Large American companies are finding that “hybrid” work has many complications.
While employers sign plans to bring white-collar workers back to offices, while still allowing them to do some work at home, many encounter obstacles. Companies are struggling with new schedules that employees must follow, where people must sit in redesigned offices, and the best way to prevent employees at home from being left out of impromptu office discussions or being overlooked by opportunities, executives say. chiefs, board directors and others.
Insurance company Prudential Financial Inc., which expects most of its approximately 42,000 employees to work at the office half the time from Labor Day, wants to ensure that not all employees choose to stay home on Mondays and Fridays and then work in the office in the middle of the week. At travel agency Expedia Group Inc., executives are trying to figure out how to hold face-to-face meetings that won’t harm those not in the room. Other employers, including software company Twilio Inc., predict that the new era of work could lead to confusion among teams, with employees gravitating to bosses who adopt their preferred work styles.
Hybrid work “will redefine expectations, rules, permissions,” says Kevin McCarty, executive director of the Chicago-based consulting firm West Monroe, which employs 1,360 people and is rethinking when its employees should work from home or enter their offices.
The new style of work is bound to be another transition for workers who a year ago had to adjust to life at home. While executives say it would be easier to manage if each employee returned to the office, or if everyone remained remote, surveys repeatedly show that most employees want a mixed approach as more adults are vaccinated. In a February survey of 1,000 companies commissioned by the LaSalle Network, a national recruiting and recruiting firm, most companies said they would adopt a hybrid model.