Many of us know that the hybrid working model will stay here, even after the pandemic. However, not many of us have figured out what type of hybrid work is the best for each organization. Many companies have their hybrid work practices. It could be “three days in office, two days from home,” “Sales team goes to the office every day, but the engineering team has to go in only twice a month,” or “you decide when you go to the office.” But all these practices could be temporary due to the ever-changing pandemic situations.
Both employers and employees want to settle on some kind of long-term agreement on their work styles. Not many people feel comfortable being in this unstable situation where companies keep pushing the return-to-office date behind every time a new variant of the virus threatens us.
Resilience to Change
How can we find peace in the never-ending change in workstyles?
The ideal is to facilitate a hybrid work policy that is resilient to change. How can we develop such a work policy?
A key to the answer is to close the gap between employers and employees. In many companies, employers want their employees to be back in the office. However, employees want the flexibility they are now used to in the two-year experience of WFH. (Also, flexibility could answer the resilience to change.)
How can we close the gap? Firstly, employers need to be aware of what their people are thinking. Listen to their voices. This article will introduce three ways to ask employees about their work styles.
1. Conduct surveys
When employers start thinking about a new work style for their companies, ask questions in a survey format to get the general idea of how employees feel about their current work styles. The questions could be about the experience in a two-year experiment of working from home, work-life balance, well-being, productivity, and so on.
If a company or team has many people, questions with multiple answers would be easier to analyze the results of opinions that summarize the company or team’s idea.
If employers have already started planning specific changes in their flexible work guidelines, they can ask questions about the before-after comparison of the new change. Ask questions to employees to observe the difference in their feelings and thoughts.
Example survey questions
- Where do you think you are most productive working? (office, home, co-working spaces, cafe, etc.)
- Which workplace can you focus on your work better, at the office or home?
- How do you think your well-being has changed since you started working from home? (better, worse, about the same)
- Do you feel your work-life balance has improved since you started working from home?
- What kind of tools do you find helpful when communicating with your team members remotely?
- Do you feel distant from your team members compared to before covid?
2. 1 on 1 meeting
Employee surveys are to understand the general idea of what employees are feeling and thinking. However, we will never know what each employee might be experiencing in detail. To understand the stories behind their survey answers, 1 on 1 meeting can be helpful.
Since people started working from home, the border between work and life got blurred. To fully understand what employees want, hearing about their work and life will be valuable to make decisions. It could be about their productivity at home, career plans, difficulties they faced during the pandemic, and family matters. Listen to the stories the employees are willing to share.
Example interview questions
- What are the good things you experienced during working from home?
- What are the challenges you encountered during working from home?
- How would you plan your week if you could decide your work schedule?
- What kind of hybrid work policy do you find suitable for you and your team?
- Do you think flexible working will help achieve your career goal? How?
3. Collect work data
What we can get from employee surveys and 1 on 1 meetings are all subjective, which are from the employees’ perspectives. Of course, what they feel, think, and want is essential. However, something we can measure is also important to make decisions on some issues.
Before further discussing work data, it is crucial to understand that this is not monitoring the employees. The work data is based on the information and activities employees agree to share.
Those data could be employees’ check-in data on how long they work, where they work (office or remote), which area or seat they used (hot-desking or hoteling), how many hours they spend for meetings each week (face-to-face or online). By analyzing the correlation between check-in data and achievements, we might understand what a company needs in your workplace for your employees to perform in the best possible way.
For example, when you decide your next office plan, check the desk usage data to identify how many hot desks you need. Or, if you look at the meeting room usage, you might be able to tell if you need meeting rooms for people to gather in the space physically or phone booths for employees to join the web meeting individually.
Since you can utilize the work data measurement system in many possible ways in the flexible working model, this could be the first thing employers might need to invest in for the future of work. As long as companies can have the work data, it is much easier to optimize their workplaces.
Examples of work data
- Employee check-in data (where they work)
- How long do employees work
- Well-being scores on each workplace
- Hours spent in meetings per week/month (face-to-face, web meeting)
- Meeting room usage (hours and occupancy rate)
We are facing a significant change in how we work, and a flexible work style will be something many employees will want for the future. In order to constantly be aware of what employees want, it is time to facilitate the process to get their voices heard. Periodical surveys, 1 on 1 meetings, and storing work data are some examples of the process. Why don’t we make the most out of this change that we were initially forced to make into something beneficial and sustainable for the better?