However, only a few companies have been able to execute a seamless hybrid plan that everyone’s happy with, while others are still confused in implement hybrid working. 

A Stanford economist told us that the major factor to make a hybrid working successful is “Organized hybrid“.

So, what is hybrid work? 

Before going through the expert’s comments, we need to clarify what hybrid work is first. 

Hybrid working means allowing your employees to choose to work on-site or remotely. Some organizations may enable all employees to work part of the week on-site and part of the week remotely. Employees at other firms may work full-time remotely or full-time on-site. Others may allow a combination of the two of these styles. 

If you want to know more, ONES Blog has a Full Guide to Hybrid Work which introduces all aspects you need to know.

Who still struggling with hybrid working

Haphazard implementation of hybrid work is useless, one of the examples is General Motors. They try to set a three-day-a-week in-office goal but then brought it back, saying their back-to-work program would not take shape until next year at the earliest.

Things aren’t much better at tech giant Apple, where workers have threatened to quit over the company’s hybrid work plan. The reason is that they do not fully understand what hybrid work is and lack a complete hybrid work arrangement.

Your Team’s Best Interests Matters

Nick Bloom, a Stanford economist and cofounder of WFH Research, told Fortune about the secret to implementing a hybrid workforce with some examples.

He cited three leaders in different industries that are getting hybrid work right:  Salesforce, Lazard, and Elevance Health.

They all follow a similar hybrid model. He explains toggling between in-office and remote work on a team-by-team basis instead of a top-down approach.

Also, it is important to take care of teams’ and employees’ needs and interests. Bloom calls this model an “organized hybrid.” 

…they (those companies) come in and realize their team is all at home, which defeats the purpose. They didn’t come in to use the Ping–Pong table, and there’s no point in coming in just to shout at Zoom all day.

Nick Bloom, William Eberle Professor of Economics at Stanford University

Social work wins

His research consistently finds that people return to the office, not for free snacks or plush couches, but more important to work together or gather with colleagues.

It’s what he calls social work, and it includes training, mentoring, and collaborative thinking that all companies try to center as the selling point of being in the office. 

Apart from too many resources of entertainment, Bloom found that middle managers working hybrid report feeling less connected to their company culture than fully remote or fully in-office managers, and many recently called return-to-work planning lonely and confusing. 

At businesses of all sizes, managers have struggled to get a handle on remote work, but the lack of face-to-face conversations still affects the development of company culture.

Moreover, some precautions and mask requirements restrict communication between employees when they return to the office. 

4 Strategies for Building a Hybrid Workplace that Works

Bloom’s deep well of research has introduced four big ways that most companies—even those without Salesforce’s or Lazard’s resources—can follow for a seamless hybrid plan: 

1. Ensure your team comes in on the same days; 
2. Front-load those days with in-person meetings and events; 
3. Promote cross-office Zoom meetings and “deep thinking” work on remote days; and 
4. Relatively new hires should come in an extra day each week for mentoring. 

Successful examples of hybrid working

Redhill, one of the top global communications agencies, has implemented hybrid working for a few years. Hybrid working helps them to attract many new talents to join them, and their workers are increasing to over 150 people now. 

Citi Singapore allows the workers to not always be back in the office, and this leads they can redesign the workspace by reducing the unnecessary fixed tables and changing the tables to hot desks. Therefore, the saving area could be rebuilt as a co-working area for gathering or reducing it to have less rent.   

Standard Chartered provides several types of flexible working modes, the modes are taking care of different employees’ needs, and they are people-oriented policies. They provide virtual meetings and hot-desking system to help employees adapt to the new environment.   

What do you need for hybrid working

ONES is one of the famous all-in-one smart office systems that can help you to easily implement hybrid working at ease.  You can easily perform virtual meetings, desk-hoteling, and digital office management with our Room Booking, Desk Booking, and Visitor Management features.    

ONES Software now has a dedicated page to introduce a series of hybrid working measures to help you solve problems. You may wish to go to https://ones.software/hybrid-workspace/ for further reference.   

Contact us: hello@ones.software, or visit ONES Software official website for more information: https://ones.software/. 

The post Stanford economist tells what can be learned from the winners of hybrid plans  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.