Hybrid Work: The Leadership Series

Hybrid work is here to stay. Moreover, it’s one of the most important shifts that we can recall in corporate culture over the last 20 years. Read our series on navigating these new regimes successfully.

Hybrid Work — The Pitfalls; Significant Organizational Shortcomings Exist (Part 4)

As most firms have now adopted flexible hybrid work schedules, clear challenges are appearing for management to do more with less frequent in-person, co-located work, which is critical to any organization’s success. Our final blog on hybrid work is focused on the importance of co-located work on a wide variety of business performance factors that are longer-term in nature and harder to measure. The potential for hidden attrition and depreciation over time in key areas such as teamwork, trust-building, ideation, culture development, engagement, and training and development is real. Managers must redouble their efforts and train the firm’s leadership with new skills to do more with less time in the office or other in-person work environments.

Leadership in Hybrid Work: Management Best Practices (Part 3)

The challenges of adopting hybrid work organizational structures are significant, including upskilling managers to lead effectively with less in-person office time available. This is the subject of our third blog, “Leadership in Hybrid Work.” The nature of which jobs and departments can effectively work on a hybrid basis, and to what extent (how many days remote will work, and on what schedule), requires a decentralized and interactive trial and error approach. The most effective guidance on adopting hybrid work cultures (not including the pandemic safety protocols still necessary) came from Vanguard: “[We] will pursue a working model that will blend increased flexibility with the known benefits of in-person collaboration.”

Hybrid Work Coming of Age: Innovation Bottlenecks in Leadership Development (Part 2)

“Imagine at the end of the next meeting you host (probably including both in-person and virtual participants) that every team member is sent a confidential text asking them to rate the time spent with the questions ‘1) On value of the time committed, would you attend this meeting again or recommend it to a colleague? 2) Rate your recent meeting for overall effectiveness.’ Most managers are not prepared for the Bain Net Promoter Score Card results to be widely visible in their firm and to have this scorecard tied to compensation and promotions.”

In our second blog on hybrid work, we shared our observations on challenges and best practices in the hybrid work world coming to most firms in fall 2020.

The Future of Hybrid Work Policies (Part 1)

The pandemic restrictions have led to dramatic innovations in workplace and recruiting practices. In our first blog of the series, we unpack the rapid evolution of work practices that are significantly benefiting more nimble industry competitors. Our recent recruiting experience shows dramatic benefits for employers that allow staff some flexibility around remote work while updating office work formats to better facilitate team meetings and maintain the critical culture-building aspects of in-person interactions on a regular basis. Flexibility is proving to be a game-changer for recruiting initiatives at more senior levels, and has significantly contributed to the retention of key employees, particularly among diversity cohorts. This is one of the most important shifts that we can recall in corporate culture over the last 20 years.