What will be the future of work culture? Recent Gartner research found 94% of organizations allow employees more flexibility regarding where and when they work. During the global pandemic, organizations adopt remote work culture, which introduces dramatic changes in employee work style.
55% of organizational redesigns were focused on streamlining roles, supply chains, and workflows to increase efficiency in 2024. Companies have recognized that streamlining the different aspects can boost efficiency, enhance efficiency and better manage disruptions and changing demands.
Compared to employees working from the office or home full time, employees working in a hybrid model positively impact productivity, collaboration and communication, creativity, relationships, and problem-solving. It helps remote workers to adopt a hybrid work model and learn how to work in such an environment.
Over 70% of hybrid employees adapted the structure of their meetings based on the intended outcome versus only 49% of on-site employees. Hence, employers need to accommodate the changes to work patterns and develop smart solutions that provide the safety of remote work with office work effectively. And this initiates the way for a new workplace model – The hybrid workplace.
What is a hybrid workplace?
A hybrid workplace includes both work from home and work from the office environment at the same time. It offers flexibility to the employees, which have a concept of both physical and digital workspaces. This new work culture supports every employee and their work environment.
Companies offer flexibility to their workers by providing hybrid workspace, which includes hot desks, flexible spaces, desk neighborhoods, and more. This work environment is wholly supportive of every employee and helps them gain good productivity and flexibility.
There are different hybrid work models designed according to the organization’s needs. Let’s discuss these hybrid workspace models adopted by small or large organizations:
Hybrid Workplace Models
A hybrid workspace includes two types of work environments – work from home and in-office. There are three different hybrid workplace models which various organizations adopt:
Remote-First Model
In the remote-first hybrid model, organizations offer remote work to most of the employees. Companies follow fully remote work where employees can work remotely in different time zones, collaborate online with their team, and maintain productivity.
Occasional-Office Model
In this model, the company does not follow a fully remote workspace, whereas they prefer to keep an office and require employees to spend some time working in the office space.
Office-first Model
In the remote-allowed model, companies provide both in-office and remote options to the employees. However, the office is designed as the primary workspace for working where the company prefers to work from the office mainly and provide remote work to the employee if required.
Advantages of the Hybrid Workplace Model
A hybrid workplace offers various advantages to both employees and employers. It can be beneficial for them by various means such as productivity, cost-effectiveness, flexibility, and more. Let’s look into different advantages of a hybrid workplace model:
Increased Productivity
As organizations highly support hybrid work culture, there was widespread speculation about enhancing employees’ productivity. The hybrid workplace provides freedom to employees to choose their work environment.
To check on the employees’ productivity status, employers can use data insights. They can compare data and analyze who is performing at home versus the office. These data insights can also help identify employees who find it challenging to adapt to the new culture.
While adopting a hybrid workplace, It is difficult for employers to make the best decisions on employees’ work patterns, who should work where, and optimize work performance. Offering employees a suitable work environment according to their requirements can help reduce their stress and enhance productivity.
Minimized Operations Cost
32% of companies are substituting full-time employees with contingent workers as a cost-saving measure. A hybrid workplace changes the game for companies by saving millions on real estate costs. By adopting a hybrid model, employers see compelling business value in maintaining a hybrid work approach.
More than 56% of companies adopt hybrid working for cost savings from their office spaces by reducing their office spaces and using that cost on employee benefits and organizational growth. Also, this cost-saving helps employers to cut rent costs, office supplies, utilities, etc. and can reinvest cost savings for development.
Set Up Distributed Teams
Developing the organization by adopting a hybrid workplace enables remote employees to work hassle-free. It allows them to cross-collaborate with teams enhance efficiency while keeping the quality of the work intact.
Communicating with the team might get difficult sometimes while collaborating with distributed teams. But with the use of the right tools and software such as shortcomings, Microsoft Teams, and Slack teams can collaborate without any hassle.
Increased job satisfaction
A hybrid workplace provides flexibility to employees that can increase employee satisfaction within the company. Employees working in a hybrid model are more satisfied with their work than those who work from home or office exclusively.
The hybrid work environment provides flexibility and freedom to the employees, resulting in high productivity and job satisfaction.
Minimize Employees Finances
Organizations provide specific facilities and allowances to the employees to set up a workspace at their homes. It helps employees to reduce their commuting costs, manage space rents, travel expenses and others.
Ways to set a Successful Hybrid Workplace Model
To create a successful hybrid workplace model, companies are adopting varied approaches. Here are some strategies implemented by organizations to make a successful hybrid workspace for their employees:
Set transparent work policies
With a hybrid workplace, companies need to set clear and transparent work policies for every employee in the organization. Employees get tremendous questions while adopting such a work culture like Does people can work on someday a week from home if they like? Can they adjust their office timings in the way they want? Do they have to notify the employer before coming to work?
To avoid such disabilities within the organization, it is required to set transparent policies. By selecting these policies, companies can overcome unnecessary hassle and difficulties.
Support Employees
To create an employee-friendly environment, employers need to interact more with employees. They can organize some exercises and share experiences to maintain a healthy bond with the employee.
Employers can conduct frequent meetings or one-on-one virtual sessions with remote employees. These sessions can benefit employees who face difficulty adjusting to the new work model and find it challenging to gain productivity.
Focus on employee learning and development
Organizations need to provide training and development exercises to the employees with the most relevant skills. It can benefit the company as well as the employee to gain good results and productivity.
Employers can offer self-paced learning to the employees that help them access learning materials and attend training at their convenient time and work schedule. It also helps them to grow at a professional level and step up for new opportunities.
Access software and tools that encourage a hybrid culture
In the hybrid work environment, employees work remotely or in-office with their teams. Therefore, it is required to choose the right tools to collaborate in meetings in a hybrid environment. Companies can use collaboration tools that help teams communicate, assign tasks, discuss projects and share their knowledge with other team members.
Embee offers tools that enable businesses to access, store and share documents quicker and make teamwork more effective. Using such tools can enhance the process and the outcome of teamwork by minimizing glitches and saving time. More than 60% of employers plan to increase budgets for virtual collaboration tools to gain this benefit.
Impact of hybrid work model on employees
For employees, the hybrid office offers a flawless experience that provides flexible work styles and high productivity. Employees get the option to choose their workplace (In-office or In-home). Accessing collaborating tools makes it easier for employees to work with the team. Whether they work at home or in the office, they’ll get the flexibility they need to do their best work.
Impact of hybrid work model on organization
For organizations, a hybrid work model offers many cost-saving benefits and management opportunities to improve workspace utilization. Saved costs associated with less difficulty on or demand for unrequired facilities. Opportunities to gain more modern trends, a comprehensive workforce. Better space utilization and redemption of unused space from traditional desking. Less rigidity in the business model opens the door for more flexible avenues of growth.
Concluding Note
Various organizations are obtaining the hybrid workplace model to improve productivity without stressing the employees. With the hybrid environment, there will be necessary changes in how we collaborate – how we conduct meetings, the design and communication within our meeting spaces, and how we find our co-workers to collaborate. It is essential to make the right balance between our physical and digital worlds – between productivity and efficiency. This balance differs for each organization and worker and varies daily by preference, role, and task.
As businesses build dynamic cultures and work intimately across time zones, the need for integrated collaboration tools becomes critical. Embee offers various workplace collaboration tools, allowing them to work with higher efficiency, strengthening employee engagement and enhancing business performance.
