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Hybrid Offices:
"Office light" or something more?
Author: Dermot Knight 11.03.2021
“The hybrid office” is of enormous interest at present as many businesses grapple with how to merge previous convention with the experience of the last year of remote working. However, much of the conversation is concerned with arbitrarily defining how many days should be in the office vs remote. This mashing together of the pre-pandemic office with remote working under appreciates the extent of the hybrid model potential and instead engrains a structure that is driven by preconceptions rather things that genuinely matter to the bottom line.
A hybrid working environment shouldn’t be trying to create an “either or” option that means doing the same thing in different places. The “Hybrid” part is less about splitting time between locations and more about distinguishing between tasks that can be done effectively when remote and those that benefit from in person collaboration. It requires acknowledgement that remote working has its own strengths and needs to function according to different conventions, as opposed to regarding it as a “bolt on” to a traditional office structure. Treating an office structure and a remote structure as interchangeable alternatives invites the bending of physical tasks into the virtual world and vice versa. This will always lead to tension as both are essentially playing to their weaknesses in order to coexist with the other.
A hybrid model that is limited to dividing up the week between home and work will be the worst of all worlds - a fully costed office and a remote working structure that is operated in a way that precludes its true benefits. In this article we share some of the factors that determine the success of hybrid model design. We advocate defining the hybrid model according to the underlying work and the people that must execute it, rather than trying to crowbar the remote working experience of the last few months into a traditional office.
Are we considering the full extent of the options?
The hybrid discussion is being driven by the logic that since pandemic restrictions triggered the need for remote working in the first place, their removal should enable some kind of return to the office.
However, this narrows down the field of possibilities! It also fails to properly understand the lessons from the remote working experience. While the pandemic may have created the need to remote work, the act of remote working has exposed many accepted practices as not being as crucial to ultimate delivery as had been thought. Everyone should be asking how crucial previous practice genuinely was to the ultimate deliverables? At a time when businesses are having to do more with less, things that are not directly connected to the outcome need to be stopped. Remote working should have demonstrated that it is possible to complete many work functions without an office. We shouldn’t be talking about “how to go back” but rather “what is it that the office can provide that remote working cannot?” This change in emphasis is important considering the significant overhead costs and administration an office consumes. Does it generate return on this investment or is there a better way?
Think about how we rent cars when travelling away from home. Do we need to OWN the car we will only need for a few days? Renting is surely sufficient. Equally do we expect to rent the same car we have at home? Or even the same one we rented last time? Sometimes we might not even need to have a car ourselves and use a taxi instead (someone else’s car.) Can we imagine the office the same way? Maybe it is a traditional fixed office. Maybe it is significantly reduced office space reorganized only to include meeting rooms. Maybe it is a small office reserved for client interactions and “hub space” is rented on a needs basis to facilitate collaboration.
It may well be that some form of office is still necessary, but automatically assuming a return to the 2019 office “just because we did that before ” makes all other potential invisible. Although we have become accustomed to thinking of work through the lens of an office, the technology at our disposal is immense and we shouldn’t be afraid to at least evaluate the horizons of different options.
What matters more: location or result?
One of the difficulties with the traditional office, long before the pandemic came along, was that it couldn’t effectively distinguish between being present and being productive. Our analytics work frequently identified significant chunks of work that were effort intensive but (in terms of their impact on the ultimate deliverable) yielded little more than marginal value. Many office environments struggled to differentiate between factors that impacted the bottom line and factors that were just spinning wheels. This created a mindset that rewarded the wrong kind of effort while engraining procedures and policies that had little to do with the work itself. Outdated conventions were preserved despite technology negating their usefulness.
When defining how a hybrid model will work it is important to construct conventions that are outcome based as opposed to just compelling compliance with processes. The goal should be to facilitate different styles rather than complicate their interlinking. Consider these likely examples:
Example 1
Monday and Tuesday are designated as office days for X’s team. Although X is in the office on Monday and Tuesday, X needs to spend all of this time at the desk owing to a deliverable due this Wednesday. Pressure is added by the time lost to commuting and office interruptions. Once the deliverable is completed X now requires team collaboration - but does this by virtual meeting because Wednesday Thursday and Friday are not office days.
This example highlights the problem of imposing an inflexible routine on work demand that is always going to be changing. The result is work done in the wrong place: remote work is done on office days and office work being done on remote days.
Example 2
Monday and Tuesday are designated office days for X and Y. X is in a delivery role which requires lots of desk time. Y is in a support role and frequently joins other teams to aid delivery. X finds Monday and Tuesday are 25% less productive than Wednesday-Friday. Y is really busy on Monday and Tuesday but often has nothing to do from Wednesday to Friday.
This example highlights a mismatch between the model and role requirements. Someone needs less time in the office and someone else needs more time.
Example 3
There are no designated office days but a broad understanding of when and how to use office space. In November X spends the first 2 weeks remote, but then organizes to work 5 days a week in the office for the last 2 weeks in order to lead a team on a specific issue.
In contrast, this example shows a hybrid model that functions according to need. Certain weeks may require a higher than usual time in the office, but others a lower than usual time. This is determined by demand flow, not time.
A hybrid model that is based only on time, without accounting for workflow, will be plagued by anomalies. Managing these will direct further effort away from “useful” work, as well as placing the burden to make this work squarely on your people. Designing the hybrid model according to need not only ensures it can successfully integrate competing styles of work, it also preserves the benefits of each style. Remote working has opened doors that weren’t available while we were in offices. A talent search no longer needs to be confined to a city, it can be global. Equally business growth is not limited by office capacity - office space can be scaled up and down according to demand thereby reducing overhead costs. Leaning too far in favour of a time commitment to a physical office will reimpose the limitations of the office – as both physical office space and proximity to it must be maintained whether someone is remote or not.
Get input from your people - they know best!
Engaging your people in the design of the hybrid model will significantly increase its accuracy since: (1) They will help the business better understand how remote vs office work affects them in both their work lives and their home lives. (2) They possess the most valuable data about the underlying work that can inform the office vs remote breakdown analysis (3) Their “buy in” is the factor that will determine whether the model works or fails.
Meaningful engagement is more comprehensive than multiple-choice-satisfaction-surveys. While these may be helpful for generating statistics, they will not produce the depth of data needed to differentiate the merits of different hybrid models.
It is also worth remembering this isn’t only about building the right model for the business. A hybrid model that is valued by your people is an advantage in talent management. Employees increasingly rate flexibility in how they work as a differentiator when making career decisions.
Adjusting mindsets
Deciding on the right hybrid model is only the start. To make it work it has to be implemented and then needs ongoing support and commitment as it integrates into accepted practice. This may sound obvious, but in our experience many good strategies often fail because insufficient attention has been given to the implementation and the change in mindset that is required to get them to work effectively.
The first mindset is to recognise that remote working is in its infancy and will evolve. This means we shouldn’t let current limitations dominate the design of the whole model. It will get better as it increases in sophistication (and other supporting industries grow up around it) and people will become more familiar with it (and themselves increase their level of comfort as their technology use expands.)
The second mindset to shift is the idea that remote working is “office work done at home.” Office conventions should not dictate how a remote structure works. In a hybrid model if X is remote working and Y has gone into the office, Y shouldn’t be dictating how and when X works. Remote working (because it is not associated with being in a particular place at a particular time) should not be confined by time. Y may be in the office and wanting to call X at 12pm but that could be when X is on a school run. Remote working is not as linear as office working – it runs for longer but is also by its nature more intermittent (and this is fine so long as it yields the right result in the right time.) Therefore the inflexible structure shouldn’t be imposing limits on the flexible structure. A failure to understand this is what leads to overwork and work continuously scope-creeping into personal life. Remote work is not an invitation to be constantly available – on the contrary it requires greater sensitivity so as to co-exist effectively with a remote environment. The mindset shift needs to be about regulating outcome/results, instead of the process of doing work.
Finally, a more advanced planning mindset is important. A greater responsibility is incumbent on each person to consider how their work fits into the wider objectives, and how to organise the inputs/dependencies they require from others. This ensures countless inputs can be seamlessly integrated, regardless of location and without causing undue stress.
Concluding thought - what do you want your business to be?
It really depends what kind of business you’re aiming to be. Hybrid models can be the new frontier of competition. A hybrid structure than enables a business to provide its products/service without high overheads gains significant pricing and delivery advantages over its peers. In contrast a business that clings to expensive offices out of convention rather than utility, is starting the race much further back.
The real lesson of remote working should be that making these kinds of decisions are not binary choices, instead it is a matter of adapting and adjusting different components to find the ideal balance. This means no two hybrid models should be the same – they should reflect the uniqueness of each business. A hybrid model is not fixed by time or location and should be evolutionary rather than static. Furthermore, it should not impose arbitrary requirements, and instead inform procedures from an understanding the factors that matter and the ones that don’t.
Hybrids are the future; they can significantly improve the life of people while boosting the potential of businesses. Let’s not waste this potential by rushing too quickly to reinstate what was there before.
Dermot Knight is a long time legal transformation advocate and
a Director at the legal transformation consultancy, NAVIGATE LEGAL
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