Going to the workplace five days a week has been the norm for generations. Over the years companies have embraced alternative work models to increase employee productivity. However, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, businesses and companies were disrupted and forced to shift to remote working to stay afloat. Remote working initiatives have since skyrocketed and have not slowed down. Suffice to say, the nature of some organizations’ work does not allow for 100% remote work policy. Yet, with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations cannot ask employees to come back to the office full-time. This situation requires some sort of balance between remote working and the traditional office. The most popular balance that many organizations are adopting is the hybrid work model. This model offers a location flexible arrangement characterized by employees splitting their time between traditional offices and working remotely.

Effective Hybrid Work Environment

As organizations begin to design hybrid work environments, with employees working from home as others work in the office, the workforce dynamics are bound to change, necessitating the need for leaders and their teams to acquire new skills and tools to excel in their current work roles and add value by taking new challenges in different functions altogether.

Skills

With the emergence of hybrid work, organizations are in a unique period of work history where success in an employee’s work is not going to be necessarily defined by their ability but skills that set them apart from others. Employees who possess a combination of technical and non-technical skills will be most sought after by employers. Burning Glass Technologies – a software company providing real-time data on job growth reports that, one in four jobs show signs of hybridization and one in eight positions are highly hybridized. This implies that a candidate who is likely to land a job in the hybrid work era possesses a mix of both hard and soft skills.

For instance, organizations are steadily moving away from employing an administrative support staff who can simply answer phone calls, welcome guests, and organize files in the workplace to one with a hybrid skillset, including updating websites, organizing virtual meetings, designing presentation materials, and using spreadsheets. On the other hand, employees who have traditionally specialized in technology-based jobs like web design will be required to possess soft skills such as communications skills, teamwork, and leadership skills that will enable them to add value beyond narrow applications of technology.

In a nutshell, adaptability, reinvention, and staying relevant in the changing job market will be the focus of potential employers in the era of hybrid work.

Tools

As more teams continue working in the hybrid model, where time is split between working from home and working at the office, remote work tools are more important now than ever. With a variety of tools to choose from, organizations are making their choices in tandem with organizational needs. However, some of the most important needs that organizations tend to prioritize are tools that will ensure team collaboration, technology that will bring everything to one place, and a way to stay connected. A survey carried out by Hive identified the most widely used tools, which showed that 91% of remote workers currently use video conferencing software, 62% use project management tools, and 61% use instant messaging tools.

Video Conferencing Software

For employees to stay connected to their fellow workmates it is important for companies to use video conferencing during meetings. Video conferencing allows employees to be more present during meetings as there is engagement and maintaining virtual eye contact. It also helps employees to maintain team culture. Some tools that many companies have been using include Zoom, Google meets, and WebEx.

Project Management Platforms

Project management tools allow for project sharing, scheduling meetings, and resource allocation. Teams can collaborate on projects and stay connected while working from different locations. Managers can effectively monitor the work performance of teams without the need for personal monitoring. Project management tools that companies are adopting for an effective hybrid work model include Asana, Zoho projects, and liquid planner.

Cloud-based File Sharing Services

Cloud-based file-sharing services allow users to access files from anywhere through any device. With people working remotely for the past year working hours and locations have become flexible. These services include Microsoft one drive, Box, Dropbox. With a broad range of tools and devices as well as special function models, it is now possible to deliver on the promise of hybrid work. With this in place, any location can now become a full-function digital conference room.

The graph below illustrates how technology helps employees to be effective as companies adopt the hybrid work model. Most employees feel that the use of technology has provided a high-quality learning experience. With platforms such as linked in learning, many companies are encouraging their employees to enroll in online learning as they work remotely to develop their skills. Several employees feel that technology has helped them to some great extent to be more productive. A small percentage of employees however still feel that they need to work in a traditional office setup to stay effective and productive. In some sectors such as improving well-being and building stronger relationships at work.

Figure 1: Technology and Employee Effectiveness (Accessible in PDF Version) 

Many employees would like a personalized employee experience when using data. Employees recognize that their managers can take advantage of technology and provide experiences such as sharing opportunities within the organization, tailoring learning, create benefit packages and provide learning experiences to cater to skill gaps. A small percentage of employees are, however, anxious about the new skills they need to learn to succeed in the hybrid environment. With companies already adopting the new normal which is the hybrid work model, employees feel there is insufficient time to learn the new systems.

Figure 2: Personalized Employee Experience (Accessible in PDF Version) 

Trends for Work-Types

Even the most reluctant companies are being forced into implementing trends in the hybrid work types that will remodel the future of work. Some of the trends likely to feature in the hybrid work model.

Flexible Working Hours: Hybrid workspaces are allowing employees to decide when, where, and how to work in the best possible way. With increased flexibility in working hours, employees are able to balance work life and personal life which has resulted in increased productivity. This progress is pointing towards a trend where companies are likely to revisit remote work policies to make them more relevant and flexible in the hybrid workspaces.

Virtual Meetings: With virtual platforms concerns of having many people in one room have been effectively addressed especially in the era of the COVID 19 pandemic. With zoom meetings, Google meet and Video Conferencing, employee concerns can be adequately addressed, ideas exchanged, and work progress updated. In fact, almost everything carried out in an in-person meeting can be sufficiently dealt with in a virtual meeting.

Before the COVID 19 pandemic, employee productivity depended on what employers visualized as the time taken on the desk or at the workplace. However, this trend of looking at employee productivity in terms of hours taken in the workplace changed immensely when employees started working remotely. This change came because of increased performance in remote work contrary to the expectation of many employers.

Conclusion

As organizations world over are waking up to the realization that the traditional workplace has changed, innovations of work models to suit the present circumstances have been ongoing. One of the most important points to note is that the ability to secure and manage the workflow is essential. Employers are facing the daunting task of establishing management platforms that can empower employees to be productive anywhere. The flexibility of work schedules and the focus on outputs rather than inputs signifies a bright future for hybrid work models.