Hybrid Work Model: The Future of Work for Business

The COVID-19 pandemic is something that took more time from us than we expected, forcing us to find new alternatives to keep working while following the former biosecurity guidelines to protect our employees. Many companies managed to go through this ordeal with remote working, but not every company can allow itself to go full remote so suddenly, so some came up with the idea of working on a hybrid work from home trend model.

Adopting a hybrid workplace provides a versatile work environment that creates many opportunities that a co-located office could never achieve. The productivity improvement and technology development allow this work model to keep growing, making it a profitable method even when we are COVID-19-free in the future.

Regardless of the visible advantages that a hybrid remote work model can offer, there are many things you need to know to apply it correctly. This is a relatively new work alternative that needs to be studied before getting established. Do you want to expand your business model and adapt it to a hybrid work from home model? Let yourself dive into this page to get to know more about this matter!

What Is a Hybrid Work Model? 

To understand what is a hybrid model and how a hybrid work from home model works, you need to understand the work models that came before it. The current pandemic changed how people did many things, including how companies worked since they were accustomed to working with all their employees in the same workplace, known as a co-located work model.

Naturally, that wasn't the only way companies could work since there were also remote working model companies. Hybrid work models allow employees to work from many places worldwide, opening up the possibilities of hiring people from almost anywhere. However, most companies hiring remote workers are freelancing companies since it's not easy to manage big transnational enterprises just with remote workers.

There is another option that consists of having your employees distributed in different areas and offices owned by the company, and that is what we know as a split team work model. Having a split team allows you to address different situations simultaneously while assigning different tasks to each group, and that helps you optimize your time and effort.

Now, coming back to the protagonist of this page, we have the hybrid work model: the future of work for business. This working model is ideal if you want to advance quickly in your tasks and to improve employee's productivity and creativity.

A hybrid remote work model is the one that includes onsite employees working from an office and some others working from different places such as offices or even their homes.

Is Hybrid Work Model the Future of Work Model?

Naming the hybrid work model as the future of the work model are big words when talking about the future of business working, but is it really the future or just a useful alternative to keep working on a pandemic? That's a tricky question to answer, but considering the advantages that this work model provides, the short answer is yes.

We want you to fully understand the improvements that this work model can bring to your business so you can elaborate on your own answer to that question. Here you have the main advantages that a hybrid work from the home model can give you:

International Job Offers

Before the hybrid work model became popular among companies and office workers, it was more difficult for someone looking for a job to find one since that person was always limited by their town, state, or country.

This problem wasn't just affecting employees but also employers since even if they found someone that was skilled and perfect for the job, they couldn't hire that person if they were in a different city.

With the arrival of the hybrid remote work model, you can make yourself available to companies that are looking for employees all around the world. Having international employees creates a team with a variety of cultures and opinions that can develop new and innovative ideas.

Multi-cultural teams are a great advantage to workers since they can learn many things regarding how their job is done in different parts of the world. Sometimes the ideas of a work team don't come up or develop because of the lack of different opinions and mindsets, so this significantly boosts your team's creativity.

You Can Design Your Workplace

When working at an office, you usually are assigned a cubicle that already has a chair and a desk. That can be detrimental to your work performance since working with standard chairs and desks can end up bringing severe health problems such as back pain or mental exhaustion.

Feeling uncomfortable in your workplace is the worst thing that could happen to your work performance since that decreases your productivity and makes you prone to make mistakes. The solution to those problems is getting ergonomic products that make you feel more comfortable while working and avoid ergonomic injuries caused by having a bad posture.

A hybrid workplace model allows you to invest as much as you want in your workstation, providing you the freedom to decide which chairs, desks, and other items you want to have in your home office. Try looking for ergonomic chairs and standing desks since they work perfectly together and create a comfortable and productive workplace.

Flexible Working Schedule

Working from your home allows you to have many liberties such as designing your workplace and your work schedule. It's common that someone who works all day doesn't have time to spend with their family or doing a hobby. Not having time for that is bad for your mental health since every human needs to dedicate some moments to entertainment to keep themselves happy and focused.

When you arrange your work from home schedule, you are assuming the responsibility of finishing all your tasks and duties on time, but if you organize your time correctly, you can mix work hours with free hours to stay active and focused.

That also provides you the opportunity to address any situation that could happen without having to ask for permission from your boss. If you can't work at the time you scheduled, don't worry about that being any problem to the company as long as you finish your assignments on time.

By doing that, you can decide if you work in the morning or at night and shifting those if you have a date or an appointment.

How Can Employers Transition to A Hybrid Model?

As we mentioned before, changing from office working to a hybrid model is not something you can do overnight. You need to take a lot of things into consideration before starting to change from a working model to another because if you do it without knowing the basics, you can end up losing a lot of time and money if you do not know how to manage hybrid work time pressure and money.

We want you to take as many advantages as you can from this work model, so here is a list of the things you must do to transition to a hybrid remote work model without having any setbacks:

Create a Work Plan for Onsite and Remote Workers

When choosing a hybrid workplace model for your company, you need to create a work plan for onsite and remote workers beforehand. That plan or schedule must include the specific job that both teams must do, just like a split teamwork model. You also should know about motivation rules to encourage your employees while working from home.

By developing that plan, you are making sure that everyone is on the same page regarding their teams and assignments, which is fundamental to have a smooth and clear workflow.

Every work team should have a specific job different from the other to optimize their work. Try to establish a clear chain of command with team leaders that supervise and help their teams to solve any doubt they have.

Build A Virtual Community

Communication is one of the most important parts of hybrid working since, without it, you couldn't communicate with your team members and other teams to merge your work. Companies need to take advantage of technological development to improve the way they communicate and have a clear way to deliver orders and assignments.

There are many communication essentials, web applications and internet platforms that work as a communication channel between people worldwide. You can choose the one that suits you best and meets your company's needs; the most common choices are Google Meet, Zoom, and Basecamp, each one of them specializing in a specific matter.

Ask Experienced Workers to Teach the New Ones

One of the issues that a hybrid work model could have, is that the new remote employees don’t have the experience that the old office workers have. If you are the boss or owner of the company, maybe you don’t have the time to teach every new-comer the basics of the job. That’s why it’s always a good idea to ask experienced workers to teach and guide the new ones in how to do the job.

Pros and Cons of a Hybrid Work Model

The hybrid work from home model has advantages and disadvantages that you need to consider before transitioning from a work model to another; these pros and cons are essential since they determine if you can adapt your business to a hybrid work model. We want you to understand each advantage and disadvantage, so here is a list of the primary ones:

Pros and Cons of a Hybrid Work Model

• It allows you to have a multi-cultural team from all around the world.
• It allows you to design your workstation and include ergonomic products on it.
• It allows you to have a flexible working schedule.
• It helps to address different situations simultaneously with onsite workers and remote workers.

• New workers don’t have as much experience as the previous office workers of the company.
• You could end up finishing your assignments late if you don't organize your time correctly.

Should Your Business Transition into a Hybrid Work Model?

If you haven’t transitioned your business into this modern work model yet, you may want to consider it. As you may have noticed from reading this article, a hybrid workplace model can positively impact how people and employees perceive your business.

However, some people argue that this new business model may not be for every kind of business. If you want to know if your business can benefit from this modern era, keep the following clauses into consideration:

How Your Business Operates

Can your business operate remotely? You may think that you can't, but almost any kind of business can successfully transition into this newer model. The first step into transitioning to a hybrid workplace model is to find a way to adapt small aspects of your business and keep working from there.

Employee Management

Some business owners find it difficult to manage their employees remotely. As mentioned before, communication is essential if you want to keep things efficient at all times, but it can be a slow process, especially if you have a high number of employees for your business.

Thankfully, you may delegate some of your remote team management duties to another person with experience, such as a manager; this way, you ensure that all your employees are getting the right attention, whether they’re working onsite or remotely.

Your Business’s Goals

Can your business achieve its goals working remotely? The chances are that it can. It may not seem clear at first, but the digital era has allowed us to find efficient ways to accomplish our goals and activities, and this also applies to businesses. To successfully transition into a hybrid work model, keep your business’s goals into consideration so that you can find a way to adapt them to the newer work model.

Conclusion

The hybrid workplace model represents a huge advancement and improvement to how companies used to work, making them develop new work strategies that boost productivity and creativity; everything with a multicultural team that helps the company grow. Hybrid working is definitely the future of work models and every company should start researching and investing to adopt this work model in the future.