The Hybrid Working Conversation

Commuting to the workplace to maximise in-person experiences. Finding your why in the office. Watercooler chats. A successful split between work and home. No one is hitting mute on the conversation about hybrid working, as if going to the office before Covid was the unprecedented event rather than the pandemic.

The return to the workplace was not a return to work as people never stopped working. The wonder of technology and a laptop-based job enabled you to login and get busy with video calls and clearing your inbox from the comfort of your home. Once blur and visual backdrops stopped the eulogising about seeing into your homes and lives, only your WiFi connection and colleagues knew where you were.

The money you saved from commuting was spent on farewell shopping vouchers for departing colleagues who wished they could repay the generosity by sending you all a cookie or depositing 20p in your bank accounts. Cakes were disappearing from the office as people started to come back.

You proved you could work from home but it was never a permanent arrangement. After Covid restrictions and safe working practices were lifted, there was nothing to stop people coming together to rebuild the psychological contract with the buildings they work in to serve the organisations they work for.

The new, new normal

The staggered return gradually became the even newer normal as people redesigned their lives to make space for the workplace. Going to the office was no longer rare, it was the expectation and contractual obligation. The idea of touch down desks, conversational hubs and recharging the human battery through work-shaped fun soon lost out to the tradition of booking a desk for the day and doing your job.

Hybrid working is here to stay unless your job makes working from home impossible. The digital feats achieved during the pandemic and the arrival of white boards consigned flip charts, felt tip pens and sticky notes to the dustbin, unless you have a colleague who still believes anything good has ever come from something scribbled on A3 paper. “I’m a hybrid worker, get me out of here!” might be an exception.

Line managers developing their interpersonal skills as they balanced business and employee needs in handling workplace attendance and homeworking requests to create inclusive organisations.

Some people kept on their masks, while almost everyone struggled to adjust to being social after everything they lived through, remembering those who did not make it.

What happens now?

Working from home in the UK Civil Service is not uniform; while many roles offer some hybrid working, there is a general expectation for 60% office attendance. As a multifunctional civil service with frontline and operational roles and buildings that need people in them to serve senior leaders and the government, some civil servants are in the workplace all the time.

At a time when “100 per cent” is a popular phrase to express complete agreement, commitment or assurance, there is an ongoing, international debate on the purpose of being in the office. The data only shows how many people are attending the office, not what is achieved in the office and how that compares to productivity when working from home. A busy job keeps you busy and being at home does not make your job easy. Whether I am at home or in the office, my personality, job satisfaction and organisational culture determine how much work I do.

I stumbled upon the Government Property Agency’s Home working and the UK Civil Service report from 2020 which aimed to provide a solid foundation for any review of the role workplace will play in the future of the Civil Service after the Covid working from home experiment. The report found:

• Employees with poor home setups were more likely to prefer returning to the office.

• Younger employees, those in lower pay grades, and Black or Black British respondents were more likely to work from non-work-specific settings, indirectly affecting their experience.

• Civil Service employees working in SCS and Grades 6 / 7 were the most likely to have a dedicated work room or office.

• Those with better setups expressed interest in continuing remote work, suggesting home environment strongly influences future preferences.

• Only 66.7% of Civil Service employees feel connected to their colleagues and 69.3% feel connected to the organisation when working from home, suggesting that the social dimensions of work life are not consistently supported at home.

• 70% of civil servant respondents reported their perception of remote or home working has become more positive since the pandemic.

This report is nearly five years old. However, I am seeing hints of departments prioritising employee experience over delivery in evaluating property efficiency and returns on employee investment. Where the measure of experience includes critical business objectives like productivity, knowledge transfer and employee pride.

The report identified three distinct employee experience clusters: Doing (the values around productivity and ‘getting things done’), Seeing (image and sustainability) and Feeling (the more internalised emotional aspects of brand and culture). An outstanding workplace experience delivers on all three, and failure on one will almost certainly limit or undermine overall sentiment. The next steps in the report are valid today, so what are we going to do about it?

Final thoughts

I no longer worry about sitting next to the photocopier in case someone asks me to fix it. The photocopiers are tucked away and rarely used. When the office has good vibes and good people, it is a place you want to be. The enduring appeal of workplace television as work-centric shows have rocketed in popularity shows I am not alone in maintaining faith in the office. I just don’t want to be there five days a week.