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29 March 2022 |
I suppose the fact that ‘hybrid working’ is now in the dictionary means it’s all now official and above board.
Although it may be one of the recent ‘words of the year’, hybrid working was not created to help fight the pandemic, it’s been around for decades. I was hybrid working successfully back in the late 90’s. However, what the pandemic has done is to force nay sayers and sceptics into surrender, created a situation which forced them to recognise that many roles can be flexible and can actually be done successfully from anywhere, not just the office.
What I’d like to share is what I believe employers need to do to make hybrid working successful and how it can produce tangible rewards not only for staff but for the business as well.
Hybrid working brings some wonderful benefits. It allows for great flexibility, not just in where we work from but also how we work. It can bring great comfort especially when work becomes stressful, taking 5 minutes to breath and sit on the sofa or listen to some music. It creates the freedom to just be as we wish. We can decide our start time and finish time, the lighting, the heating and where we are going to work today. We have some control.
Working during the pandemic has shown that we don’t need to commute every day. With the price of fuel rising and train fares high that’s a great saving.
Having somewhere creative and inspiring, like a co-working space, can be a great break from a familiar environment. We’ve just introduced co-working space at Wyboston Lakes Resort under our Landing Pad brand and from personal experience I can say these spaces offer an inspiring place to work.
I liken it a little to going to the gym. It’s a chance to spend time with likeminded people, in an environment built for or conducive to what you are doing. You feel accomplished, energised and successful. No longer do you need to park in a coffee shop and order endless flat whites, you can now get all the benefits of café culture, office space and private clubs rolled into one beautiful experience that doesn’t cost the earth and is totally flexible. I must say, a co-working space is a fantastic place to spend the working day.
Secrets to making hybrid working a success
The key, the essential element, to making hybrid working successful for both employers and staff is trust. Employers need to trust their people to work as productively and effectively as they would when visible to them in the office. That may well mean senior managers becoming more flexible, changing attitudes and their ways of managing people to ensure that staff know exactly what is expected of them and by when, and ensure that support is readily available to them by phone or Zoom when required. Regular scheduled one-to-one updates are more important to replace the spontaneous ‘how’s it going?’ chats in the office.
Being in the office also offers some great benefits too. The mentorship of those they respect is profoundly important to the development of younger individuals; they learn from seeing and hearing their leaders in action and picking up the nuances that working together daily brings. Chatting in the canteen or round the water fountain, a quick lunch together or just a cuppa builds camaraderie. When introducing hybrid working, organisations need to be mindful not to lose these or to be sure to replace them. Regular in-person team meetings and social events become more important when many of the staff don’t see one another so often other than on Zoom.
How businesses can benefit from hybrid working
For employers, hybrid working means that less office and desk space is essential. If hot desk is introduced some of the office space can be re-focused, and more social areas created.
Many organisations are rethinking their office space, booking shared facilities such as nearby meetings rooms when they want to bring a larger number of staff or clients together. Most organisations are only just coming to terms with how this new way of working is changing their needs and whether they can reduce their office space costs; but there is potential.
This change in how we work was always going to happen, just not so quickly and with such overriding force. As several experts have said, the pandemic helped to accelerate a process that was going to take ten years so that it happened in two years. It turned evolution into revolution.
In the words of the great Dolly Parton “Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living” – well now there is another way.
