07/14/2021

Four Ways to Decide if Work is Hybrid, Remote or In-person

There are many benefits to the new flexible workspace

Some of my clients' companies have always worked remotely, and others have fully adopted that policy over the past year. But most are preparing for a return to some form of co-located work, while recognizing that it will look very different than it did pre-pandemic. No one in my practice is adopting Jamie Dimon's approach--the JPMorgan Chase CEO recently asserted that working from home "doesn’t work for people who want to hustle, doesn’t work for culture, doesn’t work for idea generation. By September it will look just like it did before." [1]

Rather than viewing remote work during the pandemic as a temporary response to a crisis, my clients generally see it as a learning experience that enabled their organizations to become more flexible on a permanent basis. The benefits of this flexibility include responsiveness to employees' preferences, the ability to attract and retain talent in a wider range of geographical locations, and even increased productivity in some circumstances. The idea that remote work prevents hustle certainly hasn't occurred to my clients, although its impact on culture and idea generation is more complex--see below.

That said, it's becoming apparent that having every individual decide on a daily basis whether or not to join their colleagues in person will be sub-optimal and possibly dysfunctional. Instead, making the benefits of remote work sustainable will require a collective understanding of when, how, and why co-located work is necessary. One way I'm discussing this with clients is the idea of four "buckets"--ways of categorizing work that they and their employees can articulate and agree upon.

Please select this link to read the complete blog post from Ed Batista | Executive Coaching.