A boss concerned because he is not getting the results, suddenly eliminates the hybrid scheme and forces all the collaborators to return to the offices. It is the same person who complains in Human Resources because he cannot replace the vacancies in the company.
Employment analysts say that the first question candidates ask in a job interview is: how many days of remote work will I have? If the answer is none, the interested parties automatically end the communication.
A CEO of a local company loses patience, having difficulties in connecting by video with his team and demands that everyone return to face-to-face and allows at most one day of teleworking per week.
Elon Musk buys Twitter and forces its employees to return to face-to-face and those who do not like it, to leave. A large number of collaborators resign almost instantly.
Thus the pressure of face-to-face and its consequences advance in all orders.
After the pandemic, there is a trend in organizations to return to face-to-face, with pretexts of low productivity, need for more control. The leaders act as if the time of virtuality had simply been a pause, thus ignoring the profound changes that the new ways of working have generated in collaborators.
cases. A global survey carried out by the consultancy HEY by mid-2022 indicates that 64% of the consulted collaborators think that productivity increased working in hybrid schemes while only 41% of the leaders think in a similar way.
Another more recent study of Microsoft brand that 87% of the workers consulted believe that they are productive while only 12% of the leaders think the same. The same study indicates that a 85% of the leaders consulted said that the shift to hybrid work challenged them to trust the productivity of their collaborators while working from home.
The paradox is that by another of the data extracted from the analysis of the platform teams from the same company, indicates that heMeetings by teleconference have increased by 153%, 46% of the meetings are scheduled to overlap with other meetings, and while these are taking place, 42% of the participants carry out multitasking activities.
Indicators that accompany the growth of the “burn out” syndrome in these post-pandemic times and put the issue of well-being at the top of the people management area agenda.
The post-pandemic brought a dispute over the use of people’s own time, since 75% of those who live more than half an hour away from work prefer remote work.
Balance. On the other hand, hybrid work has some advantages. A recent study by the global consulting firm Accenture indicates that when companies manage to correctly implement hybrid work, they have a competitive advantage of 11% over their competitors, and the professor of stanford and remote work specialist Nicholas Bloom indicates that the benefit of hybrid work can represent for workers the equivalent of an 8% increase in their salaries.
The hybrid world of work is an emerging from a complex phenomenon such as the pandemic, it is the product of the clash of the analog world with the digital world that accelerated the digitization processes and has produced significant transformations in our way of working.
It has been installed in companies and everything indicates that there is no going back. According to data provided by Bloom in the United States, 28% of the workforce works hybridly and 12% completely remotely, data that is similarly reflected in Latin American countries.
An organization with at least 40% of the population working remotely implies a challenge that requires transforming the processes, culture and leadership of a company
In a world where talent has learned that they can choose their occupation, that they are capable of working from home anywhere in the world and in which it is also not necessary to waste between one and two hours a day traveling to the office; The demand to return to face-to-face without a clear purpose can be suicidal for many companies.
One of the problems observed is that companies avoided going through the necessary cultural transformations and face the new world with old paradigms with bosses who lack the appropriate tools for this new environment. This creates bewildered leaders who further complicate the situation.
In times where technology advances by leaps and bounds and society is undergoing profound transformations. Companies must necessarily rethink their leadership, discard beliefs that are outdated today and show flexibility to change.
Choosing the easier path often leads to poor results. Hybrid work requires a transformation in culture, processes and new leadership. It demands flexibility, empathy, horizontality and continuous learning from organizations and their leaders.
Today it is necessary to generate spaces for conversations, where leaders and collaborators can agree on the new ways of working, explain the purpose of the why of things, where the objectives are clear and it is defined when face-to-face is necessary and when it is not, when it can be resort to the asynchronous, as well as the ways of communicating, decision-making, non-negotiable rules, rituals and artifacts that are going to be installed to ensure a psychologically safe environment where everyone can give their best.
Many tools and methodologies have been developed to help leaders spark these conversations and facilitate this transition. It is up to organizations to choose the shortcuts that only lead to turn them into a sad memory or encourage them to take the plunge into the new world.
# Gabriel Pereyra is CEO of Modobeta and author of Leadership in Digital Key. A story in MODOBETA.
by Gabriel Pereira
