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As mandates lift and more options are now available to workers, there’s a big question leaders must answer: what will our hybrid workforce look like? In a recent Gartner poll, 82% of company leaders said they plan to allow employees to work from home part of the time. But concerns over maintaining company culture put the priority at three days a week in the office each week while employees want three days at home.
Employers have to balance what will work best not just from their perspective. The pandemic introduced a sense of personalization for employees who want a say in what a hybrid work model looks like for them.
Remote work has been the go-to phrase of 2020 and most of 2021, but now that plenty of companies were forced into a fully remote model, there’s room for creativity in defining what their return to “normal” is. For some, fully remote presented more challenges than benefits.
What makes a good hybrid work model?
Without clarity, buy-in, and intentionality behind how you’ll be a cohesive team in or out of the office, you’ll struggle with your hybrid model. Use a remote work policy to explain exactly what your model looks like. Do employees have to ask for permission to work from home more than a set number of days per week? Are there days when the entire team is in the office? Will certain roles always be onsite or remote?
When it comes to getting employee buy-in, there’s a difference between deciding this for future hires, when you’re 100% in the driver’s seat, and negotiating what the return to work looks like for your current workforce. You might get pushback, so read on for examples of hybrid work models you might use for inspiration.
Finally, look for ways to include everyone. If most of the office is in the same physical space, how will you ensure remote workers don’t get lost in the sauce? If only a handful are in office, how will you ensure streamlined communication between a largely-remote workforce and the few people who interact face-to-face?
Whose hybrid work model should I follow?
From big to small, companies are defining their own hybrid work model. Many of their leaders have shared how they arrived at the final decision, making it a helpful guide for selecting the best hybrid work model for your own team.
And don’t just run a survey to your current team to see what they think. Future employees might not have as much experience working remotely to know where they’ll thrive the best, so companies will benefit from thinking ahead and collecting data to see how people feel about the hybrid work model of their employer. Analyze and evolve will become the new battle cry since hybrid can be customized based on the company’s needs.
The Citigroup model: a true 50/50 mix
Most of Citigroup went to a hybrid model with three days in the office earlier this spring with an expected 50% split between remote/hybrid and in office. But hybrid is not available to everyone: data center employees and bank branch workers must go back to the traditional office and some employees are able to continue working remotely every day of the week. As a bonus, the CEO made a company-wide rule banning video meetings on Fridays. Each role in the company was renamed either “hybrid”, “remote”, or “resident” and those conventions will apply as new roles are added, too.
Consider this when you have a strong in-person component (like a bank branch) but when entire other departments could work remotely for the long haul.
The Microsoft model: half-time remote or manager approval
Microsoft allows their employees to work from home at least 50% of the time, but workers can get manager approval to increase their remote schedule. The company also says they’ve flipped their previous thinking on its head by focusing on people outside of offices or conference rooms first, not the other way around.
Consider this if a blanket approach leaves out the flexibility desired by top talent.
The Target model: downsizing and leveraging different locations
Target recently announced they’d be moving out of their behemoth real estate location in downtown Minneapolis, which has been an office home base for nearly four decades. Some workers will stay remote, but the company will parse out other employees through different office locations within that region, too.
Consider this a fit for larger companies that benefit from regional office centers where traffic to different locations can be problematic.
The Lockheed Martin model: 40% hybrid with better training
Leaders at Lockheed agreed: with only 3% of their workforce telecommuting pre-pandemic, their biggest issue was that leaders didn’t know how to manage in this new environment well. Up to 45% of the company will be hybrid, but managers had to go undergo 20 hours of training to be ready to lead in the post-pandemic world.
Consider this if leadership’s management style was the biggest issue when you went fully digital, but workers are hoping to stay mostly remote post-pandemic.
The Amazon model: customized by team and with individual flexibility
The company already pivoted from saying they’d have an “office centric model” earlier this spring and is now laying a baseline of three days per week in the office. However, individual leadership teams will be able to decide what works best. Their preference towards working in the office has to do with inviting “invention” that they believe happens more often in person. In addition, employees can work fully remote up to four weeks per year from a domestic location of their choosing.
This is a good fit when you want to trust leaders to make the call on what they think will lead to the best performance.
What do all these models have in common? They listened to employees, thought about whether a blanket strategy or a by-department strategy made the most sense, and decided on how tech would go beyond “enabling” remote or hybrid workers. The simple functionality of being able to stream audio and video to another location isn’t enough anymore- a hybrid work model has to consider ways to make it equally possible to thrive at home or in the office.
As mandates lift and more options are now available to workers, there’s a big question leaders must answer: what will our hybrid workforce look like? In a recent Gartner poll, 82% of company leaders said they plan to allow employees to work from home part of the time. But concerns over maintaining company culture put the priority at three days a week in the office each week while employees want three days at home.
Employers have to balance what will work best not just from their perspective. The pandemic introduced a sense of personalization for employees who want a say in what a hybrid work model looks like for them.
Remote work has been the go-to phrase of 2020 and most of 2021, but now that plenty of companies were forced into a fully remote model, there’s room for creativity in defining what their return to “normal” is. For some, fully remote presented more challenges than benefits.
What makes a good hybrid work model?
Without clarity, buy-in, and intentionality behind how you’ll be a cohesive team in or out of the office, you’ll struggle with your hybrid model. Use a remote work policy to explain exactly what your model looks like. Do employees have to ask for permission to work from home more than a set number of days per week? Are there days when the entire team is in the office? Will certain roles always be onsite or remote?
When it comes to getting employee buy-in, there’s a difference between deciding this for future hires, when you’re 100% in the driver’s seat, and negotiating what the return to work looks like for your current workforce. You might get pushback, so read on for examples of hybrid work models you might use for inspiration.
Finally, look for ways to include everyone. If most of the office is in the same physical space, how will you ensure remote workers don’t get lost in the sauce? If only a handful are in office, how will you ensure streamlined communication between a largely-remote workforce and the few people who interact face-to-face?
Whose hybrid work model should I follow?
From big to small, companies are defining their own hybrid work model. Many of their leaders have shared how they arrived at the final decision, making it a helpful guide for selecting the best hybrid work model for your own team.
And don’t just run a survey to your current team to see what they think. Future employees might not have as much experience working remotely to know where they’ll thrive the best, so companies will benefit from thinking ahead and collecting data to see how people feel about the hybrid work model of their employer. Analyze and evolve will become the new battle cry since hybrid can be customized based on the company’s needs.
The Citigroup model: a true 50/50 mix
Most of Citigroup went to a hybrid model with three days in the office earlier this spring with an expected 50% split between remote/hybrid and in office. But hybrid is not available to everyone: data center employees and bank branch workers must go back to the traditional office and some employees are able to continue working remotely every day of the week. As a bonus, the CEO made a company-wide rule banning video meetings on Fridays. Each role in the company was renamed either “hybrid”, “remote”, or “resident” and those conventions will apply as new roles are added, too.
Consider this when you have a strong in-person component (like a bank branch) but when entire other departments could work remotely for the long haul.
The Microsoft model: half-time remote or manager approval
Microsoft allows their employees to work from home at least 50% of the time, but workers can get manager approval to increase their remote schedule. The company also says they’ve flipped their previous thinking on its head by focusing on people outside of offices or conference rooms first, not the other way around.
Consider this if a blanket approach leaves out the flexibility desired by top talent.
The Target model: downsizing and leveraging different locations
Target recently announced they’d be moving out of their behemoth real estate location in downtown Minneapolis, which has been an office home base for nearly four decades. Some workers will stay remote, but the company will parse out other employees through different office locations within that region, too.
Consider this a fit for larger companies that benefit from regional office centers where traffic to different locations can be problematic.
The Lockheed Martin model: 40% hybrid with better training
Leaders at Lockheed agreed: with only 3% of their workforce telecommuting pre-pandemic, their biggest issue was that leaders didn’t know how to manage in this new environment well. Up to 45% of the company will be hybrid, but managers had to go undergo 20 hours of training to be ready to lead in the post-pandemic world.
Consider this if leadership’s management style was the biggest issue when you went fully digital, but workers are hoping to stay mostly remote post-pandemic.
The Amazon model: customized by team and with individual flexibility
The company already pivoted from saying they’d have an “office centric model” earlier this spring and is now laying a baseline of three days per week in the office. However, individual leadership teams will be able to decide what works best. Their preference towards working in the office has to do with inviting “invention” that they believe happens more often in person. In addition, employees can work fully remote up to four weeks per year from a domestic location of their choosing.
This is a good fit when you want to trust leaders to make the call on what they think will lead to the best performance.
What do all these models have in common? They listened to employees, thought about whether a blanket strategy or a by-department strategy made the most sense, and decided on how tech would go beyond “enabling” remote or hybrid workers. The simple functionality of being able to stream audio and video to another location isn’t enough anymore- a hybrid work model has to consider ways to make it equally possible to thrive at home or in the office.
