Transitioning effectively to hybrid working: considerations for your business
Read the CBI’s practical guidance for businesses making the long-term shift to hybrid working.
The country has experienced an unprecedented situation where millions of people have been working from home. This amounted to nearly half of those in employment (46.6%) doing at least some of their work from home in April 2020. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is a shock that has fundamentally changed the way we think about work and the workplace, shifting expectations of what’s possible for both firms and employees.
When done right, hybrid working can offer several competitive advantages. But the challenge for businesses is how to find the right balance between home and the workplace to make a sustainable shift that works for both the business and employees over the long-term. Doing so requires businesses to consider their approach to health and wellbeing, managing, training, engaging, and leading their teams, and the practical support needed to achieve it.
The benefits of hybrid working:
For full references and statistics, read the report.
- Increase productivity and employee engagement: 58% of workers in the UK said they have been more productive working from home
- Attract and retain talent by embracing hybrid working: the majority 91% of workers show preference to working from home at least part of the time
- Build diverse and inclusive workforces through hybrid working: 86% of working parents want to work flexibly
Changing working practices isn’t easy – there’s a lot for employers to consider, and it can be difficult to know where to start. Drawing together the experiences of several businesses, we have identified four areas where businesses should focus their efforts to effectively transition to hybrid working.
1. Health and wellbeing
Supporting health and wellbeing benefits employees and employers, as firms perform better when their staff are happier, healthier and more engaged. Employees working in businesses that invest in health and wellbeing say it helps reduce stress and creates a positive working environment where they can perform at their best.
Questions every business should ask:
- How should my business think differently about our mental health strategy to account for home workers?
- How should my business communicate mental health support to everyone in the business?
What you can do for your business
Create additional ways employees can discuss mental health when working remotely
- Set up virtual roundtables with Mental Health First Aiders, instant messaging services, anonymous hotlines, or launch employee assistance programmes
- Use workplace networks to communicate the different ways employees and managers can start a mental health conversation
- Encourage managers to establish a mental health action plan with their teams
Establish organisational norms that support staff’s mental and physical wellbeing wherever they work
- Encourage flexible working around core working hours, limit call times to 25 or 50 minutes to give employees breaks or encourage them to take a walk during the day
- Encourage managers to consider employee wellbeing when organising meetings, including setting a precedent that employees can join meetings while walking
- Create an expectation that managers should regularly communicate with individuals in their team. Suggest the first five minutes of 1-2-1 meetings are spent discussing their wellbeing.
2. Recruitment and development
Effective recruitment and development practices are strongly associated with better business performance and employee satisfaction. Not only is there a high cost for poor recruitment practices, hiring the right people and matching their skills to job criteria has been found to generate 40% higher productivity in operational roles, and 49% higher profit in management roles.
Businesses should consider how the way they hire, onboard, develop, and train their employees may need to change with more hybrid working. While businesses and individuals have become accustomed to recruiting and attending training sessions virtually, firms will need to future proof their approach by thinking about what types of development, recruitment, and onboarding practices are best delivered in the virtual environment versus face to face.
Questions every business should ask
- What training sessions can be delivered remotely and what learning is best completed on location?
- How can my business provide effective training and development sessions remotely?
- How can my business replicate on-the-job learning, especially for younger employees?
- How do onboarding processes need to change for home workers or members of hybrid teams?
What you can do for your business
Evaluate comparative learning experiences to inform whether your business delivers more training virtually
- Moving learning for knowledge and theory-based courses online can increase participation and engagement
- Training focused on practical skills, or requiring a behavioural shift often have better outcomes if held in person. Firms may want to consider prioritising face-to-face sessions for these types of courses
- Gather feedback from individuals on training courses to compare the effectiveness of delivery methods.
Establish practices that ensure new starters can integrate with the team and build organisation-wide relationships
- Consider designating in-person days for all team members to come into the workplace when new starters join
- Utilise technology to give new starters the opportunity to meet and connect with employees working in different locations
- Establish a virtual buddy system to help new starters meet new people and build relationships
When developing new starters or junior colleagues, establish ways to replicate informal ‘on-the-job’ development discussions
- Use technology to enable junior and senior colleagues to reflect on work and share advice in real-time as they would in the office, rather than wait for less frequent team or management conversations.
3. Leadership, management, and engagement
Leaders are essential to driving meaningful changes within businesses, from setting expectations of new ways of working to role modelling desired changes. This has lasting effects too, with organisational transformations being over four times more likely to succeed with leadership role modelling.
Businesses should consider how the relationship between employer and employee will change. With more people working from home, managers will need to adapt to managing individuals and teams who split their time between home and the workplace and consider how they foster team engagement and motivation if employees don’t have the same face to face and social contact.
Questions every business should ask
- How should my business change the way it leads, manages and engages with employees?
- How should my business support people managers to make this shift?
- What is the best way to maintain a strong organisational culture?
- How do I create an environment that fosters creativity, innovation and encourages idea sharing?
- How should businesses ensure that managers effectively assess employee performance based on outputs, rather than working time?
What you can do for your business
Invest in management training to support managers to change their approach to team organisation and engagement:
- Consider guidance focused on supporting employee wellbeing, staying connected and inclusive, changing approach to performance assessment, and embracing technology to foster team collaboration
- Use webinars to roll out training and make information easily accessible, such as on an employee app, a shared intranet, or through LinkedIn Learning.
Encourage managers to recontract with teams about how they’d like to work more flexibly
- Consider guidance for managers and employees to develop a set of guidelines for working effectively as a hybrid team. This could include working hours and preferred frequency and methods of communication
- Learn from and engage with other teams to inspire ways of working differently that balances organisational needs with employee preference.
Establish how hybrid working affects employees who can’t work remotely and take actions to mitigate feelings of ‘them vs us’
- Consider what types of flexibility can be offered beyond home working, such as flexible hours or shift swaps
- Share stories to help colleagues understand what flexibilities are available to them and how they can be used.
4. Operations and practical support
The modern workplace has gone through a number of changes in the last few decades – from individuals working in cubicles to wide open plan offices. The reason to adopt change is clear: an employees’ surroundings has a significant impact on their job satisfaction and employees need to feel comfortable in their physical setting to work at their best. An unfit environment can be as much of a source of strain as poor work-life balance or heavy workload.
Questions every business should ask
- What practical support should my business offer to hybrid workers, such as extra equipment and financial support?
- How should I ensure fairness in the process?
- How should my business create a hybrid working policy and roll it out across the business?
What you can do for your business
Determine what level of support your business can provide employees based at home for equipment and furniture uplifts
- Consider allocating additional equipment or furniture on a needs basis, determined by health and safety assessments results or through staff discussions.
Establish what changes should be made to the workplace to make the most of the space as more people work remotely
- Increase the amount of collaboration space to enable people to work together effectively when they come into the office. Consider hot desking instead of individual workstations to adapt to a flexible workforce
- Implement a booking system to manage space in the office, especially where employees can choose which days they come onsite or into the office.
Create a clear plan for creating and rolling out a new hybrid working policy across the business
- Involve managers and employees in the design of a new policy to test what would work well in practice
- Use the power of leadership voice and role-modelling to help embed a new hybrid working policy
- Hybrid working is new for most businesses, so it’s vital to establish a framework to evaluate how well the policy is working This could include comparing engagement survey results, net promoter scores, or data on how likely employees are to recommend the business as a place to work.
Useful resources to help you on your journey
To successfully transition to hybrid working when offices fully reopen, it’s important for firms to start thinking about these practical questions now. The good news is that there are plenty of useful resources to help you on your journey. If you’d like to find out more information, you can:
Discover more useful CBI resources to help you plan
- Eager to learn more about employee engagement for virtual teams and how to support employees working from home? Our factsheets on employee engagement and remote working are regularly updated with the latest information and real stories from businesses
- Looking to invest in your people to help them adapt to new ways of working? Our Great Job report highlights the productivity benefits of improving business’ people practices and sets out seven key habits that businesses can adopt to effectively lead, engage and develop their staff.
- Looking for new ways to prioritise health and wellbeing in your workplace? Our Front of Mind report draws on evidence from other businesses to set some basic principles for how firms can invest in their employees’ health and wellbeing with confidence.
- Visit My CBI: the CBI’s online hub is your go-to place for further information on a range of people and skills topics. Visit Ideas Forum for more inspiration.
Explore the topic further using external resources
- Timewise has published several articles about the future of hybrid working on their knowledge hub
- Grae Matta Foundation features a number of articles on the importance of good mental health in the workplace.
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