The pandemic changed the way we live and work and it has a great impact on businesses and people. The term “hybrid work culture” has become very actual since the start of the pandemic.
The term Culture
First of all, we need to understand what we mean by the term Culture. They say it is a predisposition or set of common rules in the company. This could include the work schedule, communication, management styles, etc. Each company has its own work culture and even though if there are from one industry. It’s like DNA which could not be replicated because the culture is being created by workers.
Have you ever heard that sometimes people are being rejected from some positions even if they fully meet the requirements? This usually could happen because of a different mindset of the candidate which is opposite to the established work culture of the employer.
Most of the time Culture is being addressed as “Healthy” which mean the following:
- the company is showing good financial results
- low attrition rate and as a result good opportunities for career achievements
- positive customer feedbacks
- well established strategy
- readiness for changes
Readiness for changes is the one factor that describes Healthy Work Culture. Employees should not be afraid of reorganizations and the implementation of new working processes. Employees should also not be afraid to speak about issues and describe their position and attitude in changing environment.
COVID-19 Pandemic
During the pandemic, the term culture is still alive because people never end to perform their job and communicate. The culture itself is just being transformed. Once being back in the office the work culture may not stay the same because people’s behavior and the way the business is getting done changed.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an important step of rethinking human values. People have started to pay close attention to health issues and spend more time with family and relatives. The basic “live questions” have become the number one priority. This changes the understanding of what a real job should be and impacts a lot on companies working cultures. People tend to choose flexibility the same as stability and employers have to offer better live/working conditions and spend more money on HR activities, for example, better insurance for employers and their family members. Some studies show that 87% of business leaders expect to offer more flexibility.
The term Hybrid
Hybrid is usually being associated with online. This is true because this term means that the working process is being done anywhere, including office and home. However this is not only about place, but about the way, the work is being done. Due to restrictions and the need to isolate through the pandemic period, companies moved all the meetings and communication online.
The Hybrid is about sharing the information. The job-related communication between colleagues is higher than previously, however informal connection is much lower. This leads to the low cross-connection between different teams what unites the whole company.
Technically there is an important question of ability and readiness to move online and the people to be capable to implement the new working strategy. A lot of businesses could not go completely online, such as manufacturing, law enforcement, etc.
The office could become a place to compensate for the lack of live communication, creating a cross-connection between teams, brainstorming, and just spending free time and acquaintance. At the same time, many companies give up rental office spaces instead of getting special co-working places (the ones that usually were used by freelancers).
Most important steps to make Hybrid work (based on employees who should be ready for changes):
Include a must-have stand-up time where each employee’s opinion is to be listened to.
“The problem of large companies/corporations is that ideas and basic opinions of the low-level employee are very hard to get listened to by top management. HRs are usually too busy with enrollment processes and do not pay attention to what issues existing employees face especially during the COVID-19 period.” – says Mariya Khursevich, IT recruiter at Elinext company.
Each company should try to include “open speech” practices where employees could explain their vision of online work and be advised of how to behave and not lose motivation.
Pay attention and create a unique approach to different generations of employees
From the following diagram, we see that younger people are more eager to change their working practices. Even though in most generations over 50% of the respondents see positive impacts on remote work, companies should pay attention to how to address changes individually. This could be done through personal interviews, adding special social activities, social media, friends, and family, etc.
Look for best practices of working online, including implementation of the new software.
The market of ERP (as an example) is in the phase of rapid expansion, the total size is expected to be $49,5 billion by 2025. Companies have to implement different systems for the correct operation of various business processes especially while moving online.
The pandemic period accelerated the transformation process and positively affected cost-cutting, enabling better analytics and transparency between different business operating units. It’s also important to outline that businesses were able to hold revenues the same during the implementation of sets of software while “struggling” pandemic businesses.
The readiness of businesses to perform actions with the digital product is very high now. Software development companies could use that time to create a set of products or services to attract new clients. Some clients don’t realize how to start the transformation process so it’s important to be as much understandable as possible.
Conclusions
To assume, the Hybrid term could be described as a set of technologies and readiness of company employees to perform their functions in a changing environment. So shouldn’t be necessarily online transformation. Let’s imagine that in the future there would be only online work practices and companies will need to bring their employees back in the office – that would be “offline” transformation.
The term Culture implements various sets of rules or behavior of the employees including online/offline work. So in the future, we would probably just say Culture without highlighting that it’s Hybrid.
Sources:
- https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/culture-in-the-hybrid-workplace
- https://www.bcg.com/publications/2020/managing-remote-work-and-optimizing-hybrid-working-models
- https://hbr.org/2021/08/fostering-a-culture-of-belonging-in-the-hybrid-workplace
vinay 
varsha 
Swati