When analyzing a team’s hybrid arrangement, hybrid work leaders should consider two separate but interrelated perspectives. The first is the job perspective, and the second is the employee perspective.
The job perspective includes the different roles, projects, tasks, business requirements, and customer requirements of the organization.
The employee perspective includes topics such as flexibility, inclusion, fairness, work/life balance, and career needs of employees.
Analyzing both perspectives is important to come up with the right hybrid work model strategy.
Here are some guidelines that help you analyze both.
Job Perspective Analysis for Hybrid Work
Here are a few tips that help you analyze the hybrid work arrangement from a job perspective.
Tip #1: Assess Work-Time Needs
Consider how much time your team members spend on focused activities compared to team collaboration or on-site activities.
In other words, think about how much time your team members need to spend on a task to focus on it (i.e., alone time) and how much time they need to spend collaborating on a task with their team (or spend time in the office for access to on-site resources).
For example, software developers and content writers need stretches of time to “get in the zone” and focus on getting work done without any distractions. So they will typically spend a more significant percentage of their time on alone time.
On the other hand, product managers usually need to spend more time coordinating with their teams and communicating their feedback face-to-face with their team members. Similarly, some engineers require physical access to special equipment at customer sites to conduct their jobs.
So consider assessing the work-time needs of your team to understand how they’re spending their time on each activity.
Tip #2: Consider General Roles and Functions
As you think through your job perspective analysis, keep in mind that functions and roles within an organization are not all equal. For example, lab technicians require a lot more on-site presence due to the need for access to lab equipment than social media analysts, who can comfortably conduct their job remotely.
You should also think about assessing general functional roles and their impact to your business (both internally and externally) if you move to a hybrid model. For example, employees who work in sales and spend a significant amount of time traveling to meet customers face-to-face might see a drop in sales numbers or even customer satisfaction scores if they shift to more remote arrangements.
Finally, factor in any labor law restrictions or work policies of specific roles. This is especially important in the healthcare field. For example, physicians in some jurisdictions cannot sign off on prescriptions unless patients physically appear at the medical provider’s office. Similarly, psychologists who could provide remote services might have restrictions about where the psychologist and patient can reside during therapy sessions.
Tip #3: Rethink Tasks and Workflows for Hybrid Work
Use the job perspective analysis as an opportunity to eliminate inefficient practices and improve productivity. In other words, avoid taking an existing process and then replicating its flaws in a hybrid work arrangement.
Here are three areas to consider:
Technology Innovation
What can current digital tools do to help move work from an on-site to a hybrid model? For example, safety inspection engineers who traveled for on-site assessments came up with a remote solution during COVID. They used advanced video and inspection tools to assess sites remotely. That not only helped them continue to do their job, but it also helped improve effectiveness. So instead of completing two site inspections per week due to travel time, they could now complete four remotely (and only travel on-site when they absolutely need to for complex cases).
Workflow Reassessment
What use cases can be reassessed from an on-site to a hybrid model? For example, many minor health-related cases (such as skin diseases) were diagnosed by nurse practitioners remotely over video. As a result, some clinical practices considered reassessing those workflows and designated two days a week where nurse practitioners could take non-urgent remote appointments. That gave them the flexibility to work from home during those days.
Talent Allocation
What roles can be prioritized or reallocated to improve productivity? In the previous example about safety inspection on-site engineers, the organization might consider hiring more entry-level on-site technicians who can help with remote information gathering and feed that information back to more senior engineers for analysis. This could save costs on hiring expensive senior engineers every time.
So use this exercise to rethink your team’s tasks, workflows, and skills to leverage them more effectively.
Tip #4: Conduct Assessments
Finally, conduct job perspective analysis assessments by leveraging team surveys, discussions, interviews, or workflow audits. You might already have some information as a team manager, but you can use those assessments to gather additional information or even validate what you already know.
One point of caution here: You can easily go overboard and get very detailed with your analysis. For example, you could break down job tasks and workflows to the minute. However, this is unnecessary and will take way too much of your time and effort. Instead, focus on an 80/20 analysis, where you look at the 20 percent of the information you need that gets you 80 percent of the results.
Employee Perspective Analysis for Hybrid Work
Here are a few tips that help you analyze the hybrid work arrangement from an employee perspective.
Tip #1: Focus on Your Employees
When analyzing your team, pay special attention to your team members’ needs. Inclusion and fairness are critically important to the success of a hybrid model.
Your people are the lynchpin to the success of your hybrid work arrangement, and a lack of fairness or inclusion in the workplace hurts your team’s productivity.
Although any hybrid arrangement is ultimately based on the needs of the business, make sure you listen to your employees. And although you will probably not be able to address every team member’s requirements, the fact that you make them feel heard is what counts.
Finally, try to be open and transparent throughout the hybrid work planning exercise.
Employees appreciate being included in the decision-making process and want to feel like they’re part of the journey.
Tip #2: Address Personal Needs
This may seem obvious, but keep in mind that not everyone on your team experiences the same family challenges and constraints. Everyone’s situation is different, and you’ll want to factor in your team members’ personal needs and preferences in your analysis.
For example, some employees might have younger kids. Others might be living with elderly parents. And others might be taking care of health-vulnerable loved ones.
Factor in your team’s current location versus their future potential location as well. Some employees might not want to stay where they currently live and could have plans to move to a different city or country. Understanding all these personal needs will help with your office planning strategy.
It’s important to note that you should be cognizant of all your company policies and local laws before asking your employees about their personal challenges and plans. In some situations, you might be prohibited from asking about specific types of information because you could violate privacy laws or policies. So check with your organization’s human resources and legal departments first.
Tip #3: Address Career Needs
You also want to look at your team members’ different career needs and requirements from a hybrid perspective. Some people would prefer more remote work, and others might prefer more on-site work.
Here are a couple of examples.
Mila, a 21-year-old who recently graduated from college, lives close to the office and prefers to be on-site because it might get too noisy in the small apartment she shares with her roommate. Most importantly, she’s early in her career, and she’d like to meet up and connect with other employees at the office to build relationships.
On the other hand, Anuj, a married 45-year-old with three kids, lives an hour away from the office and has been at the company for 17 years. He prefers to work more from home because he has already established good working relationships with his team and can get more focused work done remotely.
So avoid making any assumptions about your team before you understand their specific career needs.
Tip #4: Conduct Assessments
Finally, conduct employee perspective analysis assessments by leveraging team surveys and one-on-one discussions. For your surveys, consider when to use anonymous versus non-anonymous surveys. Again, make sure you work within the constraints of company policies and local laws to avoid any privacy violations.
Similar to the job perspective analysis, you can easily go overboard and get very detailed with your employee perspective analysis. So focus on an 80/20 Pareto analysis here as well.
That’s basically it. The next step is to combine the analyses of both your job and employee perspectives to come up with some hybrid model options.
This is an excerpt from my latest book: Hybrid Work Management: How to Manage a Hybrid Team in the New Workplace
