The future of work is hybrid
The future of work is well.. already here. How leaders navigate this transition is critical to establishing cultural behaviours and ways of working.
The risk is capitulating to a knee jerk desire to return to ‘normal’ by mandating returns to physical spaces. Instead, can we pause and consider the lessons learned over the past two years, and redesign the workplaces of the future to evolve into something better than we previously could imagine?
Even before Delta arrived, a near-endless stream of weekly polls told us that employees, and indeed leadership - did not want to return to full time work in the office. In fact, a survey released by PWC in March 2021 found 90 percent of Australians wanted to continue working from home in some capacity.
Flexibility, previously a privilege for the few, was experienced by the masses in 2020, and the expectations of a flexible working future are well and truly here to stay. Just look at LinkedIn’s Workforce Confidence Index, which found that nearly half of Australia’s workers now consider flexibility and work/life balance as far more important value propositions than they were before coronavirus.
We Are Unity is supporting a large portion of the ASX 200 in designing their return to work plans and future ways of working strategies and we are noticing three shared concerns continually arising:
People are feeling more inclined to socialise and yearning for the connection and interaction that only the office can provide. But not at the cost of their work life balance.
There’s a lot of anxiety around policies toward vaccinated vs unvaccinated workforces. Two lines of dialogue are ever present in conflict: “I don't want to work for an organisation that mandates” and “I don't want to work for an organisation that doesn’t prioritise health and safety”
Organisations are beginning to panic about the ‘great resignation’ which is driving a new trend of 'talent intimacy’. In other words, smart businesses are getting to know their high performers more intimately by understanding their people’s life goals, rather than just career goals.
Looking forward
The pandemic shifted the very foundations of our ways of working, and remote work has very quickly become the norm. But during the first lockdown in 2020, as organisations began to look beyond the present moment to what came next, we started to see an interesting divide - between the organisations seeking to get through ‘the now’, and those who began to examine what a limited-contact working world might look like, long term.
The organisations in the former camp – those that prioritised reactive, short term solutions – had largely the same problems to navigate in lockdown 2.0, while the likes of Atlassian, GitLab and Zapier reaped the benefits of a fully enabled remote workforce.
Now, with restrictions lifting, the tantalising memories of drink trolley Friday’s are floating back to obscure our long term vision. How do we plan for the office of the future? In the words of our own CEO Ben Bars:
“For progressive organisations looking to lead the way into the future, the challenge ahead is clear – building a culture and employee experience that’s fit for purpose, aligned to strategy and designed to weather a perpetually changing working world.”
Yes, the office as we know it is on its way out – but ‘the workplace’ will still have an important role to play as a place to connect and collaborate. The answer lies in hybrid working – bringing together the best benefits of remote work with a fixed space to connect and collaborate.
Our research found that workers in a hybrid model are one-and-a-half times more likely to believe their employer offers a great workplace experience than those who go to the office on a full-time basis. What’s more, hybrid workers also demonstrate higher ratings of job satisfaction, personal creativity, and overall wellbeing.
Whilst a hybrid work arrangement offers benefits to both employers and employees, leaders need to consider how flexible ways of working impact power dynamics and whether they are inclusive and equitable.
Ben’s top considerations in planning for the future of the workplace are:
The office set up needs to prioritise the flexible working future - colliding remote zoom participation with whiteboard collaboration. We are seeing a huge rise in the need for quiet working spaces, trending away from popular open plan offices.
The smart organisations are focussing on better ways of measuring tangible productivity and outcomes as opposed to just traditional sentiment measures like engagement, so that they can get a better balanced view of how employees feel but also perform with these new and different ways of working. Equality and equity is top of mind.
Provide employees with a clear decision making framework on how, when and where to work so that the focus is on the best outcome (so the employees interests are balanced with the organisations).
Senior leaders need to think long-term and work together to ensure they keep up with the pace of reinvention at this crucial time. Businesses will be winding their progress back by years if they resort to quick fixes once again - it’s time to hear the call of the masses. The future is flexible, and hybrid work is here to stay.
Download The Practical to Planning Future Ways of Working to receive our framework and guidebook for designing a future-fit workplace here.