8 Key Steps to Plan for Hybrid Work
Different experts predict that roughly 80-90 percent of employers plan to have their workforces return to the office during Q3 of this year, most with hybrid work, and employees are feeling anxious about it. There are three reasons. Part of the anxiety stems from burnout from the entire COVID work-from-home experience, with employees feeling as if they must be “on” all the time. Second, there is the stress and uncertainty over the culture shock of going back to an environment where employees have not been for 15 months. Third, employees are reporting that their employers have not communicated the vision for the return to work/hybrid work, much less the details.
If your organization is in the group of employers bringing employees back to the office in some form this year, the time is running out for you to create and communicate your return-to-office or hybrid plan. There’s a lot riding on this. Research from McKinsey, Korn Ferry, Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, and Gartner indicate employees’ decisions to stay with your organization (or not) will be determined by your plan and the flexibility of their future work.
As with any change initiative, careful planning is key. In planning flexible work, consider following these steps:
1. Executive Leadership, including the CHRO, should first define the organization’s strategy, expected outcomes, and planning guidance for hybrid work.
Leadership should ask questions like, What is the business case for hybrid work? Which work is asynchronous, and which is not? “What makes the most sense about where various types of work should occur? How can we ensure managers overcome location bias in managing their direct reports? How can we plan for equality of opportunity for flexible work in location, time, and type of work? Should we have multiple small offices near major employee geographic areas? Should we redesign employee development to accommodate different types of work that would support more flexibility for all employees?
Plan carefully, keeping in mind that most employees do not want to return to the office. This guidance generated by Executive Leadership will “define the box” or guardrails for the rest of the required hybrid work planning.
2. Create an initial, high-level communication plan.
Start communicating your vision and strategy for hybrid (or return to office work) to your entire workforce as soon as soon as possible to help alleviate employee anxiety. Let them know about the planning structure you have put in place and how they can provide input to the entire process.
3. Develop principles, policies, and structures for hybrid work based upon the planning guidance created by Executive Leadership.
This is a more in-depth exploration of different ideas for how hybrid could work for various types of employees, departments, or functional areas and usually involves scenario planning. I recommend using various cross-functional and cross-hierarchical teams to help with the planning. Make sure there are some end-users on these teams. Employees who actually work in the processes of the organization best know those processes; they will have very useful ideas for how to make this work. These cross-functional planning teams should check in with the Executive Leadership Team periodically to stay in sync.
Part of this planning involves HR policy planning. In communication with members of the Executive Team and the other cross-functional teams, HR will begin building HR Policies to support the organization’s version of Hybrid work and focus on things like workplace safety, return to work policies, recruiting and new hires, attendance policies, time off procedures, temperature checks, social distancing, Total Rewards, incentives, recognition, etc.
4. Evaluate opportunities to improve organizational structure, as appropriate.
During the pandemic, many organizations found better efficiency through using smaller, more cross- functional teams, or they reinvented themselves in other ways. In light of what we learned, now is the perfect time to utilize planning teams to continue improvement and question organizational structures of the past. When most workflows are cross-functional, why do we still rely so heavily on the organizational silos of the past? It may be time to revamp your organization’s structures.
5. Workplace Design
We learned from COVID that the organization of workspaces in pods of low cubicles facing one another is no longer a good idea. How can you rethink your workspaces to support your strategy and plan? If you require certain employees to come to the office for planning meetings, those meeting rooms may need to be re-designed to accommodate social distancing, especially if you do not have a vaccination requirement. For those who come to work on one or more days of the week, how will they share workspace with others–whether you keep your prior home office or create smaller work hubs closer to where employees live? Will there be places where employees can go to speak with clients, prospects, customers privately when needed? What other workspaces will support the plan?
6. Define clear expectations related to the return to the office.
What should employees be doing to prepare? What’s the process they will follow as they return to the office? How will things work after the return? How will mid-course corrections occur and be communicated?
I am a firm believer in managers’ making detailed Hybrid or WFH decisions and defining expectations related to their direct reports. They are the best suited to understand the work habits and skill sets of their employees, and their plans can operate in conjunction with guidance, policies, and strategy defined by planning teams. Planning teams should keep this possibility in mind as they plan.
7. Create detailed communication plans.
You cannot communicate enough about return to work/hybrid plans. Communicate the vision, strategy, guidelines, policies, detailed implementation plans, etc. to employees. Let them know this is a work in progress and communication will be ongoing. Effective communication must be two-way, gathering employee feedback through every step of the process. Be sure to communicate how this two-way process will flow.
8. Implement, measure, and make mid-course corrections.
As implementation progresses, measure and communicate progress and results and make mid-course corrections as needed.
By creating and communicating an effective plan, you can achieve a sound, high performance adoption of hybrid work.
For help or advice related to planning organizational change, please contact me at [email protected] or https://www.linkedin.com/in/transformingorganizations/.
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