprint and coached the team whenever it hit a really high speedbump.
The process is iterative, and as new information comes in continual tweaks should be expected. There are almost always better ways, tools, and processes to improve your organization’s hybrid experience, as well as a client’s experience.
Don’t let the process scare you. Whatever your current state, following the above steps can help you design a hybrid workplace fit for our new and future normal with minimal pain. Even Malcolm Gladwell or Elon Musk can appreciate that.
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