Challenges and Strategies to Implementing a Hybrid Workplace
One thing has become evident after months of a global health emergency: work is not a place. This clarifies the concept of hybrid work, often known as hybrid workplace universally, as a middle ground between face-to-face work and smart working, or, rather, a modality that includes both. A company that implements a hybrid work model anticipates a large margin of flexibility, both in relation to the job and in relation to time.
However, that’s not all. What sets hybrid work apart from other types of work is the ability for employees to transition freely and smoothly from remote work to face-to-face work without encountering any impediment, slowdown, or reduction in productivity.
While there are excellent advantages to a hybrid workplace, the transition to this type of model involves certain challenges for the human resource management.
HR managers’ jobs have changed dramatically since March 2020: shift planning, access control, reserving workspaces, and redesigning meetings. The transformation does not end there. After having set up an environment that allows teleworking, the company’s management must once again review its organization and its internal rules. Besides, we must anticipate events, so it is necessary to plan, starting from day one, on how to manage manpower in the new arrangement. In fact, we cannot risk letting our guard down, losing precious days to get the business going, or even letting down our talent, as this could result in a churn.
Therefore, a specific HR system for controlling places and access is required, as is conceptualizing the use of immersive technology to improve digital interaction. However, finding the proper technologies is not enough—in order for hybrid working to genuinely become a viable model for our businesses, we must also change the corporate culture as a whole, for example, by discovering new ways to maintain our employees’ commitment at all times.
For hybrid work to turn into a successful experience, it is important to overcome certain challenges through effective strategies.
Challenges and Strategies for Companies When Implementing a Hybrid Workplace
Unconscious Bias
Managers are often prejudiced against employees who work from home. In fact, some studies have found that remote workers receive poorer performance scores on evaluations, fewer promotions, and smaller raises as compared to their co-workers in the office.
This occurs because there is less face-to-face interaction. You don’t physically see the employee when he or she works from home most of the time, if not all the time. In some ways, hybrid model issues derive from the fact that remote workers suffer more as a result of their invisibility.
According to MIT research1, those who work in an office are more likely to be assessed, promoted, or given pay raises than those who work remotely or visit the office less frequently. This might become a serious problem if employees believe that they need to be in the office to advance in the company.
A Strategy to Avoid Unconscious Bias
Ascertain that your manager has the appropriate HR system, structure, and training in place to guarantee that all employees are treated fairly when it comes to performance assessments. Due to the nature of unconscious bias, it’s difficult to eliminate it, but it’s critical to ensure that people working outside the office feel they have an equal chance to succeed. Keep an eye out for any correlations between where someone works and how they’re compensated.
Recruiting and Retaining Employees
The inherent complexity of having a hybrid work model is recruiting and retaining employees, and the training experience is the starting point. As per Harvard Business Review2, 20% of staff turnover typically occurs within the first 45 days of employment. And almost 33% of newly hired employees look for a new job in the first 6 months. While having a hybrid workforce may not be able to tour offices, make in-person presentations, and provide on-site training, you can still deliver an experience that makes employees feel like part of your team from the first moment.
Strategy to Properly Prepare for the Onboarding of a New Employee
You can do the following to make your new hire’s first few days on your hybrid team as stress-free as possible:
- Prepare A Pre-Onboarding Checklist
Before the day of hiring, share the information on the progress of onboarding with an “admin,” a to-do list, and the list of people to meet. That way, there will be no surprises for your employee, who will then have a foothold in the culture of your hybrid company and will already know his schedule for his initial days.
- Introduce your New Recruit to the Whole Team
Send an email to your staff on the first day to let them know they have arrived. Inviting your employees to have a video or face-to-face meeting to get to know one another and convey their key goals is also a good idea.
- Incorporate the Collaborator into your Hybrid Team’s Rituals Immediately
From the start, invite the new collaborator to join you in your weekly briefing or daily stand-up meeting. As a result, once onboarding is completed and clearly understood by the team, it will be operational more rapidly. Everything at work, HRIS facilitates collaboration in real time.
- Arrange for Onboarding Points to Be Set Up
To ensure a smooth start, provide weekly reports to discuss stumbling blocks, the employee’s views, and their objectives. As a result, you’ll be better equipped to assist them if necessary. By automating duties at every phase of the hiring process—from recruiting to onboarding to retention—Everything at Work can make HR teams’ recruitment and onboarding operations more efficient.
Digital Divide
If left unchecked, hybrid work models have the potential to create a new digital gap that can swiftly divide workers into two groups and instil inequity and bias in the workplace. To accomplish the transition successfully, companies must deploy technology and new work regulations that provide a fair environment in which outdoor and office workers can communicate in a transparent and efficient manner and make important contributions that fuel innovation and corporate growth.
Strategy for Closing the Digital Divide
To effectively reduce the digital divide that hybrid work threatens to create, companies need to create a shared digital workspace that offers a common and transparent work environment in which teams have access to the same applications and information and can collaborate seamlessly. effective on projects, wherever people are. With the support of policies that encourage fair and collaborative ways of working, this workspace can help you get work done efficiently from anywhere thanks to Everything at Work which has;
- Employees have consistent access to the resources they need to collaborate and complete their work, whether they are in the office, at home, or on the go.
- Contextual security ensures the safety of your personal or business information on any device and in any location.
- A shared environment to speed task execution, boost communication, and ensure that all team members, no matter where they are, have access to and share information.
Management and productivity
This is one of the issues that has a direct impact on employee productivity and monitoring. The rise of remote work may have enhanced or hindered their productivity, depending on their way of living. A parent whose family commitments fall during working hours, for example, may find it more challenging to balance their daily activities while guaranteeing their children’s health and safety. People who find engagement with their co-workers to be a motivator are in the same boat. Many workers, on the other hand, have benefited from the ability to rearrange their work schedule in order to accomplish high-concentration jobs at more convenient times.
A Strategy to Monitor and Control Working Time
Regardless of whether productivity has increased or decreased, the manager must ensure that methods for monitoring and limiting working time are in place to close productivity disparities between the best-performing staff while avoiding time theft. Everything at work makes it possible, in particular, to keep track of the hours spent on various projects. Follow-ups and meetings are also necessary to keep track of the tasks that employees must complete on a daily basis.
Culture Dilution
With a hybrid paradigm, the culture is at risk of being diluted. This indicates that employees are disillusioned with the organization and that office life is the only thing on their mind. It has nothing to do with individuals who work remotely, which is one of the most difficult issues to resolve.
You must identify, establish, and embed the right hybrid work culture. However, it’s difficult to do so at the workplace, and it’s even more difficult in a remote setting.
Strategy to Fix Culture Dilution
The culture issue is one of the most difficult hybrid work challenges to overcome. That being said, it is a good time for hybrid companies to assess their culture and bring it into compliance. Since people can now work remotely, the definition of work has branched out.
Organizations must assess which cultural traits they want to preserve and foster, as well as which ones they need to do away with. This isn’t easy, and it might be advisable to enlist the help of a dedicated team to define the culture and develop a strategy for achieving it.
Conclusion
Many businesses are adopting the hybrid work model. However, many are unaware of the hybrid work challenges and issues that it presents.
Many hybrid approach issues, such as building a flexible workplace and selecting proper communication tools, can be resolved with the right human resource information system. Everything at Work is the right solution.
The appropriate HR strategies can enable organizations to continue to benefit from their HR teams’ well-honed talents while simultaneously utilizing solutions like Everything At Work to eradicate bias and encourage diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
Everything At Work has everything you require for your business. It’s a full-featured HRIS system that helps businesses find talent, develop their workforce, manage and retain the best employees, and integrate HR procedures.
Everything at Work (HRIS) offers powerful solutions to deal with the issues in a hybrid workplace. It enables HR managers to conduct performance evaluations in a hybrid work environment more efficiently.
References: