Leading Hybrid Organisations
Engage your team on their experiences from the mandated work from home model and resultant preferences
Relinquish your leadership control mindset in favour of a trust-based approach
Co-create and design your hybrid workplace model
Redesign social spaces in the ‘physical’ office to promote relationship strengthening and designate time specifically to human connection
Intervene in the human system where power imbalances emerge, to ensure inclusion and equality
Take frequent stock of what is working well and not so well and continue experimenting and being flexible to adapt and refine your hybrid model to success
Some people cannot contemplate work resembling a 9 to 5 approach in a physical building away from home. Conversely, people dream of the day that they can re-enter their company offices to immerse themselves in all the social and identity benefits of being co-located. Google and Facebook, have extended their mandated work from home timelines to a future end date and Twitter for example, is allowing remote working indefinitely. Returning to the ‘office’ will never be the same and hybrid workforces are emerging, with no templates or models setting any precedence. Companies that choose to return to a 2019 working model with simply fail in the short term, and fast adapting organisations will lead out of the pandemic.
The positives of working from home cannot negate the impact on people and their ability to self-manage and be accountable for output, versus physical office time. We proved the business case to work from any location; the ability to integrate our home and work lives (albeit a rough start); our productivity increased with focus; we adopted a plethora of new technologies in record time, we collaborated inclusively; we lowered our carbon footprint and costs and tapped our human potential with greater depth.
There were inevitable downsides too. Isolation took a toll on our mental health; we missed the ability to get things done with minimal effort in the face-to-face environment; we had to expend more energy to build our relationships and keep connected with colleagues; we spent money investing in new tech to obviate the risks of cybersecurity; we worried about being out of sight and redundancies; and the loss of our power in our social work hierarchies.
And we came through this with flying colours, mostly, and a greater appreciation for what we may seek for ourselves now and in the future in relation to our work, life and organisations.
Armed with this data, the lived experience, and the captured learning, we are better placed to create models of hybridity as we move forward in a post pandemic world. The wish for us, in relation to our work, is not to forget the courage and vulnerability that propelled us quantum leaps ahead, and to harness these extraordinary abilities and bring this further untapped energy (and a sense of continual experimentation) to the discussion, on how we shape our hybrid business models. Let us not slip back into old ways.
