Tomorrow’s ‘Hybrid Workplace’ Will Require Different Skills — and More Data

In short:

• As companies look to their post-pandemic futures, the idea of a “hybrid workplace” has gained traction, as it allows for some employees to continue working remotely and others to come to the office.
• A hybrid work policy would allow both businesses and employees to embrace the convenience and cost savings of remote work without totally losing the in-person component. However, the policy isn’t without its own hurdles.
• Bradley Killinger, CEO of workforce insights company Sapience Analytics, joins Brainyard to discuss the considerations involved in this new way of working.

Ever since Microsoft announced in early October its intention to let more folks work from home post-pandemic , “hybrid workplace” has become a business buzzword. Hybrid workplace policies allow for a more flexible work arrangement, with some employees working from home, others in an office and perhaps some coming in for specific situations and/or a designated percentage of the time. Companies are realizing the lower real estate costs and productivity benefits of remote employees and wanting to capitalize on the trend but without fully ditching in-person interactions.

This shift isn’t as simple as tossing employees laptops and setting up a few virtual happy hours. It will require changing how companies think about employee performance, culture, connection, hiring and skills. To explore these effects, Brainyard reached out to Bradley Killinger, CEO of Sapience Analytics , an analytics company that provides real-time workforce insights, to get the lowdown on the hybrid workplace — and how data is destined to play a big role in it.

Brainyard: Can you explain how the hybrid workplace has evolved to this point and where you see it going?

Bradley Killinger: So I think of a hybrid workplace in two phases. First, there was life before COVID-19. You had companies like [Sapience] that were out trying to pitch a proposition to companies that they could lower their real estate costs and drive higher employee engagement by moving several different types of roles to work from home. And we often got a lot of resistance with companies saying, “No, we’ve made all these investments [in our office]” or, “If we can’t see our employees, we have to assume they’re probably not working.”

And then COVID happened. Over a billion knowledge workers were shifted from their office to their homes. Our original hypothesis was really put to the test, but at scale.

I think we’re going to come out of a pandemic with something completely different where companies are going to divest out of [much of their] real estate. You’re going to have a lot of employees that are going to demand that they can work from wherever they want to. And I think that’s going to be a winning proposition for both sides. I think the million dollar question is, how do you actually pull that off?

The software management systems you have currently set up in most companies have a lot of big gaps that are going to make fulfilling that reality a challenge, but it’s absolutely doable. This hybrid model, or new way of working, is going to emerge [on a larger scale] 6 to nine months from now. Frankly, across our client base, we’re seeing pretty dramatic moves where companies are really starting to take action, and that will have long-term impact as they go forward.

BY: What are the pros and cons of the hybrid model?

BK: I think the pros start at the massive opportunity for companies to reshape their cost model. If you look at most companies, real estate is going to be their second or third biggest cost item. On the pro side for employees, as they become more comfortable with working remotely, that obviously offers a lifestyle where they aren’t commuting and have more time with family.

I think the negative of this is that we’re seeing across the board in our global customer set that the managers of the past are not necessarily equipped to manage in this world. Work traditionally has been the idea that workers congregate in a centralized location. You have a handful of managers that might peek out their doorway and manually verify that an employee is in their cubicle and getting work done. I think the managers of tomorrow will require a much different skill set.

BY: In terms of employee management, are there considerations for companies debating the move to a permanent hybrid model?

BK: I know we are seeing the question around culture in our business right now. How do you maintain whatever your culture is in your company when everyone is at home? People are losing that personal connection. And this mixes in to employee engagement and employee morale. So how do you unite and get people into a common mission when they feel isolated?

We’re trying a whole assortment of things. We’ve hosted virtual wine tastings and are doing a monthly little television series called “Coffee With Killinger” where we bring in one to two employees to talk about non- work-related topics. I think there are new ways [to foster culture and engagement] that are going to emerge from the hybrid model, but it is something for companies to plan for.

In the same vein as culture comes the question of hiring and onboarding. It’s going to involve getting many more levels of engagement in the hiring process to really be able to vet candidates. Our company has hired 12 people through the pandemic. Our struggle has not been finding the right talent, but actually how to get them onboarded. And just as much as managers are unsure about team performance, I think employees right now are just as concerned considering the state of the economy and unemployment.

The biggest issue right now that we see with our customers has been around employee burnouts in remote work. That is where we are spending a lot of time. We have almost a trillion hours of data with information by location, by industry, etc., and when we analyze these anonymous work patterns, we’re seeing that there is over an hour of extra work a day being applied by employees [than before the pandemic]. So if you think about it, the hidden capacity that has been found in the system is tremendous — but what it really means is that companies are doing a very poor job of delineating or building walls between personal time and work time. And so that issue of burnout right now has been top of mind because there’s zero question that people are working far more hours right now and producing far more than they did in the pre-pandemic world, which is extraordinarily problematic if it pushes employees out of the company.

Ultimately, I think there are several things that companies need to focus on to be successful in the new hybrid model:

• How can you ensure employee engagement?
• How can you ensure burnout isn’t going to happen?
• How do you effectively onboard new talent into your organization?
• How do you promote a shared vision, common set of values and culture for the company?
• How do you handle performance management in a remote world?

I think companies that handle those five things are going to gain a huge competitive advantage and really be able to excel in this new hybrid model, because ultimately it comes back to happy employees.

BY: From an infrastructure perspective, are there things that companies need to consider?

BK: There is a whole rethink of the infrastructure required to send employees to work from home. How do you arm them with the actual machines they need, with the software builds they need, with the right equipment to be productive at home on a permanent basis? But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be more investment.

We’re working with our clients to look at their data of their software asset utilization and hardware utilizations. For instance, one of our largest client’s top five software costs made up 80% of their software spend and had a 90% usage rate in the office environment. With employees working remotely, those costs were still making up 80% of the software spend — but only had 7% utilization.

Analyzing the data allows businesses to create a picture of how the work gets done and determine the investments they need to make in order to get that work done in the most efficient manner. It is definitely going to be a reallocation. Every customer we’re working with right now is going through some degree of analysis to try to understand what infrastructure they will need to be successful in this new hybrid model.

BY: Which skills do you think managers in the hybrid workplace will need?

BK: I believe that, first and foremost, managers will need to be open to analyzing and accepting data. It’s kind of a new human capital currency. I think companies used to pick managers that had some of the ability to understand the numbers and operations, but a lot of those management decisions were made upon their ability to have the right gut instinct or to maybe be an in-person persuader. And if you take that out of the equation and take the fact that they might not be in front of large amounts of people in-person for extended periods of time, then you have to get to where you have more operationally-thinking people that are able to analyze and apply the data across the business in a very humane, practical way.

“I think companies used to pick managers based on ability to have the right gut instinct or be an in-person persuader. But if managers aren’t in front of people for extended periods of time, then you have to have more operationally-thinking people who are able to analyze and apply data across the business in a very humane, practical way.”