The contest between work-from-home and working in the office is likely to go on for some time. Some companies are mandating three days in the office each week. Others are pushing for a complete return to the traditional work model. But hybrid work persists and organizations are having to figure out what works.
Different approaches to hybrid work
There are many ways to approach hybrid work. What works in one company might not work in another. Mastercard, for example, has each workplace team develop an agreement with management about the schedule for time at home and the office. This is based on the requirements of their roles and the needs/preferences of employees. It lays out expectations on the number of days they should come to work. For some teams it is once a week, some three days, and others are completely remote.
“We have forums and feedback sessions about how it is going,” said Stacy Foster, Mastercard’s VP of technology. “All agreements are transparent so you can see what other teams are doing and what their in-office expectations are.”
New recruits are briefed on such expectations in advance. During hiring interviews, they are asked about their willingness to commute and be in the office a certain portion of time.
“You have to understand that you are competing with the laundry, leaving the pets alone, and sitting for hours in a car or traveling on public transport in bad weather,” said Foster.
The office as a magnet
Employers use various tactics to make the office an attractive place to be. If the budget isn’t there for snacks or free lunches, little things like bringing in donuts can help. Some arrange all-hands activities to entice people to show up. Don’t rely on one gimmick. Stack in-office activities so there are multiple things occurring at the same time or on the same day.
“Provide more than one incentive to come to the office,” said Foster. “Engage with employees to ensure they have the tools they need available in the office and at home to do the best job possible.”
She recommended having processes in place to make it easy to acquire things such as an additional monitor for home, for example. That’s a tangible way to show you care about the employee experience.
Access to executives
Like Mastercard, insurance firm NFP has developed personas that determine who comes in when and for how long. Some are set at 0-1 days per week and others are set at three days or every day. These personas were devised based on the functions of each role. To make this work, employees need a tech setup that follows them.
“People have gone three years without a commute and have gotten used to working at home,” said Mark Grosvenor, EVP and CTO at NFP. “One of the compelling reasons to come in is that there are fewer people present so there is more access to executives than ever before.”
A key part of making this work, though, is that managers and executives show up. If the CEO is never in the office yet workers are expected to appear, problems will arise.
IT agility and hybrid work success
The strategy at Amicus Therapeutics is to connect every employee anywhere on any device. To achieve that, IT needs to be flexible — both technologically and in dealing with business needs for hybrid work. That means IT must be agile enough to support a business goal like “all-in Wednesdays,” which then might change to everyone comes in two days a week, and shifts again and again until a workable pattern emerges.
“People need to come in for a purpose, with the office being a magnet for employees,” said Gary LaSasso, senior director of IT at Amicus. “Part of that is down to technology and business requirements, as well as activities, social events and gimmicks that make people want to come in more.”
When the pandemic hit, the company told people to take their office computing equipment home. Getting them back into the office meant purchasing new gear that could facilitate a video-first strategy. That included widescreen monitors and docking stations at every workspace, as well as large screens in many offices and conference rooms for video meetings. Employees only need to bring their laptop, headset and charger into the office and hook into an available space. Some are bookable in advance; others are open to anyone on a first-come, first-served basis.
“Employees need seamless, connected rooms with as many spaces as possible equipped with video,” said LaSasso. “We try to enable video just about everywhere.”
Phone connectivity and uniformity are vital, too. NFP has installed a RingCentral app on cell phones that enables clients to call one number whether the person is working from home or the office. The logic is simple: If a client is calling a personal number, they lose contact if that person leaves. NFP channels all call traffic to work numbers as a matter of policy.
Security vs. productivity
Phil Fersht, Chief Analyst of HFS Research, said employees aren’t seeing eye to eye with employers on hybrid work policies. As well as days in the office, one of the biggest bones of contention relates to cybersecurity and data privacy.
“Cybersecurity and data breaches are the biggest factor by far worrying employers about work from home,” said Fersht. “They need to develop a platform that can secure the business and encrypt data seamlessly and manage it effectively in a compliant way. If you don’t have that, you are not really a hybrid workplace, you are just remote.”
A study his firm did in conjunction with Unisys revealed that 49% of employees lose one to five hours per week dealing with IT and security issues and 23% lose six or more hours. Therefore, it is important to have a central, focused and responsive support team on tap to resolve issues — whether in the office or at home.
Data privacy policies are another sore point. Many employees feel that restrictive data policies keep them from working effectively, with 33% reporting that data security restrictions often or always negatively impact their day-to-day productivity.
“Don’t have so restrictive a security workflow that you cripple speed of access,” said Fersht. “End-to-end encryption can be fluid and fast if you implement it well.”
Those that can’t easily achieve that internally should bring in outside help, he added.