On the contrary, several huge digital businesses, such as Amazon and Dropbox, provide employees with far more freedom, including substantial remote work choices. Many non-tech organizations, such as Lego, Deloitte, and 3M, are in the same boat. Thus, are they foregoing social capital?

Tech giant force to implement office work

According to Laszlo Brock, former Google HR chief, three days a week is only a transition time. In the following years, Google’s leadership aims to impose full-time in-office work. The Google leadership’s stance on returning to the office to safeguard social capital is similar to Apple’s, which requires a three-day work week.

This regulation goes against the wishes of many Google employees. A poll of over 1,000 Google workers revealed that two-thirds are dissatisfied with being compelled to work three days a week, with many threatening to leave in internal meetings and public letters, and others already left to work for other firms that offer more flexible schedules.

Recently, study findings show how organizations that shifted their pre-pandemic labor arrangements to remote work during the lockdowns lost social capital. Nonetheless, research shows that by implementing best practices for hybrid and remote work, firms may increase their social capital.

Why Do Companies Undervalue Hybrid Work?

Cognitive biases

Leaders frequently fail to implement best practices due to serious judgment mistakes known as cognitive biases. These mental blindspots influence decision-making in many aspects of life, from business to relationships.

Fortunately, recent research has revealed effective strategies for overcoming these dangerous judgment errors, such as restricting our choices by focusing on the top available options, as demonstrated by this comparison website.

Functional fixedness

Functional fixedness is a cognitive bias that limits a person to use an object only in the way it is traditionally used. When we have a preconceived notion of what is proper, we tend to overlook other, more appropriate choices.

Attempting to adapt traditional methods of cooperation in “office culture” to hybrid and remote work is a great example of functional fixedness. That is why leaders failed to address the challenges that would arise as a result of the rapid shift to telework in March 2020.

How to improve your social capital in the hybrid working era

To overcome these cognitive biases that undervalue hybrid work, best practices based on research must be used.

It entails implementing a hybrid-first model, with the majority coming to the office at least once a week and a minority working entirely remotely. To do so successfully, a new work culture that is well-suited to the hybrid and remote future of work is required.

Activity-based working

For example, LEGO’s new headquarters in Denmark has no permanent workstations and that is essentially a large desk-wheel community. It is a “mini-city” that offers facilities, such as a gym and theaters, for colleagues from different departments who can socialize or relax in these areas after a hard day’s work.       

The LEGO Group said that they focus on creating a free and caring environment and aim to promote recreation and productivity.  The strategy taken by the LEGO Group differs in that it appears to take into account the types of work that its workers are performing and provides them with the optimum setting for completing specific roles or tasks.

Office management systems

One of the HR challenges is management procedures and 15% of respondents agree on this point, according to HP Teradici’s survey.

The reason is the admins usually take much time for monitoring the staff’s performance or manage office resources, which makes the admins can’t focus on their work and difficult to maintain good performance.  

Therefore, business leaders should think about how to optimize their employees’ work process and Omdia’s report suggests organizations should plan and deliver technology to help their workers be productive from wherever they are.   

A hybrid office should use a comprehensive office management system, which helps your employees use office resources efficiently, such as rooms, desks, and office equipment, and support them have remote work and virtual meetings with their colleagues in the office.  

Learn more about how hybrid working helps you, and implement your own All-in-one smart office system.

The post Busting the Myth Of Losing Social Capital In Hybrid Work first appeared on ONEs Blog.

In the post-pandemic era, lots of leaders express that they have “productivity paranoia”, and find it highly challenging to have faith in their workers’ productivity due to the transition to hybrid work.

Would there be some way that can help to relieve these kinds of “productivity paranoia” for the decision-makers? This latest research from a Standford economist of WFH Research could help.

Why does hybrid working still stay?

This research “The Future of WFH” from Standford started in 2004. Currently monthly surveys of 10,000 US working-age adults and 1,000 US firms and discussion and consulting with 100s of organizations globally.

Based on this research, there are several benefits of hybrid working explain why this is becoming dominant:

Employees are happier

Employee value of a hybrid work environment is comparable to their value of an 8% salary raise. This indicates that even if their company offered them almost 10% more money to go back to work full-time, they would choose a hybrid policy—or to keep the one they now have.

Retain talents

Referring to the paper “How Hybrid Working From Home Works Out“, marketing and finance professionals found WFH reduced quit rates by 35%.

(Learn more about how hybrid working retain talent: GitLab: Flexibility is critical for retaining IT talent now)

Productivity is increased

Paper “How Hybrid Working From Home Works Out“, natural experiments and survey research suggest a small productivity boost from WFH of around 3% to 5%

(Learn more: What is Employee Productivity and how does it relate to Hybrid Working now?)

Supports diversity, equity, and inclusion

Data suggests that Hybrid-WFH can help support diversity in various dimensions, like 86% of Latinx / Hispanic, 81% of Asian/ Asian American and Black would prefer a hybrid of full remote work arrangement.

Hints about Hybrid WFH

Employees desire both autonomy and coordination

Decision-makers may struggle between providing enough flexibility to workers and maintaining coordination within the working group.

Based on the survey, actually employees desire both autonomy and coordination: 69.9% of people prefer being able to choose which days can work from home, while 75.6% of them would like their employers to set a policy that determines who works from home on which days.

Who decides which days and how many days employees work remotely? Based on the research, firms with 250+ employees would determine at the team level or by company. For smaller firms with less than 25 employees, the remote work pattern will be declined to be fully decentralized.

Number of days for WFH

Survey also questioned, “As the pandemic ends, how often would you like to have paid workdays at home? For each day last week, did you work a full day (6 or more hours), and if so where”.

Based on the responses to the question, only 16.3% of respondents would prefer rarely or never WFH after the COVID-19 pandemic, and most of them (83.7%) would like to have more than 1 day that can work from home.

Social capital: the benefit of working in the office

For asking about the top 3 benefits of working on an employer’s business premises, the employees answer as follows:

1. Face-to-face collaboration (54.8%)
2. Socializing (54.0%)
3. Work/personal life boundaries (44.4%)

Employees would like to come back to the office for 1 hour for communicating with colleagues, not for free bagels and drinks.

Action can be made for the most of Hybrid WFH

Stanford economist Nick Bloom stated some actions leaders can make the most of Hybrid WFH which can set culture to achieve “office time = group social time“:

1. Coordinate your team to come in on the same 2 or 3 days every week
2. Promote in-person meetings, events, coffee, training, and lunches on those office days
3. Suggest cross-office zoom meetings and reading, writing, data, etc on home days
4. For new hires (< 1 or 2 years), add an extra day in the office for mentoring

Learn more about productivity in the hybrid working era: https://ones.software/blog/?s=Productivity+

Develop your own hybrid office with our smart office system: https://ones.software/

The post Latest Stanford research reveals successful management strategies on Hybrid WFH first appeared on ONEs Blog.