Creating the Best Possible Hybrid Work Experience
One of the very few areas where the pandemic has led to improvement and enrichment is the modern work experience. The emergence of the hybrid workplace is purely beneficial when viewed through the numerous alterations that have happened to our everyday lives in the past months. These changes, including the acculturation of the work-from-home idea, have left employers with newer expectations from their teams.
A study suggests that 52% of U.S. workers would prefer a mix of working from home and the office, revealing that it augments their ability to be creative, solve problems, and maintain professional and personal relationships better.
To wrap our heads around the nascent idea of the hybrid workplace better, we can think of it as an opportunity for employees to fit work around their lives, rather than building a life around the fixed office hours. It is a delicious combo of productivity, reduced stress, and less commuting through infection-rigged means of transport.
Now, building a hybrid workspace that actually works might be a challenge. But keeping the following pointers in mind can ease the process for you.
- Go phygital
The best and probably the only way to put together a hybrid workspace is to carefully blend the physical and digital aspects of your work. It means striving to deliver a work experience equally good for remote employees as it is for the physically present ones.
Suppose we try to understand it with an example of conducting meetings. In that case, we are looking at angled or mobile tables, additional lighting, extra speakers, in-room microphones, and easy-to-move marker boards and displays to facilitate better involvement of members behind the devices.
- Reimagine logistics
The hybrid work culture will breathe in a fluid workplace that can adapt to change. The shift from fixed to a fluid workspace will bring in moveable furniture, comfortable sitting, and the liberty to reform one’s work environment. This will positively give an impetus to innovation, creativity, optimization of real estate, and in turn, productivity.
Moreover, it is economically effective as a single space can be designed to support a range of purposes. Besides that, individual spaces might need increased levels of privacy that people have habituated with while working at home.
- Invest in your IT infrastructure
In order to sustain the new ecosystem of people working from home, coworking spaces, and offices, your space will have to serve as a hub for collaboration for all these employees. Upgraded technology will massively smoothen interaction and the flow of work.
It would be great if video calls could happen anywhere, and enclosures like screens, panels, pods can give people places to focus and mitigate disruptions. Thus, to ensure the smooth running of daily operations, organizations must invest in IT tools that fit future needs.
While the hybrid workplace may seem like just a fresh cocktail of benefits served to employees, it is really a solution for the future of work. It’s a salubrious structure that aims at a balance of work, safety, communication, and mental health.
