What is ‘hybrid working’?

Hybrid working grew from the pandemic. The similar concept of ‘flexible working’ had been growing for some time - that’s when you have the occasional day working from home, or start later to avoid commuter chaos - but many workers wanted to take that a step further, and simply, to work from multiple locations as desired, to suit their needs and schedule. That’s hybrid working.

So, a hybrid example might be: instead of working from home some days and from the central company office on others, you might prefer to have a desk at a local coworking space when it suits you, only heading to the CBD office for team building or important face-to-face meetings - and working from home on those days that you have to get to work very early or very late.

The advantage of this hybrid example is that you’re getting the motivation and companionship of working in a professional environment most days, while maintaining full flexibility of your schedule and, most importantly, avoiding the commute. It gives separation between work and home life when you want it, and it provides that important water-cooler conversation you get from working within a bright, vibrant community.

How does hybrid work for teams?

Hybrid working is ideal for teams, and coworking businesses are now finding that they have more clusters of workers who’re using it to their advantage.

An example here is the ‘halfway office’. It’s rare that everyone in a work team lives in the same location, and even more unlikely that everyone lives within walking distance of the CBD office. That can lead to a lot of lost time commuting for the team, or perhaps even one team member doing all the heavy lifting by driving for an hour or more each day to get to the office.

By taking a cluster of desks at a coworking office on the city fringe instead, closer to where the majority of workers live, everyone’s commute is reduced, and the team can still get the benefit of working as a group when it suits them. It’s also possible just to schedule certain days that the team works together and then work remotely other times to get the best of both worlds.

But what happens to the corporate office?

It won’t be a surprise to hear that many corporates are already moving to downsize their CBD offices. Even before COVID, they were starting to reduce the number of offices and dedicated spaces for their staff and were increasingly utilising hot-desking to make better use of the space. Since COVID, this trend has really kicked on.

In many real estate and human resources publications, the conversation is all about making the CBD office more of a lounge room than a board room - a place that’s pleasant for staff to come together for meetings, functions and team building, not a factory farm of cubicles.

Of course, the corporate office isn’t totally redundant and isn’t going away any time soon. But whether someone chooses to work from the head office depends on each individual’s preferences and needs. And commuting to an office, paying for parking, only to find your coworkers are working from home or are away sick, isn’t a rewarding experience. In fact, the trend is that it’s the trip to the corporate office that needs to be planned, not the alternatives.

A quick guide on how to propose hybrid to your manager

• First, do a schedule for the next fortnight, showing where you’d work and how. Prepare a real-life example of your work needs and where you’d like to be based.
• Look at how that would improve your productivity, well-being and work/home life balance. Would it result in more actual productive hours?
• Make a calculation of how many hours you’d save by not commuting, plus other costs you’d save on parking, petrol and vehicle costs. Extrapolate that out for a full year - you’ll be surprised how much it is.
• Go to a shared office or coworking space such as Q Space and talk through the options of membership, permanent desks, hot-desking, meeting rooms, pods, breakout spaces, screens and equipment.
• Take that to your manager and show them the benefits - the spaces you’ll be working from, the increase in productivity, and how it will improve your well-being.

Ready now?

In summary, hybrid working simply means making the spaces available to you work for you. Used correctly, hybrid principles allow much higher productivity and better work/life balance. Hybrid also means improved well-being, improved motivation and opportunities from being based in a diverse, vibrant community. And, as we all try to save the planet in our own small ways, it means less wasteful commuting and energy use.