The world’s biggest working from home experiment — forced upon us by C-19 — has been a real eye opener for people and businesses alike. For businesses it’s busted myths about remote working, tested every part of the operations process from tech, security and logistics and it’s brought work and home life closer together. Giving rise to the need for a whole new set of rituals and leadership practices. For people, it opens doors and opportunities, pathing the way for more flexible working patterns so they can clock in how and when they work best. It’s created a seismic shift in the way we live our lives and fuelled a change in human behaviour so significant, the office as we knew it has changed forever.

Now the return to the office is on the minds of business leaders as they start to think about the role of the office, how hybrid working works in practice and how to create the right environment that brings the best out of our old world into the new world of work.

Here’s a round up of the final day of the Work Reimagined Festival:

• Home to focus, the office to collaborate. Many reports show open-planned offices have more distractions, make people sick more easily, and a lack of privacy means there’s more pressure to work longer and harder, but not more productively. It’s no secret that most people are missing the social element of their office, as well as the ability to collaborate and be inspired, and there is a place for it. Hybrid working creates an exciting opportunity to get the best of both worlds. Employees should be empowered to have the autonomy to flex and choose which working environment is best suited to their task, being judged on outcomes as opposed to time ‘chained to the desk’.
• The future of work is different for every business, but there’s one thing that’s the same. We’ve become unapologetic and real about our home lives and after seeing each other’s homes, families and pets we’re now a lot closer to co-workers. The way we engage with one another is more authentic; leaders included. The work mask has well and truly come off. Now that’s happened you can’t come back from that, says the CEO of magneticNorth; ‘We’ve all become more human and that intimacy and empathy is great for working culture.”
• Draw inspiration from other businesses, but sustainable change is employee-centric. It’s always useful to look externally at what other businesses are doing, keep an eye on trends and draw inspiration for how you reimagine your world of work. Core to any sustainable change is about staying true to company values and fostering trust. The Global Workplace Transformation Lead at Mars said “We needed to think through what associates were actually experiencing, document it, then look at what we can do past that. The transformation story of transitioning to the hybrid working world has to be user-centric if we want to emerge stronger and better”. Fluxx are currently helping Mars unpack their ambitions for the future and how a hybrid working model fits into that.
• Hybrid working offers young leaders an opportunity to shine. Hybrid/remote working has dissolved the arduous, layer upon layer of bureaucracy that existed in many companies. Teams have to be empowered to make their own decisions, as opposed to reverting to a central authority; which means a new younger generation of leaders are given the opportunity to find their confidence and shine.
• Emotional Intelligence allows us to respond better in a crisis. Emotionally intelligent business leaders promote a culture of psychological safety, empathy and trust within a business. When emotional intelligence is ingrained in the DNA of an organisation, it enables better collective decision making in times of crisis.

The last 12 months have been a testing time for businesses as our world has totally changed as we know it, and there are more changes to come. In amongst the health crisis, we’ve had a business crisis too; many businesses will never go back to working in the same way again. We’ve seen incredible courage from leaders who are thinking about the longer term opportunity that’s been created by embracing this new hybrid world of work. Acceleration of the business’s sustainability agenda, attracting and retaining high quality, diverse talent,, enhanced employee wellbeing, greater business agility, the list goes on.

Hybrid working is here to stay. It’s time to reimagine work.

Natalia Walters is a senior consultant at Fluxx. Stay tuned with all that’s Fluxx by following us on LinkedIn or signing up for our WTF Newsletter.

Many thanks to Gemma Slater, Jassi Porteous and the whole Work Reimagined team. Get in touch to chat about reimagining your world of work — natalia.walters@fluxx.uk.com