Hybrid Working is an Experiment
For most organisations who have never done any kind of hybrid working prior to the pandemic, this statement is true. Leadership teams may have made grand statements about hybrid working, the re-purposing of office space, flexibility of work hours and location and the future of work but most have a lingering doubt, because, well, they’ve never done anything like this before. So, it’s an experiment.
And like all experiments, there are going to be times when things don’t go as planned or else take much longer than you think they will.
Consider British scientist Sir Isaac Newton, yep, the apple guy (not that Apple, this one). In the same year that he discovered the theory of gravity, he also decided to stick pins in his eyes, literally.
Interred at home to avoid a bout of the plague, he decided to pursue an experiment into optics and also the process by which our brain perceives reality.
He had a prism in his house and created a small hole through which light passed into the prism, creating a spectrum (a word that he invented) of colour, you know, like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album cover? Through his experiments he was able to prove that white light is the combination of all light from all the colours in a rainbow.
He took his experiments a step further to better understand how the human eye processes light and colour. And to do this he stuck an actual pin in his eye!
He started his experiments into optics in 1666 and yet only began lecturing on his discoveries in 1670. In 1671, he faced a backlash for his ideas and withdrew from public life as a result, but didn’t stop working on his theory. In 1704 he finally published Optiks asserting that light consists of a stream of particles.
This paper formed the basis for our understanding of light particles and became the foundation for all future work in this space. His telescope design (and clever use of mirrors to refract light) is still in use today.
And yet… at any stage he could have given up. He could have said, ‘this is too hard and I can’t believe I stuck a pin in my eye, what was I thinking?’. Yet he didn’t. He recognised that the idea was sound and that more time was required to prove it.
And so, to hybrid working.
Given the gradual return to the office, hybrid working is now becoming a reality for those that see the value in implementing it. Given that office work is only just becoming a choice, there is very little research available surrounding the benefits it provides.
One paper, released in March, entitled Is Hybrid Work the Best of Both Worlds by Choudhury, Khanna, Makridis and Schirmann, found that intermediate hybrid work, that is, up to 14 working days per month in the office, is the sweet spot ‘where workers enjoy flexibility and yet are not as isolated compared to peers who are predominantly working from home’.
They also found that intermediate levels of hybrid work ‘may result in both enhanced novelty of work products [productivity] and greater work-related communication.’ Thus proving, for now at least, that half the month at home and half in the office is the optimum for those able to work in a hybrid way.
Getting to that point however, is going to be tough for organisations because, as I mentioned at the start of this blog, most have never done this before. Even technology giants such as Google and Apple have stated that hybrid working is an experiment as they wrestle with not only the dynamics of productive work, but also competition for global talent.
In my conversations with CEOs on this subject, I’m urging them to address the challenges and focus on the opportunities that hybrid working poses and to work through the six considerations that I outlined in my book, The Hybrid Handbook:
- Culture — redefine how people will work together
- Eligibility — be clear about who is eligible for hybrid working and who isn’t
- Management — upskill managers to ensure that they can lead staff regardless of location
- Workspace — ensure that office/home spaces are set up for maximum productivity
- Technology — provide tools that support hybrid collaboration
- Remuneration — be clear about pay, benefits and conditions.
Given the unique nature of this change in the way that office work gets done, there are going to be teething problems. However, simply pressing reset and demanding that everyone return to the office full-time is not the answer. Whilst at times managers may feel like sticking pins in their eyes is preferable to managing through the issues, the long term optics are positive providing that leaders are prepared to persevere with the experiment.
