HYBRID WORK—POWERED BY CHOICE

by Fran Katsoudas and Jeetu Patel

If all you’re talking about when you talk about hybrid is whether people will work at the office or at home, you’re missing the deeper conversation. When the pandemic shifted the world of work to remote in 2020, people had to learn to connect in new ways. They dialed in from home offices, couches, bedrooms, or even (the lucky ones) from beaches. And paradoxically, communicating from afar actually helped people get to know each other better.

Connecting from outside of the office brought new worlds into the world of work; people got to know each other’s homes, families, pets. There was a level of intimacy associated with calling from your personal space that drew people together in new and deeper ways. Employees got to know—and embrace—all aspects of their colleagues, not just the work personas they brought into the office.

If there is one thing that we want to retain from remote work lockdown, it is this: We don’t want people going back to masking who they are at work. Getting hybrid right will be about embracing your people in their entirety. Companies must be willing to see who their employees are and who they want to be, and allow them to choose to work in the ways that best play to their strengths.

It has always been clear that every person’s work needs and preferences are unique, but the traditional organizational structure has never recognized this. No one-size-fits-all model will allow every employee to flourish. Some people love working from home every day; others despise it. For most, there’s a happy medium somewhere in the middle. And it is through embracing flexibility and different modes of working that companies will get the most out of their people and incur the greatest benefit for their business.

Tapping into this secret of choice will also attract the best talent. At a moment in time when there are more people looking for jobs and more jobs in the market, employees have more choice than ever about not just who they work for but also how they work. They are going to be drawn to the companies that are offering flexibility and putting employees first.

Remote work began to chip away at the traditional, rigid organizational structure. Hybrid work can take this further, but in order to do it right, hybrid has to be different than remote. “Remote” connotes distance, barriers, separation. It focuses on where you’re working and emphasizes being apart from others. Hybrid must create an experience that isn’t diluted, that engenders inclusion for individuals no matter their location.

Before we can cross the bridge to the future of work, we must begin by seeing each employee as a whole person. Where this new conviction leads, technology can follow. By believing that hybrid can usher in a better and more productive experience than fully remote or fully in the office, we can make this new era manifest. But it must start with a mindset focused on people and driven by inclusion.

The hybrid workplace requires a rethinking of our spaces and a seamless experience between the physical and the virtual, and technology will be critical. Virtual communication technology has been well established for a while, but virtual collaboration technology is just being truly born. Companies need platforms that will not just dial in a colleague but ensure that colleague’s voice is heard, ideas are valued, experience is seamless, and opportunities are equal.

The real game-changer will come when we build the collaboration technology to enable serendipity in the virtual experience. The typical experience of virtual connection is transactional, agenda-driven. Figuring out how to build serendipitous interaction into the virtual world of hybrid work—time to wander and organically connect—will truly usher in an era of productivity and collaboration unlike anything experienced before.

The result of all this transformation will be a new world of work in which an employee’s choice about how, where, or when they work doesn’t have an impact on their career trajectory, contribution to the business, or opportunity for advancement. In the pre-hybrid era, there was a real fear of being left behind if you weren’t in the office—fear of being granted flexible hours but being “mommy-tracked”; fear of being based at the satellite office but losing face time with the boss. Hybrid done right will ensure there won’t be a two-tiered hierarchy in which those in the office have a leg up. It will be the work that is done that determines someone’s merit, not where the work is being done.

The transition to hybrid work and a focus on the what instead of the where present a true chance for a revolution around inclusion not only at work but through work. Hybrid presents a way to democratize opportunity and reach talent wherever they may be. Right now there are 3 billion digital workers on the planet. Hybrid work provides the potential for us to use technology to ensure that that anyone, anywhere, speaking any language, at any socioeconomic level, can participate in a global economy. A person in a village in Bangladesh can—and should—be afforded the same opportunity as someone in the heart of Silicon Valley. And that has never been more achievable than it is now.

This is the real opportunity with hybrid work and the most exciting prospect for the transformation of work over the coming years. It isn’t just for people to have the flexibility to work two days from home and three days in the office. It is the opportunity for talent itself to be democratized. People can pursue opportunities from anywhere, and companies can seek talent globally.

Hybrid Workplace: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review provides tools and ingredients for your own hybrid experiment, empowering you to begin the journey into this future of work. Each of the articles in this book looks at different facets of the new world of inclusion and choice that hybrid work can unlock. Section 1, “Designing a Better Hybrid Workplace,” will help you understand the decisions you need to make—or remake—to ensure your hybrid policies are balancing institutional and individual needs. “Management and Culture in the Hybrid Workplace” looks at how approaches to team building and managing people must change in this new environment. And the final section, “Hybrid Meetings and Collaboration” explores how what we have thought of as “virtual communication” can and must evolve into hybrid collaboration.

We are now living in the age of the hybrid work experiment. For many, this experiment began many months ago, or longer, but we have a long way to go to get it right. If we follow some guiding principles—leaning into choice, inclusion, and opportunity—we have a real chance to redefine the future of work. It will take changing our habits, making new commitments to the work and to each other, and periodically pausing to see what’s working and what’s not. And then we innovate and adapt to improve, finding the solutions and configurations to make hybrid work work.