It’s hard to think of a cultural change that’s had as pronounced an effect on our modern working lives as the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, as it caused us to leave our offices and switch to remote work, there was a pervading sense that soon enough we’d be back to our workplaces and typical working days. But, as the crisis rumbled on and we dipped in and out of lockdowns, the idea of working exclusively from an office has become an anachronism. Remote work as a standard practice is here to stay and the future of business lies in the hybrid working model.
In fact, employees now expect hybrid working conditions to such an extent that over half of Australian bosses anticipate employees to be in the office just three days a week moving forward.
Embracing the hybrid model provides a rare opportunity to reset the way your business operates, and while implementing it permanently may seem complex – actually, it isn’t.
Hacking hybrid work to leverage its benefits (flexibility, opportunity for work–life balance) and avoid its pitfalls (blurred work and home boundaries, sedentary working days) is all about capitalising on the strengths of in-person and remote work at the same time.
Successful hybrid work starts with trust
Successful hybrid working is underpinned by a healthy company culture which, according to research, drives performance, offering up to three times greater total returns. Conversely, stats show that 70 percent of transformations fail, largely due to people and culture-related challenges.
A healthy culture is one based on trust, where the company’s expectations, outputs and ways of working are clearly set out for and understood by employees, who are also empowered to deliver on them autonomously.
Yet employees need more than a company or values mission statement for this – which can be nothing more than empty words in a document – they need authenticity. For leaders to model transparency and offer frequent, open communication and access to information.
To put it simply, staying productive while working in a hybrid model is as simple as ensuring everyone understands exactly what needs to be done and to what standard and deadline, then giving the relevant people the space and flexibility to do it.
Set your people up for success
To succeed at the hybrid model, it’s vital that businesses not only communicate clearly to their staff, they must also genuinely listen to what employees need and trust their team.
As business leaders, we need to provide clear direction to help people to understand the why and the what of value creation and then get their insights and input into how we can achieve this. After all, who better to advise than those who are on the front line of what we create and do?
Of course, in these new times, this communication must include advice from our people on how we can better serve them, too. How can we help them create clearer boundaries between work and home, take more breaks, feel more purpose in their work?
Then, in keeping with our healthy culture, we must deliver. The cold hard truth is employees will walk away if they don’t get what they’re promised, with stats from LinkedIn showing a 26 per cent jump in Australian workers moving companies compared with before the pandemic.
Promote a sense of belonging
Research by career coaching platform BetterUp highlights the importance of inclusion and belonging for retention and engagement – emphasising the manager-employee relationship. According to its latest Insights Report, when managers are viewed as inclusive, employees are almost three times more committed to an organisation and have over three times more engagement and job satisfaction.
In a hybrid working model, leaders have a responsibility to create a sense of inclusion and belonging for their teams, key areas of focus to improve this include training, work wellbeing initiatives and internal communications.
Training:
- Businesses need to try to minimise feelings of isolation, starting from remote onboarding practices (which need to be rethought across the board) and continuing through to the day to day
- Employees need a point of contact so they can ask questions when they need to
- Employers need to tap into employees’ desire for development opportunities, asking what it is they want to do and why, which could help create an overlap between individual purpose and professional lives
- Social agility training should be provided, which can help support employees in new ways of working as well as keeping job satisfaction high
Wellbeing at work:
- It’s now the role of employers to set employees up for remote work in an OHS-friendly way. At Brother we partnered with Actevate to ensure everyone had the correct equipment and were sitting correctly while working from home
- Companies need to provide incentives, such as discounts on corporate gym memberships and social events with an active element (always voluntary and never forced)
Internal communications:
- According to the Harvard Business Review, improving employee engagement increases productivity by as much as 22%
- Internal comms should be filtered through a lens that shows how the company is aligning with and achieving its purpose and how employees’ individual purpose fits into that too. Standard practices such as monthly whole of company updates that share what’s happening and give opportunity for people to connect in small groups create ample opportunity for this
- At Brother our internal comms include newsletters and virtual seminars, which have helped continue to build our culture in and out of lockdowns
Make your technology an enabler
With the right tools for the job people can do anything, and the role of technology in a hybrid infrastructure is to be an enabler.
Everyone has embraced tools that support a decentralised working environment and 52% of Australian businesses say they’ll increase spending on collaboration, communication and productivity technologies over the coming year.
However, if the plan is to increase investment in tech, then that spending has to be strategic so as to not overload employees with too many tools.
Functionality is key and organisations transforming for hybrid work should seek to keep productivity high and burn out low by opting for tech that’s fast, reliable, secure and everyone can access from anywhere – right in the flow of their work.
The key to success here, just like everything else in the hybrid model, is to keep it simple and people-centric. All it needs to do is allow people to communicate, share ideas, collaborate, and even socialise – just like they did in the office.
Andy O’Donnell is a Director (Sales, Product & Marketing) at Brother Australia. With over 16 years in the organisation, Andy has helped to launch countless new products and innovations from Brother, all while supporting the brand’s mission to provide the best ‘at your side’ service to its customers.