Personal contact with colleagues is missing

More flexible working time models and home offices make it easier to combine work and everyday life. Visits to the doctor, bank and authorities can be easily integrated into the working day. The trip back and forth to the office and the associated time expenditure are saved. Nevertheless, the virtual working world still presents employees with major challenges. Many find it difficult to collaborate with other colleagues via video chat. Active participation in virtual meetings is also limited, as employees find it difficult to contribute virtually. Forty-five percent of Barco study participants said they found it easier to collaborate with colleagues in the office than to communicate via video chat. Virtual collaboration requires clear alignment on goals, approaches and roles. Careless planning can lead to miscommunication and frustration. Information sharing and knowledge management are also challenging over distance. Personal exchange in the coffee kitchen, in meetings or during the joint lunch break was missing for most respondents.

Improved technological infrastructure expected for a more productive workday

Employees who choose not to work in a home office even though they are allowed to do so cite inadequate technical equipment or infrastructure as the main reason. Slow, error-prone Internet connections are the main reasons. For younger employees under 30 in particular, the equipment in the home office cannot keep up with the equipment in the office (IBA survey). In addition, study participants in the Barco survey would like to see technological improvements in future meetings. Fifty-six percent of respondents were in favor of an app for participating in video and telephone conferences with the click of a button. Also desired are further development of speech recognition technologies, filters for video conferences and collaboration software to make everyday work at home easier. Meanwhile, there are numerous providers that enable services for editing and saving work documents by multiple participants. Various video conferencing providers have also already reacted and offer, for example, background formatting to give the conference participants a bit of privacy.

Hybrid meetings in formal meeting rooms preferred

An integral part of the working world is the exchange of ideas in meetings. Business travelers are often on the road for days at a time, and delays and traffic jams create time pressure and stress. Under the COVID-19 measures, things then came to a standstill. Many meetings were no longer possible in physical form. Online meetings via video chat, which had often been disdained before, became established. The majority of Barco study participants assume that the current virtual meetings will become hybrid meetings in the future, with one part of the workforce participating virtually and the other part from the office. In this regard, 75 percent of respondents prefer scheduled meetings to spontaneous meetings. The greatest advantage of this hybrid solution is that in some cases hours of travel are avoided and, if necessary, related parties can meet together directly on site. 50 percent of respondents would prefer formal meeting rooms for this purpose. The trend of the so-called huddle spaces (small meeting rooms for six to eight people equipped with seating and necessary media technology) of the past years seems to have been slowed down by the pandemic. Working together with several colleagues in small spaces seems unattractive to most for the foreseeable future.

Employee satisfaction with home offices currently remains high. However, the proportion of respondents who are very dissatisfied rose by four percentage points to eight percent compared with March 2020. A downward trend can thus be observed. According to current studies, the reason lies in particular in inadequate technical equipment and a lack of personal contact with colleagues. The hybrid working world is thus a new trend that can combine the advantages of the virtual world with those of the analog world.

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How do companies view the home office in early 2021?

After a year of corona crisis, the Munich-based Ifo Institute surveyed nearly 800 HR managers on their opinion of the home office and hybrid working. 73% of them believe that a megatrend has begun in which they want to participate. According to Corona, they also want their employees to work partly in the company and partly at home. Contributing to this attitude is the fact that most employees have adapted relatively quickly and well to the home office. Technology allows this anyway, as companies manage most of their data in a collaborative cloud, where several employees can work on a database themselves at the same time. Therefore, productivity did not drop as a result of the home office. Teams and their managers were accessible at all times, but the latter had to establish new management mechanisms. How, when, how long and in which outfit a video conference is held, whether employees must be reachable at all times via desktop chat and how to deal with e-mail, messenger and telephone, all this had to be re-established first. But it works. The question now is whether this means that the home office has become the “new normal. Experts dare to doubt this. Apart from the fact that the majority of value creation cannot be shifted to the home office, office workers also complain about some of the disadvantages of working at home. We humans are highly social and are most creative in direct interaction. Digital communication can only replace this to a limited extent. In addition to the isolation at the kitchen table, the lack of separation between work and leisure time is also a major problem for many employees in the home office. Parents who have to homeschool their children in addition to working from home suffer the most. Last but not least, employees are burdened by the lack of direct feedback: an encouraging smile in the office is still better motivation than a smiley face on the screen. This will probably never change. People want to feel they belong to a team, they want to discuss things and occasionally have a coffee together. Ergo, no one seriously aspires to permanent, exclusive home offices. Instead, the future is likely to be hybrid. One part of office work takes place in the home office, the other among people in the company office.

Hybrid working world: new work culture

Corona, however, has heralded a cultural change that is now considered irreversible. In Germany, the presence culture was very prevalent until 2019, but this now seems to be history. “New Work” was, after all, already on the rise before Corona, it referred to the hybrid way of working partly in the company office and partly in the home office. In the meantime, there are quotas for the home office, such as for three days per week. Office space projects, on the other hand, are only being tackled hesitantly. As a result, we are currently experiencing a hybridization of our working world. Home office and office presence are being balanced within the company. Individual companies are likely to adjust the ratio even more frequently in order to find the right mix for their workforce. Hybrid work situations have two interesting implications:

The housing market is regionalizing again. Pressure is disappearing in overheated urban centers.
The office of the future is being redesigned. Work cubicles in open-plan offices are probably a thing of the past.

If employees only have to travel to the office twice a week, they will once again accept longer commutes. As a result, they again prefer to live in rural areas with all their charms. Higher costs per trip are amortized by the more favorable real estate prices or rents. Since the end of 2020, the demand radius around the conurbations of Munich, Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfurt and Stuttgart has already successively increased.

Living, corporate office and hybrid working environment

Hybrid working is changing the demands on living. Commuting is becoming less frequent, but longer, and more affordable, but also different. Anyone who regularly uses their home office on up to three days a week needs a large study. Real estate experts have already calculated this: The additional space required amounts to an average of 10 m² per household. Size alone is not enough: it must also be possible to separate the study. Last but not least, it must be correctly declared in the tax return, which is uncharted territory for many employees. The classic office in the company, on the other hand, is taking on new functions. It is changing from being primarily an office workplace to a communications center. Workplaces are shared so that they can be left without personal belongings at the end of the working day. With this flexibility, companies are saving enormous capacities – in favorable cases, almost half of their office costs. Commercial architecture is moving away from small cells, creating more meeting rooms with larger spaces in offices. Increased hygiene needs must also be taken into account.

Will the corporate office disappear altogether at some point?

The answer in 2021 is: No, it will stay with us. We need physical meetings to cultivate innovativeness and team spirit. The future is hybrid, not purely digital.

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The strengths of the home office

Many have long dreamed of the possibility of working from home. That means not having to slog through rush-hour traffic and being able to sit at a desk in sweatpants for a change. Or maybe it means being in a completely different place, such as on the balcony of your vacation home with an ocean view? That’s not so realistic in COVID-19 times. But it is a possibility for the future.

For businesses, the home office offers some advantages. Less office space is needed and there is less need for social spaces. Compliance with Corona rules is much easier with reduced office use.

Whereas visiting customers in person used to be good form, everyone involved is now finding that in many cases it is more effective to meet online. There is more flexibility in terms of time and location. This not only saves travel and accommodation costs, but also a lot of time. By eliminating the need to travel, less CO2 is produced, thus additionally protecting the environment.

What’s missing when working from home

You dream about something until it becomes reality. Then you realize that there are not only advantages. This is how it can go with mobile working.

It starts with a suitable workplace. The majority of employees do not have a separate workroom at home. The playing children run through the living room and the best seats are already occupied by home schooling. If then the partner also works from home, it can become very tight. That’s when you might wish you had life as a single person back. But alone in your own four walls all day? The ceiling threatens to fall on the head even of stable personalities.

Health protection can often come up short outside of the employer’s sight. There is a lack of ergonomic office furniture, good lighting conditions and sufficient space. In addition, there are psychological stresses, such as the lack of separation between work and private life or the feeling of having to be constantly available.

Personal and informal contacts are an important part of everyday office life. A quick “Can you show me that?” solves many questions through official channels. None of this is possible in the home office.

The hybrid working world as a model for the future

The months-long trial phase triggered by Corona has delivered many useful results. One thing has become very clear and has also been confirmed by surveys: hardly anyone wants to work exclusively remotely. Most would like to work two to three days from home and the rest of the week on-site. This trend runs through all age groups. So it’s clear that there is broad support for hybrid working among employees.

Of course, these benefits can be implemented predominantly in the office environment. Sales and customer service can also be done well from home. Areas such as production, workshops, laboratories or transportation are less suitable.

For hybrid working to be a successful model, there are a few points to consider. A change in management style is required. Since there are fewer opportunities for informal exchange, these should be created online. On-site meetings are equally important. Working hours should be organized to allow face-to-face meetings from time to time.

If one really wants to save work space, the office organization must be changed. There will be fewer fixed places. Some employees will have to be gently introduced to this new situation.

Solving a problem at home is often a bigger hurdle than with the colleague next door. This applies in particular to questions of digitization. Setting up an internal service center helps, as does an expanded training offering.

Another important point is the onboarding process for new colleagues. Separated from the real working day, it is more difficult for new employees to get on board. The communication of the corporate culture and important onboarding facts must be planned particularly carefully.

The hybrid working world is a huge opportunity for the future, but it is not a foregone conclusion. Implementation should be well planned and not rushed. The valuable experiences of the pandemic period can be transformed together, step by step, into a successful model of tomorrow’s work.

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Hybrid working world in the Robert Half Report

The labor market report of the personnel service provider Robert Half was published for the first time for the year 2021. Primarily, it shows recruiting trends and the expectations of companies and employees. However, it also looks at hybrid working. Its popularity has increased during the pandemic, both among employees and employers, 86% of whom now see hybrid working as a permanent model for the future. Employees certainly feel relieved in the home office, and employers remain agile through hybrid models. At the same time, this form of work forces companies to strictly expand digitization. Most of them find this compulsion quite productive. Among other things, the technical skills of their employees are growing. A second effect is purely economic: If hybrid working is fully possible, companies can ensure their business continuity and thus productivity even in a crisis – Corona will certainly not have been the last.

More job postings for the hybrid work world

The Robert Half Report shows that the number of job postings with an explicit home office option increased by 54% in 2020. The research in question was conducted by labor market analyst Burning Glass on behalf of Robert Half, and was included in the report. Some numbers from it:

• There were 54,309 more jobs advertised with a home office option compared to the same period in 2019.
• Hybrid job openings for assistant and office professionals grew by 72%.
• In accounting, 28% more hybrid jobs were posted.
• In IT, the number of related job openings grew by 6%.

Individual areas for which hybrid working is particularly suited include systems analysis and security, communications, payroll, credit management, sales and procurement, DevOps management, back-end and front-end development, asset management, project management and cloud engineering, according to the Robert Half study. Robert Half’s senior managing director for Europe Sven Hennige saw reason for optimism when the report was released in February 2021, saying that companies may well grow as much as they did before the pandemic after a restructuring phase toward hybrid work models. Hennige cited global shifts toward hybrid work, the growing importance of e-commerce models, data-driven planning and operations processes, and efforts to build more agile workforces as reasons. In that sense, the pandemic is an opportunity, he said. It accelerates important trends in the world of work that would have taken hold even without the Corona crisis, just nowhere near as quickly. Burning Glass CEO Matt Sigelman described the rise of hybrid jobs as a prime example of the paradigm shift brought about by the pandemic.

Capgemini study: demands on managers in hybrid work models

The home office and hybrid working require new leadership skills. That’s what a study by Munich-based management and IT consulting services provider Captgemini suggests. The experts see an increased need for the implementation of remote working, which they now also call hybrid working. According to their research, this demonstrably increases productivity, with 63% of all companies benefiting significantly. The study’s authors cite the following reasons

• better collaboration with digital tools
• Eliminated travel time and expense costs
• More flexible working hours
• Reduction in the size of offices including surrounding infrastructure (parking spaces, canteen, etc.) through workplace sharing

Capgemini cites similar areas to Robert Half in which hybrid models perform particularly well. The experts presented the following figures:

• By 2024, the companies they surveyed expect an average productivity increase of 17%.
• In the last quarter of 2020, 88% of them were able to reduce their real estate costs through hybrid working models.
• 92% are convinced of further savings in fixed costs.
• 70% of the companies believe that the productivity gains will be sustainable.

As a prerequisite for a successful continuation of the trend, the authors cite new management structures and models that address the special features of a home office workplace. For example, virtual meetings may need to be scheduled differently from face-to-face meetings and may need to be restructured in terms of time. Communication with colleagues in the home office would have to be reorganized. There would have to be fixed rules about which messaging channels are used and the frequency of communication. For example, the question arises as to how promptly e-mails or messenger messages should be answered, what role the telephone plays, and whether all colleagues must keep an open chat on the desktop for brief questions at all times. This would have to be clarified by the management level, according to Capgemini’s experts.

Global expectations for the hybrid working world

Meta-studies show that 30% of all companies globally expect hybrid work to reach 70% by 2024. 48% believe their office space requirements will decrease by at least 10%. The trend towards hybrid working appears to be irreversible.

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Why do people want the hybrid work world back?

The Corona crisis is currently making remote work at home an experiment under duress. As a result, companies have had to quickly and unbureaucratically establish a digital infrastructure where it had not existed before.
Employees have had to focus on new technological tools and quickly develop new methods and skills. In this way, they have learned that working from home can work for entire teams and divisions, even though they didn’t think it was conceivable. The fact that team meetings can be held not only in person but also digitally is also new. At the same time, employees have noticed that they can use the newly gained time in a different and at the same time meaningful way by taking fewer vacation trips or commuting to work.

At the same time, they have learned that they need inspiring moments and connection, which come from meeting colleagues in the kitchen or in the elevator. In the near future, there will probably be no going back to the daily office culture and at the same time no desire for a full-time home office. Hybrid work will therefore be completely normal in the future. So it is up to the people themselves to be able to shape this hybrid world of work in the best way for everyone. At the same time, the so-called Shift Collective is a descendant of this hybrid way of working.

Studylink

The current design of the research

A new study now aims to shed light on the future world of work. To this end, those responsible have opted for a “hybrid” design with a scientific mix of methods. This is qualitative, secondary and quantitative. In the qualitative interviews, a total of 20 senior executives from large companies, medium-sized companies and start-ups were interviewed, who are responsible for the future world of work because of their own role. In a 30- to 90-minute guideline, the research team gained insight into the current findings of the working world changed by the Corona pandemic and, at the same time, into the plans and strategies of organizations of that DACH region for the
period after the pandemic. The findings were presented- partially anonymized – in this study.

The study uses the terms mobile office and home office synonymously for the sake of everyday language, even if there are differences in employment law. In a quantitative survey, a total of 530 employees and managers were asked via a digital survey between November 2020 and January 2021 about their own personal perception of the current work situation and their ideal wishes for future conditions at work.

In a secondary study, the research team analyzed the top 30 studies and
findings that developed data-based results on hybrid working in Germany during the Corona pandemic. All of the findings are brought together in a co-creative development process in the ten theses of the study. This results in many recommendations for action for employees.

The importance of the Shift Collective

The Shift Collective is an alliance of innovative consultancies for a new economy. This is an economy that aligns people, profit and planet. Together, it is a meaningful partnership for businesses large and small in the areas of innovation, leadership and transformation. It is clear, not just since the Corona pandemic, that conventional patterns of work are not up to the complex difficulties of the future. New answers are needed, as well as a willingness to make bold decisions. These are decisions that will change companies and the way they work together in general. The most important goal is to resilient and ready for the future and to be able to react flexibly and quickly to changing conditions and possible crises. In order to sustain change in the world of work, people are driving change on different levels every day. Together as a community of courageous and humane pioneers, this certainly works well.

The 3+2 model

Today’s working world is particularly complex, and this also affects hybrid work requirements in companies. There is generally no simple solution. The interviews conducted with HR decision-makers revealed that companies rarely opt for a general solution for their employees, and almost all of them rely on options or flexible concepts from which employees are free to choose. The most important goal is to meet the diversity of processes, appropriate team sizes and applicable regulations.

It is noticeable that employees are increasingly involved in the development of future work models. In general, there is still too little knowledge about the advantages and disadvantages of these models, that the needs of the employees should be decisive. For example, an employee of Thermondo, a digital craft company with about 450 employees, reports that they still scheduled an employee survey in the summer of 2020.

The core question was how many working days employees should be at work in order to be able to do a sufficient job. The final result here was a figure of 2.6 days. From this, Thermondo had produced a 2+x rule, which states that 150 employees at the headquarters in Berlin must be at work for two days and the remaining three they can work wherever they want. This could be the actual workplace in the offices or even on vacation in Mallorca.
The result was a little more conservative in a media agency, reports the HR manager here. Starting with an arrangement of 20 percent remote work before the Corona pandemic, the offer here is also opening up gradually. The full team of CEOs at the agency has decided that this will be doubled.

That is, it will be increased to 40 percent. This equates to two days a week in remote work. In IBM, a digitally distinct corporation, Janzen, the head of HR, assumes probably 50 to 60 percent time in the home office. Only two to three days at the on-site workplace is a possible scenario. The Shift survey conducted reiterates across industries that a total of 65 percent of participants would like to work remotely at home two to three days a week in the future.

The interviews with HR decision-makers show that companies rarely opt for a blanket solution for employees, with almost all opting for flexible models from which individual employees can choose. The goal is to accommodate the diversity of processes, team sizes and existing regulations. At the same time, it is noticeable that employees are increasingly involved in the development of future working time models. There is still too little experience of the advantages and disadvantages of these models, so the needs of the employees are decisive.

The office as a place – of creativity, identification and connection

One of the most discussed questions for the hybrid working world is what role the
workplace should take in the distant future. While it was an unchangeable principle of the working world until some time ago, the investments in real estate close to the city and larger campus projects are revealing many perspectives. This was formulated by many experts in recent months in the departure to the workplace. The new analyses have shown that this will continue to have an important and at the same time radically changed influence on the world of work in the future. While 63 percent of the employees surveyed agree that operational
work can easily be done from home, some 76 percent want a place for good teamwork and informative exchanges. SO the office space becomes the place for the team and for creative space. Individual and new office concepts must be created for this. These are mainly fewer workstations and one-man offices, more areas for meeting colleagues and so-called creative spaces.

One executive board member of a major insurance group interviewed by the research team
therefore already had his own real estate re-evaluated and has decided that he will part with 30 percent of the space – and instead invest heavily in the remaining 70 percent.

Whether flexible workplaces such as coworking spaces will be newly rented by the individual companies in the
near future and made available to employees for creative meetings is currently still being reviewed by the companies surveyed in the project.

None of the companies surveyed by the research team wants to do without the office altogether. In this context, the impact of office space as a culture-shaping and identity-forming element is far too high. One management of a medium-sized company in the retail sector explains that it notices that employees are now not as closely connected to the company as they used to be. The HR director of a large IT corporation affirms the new challenge. In general, the culture is shaped by people and by the daily interaction of colleagues on site.

Above all, values are communicated very well on site. Above all, if the employees lose the closeness to the culture of their own company, then at the same time the existing employer very quickly becomes interchangeable. Employees can theoretically do the same job at another company. For this reason, it is a major challenge to ensure that culture is maintained in the hybrid working world.

However, hybrid work is not the swan song of the company’s own on-site workplace, but rather shapes a new type of evolutionary stage for it. Companies are therefore faced with the challenge of establishing identity, culture and employee loyalty in a digital space and repositioning the workplace to meet the needs of hybrid work.
Here, exchange, encounter and creativity become the most significant design principles.

Flexwork as an opportunity to combat the shortage of skilled workers

While hybrid working brings many new challenges for companies, they recognize above all the opportunity in being able to better retain or attract talent in their own and more flexible working environment.
Above all, companies with disadvantages in terms of location or a highly competitive
supply of skilled workers stand to benefit from this. The HR director of a large IT group explains that the company
can now make better offers to customers that are also attractive to the best talent – and for which they don’t necessarily have to move to the country right away.

On the other hand, colleagues from international or rural areas can be included more optimally.
The more flexible deployment of part-time employees through hourly or selective working hours or shift work phases with longer breaks becomes attractive for companies and also for employees without the need for lengthy commutes. In this way, both sides benefit from the flexibility and the companies only pay for what they really need. And employees can better combine their own work with other pursuits, family or hobbies.
The Chief Customer Officer at the company Thermondo, has a fitting example of this. In this way, employees who work in customer service can flexibly take on shifts, for example in the morning and evening, and at the same time have a longer break at lunchtime if there is ever a need. This is optimal, and they wouldn’t do that if they were in the office, that these four work-free hours at midday are of no use to them in that case. In this way, hybrid work becomes a stimulus program for work matching, internationalization and flexibilization – and in this way can become a gamechanger primarily for “hidden champions” in rural regions. The
elimination of geographical distance as a limiting factor can improve the matching of job seekers as well as employers. In the end, economic productivity can then be increased.

Digital fitness as hybrid work with good technology

With the Corona pandemic, digital transformation has experienced a major upswing in Germany. Here, new types of tools were developed, disseminated or integrated into already existing environments. This was a successful act for many IT departments.

Creative formats for digital work

Before the Corona pandemic, dressing up the Employee Experience was one of the most important tasks of HR departments. In the lockdown, this was put to a particularly tough test for a long time.
In the interviews, individual managers recount their experiences of how provocative the onboarding of newly acquired employees is in the remote setting. When employees feel like teams, it’s very
difficult if the employer can’t find a point of reference for allies in this new situation at work during the team meeting or while walking through the rooms. In individual cases, this can even lead to termination after only a few weeks.

Conclusion

This study describes the current changes in the world of work brought about by the Corona pandemic. Various examples were explained of how the companies can cope with the changed situation and also that the employees can benefit from it.

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