Office 2.0 - post Covid hybrid working

Sudden change

For most companies, the move to full remote working was sudden, dramatic, and unplanned. In March and April last year, IT departments scrambled for additional laptops and to deploy and scale out virtual desktop infrastructure. Nearly twelve months later remote working has become the new normal with those speedily deployed solutions reworked to become more robust and secure.

The rapid roll out of effective Covid vaccines in the first half of this year opens up the possibility of a return to offices later in 2021. While David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs, and Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan have both gone on record to say they expect most of their staff to return to traditional office based working patterns, it is likely that theirs will be a minority view, with most companies pursuing a strategy based around a hybrid of in-office and remote working. Lloyds and HSBC have both said that they expect to reduce their commercial office space by between 20% and 40% over the coming years as a result of greater remote working and BP has announced their expectation of a 40/60 split between home and office.

Critical glue

Making a successful transition from fully remote to hybrid working will require close collaboration between IT and HR as new working patterns are designed and embedded. The use of the collaborative tooling that has become ubiquitous over the last year will need to evolve to cater for participants in a variety of settings – it is clear that technology will provide the critical glue between on-site and at-home working models.

While Zoom, Teams and other video conferencing platforms have provided a vital basis for teams to remain connected in a largely fully remote scenario, the problems of “video call fatigue” are well documented. Difficulty in interpreting body language and other non-verbal cues, audio lag and the impact of constantly seeing yourself in a small box in the corner of your video conference all lead to tiredness and a drop in performance. Managers will need to plan carefully to ensure that video conferencing integrates seamlessly into hybrid work patterns, whilst giving their teams plenty of time away from multi-participant calls.

With a return to offices, conference and meeting room equipment should be reviewed to ensure that they are well placed to integrate participants from within an office setting and those joining remotely. Good quality audio and video will be critical, and the use of digital whiteboard technologies will help to bridge the physical gap between participants and avoid those not in the room feeling like second-class attendees.

The use of “virtual coffee breaks” and socially focused events with break out rooms should be considered to recreate those water-cooler-meetings and desk-side chats that have been noticeably absent over the last year.

Broader IT changes

In addition to the continued support and evolution of corporate collaboration tools, IT leaders will also need to consider the broader implications from the change to hybrid working models. HR may need new software to manage desk booking and employee absences effectively, while service desk hours could extend to provide cover for the flexible working patterns of business users. The provisioning, distribution and maintenance of user devices will need to take account of users who rarely come into the office, and security considerations must include this new, broadly distributed user perimeter.

Winners and losers

If corporate IT does not move fast enough in selecting and deploying the right collaboration technologies, backed up with appropriate guidance and training on their use, it is likely that business users will take matters into their own hands with tools and costs proliferating across the enterprise.

If done correctly, however, new hybrid working models will address concerns around creativity, innovation, and culture. Successful adoption of tools and process will enable productivity to remain high and allow access to wider talent pools for recruiting as where and how employees are able to work becomes a competitive differentiator.