4 hybrid working initiatives to implement now

Since the start of the pandemic, studies have repeatedly shown that remote work does not negatively affect productivity. But we know there's something irreplaceable about seeing our colleagues in person, especially when it comes to intangibles like culture, collaboration and purpose.

Before the pandemic, the norm was to work entirely in person. Amid the pandemic, the norm was fully remote working.

We tried extremes. Now is the time to strike a happy medium: Hybrid.

Isolating the benefits and avoiding the pitfalls of working from home (WFH) takes some trial and error. Experimentation can intimidate some companies that don't want to take unnecessary risks, especially in a difficult market climate.

Good news: you can use my company, Thirdlove, as an example.

Over the past five months, I've been experimenting with hybrid working initiatives and have identified a number of best practices along the way.

Work from home

No commute = more time for everyone. A Bureau of Labor Statistics report released last year found that in 2019, Americans were spending more time commuting than ever before. The average round-trip commute time was about an hour, and more than 15 million Americans spent more than two hours a day commuting (down from 12.6 million in 2006). The average one-hour round trip means five hours of wasted time per week. More than two hours of commuting and you lose more than 10 hours in the car, every week. That's a lot of hours. WFH doesn't have a commute, giving all that time back.

Work from home teammates become more independent and resourceful. Because you have fewer resources at your immediate disposal, the WFH encourages a do-it-yourself attitude. I have seen many of our team members become more self-sufficient throughout the pandemic.

WFH minimizes distractions. Especially now that schools are back in person, the WFH is putting people in control of their surroundings. People who work well with music don't have to worry about distracting people who work well with silence. You also don't have your teammates tapping you on the shoulder all the time, which in some cases is a positive.

Pain points of working from home

Communication inefficiencies. One of the most obvious downsides to WFH is that you lose those in-between moments - dropping into someone's desk to ask a quick question, walking past someone's desk to check in. WFH's substitute at these in-between times is asynchronous communication - Slack, email, text, etc. I've noticed that these threads tend to last much longer than necessary in some cases, especially for small topics. This means that WFH teammates spend more time on easy-to-solve problems than they would in the office, which can lead to communication overload and misalignment.

It is more difficult to establish relationships at a distance. The downside of building your relationship with your own space is that you don't spend time building relationships with your co-workers. We've all done enough Zoom happy hours to know that they're significantly less happy than the in-person versions.