Create an employee-centered workplace. Is hybrid office a “flash in the pan” or a “trend”?

The COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the world has changed the way many people live their lives, some temporarily and some long-term. As far as working methods are concerned, the most significant long-term change is that many companies around the world have made hybrid working the norm. In fact, the pure remote working model existed before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and most of these companies were Internet companies focusing on technology. Some of the world's leading high-tech companies, such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc., have gradually normalized and institutionalized hybrid office, requiring employees to come to the company for only 1-3 days a week, and some companies have even extended this cycle to One month. So, what exactly does “hybrid work” mean?

With more than 175,000 employees in 74 countries, Microsoft faced huge personnel challenges at the start of the pandemic, with the office model largely shifting to remote working. From building connections in virtual environments to trying to keep up with rapidly changing employee needs, HR managers at Microsoft have been grappling with changes likely to occur in most employees' careers. "Hybrid work represents the biggest shift in the way we work in our generation," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote in a LinkedIn post. Nadella said, based on his research: A majority of employees say they want more flexible remote work options. Employee expectations are changing. We will need to be more inclusive, collaborative, learning and inspiring to drive the career development of every employee. This needs to be done through "the time people work." , flexibility of place and manner”.

Mixed office has become the new management normal. This is the biggest change in the labor system since the forty-hour work system nearly a century ago, and will have a profound impact on society and the economy. As a country with a large labor force and a large Internet country, China also needs to face this change head-on. Affected by the epidemic in spring, some first-tier cities in my country, such as Shanghai and Shenzhen, faced huge labor population distribution and personnel control, and many companies had to choose to work from home again. This also gives us the opportunity to think more directly about how to build hybrid work teams and develop them into a new normal. Whether working remotely or in the office, managers need more time to consider the needs of each employee. Job requirements. Ctrip Group took the lead in promoting the "3 2" hybrid office model in most departments of the company. Ctrip announced that the company will begin to implement a hybrid office system, allowing employees to choose 1-2 days every Wednesday and Friday to work remotely. This is the first large company in China to launch a "3+2" hybrid working system for most employees. Prior to this, Ctrip had conducted experiments in two R&D departments and achieved good results. Work efficiency has not been affected, employee satisfaction has also increased significantly, and employee turnover has dropped by one-third. It is not difficult to see that more domestic companies have begun to explore the hybrid work model.

A hybrid work model allows employees the freedom between telecommuting and on-site work based on their personal preferences and work goals. Therefore, not every employee in this environment has the same arrangement within their company. The idea behind hybrid working is that different employees, even those on the same team, can work together in the same space, as long as they are provided with the appropriate equipment and tools.

The following are three types of flexible work arrangements that ViewSonic, the world's leading video manufacturer, recommends that companies consider:

Telecommuting

Telecommuting means that employees are in different places Work, whether from home, a coffee shop, the library or anywhere there is Wi-Fi access, depending on your employer's policy.

This arrangement can be fully remote—which is why it is often incorrectly labeled "remote work"—but there may be times when telecommuting employees are required to return to the site for meetings or information exchanges meeting. Telecommuting, therefore, refers to employees who work remotely but can also return to the office as needed.

Employers will not dictate where telecommuting employees work, but they may need to provide technical assistance, such as access, so employees have the equipment they need to do their jobs. Employees can also choose whether to telecommute every workday or only certain days per week.

There are some difficulties that employers and employees must consider when working remotely, including:

Teleworking

Similar to teleworking, teleworking allows employees to work from any location Work offsite with accessible Wi-Fi and the technology equipment needed to stay connected to the company. However, a key difference is that remote workers (usually) never need to enter the workplace. In this way, remote workers can be recruited from all over without strict geographical restrictions.

Some companies are even moving to a fully distributed model or remote work, where they no longer have a central office location. A prime example of this is Automattic, the company behind WordPress (content management system), which has chosen to close its San Francisco headquarters as all employees are now remote.

There are many benefits to adopting remote work for both employers and employees. Remote working has been proven to encourage increased productivity, flexibility and cost savings, as well as reducing the carbon footprint by eliminating commuting. It's also becoming an increasingly viable long-term option for more workers. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, nearly 40% of U.S. full-time workers can effectively perform their jobs from home.

Remote working also brings huge benefits to talent acquisition and recruitment efforts, as the pool of potential candidates has no geographical boundaries. Now, companies can hire the best people for their teams, no matter their city or even country.

Remote workers may also be allowed to use their own devices, such as laptops, but many industries will need to tighten security measures to protect people and data. Under these circumstances, companies need to strengthen IT and network data security and provide necessary equipment and guidelines to enable remote workers to complete their jobs correctly.

Whether it is telecommuting or remote work, cooperative communication is an indispensable and critical step, so how to effectively carry out teamwork, Erica Dhawan, author of the best-selling book "Connection Era" ) and Professor Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Chair of Business Psychology, have some rules of thumb for communicating with remote teams:

Flexible time

Flexible working models allow employees to choose when their workday starts and ends - as long as the core hours they work do not change.

Since flextime does not affect the total number of hours worked, the main benefit is that it allows employees the freedom to choose when to work. This could mean employees opting for a 10 a.m. to 7 a.m. shift instead of the traditional 9 a.m. to 5 a.m. schedule. As long as employees clearly communicate their preferred flexible work schedule, this work model can be effectively integrated into company policy.

Flexible workers often don't work traditional hours, which can benefit those who need more work/life balance to adjust their schedules around other factors, such as school, child care, or commute time. Likewise, some employees work best outside of traditional work hours. According to survey data, 60% of flexible workers say they are more productive and engaged in flexible time settings than in the office.

Hybrid workplaces reap huge benefits from two work scenarios: remote and on-site. However, organizations may encounter difficulties when transitioning to a hybrid working model if they do not consider the potential challenges that come with it.

The most common challenges associated with hybrid working can be grouped into the “5C challenges”: communication, coordination, connection, creativity and culture. You can start by understanding these five challenges to assess where you are and where to go from there. It's designed to help leaders address and prioritize the most common challenges in hybrid work.

Communication

Clearly, dependence on technology creates fundamental communication challenges. When we first transitioned to fully remote work in March 2020, many of us had to overcome technical difficulties, but the transition to hybrid work can also be difficult. One executive once said that when their employees started returning to the office, they realized their video conferencing systems weren't fully adequate for hybrid work—if they even remembered how to operate them. Additionally, there are other practical difficulties associated with hybrid working. For example, if some people are working remotely, to level the playing field, should everyone in the office log in from a different computer? Or does that create more problems than it solves?

Technical challenges aside , communication in remote and hybrid teams can be complex, and some people are more comfortable on a screen than others—this is in addition to power, status, and language differences that already create communication barriers in work settings.

Coordination

All collaborative work involves coordination, but working in hybrid teams presents more coordination challenges than working face-to-face. The risk is that what researchers call "fault lines" can easily develop between those who work face-to-face and those who work remotely. Because of the extra effort required to coordinate with remote teammates, they are excluded from the small interactions and small decisions made by those working together in the office. Over time, as people get used to who is in the circle and who is not, they become excluded from more important conversations and more important decisions.

Connection

Connection challenges are not limited to issues of technical communication and logistical coordination. There's also a bigger issue around social connections, which can be threatened or disappear entirely when working remotely. We know that professional networks and mentoring relationships are important for advancement in the workplace, and that building and maintaining these relationships can be particularly challenging for women and minorities. We also know from research that relationships are socially sustainable and important to our mental health. Hybrid work risks creating a "ruling class" of people who feel they are the core of the organization, with those firmly committed to the "below" feeling and disconnecting the periphery not only from work but from social life to create meaning and bond employees closer to the organization to cooperate. The result may be less happy, less loyal employees who are more likely to look for opportunities elsewhere.

Creativity

Both types of creativity are threatened by hybrid work. Perhaps the most obvious one is collective creativity: people can brainstorm over Zoom, but the programming time and format generated ideas likely won’t prove as liquid as the more fruitful conversations that unexpected things will happen when we interact with Others will bring different perspectives or work together to solve a problem.

But personal creativity can also be at risk. We know that quiet time alone can help people generate new ideas and insights. However, it's unclear whether days or weeks of working alone can prove productive for workers who must constantly create or innovate.

Instead, there's reason to think that at least some social interaction and spontaneous conversations with coworkers, seeing random artifacts in each other's cubicles, and even a change of scenery from home to work might be important for creativity.

Culture

Like creativity, this is a challenge senior leaders are increasingly concerned about at the prospect of bringing everyone back to the office during the pandemic. dim. In the early days and months of remote working, companies seemed to be relieved at how productive and engaged their employees were. But that may be largely down to the fact that these employees had all worked closely together before the pandemic and knew how to do so effectively, plus they understood the company's norms, values ??and expectations. Now, as existing employees leave and new hires come on board, an increasingly pressing challenge is how to socialize and integrate these new hires into the company's culture, whether they are interns, newbies or seasoned executives.

Additionally, corporate culture is critical for signaling the organization's uniqueness to potential new employees, especially in industries where companies are highly competitive, such as technology, consulting, or banking. How do you maintain a company's unique "feel" if employees never or rarely come into the office, or rarely spend time together? So how can companies stand out in the war for talent?

While recognizing the importance of culture for new hires, we should not lose sight of the reality that maintaining a positive culture and strong organizational commitment is at least as important for many companies where new hires are not new. Over the past two years, employees have often found themselves overwhelmed with demands and pressures, without a company culture that adequately recognized their struggles or supported their needs. But even those who manage their day-to-day jobs well may find themselves increasingly disconnected and disconnected from the company, amplifying the risks of reduced motivation, reduced organizational commitment, and increased turnover.

Research in the Harvard Business Review shows that a lack of intimacy inhibits the formation of trust, connection, and shared goals, three essential elements of healthy teams.

The world shifted to remote working overnight, and now we’re considering what the future of work should be. The dramatic changes and changing mindsets surrounding work and life are real, and the decision to return to the office, hybrid or fully remote work is complex. There is little doubt that most economies will shift to remote work in 2020, and this will have a lasting impact on the world's "remote work experiment." But what is certain is that the digitization of work is here to stay.

While this pace of change has challenged HR like never before, it has also brought with it many lessons. From making connections in virtual environments to trying to keep up with rapidly changing employee needs, HR professionals have been grappling with the "biggest change" likely to occur in most employees' careers.

That requires, Managers should pay more attention to the role employees play in the organization and motivate and empower employees. The challenges of building a hybrid workplace are knowledge management, collaboration, innovation and empowerment.

The future of hybrid work means that employees have more adaptability and independence. Employees hope to complete their work at a more flexible time and place to improve their own expectations and completion of their work. Remote working requires more secure and reliable links, including basic office software and management controls. These must be independent of any workplace so that work can be carried out from anywhere.

In the current environment, how do we define whether we have completed the transformation from traditional office to hybrid office?

Clarity and consistency are key to hybrid working. Establishing a set of norms for remote working can help avoid confusion during the work process. Contents can include but are not limited to: Response time of work , delivery time, standardized execution process, etc.; secondly, the information transmission from top to bottom of the organization must be clear and unambiguous, and avoid assuming that all employees understand simple statements about the work; and finally, find effective team motivation methods to enhance Relationships between team members and strengthen the concept of collaboration, even if it is just from a simple written notification to a video celebration, promote the transformation of empathy among team members, the challenges of remote working will never disappear, but create consistent rules , culture, and protocols will go a long way toward building a new mix of communication skills.

In fact, Microsoft has gathered lessons from the transition to a hybrid work model:

1. Strong culture offsets chaos:

Over the past six years or so Microsoft has been changing its culture over the past year—and during the pandemic, that work has proven critical. “Culture is tested in crisis” Three aspects of Microsoft’s culture have become “guiding lights” over the past year and a half: its functioning as “one Microsoft team,” prioritizing diversity and inclusion, and customer focus . On the latter front, for example, when retail stores had to close early in the pandemic, Microsoft created an emergency remote model that enabled 80% of its retail employees to provide virtual training to customers — meeting customer needs while keeping employees on track Work pay stub.

2. Employee well-being takes on a new meaning:

HR leaders have always understood the value of taking care of employee well-being, but have long struggled with this issue—especially It's a time when business leaders can no longer deny the value of prioritizing employee well-being during the pandemic. While many employers are seeing increases in productivity, workers are taking fewer days off, working outside of normal working hours, and suffering from burnout and pressure. To address this issue, Microsoft first revised its messaging, renaming its "Sick Time" to "Sick Time and Mental Health Time." Leaders also gain a new understanding of the many dimensions of well-being—emotional, physical, financial, and psychological. They provide discussion guides that teach managers how to talk to them about these various areas and expanded benefits.

3. Line managers are important

Microsoft employs about 22,000 managers, and they have become even more important during the epidemic. In particular, the organization has relied on its managers to help adapt to the 25,000 new employees it has brought in since the start of the pandemic, finding that new employees relied on managers for onboarding assistance increased by 20 during this period. And, those with managers who were actively involved in the process were three times more likely to be satisfied with their onboarding. "

4. Listen and communicate:

At Microsoft, leaders noticed that once the pandemic began, the time employees spent in meetings more than doubled, and during a typical The number of chats sent after office hours skyrocketed. Recognizing a problem, leaders turned to technology to gauge employee sentiment on work/life balance and other topics—providing all employees with the opportunity to provide feedback during company town halls and creating A company channel dedicated to answering employee pandemic-related questions. Importantly, leaders also share data and insights about employee needs with managers.

5. Flexibility comes in many forms:

Before the pandemic, Microsoft allowed for occasional flextime and working from home, but flexibility was not yet part of its core culture.

Leaders now understand that flexibility needs to be highly personalized, based on the needs of each employee—which means managers and leaders need to have a deep understanding of what aspects of flexibility are important to their employees. "Flexibility is multifaceted, personal and will continue to evolve - now is a great opportunity to continue this momentum."

6. Building social capital requires creativity:

Having a strong network at work impacts productivity, innovation and inclusion, among other opportunities. But relationships that were previously fostered through hallway conversations, around the water cooler, or on business trips must now be forged virtually, remotely and in many hybrid environments, which can be more challenging. Employers need to be more intentional about helping employees make these connections. For example, encourage managers to allocate a few minutes at the beginning of meetings to have casual conversations and spend time with employees learning about their lives, not just their jobs.

7. Inclusion is essential:

The pandemic is a “wake-up call” about long-standing inclusion issues remote workers have faced: challenges finding a place to work, broadband outages, care complications — prompting many employers to finally address these barriers. It's also an opportunity for teams to become more inclusive, especially when employees can see each other's home lives, pets, partners, and more. In a recent employee survey, nearly 40% of Microsoft employees said they have become more committed to being their authentic selves at work since the start of the pandemic.

8. Technology is the link:

The digital employee experience is just as important as the in-person experience. However, because employers use so many digital solutions, it is often fragmented. As hybrid becomes the norm, employers will need to think more carefully about the many aspects of the digital employee experience—connection, collaboration, inclusion, learning, purpose and culture, to name a few.

9. Talent determines its own terms:

As the Great Resignation continues and employers grapple with new employee expectations, this trend is here to stay. The study found that more than 40% of employees surveyed plan to leave their job within the next year, citing burnout and a lack of flexibility. Employers need to pay special attention to who is leaving: Millennials, for example, have seen more than 275 job changes in the past two years.

Objectively speaking, by choosing a hybrid work model, companies can take full advantage of remote and on-site advantages to provide employees with greater flexibility and benefits. The benefits of a more flexible work environment can greatly improve employee morale, increase sustainability and improve employee retention.

In fact, the survey showed that 59% of respondents felt that their productivity increased while working from home, and 32% said that their productivity increased significantly.

However, finding the right balance in a hybrid model does require management to follow best practices when dealing with the transition to flexible working arrangements. Even with office working as an option for a hybrid workforce, businesses must maintain empathetic and up-to-date communications with all employees to help them stay connected.

This means that despite the distance that may exist between colleagues, there must be tools and resources available to connect employees. Email, monitors, and video conferencing are all necessary for employee check-ins and increased collaboration.

Real office spaces will not disappear completely. Even the largest companies will not completely give up their office facilities, because this is enough to form part of the company culture and external brand image, such as Apple (APPLE ), Amazon, the key point is that if you create a hybrid working environment, it means that you need to work in the office and remotely at the same time, which requires managers to accept the mindset of remote working first, which is what is often discussed Remote working is more than just scaling and applying digital tools.

These digital tools are indeed simple to use, but only by being designed in line with the company's actual situation can they better serve the future hybrid office model.

In addition to creating a digitally enabled environment, employers can take steps to improve how employees feel in the hybrid workplace through thoughtful investments in technology and resources. Encourage employees. Taking breaks and respecting their work/life balance is crucial, but isn't always possible in a day-to-day work schedule. Choose monitors and devices that reduce eye strain through ergonomics and blue light filters to ensure employees can work efficiently and safely.

The value of the hybrid office model to enterprises and employees is that it can reduce commuting costs and improve employee satisfaction and loyalty without affecting efficiency. The hybrid office model also allows employees to be more flexible in arranging time for family life and leisure travel. From the perspective of social effects, the promotion of mixed offices not only reduces traffic congestion, but is also conducive to environmental protection, women’s career development and increased fertility rates; the popularization of mixed offices is also conducive to shrinking cities and suburbs, big cities and small cities, and harmonious relations between countries. distance. In addition, the popularization of mixed office models will reduce the demand for office buildings in big cities, and the demand for residential buildings in the suburbs of big cities and small cities around big cities will increase significantly, which will help alleviate the high housing prices in big cities.

Hybrid office will gradually become an important trend in future development. With the penetration of the concept of the metaverse, hybrid office will also become the daily working mode of more non-technical companies. However, it remains to be seen whether complete remote office is feasible. Discuss.