How to lead in a hybrid environment (1): Know the challenges
This is a butter knife. It's not sharp, but rounded and wide in shape to make it easy to slice and spread butter. And, it’s at the center of one of my favorite stories from working in a hybrid environment. Years ago, I worked in a hybrid company with one office and a globally distributed team. Our CEO liked good food and useful tools, and decided to gift everyone a butter knife at the end of the year as a thank you. (Side note: I’m still not 100% convinced that sending your employees a knife sends an appropriate message!)
That aside, this was no problem for people in the office, they all received theirs with no issues, and some even tried it out during lunch. But then there was everyone else based in other locations: customs didn’t let the knife through, people had to pay extra fees to get it delivered, and for some employees, the package just never arrived.
What was intended to be a nice gesture, literally didn’t reach everyone the same way because of the hybrid environment we were in.
“Hybrid work” and why companies use it
“Hybrid work” encompasses all models that do not require a full-time presence in the office and allow for some degree of remote work. As more and more organisations adopt and adapt these models, I expect that we’ll see further specifications and evolutions of the terminology.
Companies utilise hybrid models for various reasons:
Talent acquisition & retention:
Companies believe that hybrid operation models enhance their ability to attract and retain talent.
Increased employee happiness. Workers identified a hybrid model as ideal - 63% of workers want it. Based on the latest research conducted by Catalyst, access to remote work increases the likelihood of innovation, work engagement, and organisational commitment.
Hopes for better results
Increased productivity: The same Catalyst research revealed access to remote work increases the likelihood of innovation by 63%.
Lower costs compared to a fully co-located model due to the ability to hire in less expensive locations, as well as lower costs for office space.
Organisational needs
Hybrid work can help bridge the needs of different departments. As an example, sales and revenue teams have historically largely relied on in-person work, whereas many engineering departments, pressured by difficult hiring markets, already worked remotely for a longer time.
Fully remote setups aren’t possible for all roles, and hybrid models provide flexibility.
Understanding the complexity of hybrid work
The human presence is singular - no one exists in a hybrid environment. This means that hybrid work exists only as the sum of remote plus in-person experiences, and is not a singular experience. The challenges you face with hybrid working are more than the sum of remote and office work challenges.
Hybrid is an amalgamation of experiences and a highly complex environment. It contains at least six work modes, from in-person and together (in-person meetings), to remote and together (online meetings and collaboration), to in-office - remote - alone (async work from office).
In-office and remote work mean tradeoffs for employees, but not everyone has a real choice
While it may seem like many employees can choose between somewhat equal work environments, the choice between working from an office or remotely can be much more complex, where the advantages of one are the disadvantages of the other.
Working from an office
Benefit: Access
Working from an office means having increased, and more direct, access to crucial functions for job success:
Relationship-building with coworkers and bosses
Ease of access to unstructured social time and interactions
A usable office setup by default
Access to career progression and development opportunities, and learning from peers
Challenges:
Offices can be a challenging environment for some groups of employees:
Many members of underrepresented groups face microaggressions, as well as sexism, racism, and other discrimination for their identity or sexual orientation.
Offices are not designed with neurodiverse groups in mind. The noise, light, and other distractions can be difficult for some people to manage and be productive in.
Many offices are not accessible for people with disabilities or chronic illnesses.
Trans and non-binary people often don’t have access to gender-neutral bathrooms and are frequently discriminated against.
“If you aren’t a white male, you have to adapt yourself to fit into white male professional norms while you’re in the workplace. So white women do have to adapt their behaviors a bit to fit into male-dominated cultures, but Black employees have to adapt, change or hide who they are much more to fit in. Dealing with racism, sexism and other forms of oppression is exhausting, and sometimes employees do need a break from just pushing through. Remote work can provide employees with that time and space to escape.” (Angelica Leigh, Professor of management and organizations at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. In: Who Wants To Return To The Office?)
Working remotely
Benefit: Cost
Not having to commute (regularly) means more time, as well as flexibility and cost-saving.
Challenges: Work-life-boundaries, treatment
On the flipside, the work-life boundary is blurrier, and the potential for distractions can be high in a remote setup.
Many remote workers report higher productivity guilt because, unlike their coworkers, they save time on commute.
Remote workers are concerned about their treatment: “64% percent of non-Hispanic Black women working remotely said they are treated fairly at work (it’s 76% for non-Hispanic white women). For non-Hispanic Black men, that number is 72%. Non-Hispanic white men feel the best about their treatment, with 81% saying they are treated fairly.” (Fivethirtyeight)
For many employees, the advantage of remote work is not only a personal choice, but also a way to work in places that were historically not built for them.
In-office work is favoured by 42% percent of executives, who report they work from there 3-4 days a week, as compared to just 30% of non-executives (source). The other main groups favouring in-office work are white employees and men.
Groups who favour hybrid and remote work are employees with disabilities (by 11%), non-binary people (by 14%), non-straight employees (by 13%), and working parents (source). Different studies show the same trend for Black employees, of whom 97% prefer hybrid or fully remote work models (source).
Meanwhile, organisational reward systems aren’t hybrid (yet)
While many organisations have been adapting hybrid models, their reward systems, e.g., promotions and pay increases, haven’t adapted in accordance. Proximity bias in particular is still a critical factor in employee advancement. The physical proximity to influential people, or working with “important” people on projects, leads to higher-level wide-reaching projects, opportunities, promotions, and pay increases.
A 2015 study, for example, showed that remote workers at a Chinese travel agency were 15% more productive than their peers. But when it came to performance-based promotions, in-house staff were favoured. Spending more time together can also create a halo effect, where we build an inflated view of those near us. This can also cause leadership to excuse the poor performance of those in their proximity.
Examples of proximity bias in practice:
Offering in-person employees more exciting projects or professional development opportunities, e.g., networking events that only take place in person. It can also be as small as a manager in the office thinking to themselves, “I’ll just delegate this new project to Michael who’s here today, I don’t have the time to hop on Slack or Zoom and explain this to someone else.”
Leaving remote stakeholders out of decision-making or important discussions - “Oh, we just decided this over lunch”.
Providing in-person employees with more perks, e.g., office lunch is catered every day, but nothing is provided to remote workers.
Hybrid work is fundamentally an issue of equity and inclusion
In a hybrid world, these skewed reward systems have consequences. “Hybrid” isn’t the same “hybrid” for everyone. Not everyone has the same real choices that the model implies.
This means that hybrid working isn’t an equaliser, but exacerbates existing inequities and inequalities. If underrepresented groups are spending the least amount of time in the office, it could limit their access to professional opportunities - from face time with the boss to promotions and career mobility.
Equity is an ongoing effort and about opportunity. Recognising everyone has individual needs for tools to succeed and grow, and empowering employees with the tools they need to be successful, based on those needs. In contrast, equality means providing each person with the same resources, regardless of their needs. Equality in a hybrid environment would mean, e.g., equipping everyone with the same desk, regardless of where they’re at, their physical needs, or the limitations of their space. Equity, however, would mean, e.g., giving employees a budget to get a desk of their choice - so they can get one that suits their needs best.
In consequence, hybrid work leads to complex challenges for leaders
This complexity of hybrid work means that leaders have to manage many more factors.
Greater variance in employee experience
There is the potential to reveal and exacerbate inequity. Hybrid leadership is fundamentally an issue of equity and inclusion, especially since a hybrid environment exacerbates these issues.
FOMO (fear of missing out) is real. In a previous company I worked with, remote employees would regularly travel to the office voluntarily because they felt it was the only way for them to get a picture of what was really going on at the company.
Leaders need to turn amalgamation of very different physical environments into a unified experience. Instead of just optimising for a good office experience or a good remote experience, we also face the challenge of creating a good mixed experience between the two.
Increased communication complexity
Knowledge and information are harder to share consistently. In other words, communication takes more effort.
Artificial harmony, niceness, gossiping can seep in, leading to an “us vs. them” culture between office and remote workers. In a previous hybrid company I worked with, it became clear that lots of employees were learning critical information from hallway chatter, and remote workers felt left out.
Organisations are still learning how to do hybrid, and do it well
The majority of organisations were not explicitly designed for hybrid work, but adopted it only over time. This also means that companies are still figuring out this operational model, which takes time. They will get things wrong along the way, and at least some of this learning will happen at the disadvantage to their employees.
Policies, benefits, frameworks are often designed for on-site by default and then adapted for hybrid/remote. This leads to remote work setups being more of an afterthought, or at least less thought out.
Highly political organisations are harder to navigate in hybrid mode.
Your organisation is very likely biased towards in-office or, less commonly, remote work, and not aware of it. This will show up in its processes, practices, and recognition systems.
There are a multitude of reasons why companies choose to go hybrid, and many more reasons why it’s challenging for leaders. Understanding the nuances of remote work and what it means for different groups of people can increase empathy and form a solid basis for a more effective, and more equal, hybrid working environments.
Now you have a good grasp of the theory behind hybrid working models and what it takes to lead successfully in this context, let’s move onto practical steps and examples of how to create an effective and supportive environment for your teams. Check out part two of the series here, which features exclusive insights from engineering leaders who work in hybrid SaaS companies ranging from 50 people startups to 5000 employees, to global megacorps with 150k+ employees!
