How To Ensure The Success Of A Hybrid Workplace

The ongoing pandemic has led almost every organisation to adopt remote work culture and has changed people’s way dramatically. With the recent lifting of restrictions, a return to the office seems plausible. However, a hybrid workplace approach is emerging as the trend to follow in the pandemic’s wake. 

A hybrid workplace is essentially a model that combines going to the executive office and working from home. Employees are offered a choice on whether they wish to continue remote work or report to the office. Let us take a look at how organisations can successfully implement a hybrid workplace model. 

Flexible policies 

Companies seeking to implement a hybrid workplace have to enforce flexible work policies in accordance with the organisation’s requirements. Due consideration has to be given to both genres of the workforce. A clarity in workplace policies is of the essence to avoid mismanagement while rolling out the hybrid model. 

Ensure employee engagement

Managers should take the time and effort to manage a hybrid workforce effectively. They should constantly interact with employees, conduct training exercises, have informal sessions, and build a good working relationship with everyone. Individual virtual sessions can be held for remote employees to understand the challenges they face in adjusting to the new model. Insights gained from these sessions can formulate new policies and strategies to improve the employee experience. Keeping the workforce motivated with meaning and purpose is essential for enhancing productivity and achieving organisational success. It is also important to undertake periodic employee satisfaction surveys to ensure that their voice is heard and their grievances are addressed. This helps boost employee morale, thereby improving the productivity of the business.

Learning and development

Training employees consistently is vital for the progress of the company. It’s a fast-changing world, and with the increasing number and frequency of innovations, regular upskilling is crucial for the organisation to stay up to date. In a hybrid workspace where the employees may not necessarily be present physically, it is impractical to conduct traditional training sessions. The differences in time zones and geographical limitations may render online training sessions impossible too. The solution enables employees to engage in continuous, self-paced learning by offering learning materials and general guidelines. A holistic digital platform for the hybrid workspace will offer portals and interactive walkthroughs for the employees to learn at their own pace and convenience.

Management of employee inflow

In a hybrid workplace, with different employees working at other times of the day, it could be challenging to manage and document their inflow and outflow. Flexdesking is one possible solution for this, where employees book their desks every morning before they come into the serviced office. This requires proper scheduling of the desks, but the advantages outweigh the inconveniences of setting up a flexdesking system. This maximises resource usage, cuts costs, and facilitates easy monitoring and management.

Effective collaboration 

In a hybrid workspace, it is essential to have the optimised frameworks to enable efficient collaboration between hybrid teams in a physically dispersed workplace. These include the right tools to communicate, assign and manage tasks, knowledge sharing, etc. Proper virtual collaboration tools minimise errors and maximise organisational productivity.

It is very much evident that post-pandemic workspaces are going to look different. A hybrid workplace model offers an opportunity to transform the organisational structure into an engine of constructive collaboration and consistent innovation.