A quarter* of UK workers would resign if they were forced to return to the office post-pandemic. This research published in March this year found that UK workers were the most reluctant in Europe to return to the office full-time.

Furthermore, 37% feel that their company is avoiding implementing new hybrid ways of working including flexible working schedules which include WFH. Instead, most are persisting with compulsory office attendance from a fixed date later this summer. Is there a disconnect between what workers want in terms of the option to WFH, and many employers’ desire to get as many as possible back to the office?

Employers may have a point as a good deal is lost in translation when we work remotely. A study by employee experience management platform Totem found that those working only from home can experience a lack of employee engagement. Over half (55%) of workers in this recent study, reported that collaboration within a team is harder if everyone is working remotely all the time. More than half (59%) felt less connected with team mates and 57% felt less able to connect with people in the wider organisation outside their immediate team.

Remote working demands that to get noticed you need to be more overt in your communication – on platforms such as Microsoft Teams you have to raise your hand and reach out directly for support. That becomes more difficult, particularly for younger workers, if unfamiliar people are in a virtual meeting. These barriers to collaboration can become  psychological barriers which foster disengagement.

Teams also tend to become more siloed when remote working. Employees can feel more isolated and unsupported and work can become more output rather than outcome-orientated as the big (corporate direction and values) picture tends to get lost amidst a sea of deliverables. Worse, virtual teams tend to spend less time debating a given problem. Decisions often don’t consider all the factors in the round which may make a course of action a success (or failure).

All the evidence indicates that employees, who have been with the company under a year are the ones most likely to struggle to ask for help or raise a query. Opportunities for serendipitous learning and development, as well as for informal support and sharing of ideas with colleagues within or beyond your core team, fall away. In a nutshell, isolation increases risks of poor business outcomes, lower morale which ultimately affects productivity.

As there are clear concerns about remote-only working and clear reluctance by a significant minority of staff to go back to the office full-time, it makes absolute sense to plan for the reality of hybrid working.

Any hybrid working plan needs to consider counteracting any of the aspects of remote working which may be promoting employee disengagement today. It’s critical to put this plan in now or, many predict that as soon as the job market has stabilised, you are likely to see an exodus of talent which could put the brakes on post-pandemic recovery and growth plans.

So, what are the Top 5 Considerations for those Creating Hybrid Working Plans Now:

1. Leaders need to make themselves more visible: ‘Town Halls’ where all staff have an opportunity to quiz senior leadership on the direction of the business, while leaders have a chance to explain how the company’s planning is adjusting to external changes, make good sense. As more staff return to the office, these can become hybrid events when you have some face to face and some still working remotely.

These sessions do not have to be held in your offices if they are not geared to offering a highly immersive, collaborative experience to those dialling in remotely. You could consider hiring dedicated high tech spaces in flexible workspaces like Scale Space’s Interaction.Works-built Collaboration Room to make sure these events work for both types of workers and don’t effectively discriminate against those joining remotely.

2. Staff need to be made to feel more visible: one of the main reasons staff morale has suffered in the pandemic is the failure of managers to give their staff a pat on the back for a job well done. Why not open up an online forum for sharing daily or weekly successes, no matter how small? It’s not just about hitting work task targets. They can be related to non-work issues like sticking with mind or body health regimes or even taking holiday to break unhealthy presenteeism-linked burn out issues.

Identify the moments which matter most to employees & support them remote and ‘in real life’ (face to face). Ensure those moments which define how you think about your employer and your job are supported effectively as possible regardless of the employee’s location.

So, if one of those moments is onboarding when you join a new company, offer face to face or remote onboarding options and support them equally well using the right type of collaborative technology. It could make the difference between retaining your talent long-term and getting off to a false start with some which leads to an uptick of early resignations.

3. Make sure you are measuring employee experience and ensure they feel engaged: Many firms have been running weekly online check-ins or polls with samples of employees to make sure their needs are being met (within reason) and concerns heard. These feedback loops are a good way of uncovering what employees are looking for in the hybrid working ‘new deal’.

Do they want to work 2-3 days per week only? Do they want to determine which days they work from home? What other pressures on their time are affecting this? Perhaps they have found themselves shouldering more childcare or looking after an elderly relative through the pandemic?

4. Consider creating more flexible workspaces which work better for some staff: The pandemic has created an opportunity to rethink where and how we work. Now is the time to explore pulling out those lines of desks facing each other and instead great collaboration spaces where teams can work more productively. Consider supplementing smaller HQs with more flexible, hire by the hour/week/month workspaces, which work better for specific teams of people – perhaps because they all live within easy commuting distance of a space or that space offers facilities which enable more productive meetings with wider cross border teams for example.
5. Create workspaces designed to enable creativity: Many managers have remarked that one of the biggest losses in the pandemic has been loss of forums for creativity. The best ideas often come while chatting over a coffee in the canteen or water cooler. The endless virtual meetings, often working to specific agendas and end goals, leave us feeling wrung out and lacking in creativity. Ideas cannot be as easily thrown around in virtual-only meetings, perhaps because it’s more difficult to build trust, read body language and riff of each other. Conversation naturally becomes more stilted.

Finally, there is no hard and fast template for building Hybrid Working strategies…yet. However, the key is to keep listening to your employees, continue motivating, inspiring and reinforcing the big picture of what the business is about – what it’s striving to achieve and how they are the vital part of realising those wider goals and values.

*survey by Personio