What are some hybrid working challenges, and how do you overcome them?
August 1, 2023
October 25, 2024
Flexible work arrangements have now become the norm, offering many benefits to employees and companies. Yet, no working model is perfect, and hybrid work challenges exist. Maintaining team cohesion, ensuring smooth and effective collaboration, adapting the office space to this new approach to work… These are all hurdles organizations must overcome to provide a positive and successful work environment.
Returning to a 100% in-office model is no longer an option if you want to remain competitive and attractive. So, what are the solutions? As experts in hybrid work, we share the best practices you can implement to overcome these potential drawbacks and maximize an agile, dynamic, and flexible work environment.
Hybrid working challenges from an employee’s perspective
Lacking clarity in a hybrid work environment
Skipping the creation of clear guidelines can have significant consequences when adopting a hybrid work policy. This results in a team being unsure about what they are supposed to and are permitted to do regarding scheduling and collaborating, for example. Do they have to stick to their working hours like in the office, or is flexitime allowed? Should they be on Slack continuously, or can they check messages only from time to time throughout the day? Can they truly come to the office whenever they want, or will it impact their career development? All these questions must have crystal-clear answers.
Drawing a clear boundary between professional and personal lives
When working from home, doing other tasks, such as putting laundry on before starting the day, is tempting. Multitasking might make your staff believe they are being more efficient, but it has the opposite effect. A few minutes later, they hear the “bip, bip, bip,” indicating the washing machine is done and their clothes must be hung on the rack. Meanwhile, they don’t do their job as efficiently because they are distracted. Remote work is great. Yet, setting barriers between private and professional tasks can sometimes be challenging, especially without a dedicated workspace at home. But the same goes the other way around. Checking e-mails or working late on a project can be more tempting when working from home.
💜 Learn how to separate work and personal life!
Interacting and building relationships with colleagues
The rise of remote work has forced everyone to learn how to interact differently. Virtuality often means less spontaneous or personal interactions. It’s easy and natural to stop for a little chat when you pass by a colleague in the office corridor before returning to your tasks. It gets more challenging for hybrid team members who aren’t on-site at the same time. This is why “87% of employees believe working in the office is important for collaborating and building relationships with team members”1.
Collaborating efficiently and seamlessly
Does your hybrid team have access to the right tools to “work from anywhere” as efficiently as on-site? Working from different places and times can create coordination issues if team members don’t have access to the resources and equipment they need. While remote workers are more productive than their colleagues on-site, they will be more stressed and less efficient if hybrid work is not implemented thoughtfully.
Isolation
If your hybrid work policy doesn’t specify a minimum number of days employees have to be on-site per week or month, people who don’t come on-site often are more likely to feel isolated and alone. As we spend a lot of time working in our lives, the office used to be one of the places where we would have the most social interactions. For some team members, not going on-site regularly can significantly impact workplace connection and mental health.
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The challenges of hybrid work from an employer’s point of view
Finding the right balance between remote and on-site work
Some companies are forcing employees back into the office, but the vast majority of workers no longer see flexible work arrangements as a “nice-to-have” option. You might think, “Alright, we will switch to hybrid work then and ask team members to come on-site twice a week. Voilà, done!” We wish it were that easy. But every company, industry, and team is different. What works for one doesn’t for another. While working from home 2 days a week seems to be the best ratio, flexibility remains key.
For example, Baby Boomers, Gen X, and Millennials prefer to be on-site 1 to 2 days a week, whereas Gen Z expects to meet their colleagues in person 3 to 4 days a week. This information is important to consider if you aim to implement a successful hybrid work strategy.
Building a strong corporate culture and maintaining workplace connection
The office plays a central part in fostering organizational culture. So, how do you keep sharing and promoting your corporate values when people aren’t coming on-site as often as they used to? The decrease in corporate culture is one of the most common feedback from managers and employees regarding remote work. This goes hand in hand with the loss of workplace connection. Employees can feel less connected to their colleagues, jobs, and the company if they don't find ways to boost these two aspects.
Leading a hybrid team
Managing a remote, hybrid, or distributed workforce isn’t the same as leading a team you see in person daily. It requires some adjustments from both sides. Yet it is the managers’ role to promote remote work best practices and an employee-centric approach to make it work. You have to know who is working, where, and when, and you also have to monitor your employees’ needs and well-being closely. For instance, noticing symptoms of workplace burnout is easier when you meet your staff daily than when you see them only once a week.
👋 Learn more about leading in a hybrid work environment!
Creating a fair and inclusive work environment
“41% of employees feel that remote workers don’t have equal opportunities for career growth.”2 Biased behaviors can easily rise in a hybrid work environment. For example, on-site workers might know about new job openings before their home-office colleagues just because they’ve shared a coffee with the right person. Moreover, some managers struggle with the idea of not seeing their staff working when they are at home. This can also lead to unfair treatment as they might have the feeling that people who come to the office work more than those who operate from home (although it is often the opposite).
Mental health issues and burnout
As mentioned, allowing more flexibility at work usually positively affects employees’ mental health, but it can have the opposite effect if not implemented thoughtfully. For example, a poor corporate culture or micromanagement practices can develop in a hybrid work setup. Stress and frustration can also arise among workers when the switch to hybrid work practices is poorly structured and managed. This frequently happens when companies don’t have a clear hybrid work policy or provide their staff with proper equipment (collaboration and communication tools, desk booking software, project management platforms, etc.).
Ensuring your hybrid office’s cybersecurity
Cybersecurity becomes even more crucial for companies and IT teams with a hybrid work setup. Keeping the workplace safe and secure is more difficult when employees work from different locations with sometimes unsecured internet connections and personal equipment. The development of remote work practices and technology opens a new door for hackers to attack your network and access your private data. This makes cyber risk management an even higher priority than it was already before.
👋Read our article about hybrid workforce security and learn the best practices to protect your digital work environment!
Solutions to minimize the challenges of hybrid work
Ask your employees for feedback
Requesting your employees' feedback is the best way to create a successful hybrid work policy. They know what works for them and what doesn’t regarding this new working style. You can collect information during an informal conversation, send anonymous employee satisfaction questionnaires specifically targeting this topic, and organize team meetings to discuss areas of improvement... Most importantly, don’t assume a particular idea will work without consulting your team first.
Check your workplace analytics
If you’ve focused on building a smart office, there is a high chance you use multiple technologies. These tools constantly gather data about your staff’s behaviors (as soon as they’ve signed a Data Processing Agreement). By checking these workplace analytics, you can observe if:
- they tend to use more this or that communication channels;
- they often come on-site or not;
- they book more collective workspaces than single desks;
- and so on.
These are key resources for all leaders, especially those in CRE (Corporate Real Estate), HR, IT, and Finance. They help you pinpoint potential challenges before they arise or get worse and give you essential insights to make the most of hybrid working.
👉 Try our hybrid office calculator to know how much you could save by optimizing your workspace!
Create tailored-made hybrid work policies and guidelines
We believe a hybrid work model can be an excellent solution for many businesses and workforces, provided that the organization and the employees’ needs are considered. Once you’ve collected your workers’ feedback and clearly understand your areas of improvement, you can develop tailor-made hybrid work policies and guidelines. The next step is to share them with your team and explain any unclear rules so everybody is on the same page. Lastly, remember that the requirements of the business and staff constantly evolve. Therefore, it is essential to update these regularly.
Optimize your office space effectively
The office's purpose changes when you work with a hybrid workforce. Consequently, redesigning the workspace to match the new needs of your team members is fundamental. For example, you might notice a higher demand for meeting rooms and other collective areas on your desk booking software. This is because hybrid employees tend to prioritize working on collaborative projects rather than individual tasks when they come to the office. Also, with fewer people coming on-site daily, your space needs are smaller. This allows you to downsize the size of your office and reduce various costs.
Build a digital work environment aligning with hybrid teams’ needs
Technology plays a crucial role in employees’ daily lives in every workplace. So, as much as you need to adjust your physical workspace to the new requirements triggered by hybrid work, you must also adapt to the digital one. With hybrid workplace technology, you boost employee productivity and satisfaction. By using AI in the workplace, they can concentrate on more purposeful tasks, gain efficiency, and lower human error. Thanks to proper communication tools, they are more effective. Hybrid work solutions such as desk booking apps enhance collaboration between team members and workplace connection.
Allowing flexibility at work has more benefits than downsides for both employees and organizations. When you introduce this working model thoughtfully, with policies and guidelines matching your organization and workforce’s needs, you significantly minimize hybrid work challenges. The key is to promote an employee-centric approach and stay alert to the new trends of the future of work. Discuss with your team members regularly to continuously improve and help them and your business thrive.
Are you looking for a solution to manage and optimize your hybrid workplace successfully? Start a free trial of the deskbird app and level up your employee experience while saving costs!
1 30 ESSENTIAL HYBRID WORK STATISTICS [2023]: HYBRID WORK MODEL, DATA, AND PRODUCTIVITY, Zippia;
2 Remote work statistics: What do the numbers say?, deskbird.
