Google, Apple, Twitter, and a number of other large tech companies argue that requiring mostly in-office work – at least three days a week – is necessary to protect the company’s social capital, which refers to people’s connections to and trust in one another.
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?
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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.