The hybrid workplace will never succeed without serious employee involvement

On the whole, employees love the flexibility that hybrid work offers. But at the same time, many report poorer mental wellbeing and a weaker sense of belonging at work. We love the freedom, while we miss the creative energy, bouncing ideas off each other, the company of colleagues, and the informal breaks between meetings. At worst, this can have serious consequences for companies that ignore the challenges and don’t adjust their strategy. But if we make an extra effort, we have a unique opportunity to listen to employees and build the best foundation for hybrid work. Now is the time to involve employees, if the move to hybrid work is going to succeed.

A year ago, few people had probably heard of the hybrid workplace. Denmark was still in lockdown, leaders were finding it hard to lead at a distance, and many of us were really feeling the fatigue of working from home. But fortunately, a great many companies decided that when the country reopened, we shouldn’t just go back to the office, but forward to an even better way of working. A model where we combine the best of the physical and the virtual world. A new analysis from the Confederation of Danish Industry (Dansk Industri) shows that 8 out of 10 member companies are opening up to more working from home. The main reasons are retaining staff and giving people a better work-life balance.

Based on our work with a number of larger companies over the past year, we see some recurring trends:

1. Companies have been good at setting shared ground rules for hybrid work, but perhaps not so good at preparing their leaders to lead where the physical meets the virtual. It’s hard to lead the people at home and the people in the office at the same time. Especially if, as a leader, you come into the office and fall back into old habits and familiar patterns.
2. Employees are generally happy with the flexibility. At the same time, it’s hard to find your way in the new hybrid workplace. That’s often because of more digital meetings and tools, without any training or guidelines for how best to work together in a hybrid set-up.
3. Both leaders and employees are facing challenges with belonging and wellbeing. Partly because the day is packed with digital meetings and a flood of digital communication. And partly because very few companies have worked out how to build a strong culture in hybrid work. Culture used to be created, more often than not, in the same room. Now we have to learn how to build culture and cohesion in a hybrid workplace.

It’s time to involve employees for real

The hybrid workplace makes entirely new demands on how well leaders understand their people. Hybrid work amplifies individual preferences and differences. Where you live, your family situation, when in the day you work best: far more factors suddenly shape where and how each person wants to work. Some of us go into the office to find the quiet to concentrate, while others stay at home for exactly the same reason. To understand employees, we have to listen.

New virtual ways of talking make room for more perspectives

A virtual meeting is well suited to getting together quickly and bridging distances. But most of us have seen the usual meeting platforms fall short when you need to listen, develop ideas or solve problems, or when more than a handful of people join.

Should we involve people online or in person?

For group work or employee involvement, many people will probably prefer to bring employees together in the same room. We love meeting in person ourselves, and the energy that comes from being together. But the lockdown also gave us a reason to take a fond but critical look at some of our old habits. Being in the same room has its own dynamics, and they make it hard to find out what a group really thinks and feels. For example, the widely described mechanisms of groupthink, where a few individuals set the agenda for the whole group. Add to that all the invisible power structures and biases that stop us from listening to everyone equally.

Finally, there may be personal, sensitive or difficult subjects that have a big effect on wellbeing at work, but rarely come up in team meetings or one-to-ones with the leader. For example, it can be hard to say out loud that you feel left out, or that you feel less and less attached to your workplace.

Online can be an advantage too

Fortunately, the tools have come a long way in recent years. You can now involve employees with innovative tools built for online use, which leave room for nuance and let people build on each other’s ideas. Real-time, anonymous and engaging dialogue tools make it possible to hear employees’ honest views, feelings and ideas, in a way where everyone has an equal chance to have their say.

What matters most is the dialogue

Our experience is that when the dialogue with employees in hybrid workplaces is interactive, with equal room for everyone to contribute, you get a clearer picture of the challenges employees are dealing with. And used well, the tools can then move the conversation towards solutions, where employees feel involved, management gets better insight, and together you can create some of the solutions that help build a hybrid workplace with room for both flexibility and community.