The hybrid workforce model has been gaining immense popularity due to the varying preference of the employees towards working remotely or working in-office and also the increasing acceptance of most organizations towards it.
The Hybrid work environment is indeed considered to be a much more efficient alternative as compared to the pure in-office or exclusive remote work model, in terms of overall business productivity.
Adopting Hybrid Workforce Model for a long term
Back in 2020, COVID19 impacted the entire world’s work culture almost instantaneously by the inevitable introduction of remote work to millions of employees habituated to work from office premises. This escalated the long-term plan for organizations to plan and execute Remote work culture, in the flick of a few days.
Even if this extremely quick digital transformation was essential, it is important to acknowledge the negative additives of it as well. The fact that everything isn’t up to the desired standards made a large fraction of the workforce to desire a way back to conventional working. Therefore, amidst the lower curves of the pandemic, the key focus has always kept going towards devising a way where a middle-ground could be set up to accommodate the people comfortable with remote work as well as those eager to get back to office.
The Hybrid Workforce model turns out to be one of the best solutions here to keep the businesses running while letting both the set of employees choose their preferences and be perfectionists through its approach. Thus, every organization has arranged for minimalistic sources that can help support the teams and employees to adopt and sustain within this work model.
Hybrid Work Model: Is it Suitable For your Organization?
The pandemic came as a great workplace revolution, changing our ways of work and communication once, and for all. While some might experience a communication gap, some are experiencing a great surge in employee productivity too.
Nobody has a clue till when this global emergency is going to last and even if the lockdown ends, its spell will surely last long, forcing some organizations to adopt Remote Working while some other fraction of organizations implementing it willingly.
So, now the question arises that should we go for a complete change to the Hybrid workforce model? The choice is entirely dependent on the type of business, the way you adapt it and most importantly, the statistics of the initial few months after adopting it.
Now, let’s suppose you have successfully planned it, test-driven it for a few months with really positive outcomes, and thus, have decided to implement the same Hybrid Workforce Model for the long run. Let’s delve through the aspects that need to be taken care of:
Well-Defined Roles and HR Policies
Goals of any kind are the integral parts of achievement and so do organizational goals. Let your goal-defining system be very strong as well as realistic both to the organization and the employees.
Clarity is crucial! A well-defined work from home policy for remote workers must be in place to be productive. The employees must know their rights and policies beforehand.
Even if supporting the flexibility of work hours and roles, some rules need to be implemented to promote self-discipline as well as avoid any kind of conflict on the performance evaluation statistics.
Collaborative Efficiency
Team collaboration has a direct impact on overall productivity. Therefore, the employers’ main focus must be to support remote teams to collaborate and work together.
Employee Engagement solutions need to be chosen wisely to eliminate this challenge faced by most companies while having employees remotely.
Office buildings will become just conference centers where unavoidable and extremely confidential communication will take place.
Enhanced Accessibility
If your overall information channel is not, engaging your remote employees will be mission impossible.
Therefore, employers should put more effort into the convenience of the employees and engagement.
Knowledge Sharing & effective Peering
Peer-to-peer sharing plays a major role in team development and if not connected properly, this can be a major setback of remote work. Formal and informal knowledge sharing in any form must be encouraged.
Perfect tools
Most meetings will be virtual. As all kinds of travel seem a distant dream in the present scenario for a fraction of the employees, it’s quite obvious that the real-life interactions between the in-office and the remote teams will be nothing more than the annual business trips. And even if they occur, they need to be technologically advanced enough to allow virtual follow-up in the future. Such meeting and collaboration tools must be a part of your organizational assets that makes it perfect for giving the real meeting-feels to such meetings as well.
Performance management & reviews
As staying away from the usual work environment can be quite illusionary, both the managers as well as the employees should be clear about the expectations, deliverables, and delivered. There should be transparent ways of monitoring in place and proper feedback must be arranged for the employees to keep everything in place
Budget and Resourcing
Budgets and resources need to be taken care of to make sure neither the employee nor the employee has to compensate for the budget or the essential resources. All the essentials that an employee needs to function, be it hardware or software needs to be taken care of the organization while keeping in mind that no extra money is wasted which wouldn’t have been in real office scenario. This budget can be reutilized to find ways to enhance the collaborative synchronization of the in-office and remote teams.
Empowering your Hybrid Workforce with modern intranet
These were our suggestions for a Hybrid Work adoption plan. What else do you think needs attention in order to have a long-term Hybrid workforce model running successfully?
