How Should Leaders Manage A Hybrid Workforce

Leaders must now decide what to keep and what to leave behind

In just a year’s time, it seems the world has entered a whole new era. The forced work from home (WFH) experiment introduced many to remote work’s pros and cons for the first time. While there are some who were quick to reject it as a permanent arrangement, the majority expect to provide the option to continue to WFH to at least some employees, some of the time. A recent survey suggests that while employers anticipate the proportion of their full-time employees working from home to decrease from current levels as the pandemic ends, the fraction of employees working from home will still be almost six times what it was just three years ago.
 

It makes sense. Even before the pandemic, forward-thinking organizations were making remote work an option. In a 2017 international study by Dale Carnegie Training that surveyed 600 senior leaders, a subset of particularly successful companies with strong company cultures indicated they were significantly more likely than others to offer flexible work locations. 

This option, now known as the hybrid workplace, where some employees are physically present in the office while others work remotely at least some of the time, is here to stay. That has big implications for both employees and their leaders. Beyond redesigning workspaces and ensuring network and data security, leaders will also need to take a close look at the interpersonal impacts of the hybrid arrangement. For example, in some cases, employees will communicate and create professional relationships primarily through face-to-face interactions while others do so mainly virtually. And the experience won’t be the same for everyone.

In addition, the impact on corporate culture, which is affected whenever something alters “how things are done around here,” could be significant. Many organizations made dramatic changes in response to the challenges of the past year. The decisions around whether and how to make hybrid permanent as the pandemic emergency ends (as much as anything can be termed permanent in the fast-changing world of today) will be yet another test for leaders.

Time for a Corporate Culture Check-up

With vaccine distribution underway, leaders will soon be able to turn their focus to the health of a different kind: that of their corporate culture. Along with affecting how work and business get done, the upheavals of recent months have tested organizations’ commitment to their principles.

While some immediately found ways to live their values, others made decisions that conflicted with them and damaged trust. In places, team cultures began dominating the connections employees felt to the organization’s larger culture as patterns of communication changed. With the employee experience becoming more fragmented, each person—even those at the same company on the same team—is living a very different workplace reality. That in turn presents challenges to corporate culture, similar to those the wider society is experiencing as a result of media fragmentation.

The situation is concerning given the established links between corporate culture, employee engagement and company performance over time. At the January 2021 meeting of the World Economic Forum, leading banking executives gave voice to what many are feeling. “It’s remarkable it’s working as well as it is, but I don’t think it’s sustainable,” declared Barclays CEO Jes Staley. Mary Erdoes, Asset & Wealth Management CEO for JPMorgan Chase & Co, said simply, “It is fraying.”

A common ailment among many organizations today is a drain on social capital, which in this context refers to the networks of relationships among people who work together. These networks allow an organization to function effectively and to adapt. They enable new ideas to gain traction, win support and become priorities. The networks that were built up over prior years, on which the much-acclaimed early success of WFH depended, are beginning to deteriorate as turnover, realignments, layoffs, and a lack of face-to-face interaction all take their toll. As leaders decide how, when, and which employees to bring back to the physical office, corporate culture and social capital should be kept top of mind.

Supporting Employees Who Can Stay Remote

Reasons for offering employees the option to work remotely—even before the pandemic hit—included the ability to attract hard-to-find talent from a broader talent pool not limited by geography, related cost savings for commercial office space and even salaries, since geographic pay differentials may be up for discussion. These are still good reasons to allow employees to work remotely. 

On the other hand, while it may seem to leaders that they are announcing a positive policy in continuing WFH, even employees who see it as a very good thing may not respond entirely as expected. People have sacrificed a great deal during this emergency. They’ve put in extra hours, they’ve given up socializing, travel, celebrations, events, and for many, even a suitable space to work in. It has been a more difficult time for some than for others. 

If WFH is the new normal, it is time to make it more comfortable and more equitable. Stop-gap measures must be formalized. Plans should be made for how to handle permanent solutions for at-home office equipment and how to avoid a two-class system of career development opportunities that may not be as readily available to WFH colleagues. In fact, training and career development are among the top reasons employees give for returning to the physical office. 

How will the organization foster a sense of belonging among new remote workers, keep them connected to the organization’s purpose, and encourage mentoring? When it comes to social capital, how will they support the creation and maintenance of trusting relationships between people who meet infrequently or not at all? All of these issues must be addressed with empathy for the employees who have helped the organization come through the crisis and with an appreciation for what they’ve endured and contributed.

Convincing the Others to Return

There are also leaders who will decide that staying remote would be a disadvantage if their competitors return to the physical workplace. In those situations, there will be a mandate that some or all employees go back to the office. There is a good argument for that, too. In fact, Netflix's CEO, Reed Hastings says that for their corporate culture—about which he’s written an entire book—working from home is "a pure negative."

Many employees are already asking the question, “If it’s worked fine for this long, why do I have to come back?” It’s one thing to have been told you can’t work remotely in 2019. It’s another to have done it for an entire year, liked it, and be told you have to stop. Human beings have serious loss aversion, and leaders would be wise to recognize that. Right now, people are tired of being told what they can and cannot do. When it comes to a return to the office, to achieve commitment, not just compliance, or worse, conflict, don’t shortchange the communication around the “whys” of returning. 

Leaders should first ask themselves why they are requiring workers to return. Is it an obvious imperative? Just their personal preference? Or a sense that there is more at stake? In a recent Dale Carnegie webinar, participants were asked whether they are spending the same, more or less time talking with colleagues since working from home.

Nearly everyone said ‘about the same time’ or more. But when asked with whom they’ve been talking, it became clear that people are spending more time communicating with a smaller core group of colleagues, typically those they share work with on a daily basis. They speak less frequently with colleagues outside of their own teams—the ones they used to meet in the hallway or cafeteria. This may be a concern when it comes to collaboration and information-sharing across the organization, and that could impede innovation. As a result, a natural consequence of ongoing WFH may be a new version of the dreaded “silos”, the once all too common disconnect between different departments of the same organization that didn’t leave their own areas to communicate with each other. This is another example of valuable social capital that may be at risk, with implications for the organization’s culture and performance. 

Most would agree that the results of the WFH experiment haven’t been all good, but they haven’t been all bad, either. Organizations have been compelled to operate in new ways, and with that came new lessons. But decisions about where to go from here must be deliberate because they will have an enduring impact on social capital and corporate culture. To paraphrase a quote from Dale Carnegie “If we are not in the process of becoming the organization we want to be, we are automatically engaged in becoming the organization we don’t want to be.” Leaders must now decide what to keep and what to leave behind, recognizing that what worked to get by may not work for the long term. 

Mark Marone, PhD, is the Director of Research and Thought Leadership for Dale Carnegie & Associates, where he is responsible for ongoing research into current issues facing leaders, employees, and organizations worldwide. He has written frequently on topics related to corporate culture, leadership, sales, and customer experience and has co-authored two books on sales strategy.  Connect Mark Marone