In our previous Ellipsia Insight, we shared a few lessons learned from the successive phases of lockdown and reopening to help support employees’ return to the office. Since 9 June, the constraints on on-site work have been relaxed, allowing each company (in consultation with employee representatives) to decide how many days of remote work its employees may have.
This first step towards a new normal highlights the challenge of managing a combination of varied situations that depend on employees’ attendance rotations, their working hours and also their place(s) of work (office, home, third place, travel, etc.). This concept of hybrid work, which made it possible to maintain business continuity during the health crisis, must now be adapted to turn what was until now a constraint into an asset that helps revitalise and develop companies’ activities.
In this new perspective, we look at the main factors to take into account in this thinking:
- How can employees be brought on board in defining this new balance?
- What are the important factors to take into account to make hybrid work last within the company?
- How should communication be adapted to address the challenges related to the impact on employees?
Supporting the evolution of work at every level to bring about a new harmony
With the relaxation of the rules on remote work, the need to return to a “comforting normality” is strong. After the trauma that the period we have just been through may have represented, it is tempting to take the easy way out and not seize the opportunity for an in-depth change in working arrangements. Indeed, given the often complex issues involved, this change may at first seem insurmountable when you add the many levels to take into account (individuals, project teams, functions or entities).
While the main topics related to the evolution of work obviously revolve around guaranteeing health conditions and the means to maintain the performance of collective work despite the distance, it is also necessary to address the challenge of adapting management, governance and quality-of-work-life models, and what represents the common foundation of the company.
So, in addition to the concrete (logistical) means, namely changes to technology solutions, processes and the office offering, come the following topics:
- Agile ways of working:
- Adjusting the processes put under strain by hybrid work, such as decision-making, committee structures, project management, recruitment, etc.;
- Managing working time, including the need for flexibility and the right to disconnect;
- Promoting cross-functional collective work to avoid the silo effect;
- Evolving management practices:
- Leading the group through changes in the relationships between managers, their teams (collective bond) and each of their employees (individual bonds) in order to prevent possible situations of isolation;
- Supporting employees towards greater autonomy;
- Adapting performance assessment methods;
- Maintaining social ties and the sense of belonging to the company:
- Preserving employees’ involvement, their motivation and the meaning they give to their work within the company;
- Internal and corporate communication.
All these topics must be the subject of discussions between the various parties affected, namely management, employees and their representatives. The aim is to reach a company agreement representing a balanced common general framework that clearly defines and governs the main common themes (definition of remote work and authorised locations, eligibility conditions, frequency and authorised days, etc.). To also address certain specific functions, the company agreement must provide a framework for possible exceptions and adaptations.
For example, we can imagine specific delegation rules for operational managers, allowing them to adapt the conditions of access to remote work, its frequency and its arrangements to the operational constraints of their teams.
For this framework agreement to last and evolve with current events and the company’s needs and constraints, it is necessary to adopt an approach of continuous adaptation and improvement of its content, reviewing it at least once a year.
In early June 2021, Hewlett Packard France signed an HPE remote work agreement representing a proposal for a new hybrid balance between employees’ professional and personal lives, and for strengthening the company’s attractiveness, resilience and social commitment.
In this respect, the chosen strategy outlines the rules and conditions of application intended to enable:
- A better balance between professional and personal life, thanks in particular to greater autonomy granted to employees,
- An improved quality of work life, for example by reducing travel and therefore the fatigue and stress that can be associated with it,
- Responses adapted to employees’ specific situations,
- A more attractive company, to recruit new employees and retain existing ones,
- Better anticipation of future exceptional situations that, like the current crisis, would pose risks to the company’s business continuity,
- The company’s contribution to the ecological transition, thanks in particular to fewer journeys and therefore lower CO2 emissions.
Identifying and putting in place the building blocks of the new on-site / remote balance
The obligation to adopt remote work as part of the health safety plan led companies to reduce on-site work to the minimum possible. For some of them, this led to the widespread adoption of general short-time working schemes. For others (mainly technology companies), it meant closing their premises for several months and switching to full remote work.
Although many initially considered these initiatives inspiring, it has to be said that today some of them are backtracking. Why this U-turn?
Probably because remote work does not seem to meet certain needs, notably social needs and the need to belong, which drive the smooth running of the company: in-person collaboration, formal management relationships and informal or friendly exchanges. The latter become laborious, if not impossible, without physical interaction.
Building social ties at a distance can therefore prove frustrating, or even insufficient, because it makes it difficult to pick up the subtle emotional field and energy of the people you are talking to, which physical proximity allows, notably through body language and non-verbal communication.
Examples include the following situations, which suffer from distance:
- Relationships between managers and their employees, made uncomfortable notably during appraisal or corrective interviews and the welcoming of new employees, given the personal nature and emotional charge of these exercises,
- Spontaneous contacts (notably to ask for help), which prove more effective when you go to someone’s office in person than by email or phone,
- Social ties between employees and conversations about more personal matters,
- Social events, which clearly have neither the same flavour nor the same effect on cohesion and morale.
All these moments of exchange and sharing find their full power and reach through physical proximity, which makes it possible to develop and maintain a deep bond of trust between people.
“A few years ago, as part of a major nationwide service rollout project, we spent several months in telephone contact with the people managing its roll-out at regional level.
Until the local launch meetings for the new service, we had never had the opportunity to meet them in person. From the moment we were able to talk with them face to face, we found that our relationships took on a whole new dimension in terms of rapport and fluidity of exchanges.”
“On many occasions, we have heard from people working in France with service centres in India or in other so-called offshore countries.
They all agreed that these models only work effectively if you invest in bringing the members of these extended teams together in person at least twice a year, in order to create and then maintain that bond.
So, to date, no video system, however sophisticated, is yet able to replace a real meeting: looking each other in the eye, sharing the same space, breathing the same air.”
The future of remote work therefore lies in defining the right balance between the need to go to the office and the ability to carry out activities remotely. The right level of hybrid work is not a matter of fixed rules. It therefore seems important to consider the organisation’s needs from two main angles:
- The general framework that applies to all employees,
- The adaptations needed to match the realities of the company’s teams and professions.
Each company therefore needs to ask itself, in the light of its particular features, what makes up this new harmony, in order to put in place the organisation that gets the best out of both modes:
- Which activities can usefully take place in the privacy of the home or a third place,
- Which ones benefit from being experienced together in the same time and space?
Setting the general framework properly requires consulting the stakeholders. This is all the more relevant as, following the health crisis, almost every organisation has a wealth of lessons about the possible, desirable or prohibited uses of remote work.
Adopting a relevant approach to make hybrid work a reality
Designing and putting in place the new ways of working associated with hybrid work requires involving the organisation’s employees in an iterative and pragmatic approach initiated by management.
Establishing the general framework mentioned above requires first defining the objectives and the results expected from the approach leading to the hybrid balance (employees’ work-life balance, social responsibility, recruitment or retention strategy, etc.). This initial strategic aim is then fed by interviews with a representative panel from the company’s various professions, making it possible to identify groups with common behaviours and similar needs with regard to remote work.
Once this overview has been obtained, the second step consists of consulting representatives of the various groups to refine the understanding of needs and constraints in order to build suitable solutions in terms of processes, organisation and tools. The results of this step then feed possible adaptations of the general framework so that it better matches realities on the ground.
Once the targets have been identified for each group of employees, representatives of the various groups within the teams concerned are mobilised to roll out and test the solutions on the ground. In this phase, the aim is to take the organisation’s pulse, answer questions, and gather feelings and recommendations in order to adapt and enrich the answers provided for each of the realities within the organisation.
At the same time, the target operating principles and tools are rolled out through iterative experiments that make it possible to adapt, complete and validate the solutions in situ. Finally, to ensure that the generalisation goes smoothly, it is important to support it through communication, support and, where needed, training in the new ways of working. Ideally, this support is provided by the representatives of the various groups who worked on the initial design of the solutions.
Communicating differently and at the right level to keep the momentum going
Good communication, which was already a definite driver of efficiency within an organisation in “usual” times, is an even greater challenge today in a “hybrid” way of working. How can a satisfactory level of communication be maintained within natural teams, cross-functional projects and management lines? And this whatever the working mode, on site or remote, at any given moment, so as not to prove right the sayings “the absent are always in the wrong” or “out of sight, out of mind”…
Indeed, it is now necessary to change ways of working and adopt new reflexes to preserve the added value of formal, informal and impromptu encounters, notably the moments:
- Just before or after an in-person meeting, which allow a “different” kind of encounter,
- Of exchanging information in a corridor or over a coffee break,
- Of mutual help and creativity.
As a result, the question to ask collectively is:
- How can information or ideas exchanged in person during meetings or informal encounters with the people involved be shared more widely with the group concerned (team, project group or management line)? A team meeting does not always bring together all its participants, so for these “usual” moments, you need to make sure that everyone has the same level of information.
- How can the reflex of sharing information be anchored? Beyond the shared principles, how can this new reflex be assessed and embedded in the organisation’s mindset and culture?
- What means should be put in place, at an overall level, to make sure that “out of sight” becomes “close to the heart”? It may be necessary to regularly organise time dedicated to cross-functional communication and to nurture the sense of belonging and the pleasure of “seeing” and hearing each other and getting “live” news, such as sharing quality moments together (in person or not).
Simply looking for the right hybrid work model in the light of business results alone would miss what is essential in defining the spirit and the letter of such a change.
The letter, the side that is closely observed and in the spotlight at this stage, consists of answering the question: how can processes, tools, spaces, and ways of working and managing best be adapted?
The spirit, the hidden side, which also seems essential to question, leads to issues such as: how, in this new balance, can we avoid losing the fundamentals and DNA of the organisation, the quality of the bonds that unite its members, what they are proud of or what particularly satisfies them?
And as with everything that matters, in a society where people are increasingly looking for meaning (especially after this unusual period), how can we avoid forgetting the spirit in favour of the letter alone? Who are we? What do we not want to give up? What opportunity does this new period offer us to become what we want to become?
It is these existential questions that can make a real difference between organisations, and for their employees. Indeed, approaching hybrid work by focusing first on the technical side, the tools and the layout of the premises amounts to answering the “how” question before answering the “who” and “what” questions.
Only an approach centred on the needs, the constraints and the prospects offered by a judicious split between remote and on-site work makes it possible to build a structuring and reassuring framework within which to deploy technical solutions that get the most out of both modes and preserve the organisation’s DNA. The gains in efficiency and in employees’ quality of life are then sustained over time through an iterative approach that regularly questions the needs and the hybrid work solutions proposed.
This article was written in collaboration with the Vesta Team.
Articles in the same series
From remote work to hybrid work: what lessons to learn to prepare the return to the office
What lessons can we learn from the unusual year we have just been through? Remote work: stop or carry on? What service offering should be proposed to employees? How can teams be helped to get to grips with this new way of working?
In this article, we take stock and give you a few ideas to help make the return to the office a success and better plan for what comes next.