Try these five steps to humanise hybrid work and create a successful blueprint for business

‘Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo and willow survives by bending with the wind.’ – – Bruce Lee

When it comes to hybrid working models, some businesses have gone all-in and don’t care if you come in four days of the year, whereas others are adamant that the office is the only place to work. Throw in other critical issues, especially COVID-19 and there’s a lot at stake for businesses to get the balance right, writes Mark LeBusque.

Some hybrid work experiments have proven to be an incredible success, where others have resulted in an increase in disputes for unfair treatment of employees. This is where flexibility and rigidity are at odds.

So where is the truly flexible point where both business owners and employees can bend enough to create a successful business blueprint for the future and turn a draft document into a global best-seller?

I have advocated and experimented with some radical and very successful approaches to flexible work and  there is no one size fits all.

Here are my five tips to make hybrid work truly flexible:

Trust is the foundation of hybrid work

The biggest mistake we can make is that we don’t trust employees to be working if they’re not in sight. The pandemic has shown that humans can be trusted to do great work when not physically supervised. The old adage of ‘to be seen is to be productive’ is so yesterday and has no place in a more flexible work agreement. If that’s your mindset, then teleport yourself back to the early 1900s when humans were considered nothing more than outputs and units of labour. The first and most important tip is to change your story about trust by ‘trust implicitly’. Anything else just won’t work and is an energy sapper.

Every human is unique

One size does not fit all when it comes to flexible work, and we’ve seen how trying to put all employees into one box has negative impacts on motivation, engagement and discretionary effort. The truly flexible business manager will sit down with each employee and create an individual flexible work arrangement. Why would Michelle or James who are single parents with school-aged children wanting to spend quality time with them after school pick up, have the same flexible arrangements as John who is single and loves nothing more than being with friends camping and roughing it in the outdoors three days a week?

Get radically creative with performance goals

The Fair Work Commissions award flexibility scheme may not apply to your business but heed these words. ‘The schedule’s working from home provisions aim for agreements that balance the personal and work responsibility of the employee with the business needs of the employer’. Take a creative approach and why not build non-work-related goals into the employee performance plan and acknowledge the human and not just the ‘worker’? It might only be one non-work-related goal but it will have a positive impact on the relationship and the formation of trust.

It’s not all about Working from Home (WFH)

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket here as a business owner. Working from home is only one potential element of flexible work. Get the creative juices flowing and involve your staff in a brainstorming session to truly explore and experiment with what flexible work could be. Changes to the span of hours, days worked, locations both temporary and permanent are all on the table right now. Leave no stone unturned and remember great ideas can come from anyone in your business.

Don’t ‘guilt trip’ your employees

When we eventually return in some format to the office, business owners must be 100 per cent conscious of the throwaway lines that create a level of guilt for the employees. Looking at your watch and rolling out one-liners such as ‘good afternoon’, ‘It’s alright for some’ and ‘I was here until midnight last night’ are not useful and will soon erode any feeling of trust and psychological safety for your employees.

The policymakers at this moment in time have been presented with an amazing opportunity right now to lead the way on flexible working arrangements and turn their current draft into a global best-seller. The only thing stopping them from ending up in the two-dollar book bin is inflexibility.

How flexible are you prepared to be?

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