We are often asked for advice on how to design a Hybrid Workspace. The bottom line is that Hybrid Workspaces are different for every organisation. Typically, technology companies have different requirements and patterns of office attendance to accountancy firms for example.
On paper, a Hybrid Office is basically an office space that allows employees to collaborate face-to-face and remotely at the same time. It requires a mixture of spaces and technology to work successfully. But it’s also a lot more than that. It’s the place that people come together to collaborate, to innovate face-to-face, to chat and laugh, and to have a day full of human moments. It’s a place to come home from, and if planned right, can offer the perfect balance to working from home.
Before redesigning your office space, gather real data to help you plan for your actual requirements. We encourage clients to use our system to understand their occupancy trends. One client found that their meeting rooms were booked out most of the time, but their desks were only at 30% occupancy over a six-month period. The data from our Hybrid booking system gave the leadership team an understanding of why the team were coming into the office. Trends emerged which allowed the company to reduce the number of desks and increase their break out spaces in the office in order to allow for greater collaboration, as well as individual focused work.
Create a Hybrid Policy: You may not get it right first time. It’s ok to flag to employees that this is a pilot programme designed to gain a better understanding of how Hybrid will work across the business. Hybrid Working is here to stay. That genie is not going back in the bottle. But there is a big difference between remote working and Hybrid Working.
As organisations are wrestling with what Hybrid Working looks like in their own policies, we can see across all sectors and sizes of organisation, that people enjoy a social lift from spending a day in the office. Those face-to-face encounters are part of who we are. While planned video calls have become a part of everyone’s increasingly structured work life, bumping into colleagues and asking a question or having a quick chat brings back that element of humanity and breaks up the endless meetings that have defined the last few years of working from home.
Collateral learning, where an employee learns by picking up on conversations and behaviours, is also a huge positive of being back in an office. All the feedback you can get from your team about their experience of Hybrid Working, will help shape the future of your workplace.
Seamlessness is the key to a successful Hybrid Workplace. But unlike that moment in 2020 when we all grabbed our laptops and landed on the kitchen table, making do is no longer acceptable. Employees have more power than ever to demand a working environment that is flexible and fits around their needs.
At Capella, we are all about research and understanding the trends of Hybrid Working. From Owl Labs we know that 1 in 3 US employees will quit their job if they can no longer work remotely and that 71% want Hybrid or remote working. Gartner tells us that Hybrid work is driving business transformation and is the number 1 priority for HR leaders. And from our own clients, we know that taking a breath and gathering some real data on how your employees want Hybrid Working to work for them, and how that fits within your organisation, is key to designing and managing your Hybrid policy and workplace.