Hybrid Work : After the revolution that COVID-19 has brought about in the way organizations work by adopting teleworking, greater flexibility, new processes, and responsibilities… a new disruption appears that is not just a fad but has come to stay: hybrid work.
Hybrid work is characterized by combining teleworking and office work, sustained by a cultural, organizational, and digital transformation of the company in which the place from which the work is carried out no longer matters. This implies changes in the following aspects:
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Create An Employee Centric Culture That Empowers People
with more autonomy and the ability to self-organize to work collaboratively on projects and objectives in an agile and efficient manner.
New Work Patterns
New work policies give employees flexibility about when and where they work. This means updating the organization of work in terms of procedures, processes, and ways of working.
Results-oriented work
Emphasizing productivity and generating results to the detriment of issues such as hours and location.
Optimized Investment
Looking beyond company offices to create personal, collaborative workspaces through technology anywhere. It is necessary to take advantage of digital tools that allow optimization of collaborative work and creativity.
The definition of productivity and creativity must be rethought in this new scenario in which work teams will need tools and solutions that allow them to collaborate and learn better.
In addition, it is necessary to ensure the welfare of the templates in the new environment. We have all heard that “working remotely during the pandemic is not reconciling” and complaints from teleworkers have increased regarding increased levels of stress, difficulties disconnecting, isolation and loss of quality in work. communications and professional relationships or the reduction of innovations… It is possible to transcend these problems and organizations have solutions at their fingertips to ensure the emotional health of the workforce.
How To Design The Hybrid Working Model?
There are some questions that we should ask ourselves in the design of hybrid work:
What role should physical offices have?
It would be necessary to analyze the situation and context of each company to differentiate those activities and tasks in which attendance is preferable from those that can be carried out perfectly remotely. For example, to develop innovations or generate ideas, a meeting in the office would be preferable, but to write a report, which requires a greater degree of concentration, it may be more efficient to work remotely. In some cases, we will see the need to resize or reform physical spaces so that they respond to new needs.
What positions can be developed remotely?
It would be necessary to classify the jobs, considering all the relevant aspects of the job with respect to the need to carry out tasks in person, remotely or from anywhere. All this implies a redistribution and reorganization to achieve a higher degree of efficiency and productivity.
How should procedures and processes, routines, guidelines, and standards or ways of working be redefined? It will be essential to set clear standards and guidelines and better communication and knowledge management at all levels under two parameters: relevance and efficiency.
For example, one of the most common complaints about teleworking is the excessive saturation of virtual meetings that mentally exhaust people. Clear criteria must be established to properly define the objective of each meeting, discriminate who is important to be there and who can save it if they are not going to participate actively, limit and shorten their duration and implement planning, organization, and follow-up actions so that their realization provides value results.
What are the new risks?
Information security and data protection are paramount. Working remotely, security breaches can seriously compromise the company’s information. Cybersecurity and data protection becomes an even higher priority issue.
How are we going to ensure the well-being of the teams and motivate them to be more productive and creative? It is important to help people focus on their purpose, modify attitude dynamics towards work, implement active policies and emotional well-being and resilience measures: reduce psychosocial risk factors, train people in efficient communication and active listening, conscious self-leadership, carry out Team Building activities, propose group dynamics to increase confidence or creativity, train and establish psychohygiene guidelines: mindfulness, relaxation techniques, healthy eating, sleeping and hygiene habits, rest guidelines and digital disconnection.
What technological tools will help us improve the employee experience?
We have at our disposal technological tools that allow us to better manage the employee experience, which empowers each employee in the new digital era and It allows people to feel connected, supported, and able to offer their best at work. Viva brings together communications, knowledge, learning, resources, and insights into an integrated employee experience.
This tool includes four modules, Connections, Insights, Topics, and Learning, which we briefly describe:
- Viva Connections allows employees to access all kinds of information such as news, policies, internal documents, company procedures, employee groups, or communities…
- Viva Insights helps employees stay connected with their peers, better work time management, regular breaks, and learning.
- Viva Learning is the module that makes it easy to find and share from training courses. With the help of artificial intelligence, it can recommend each person the right content at the right time based on their profile.
- Viva Topics is a very useful tool for knowledge management, as it saves us the enormous amount of time we waste looking for the information or experts we need at any given time. Instead of looking for information, the information comes to us thanks to artificial intelligence.
