How is hybrid work working for you (and your organization)?

Hybrid work is here to stay. That’s why an important part of reimagining how we work–so that organizations can succeed in our uncertain economic environment while also restoring humanity to our workplaces–is figuring out how to do hybrid the right way.

While announcements from large corporations like JP Morgan Chase, Amazon, and Disney that remote work is a thing of the (not so distant) past make headlines, the reality is more complex: as many as three-quarters of organizations with employees who can do their jobs remotely have chosen a hybrid model for their workplaces.

And we’re not talking about organizations that let their employees work from home occasionally. According to the McKinsey American Opportunity Survey conducted in 2022, 58 percent of Americans have the opportunity to work from home at least one day a week, and 35 percent can work remotely full-time. Combine the number of Americans who have the ability to work remotely with the number of organizations choosing a hybrid workforce, and you’ve got a significant chunk of leaders and teams navigating this new way of working.

While many executives have resisted remote work and pushed for their employees to return to the office full-time, they’re coming up against employees who don’t want to let this flexible way of working go. The same McKinsey study revealed that when workers across sectors have the option to work remotely, a staggering 87 percent of them take it.

That’s why organizations who want to succeed in the future must, with very rare exceptions, provide flexible working arrangements like hybrid work for their employees. Hybrid work has proven to bring many benefits to both organizations and their teams, reducing costs, improving retention, combatting disengagement (including phenomena like Quiet Quitting) and ultimately bolstering the bottom line. 

“Okay, we get it!” you may be thinking. Talk to anyone leading a team, especially in the knowledge economy, and more likely than not that team will be at least partially hybrid. These statistics resonate because hybrid is the lived experience for a large percentage of workplaces today. But navigating an entirely new way of working and managing, especially in uncertain economic times, comes with its own set of unique challenges.

That’s why I’ll be spending the next six weeks talking about all things hybrid. We want to help your organization make hybrid work for you. Your organization has a unique set of circumstances, from the type of work you do to the clients you serve to the roles and locations of your team. There is no one “right way” to do hybrid, but you can do hybrid right.

While it’s helpful to understand the landscape of hybrid work today, my goal is to provide actionable insights and tools that you can apply directly to your organization. Next month, I’ll be launching a 3-Day Hybrid Challenge designed to do exactly that: provide a framework for understanding how hybrid works and guide you through that framework with key questions that will help you determine exactly how to do hybrid better. 

Follow along on LinkedIn or click here to get the 3-Day Challenge delivered directly to your inbox next month. And as always, MatchPace is here to help you make hybrid work for your organization. Send me an email at elizabeth@matchpace.net and let’s get started!