Hybrid working is becoming a choice, rather than a necessity, and coming out of the pandemic, businesses are taking the chance to re-evaluate their business model to decide their next move. Taking in the feedback from employees and drawing from their own experiences, decision makers are having to decide will they:
- Return to the way of working prior to the pandemic?
- Continue with their current way of working?
- Introduce and recreate their business model to adapt to the future of working?
Since working from home throughout 2020, studies show that 73% employees would like a flexible work model in which they can work part-time in the office and part-time remotely from home. On the other hand, there are employees who would prefer to work either from home full time or in the office full time.
Now you are faced with a dilemma. Your business is trying to find a way to maintain productivity, ensure employee satisfaction and successfully retain and obtain customers. However, by implementing a business model that is not best suited for all your employees will cause dissatisfaction and disruption within the workplace.
So, what do you do?
If we can draw any sort of silver lining from the pandemic, it is that remote working has provided business leaders with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reset their work by using a hybrid model.
By implementing a hybrid working solution, that is focused on individual employee concerns, not just institutional ones, you can pave the way for a more productive and flexible work model, designed to accommodate and meet your business needs and expectations.
“We’re not going back”
In September 2020, Hiroki Hiramatsu, the head of global HR at Fujitsu, recognised that working from home during the pandemic has saved valuable time and effort for employees that can be best implemented elsewhere.
In a recent article with Harvard Business Review, Hiramatsu said, “The two hours many people spend commuting is wasted… we can use that time for education, training, time with our family. We need many ideas about how to make remote work effective. We are embarking on a work-life shift.”
And Fujitsu is not the only company to come to this realisation. Chief executive Alan Jope of Unilever has stated that his office workers will ‘never return to their desks five days a week’, in which they are looking to implement a hybrid working model.
Whilst many businesses have already made the decision based on working from home in 2020, there are UK firms that will be testing a hybrid working model throughout 2021. William Chalmers, finance director for Lloyds Banking Group, has said that 77% of employees “expressed a desire” to continue to work from home, hence they will be carrying out trials of hybrid working this year.
Enterprises are listening to their employee suggestions, whilst also seeking the rewards and opportunities available with a hybrid work model.
The Three Types of Hybrid Working
When you breakdown hybrid working to its core principles, there are three options available for companies to choose from.
Remote-first
A remote-first approach allows for businesses to work remotely, whilst maintaining their offices as space for employees to work from if they would like to.
Some organisations will not allow flexibility to all employees, due to their role within the company, especially if their job requires physical presence in the office.
The main principal behind this hybrid model is the companies will act as a fully remote business, in which employees can be spread across multiple time zones and countries, defaulting to online communication.
Office-occasional
To accommodate for the companies that are eager to get back into the office, whilst maintaining a remote workforce, organisations can choose an office-occasional approach. This hybrid model is suitable for companies that do not want to lose money on unused office space, who are not sold on remote working or would prefer to have their employees interact face-to-face at least once a week.
The model requires employees to come into the office a few times a week, however it can depend on the policy of the company. You can provide your employees with the option to choose the days they would like to work from the office, or perhaps have a set day for all employees.
The core principle of office-occasional is that a company will not be fully remote, in which employees can choose to spend more than the required time in the office if they wish. This is more suitable for a workforce that is local rather than distributed, since employees will be required to come into the office occasionally.
Office-first, Remote allowed
This hybrid model means that businesses can keep both their office and remote work, but they designate the office as a primary place for working. This type of work model was most common prior to the covid-19 pandemic, in which a small percentage of employees would work remotely, and the rest worked from one main office.
Usually, a bulk of employees will work from the office, especially if they are all on the same team, whilst employees who may not be required for in-person communication on a day-to-day basis will work from home.
The option is available for employees to work from home when required, for example if they need to look after their children or are unable to reach the office. But at the end of the day, it is preferred that employees will work from the company’s main office.
Key Considerations for Hybrid Working
Before you decide to make the move to hybrid working, it is important to note that implementing one of the above models will vary from organisation to organisation. It is key that your company explores the follow areas when considering which approach to take.
- Define a form of hybrid working that your business will accommodate. This may be that your business will implement a blend of different forms of hybrid working, depending on the requirements of your company and employees.
- Agree on an overall plan, developing a policy and supporting guidance reflecting the strategy that will be used across the business. These policies will set out guidelines and procedures to follow within the business.
- Provide managers and team members with an opportunity to voice their options or concerns, as well as providing training and development to support employees with the transition to hybrid working.
- Plan and respond for implications of hybrid working within your company, such as technologies, employee wellbeing and facilities.
- Support the growth and development of effective team building and cohesion in hybrid teams. Learn how to manage a business and ensure continuity in the office and working remotely.
For a more in-depth analysis of the above points, visit the CIPD website on planning for hybrid working and download their guide for more advice on setting up procedures and policies.
How to implement a hybrid work model
Completely uprooting your entire business model is stressful, time consuming and exhausting to say the least. However, with the right technologies and assistance, this transition to a flexible work model can be easier than you think.
Hosted Desktop
With a hosted desktop environment, employees can login to their work desktop from their personal device(s), wherever they may be. This technology replicates your business’ workspace in a private cloud, in which your system is centralised in enterprise data centres or server rooms.
This technology, known as Desktop-as-a-Service (or DaaS for short), allows for companies to outsource their IT to a cloud service provider who will manage and support their system.
A hosted desktop accommodates the three types of hybrid working, enabling businesses with the option to work in the office and remotely, by providing a secure workspace that is monitored and centralised.
Employees will have access to their required applications, files, and data (as they would in the office), when working from any remote location. Moreover, hosted desktops allow organisations to scale up operations quickly and meet new demands related to mobility applications.
With Citadel Technology, we can help your company transition to a hybrid work model which will allow for greater flexibility and business agility, improved security, and reduced Capex and Opex. By moving your business applications to the hosted desktop, this enables your teams to just work wherever they are and pick up from wherever they left off, securely.
As well as this, we employ solutions like Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) into your hosted environment, depending on your business requirements.
Start your Hybrid Future
If you want to find out more about a cloud DaaS and Azure hybrid solution, about deploying new workstations quickly and easily for home and office workers so they have the same working experience wherever they may be, or about implementing a new hybrid work solution in general, then contact Citadel Technology today.
We can discuss your business requirements and ways to support the needs of your employees, as well as discussing further how your business can more to a flexible work model.