Whatever working model your organisation decides to adopt in 2022, it’s highly likely that it will include an element of hybrid working and continue to elevate the importance of the IT team. Here, we’ll explore three key areas hybrid working will impact in 2022 – colleagues, customers and collaboration – and what to incorporate into a strategy for maximum impact in these areas.
Colleagues
It is undeniable that flexibility is on most employees’ priority lists when considering where they want to work in 2022. However, flexibility isn’t limited to allowing people to work from home now and again. “Companies have been engaged in an arms race to offer the best perks,” says Carolina Valencia, a vice president in Gartner’s HR practice who has conducted a recent global study into post-pandemic working. “But once basic needs are met, people are more powerfully motivated by feelings than by material features. Employees today want to be treated as people, not just workers.” That includes creating equal opportunities for training, mentoring and development regardless of where people are based, and ensuring high-quality interactions with colleagues even if you’re the only one not in the office.
How to tailor your hybrid strategy
✔ Make flexible working your unique selling point to maintain and attract talent. How can you go the extra mile to ensure true flexibility in your organisation? Get to know your teams on an individual basis, and take time to understand what is important to them. Then, tailor solutions accordingly – from making sure everyone has access to the same quality equipment to exploring compressed hours.
✔ Welcome new employees with a hybrid-friendly onboarding process. Solutions like Google Chromebooks allow remote device management and create a unified experience for everyone.
✔ Consider training programmes to encourage a continuous learning culture. There’s no question that the natural learning and mentoring opportunities happening in person are invaluable, but to create parity and long term success for hybrid models we also need to consider manufacturing these moments virtually.
Customers
Regardless of industry, the way customers behave and our interactions with them has changed forever. Expectations to be increasingly available, offer flexible communication channels and create personalised experiences are becoming ever more vital. As more happens virtually, organisations have increasing amounts of data to gain valuable insights into customer behaviour, but may not have the tools or knowledge to do so. On top of this, customer service agents are increasingly burnt out and dissatisfied, with less than 30% feeling empowered to do their jobs well.
How to tailor your hybrid strategy
✔ Look for ways to offer flexibility and find new ways to connect with your customers. Whether that’s sharing your calendar and physical location or starting a regular Meet to get together (like Netpremacy did for our community of CSS customers), the key to interaction in 2022 will be to understand individual contact preferences.
✔ Empower your teams with reliable tools. With collaboration tools like Google Workspace, customer service agents can work from wherever they are, and you can enhance the experience for your customers with high-quality hardware for crystal-clear conversation.
✔ Capitalise on the influx of customer data that hybrid interactions have generated with a data strategy to understand your customers better.
Collaboration
Three areas that come up frequently in the conversation around why employers are keen to encourage the return-to-office are creativity, culture and collaboration. However, in a flexible workplace, how do we ensure employees only come together in person for the moments that matter? How do we value our own and our colleague’s time and the right to a work/life balance? How can we encourage our colleagues to come together when it’s more convenient for them to be elsewhere? Hybrid working offers us a new, improved model to create more meaningful, productive collaboration – but it requires a careful plan.
How to tailor your hybrid strategy
✔ Categorise your work to choose the best way to collaborate. McKinsey has observed three broad categories of collaborative interactions: decision making, creative solutions and coordination, and information sharing. Depending on the category of collaboration and what you’re trying to achieve, they suggest which tasks require face to face time, and which don’t.
✔ Create meaning for in-person meetings. “People need to understand why they should come into the office. By using the office for specific purposes, such as face-to-face meetings, we can make sure people are getting the most out of their time there”, said Gareth Thomas, Ocado Group’s Digital Workplace Manager, when we spoke to him at the end of last year.
✔ Ensure the office is still fit for purpose. Consider more multi-purpose open spaces or meeting rooms. Review your hardware and ensure teams have access to high-quality equipment to offer the same experience whether customers and colleagues join meetings on-premises or remotely.
To summarise, hybrid working opens up a whole range of opportunities and a better future for many employees, but it isn’t without its challenges. Some ways of optimising your hybrid strategy – data strategies, learning platforms – are complex, but others – reviewing office hardware, virtual onboarding – are comparatively straightforward. Here at Netpremacy, we work with some of the most innovative companies in the UK to shape their hybrid strategies and help them to build creative, collaborative teams. To arrange an informal conversation, get in touch today.
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