Companies that have not figured out how to reintegrate workers into an in-person office environment risk becoming “hushed hybrid,” one Ottawa HR professional suggests.
A recent poll by Robert Walters Canada found that about 40 per cent of Canadian managers were thinking about implementing a “hushed hybrid” work model, which allows their teams to quietly disregard return-to-office (RTO) mandates and work from home.
Karen Brownrigg, founder and CEO of Ottawa-based iHR Advisory, said she’s seen this happening in workplaces around the nation’s capital, especially when larger organizations started to pivot to in-person work.
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“The floodgates started to open … when we started reading in the news more globally about larger, big-brand name organizations saying, ‘This is not working for us. We need to have people come back in the office’ … That created some discomfort (with employees). I think people were unsettled,” she said.
Brownrigg said “hushed hybrid” may happen if organizations lack ways to reintegrate in-person work and give employees few incentives to incur the time and costs to travel to the office, leaving middle managers to figure out a way forward.
“If that’s not planned out and managed effectively, we tend to see this ‘hushed hybrid’ situation. It’s mainly the middle managers that are trying to navigate it in a way to placate the more senior leaders in the organization while also placating what’s going on for the employees,” Brownrigg said.
Additionally, she said middle managers may choose to allow “hushed hybrid” work in order to retain talent.
“If some of your competitors are still offering the hybrid work environment and your organization has decided that people need to come back, you may have a little bit of a talent war,” she said.
When remote work became the norm during the pandemic, many employees saw opportunities to move farther away from their workplaces or chose jobs farther from home, Brownrigg said. She said that with longer commutes, employees are looking for incentives to make the trip.
“I think we’ve got to get out of the mindset of, ‘I’m getting into a mode of transportation to get to that particular building.’ We need to try to provide some incentives and some rationale for people to go in (to work). What’s the value of that commute to people in your organization?”
According to the Robert Walters Canada report, about 35 per cent of professionals were willing to choose a lower-paying job if it offered better flexibility.
Brownrigg said selectiveness is not new when it comes to people choosing their next job, but remote work has added a new dimension.
“I think it’s no different than any other time period in people’s careers. People will make a decision about where they want to work based on what they need at that time in their lives. We can’t react based on that alone. We’ve got to understand the why behind it. What are we offering as employers for people to be interested?” she said.
She said she believes that “the greater the remote work, the lower the productivity,” adding that remote work isn’t healthy for individual employees or teams as a whole.
“(Having) back-to-back meetings, is that really healthy? If you’re jamming as much in because you don’t have commute time, I would argue that that might not be all that effective,” she said. “I’m seeing more difficulty in having complex conversations … I’m seeing a decrease in civility and respect, because of this sense of being able to isolate when the going gets tough. I turn off my camera (and) let it fester. (It’s) hitting our productivity and we’re losing a sense of humanity in the workplace to screentime.”
Brownrigg suggested organizations may need to think differently about what in-person work looks like.
“(Collaboration) might not necessarily mean showing up and clocking into your workplace. Why don’t we meet at a local coffee shop?” she said.
She said employers have “missed the objective” of in-person work, saying it’s not about “going into the office and putting a butt in a seat at a certain building,” but rather about learning from each other and having “that organic ability to connect with one another.”
Going forward, Brownrigg said organizations should reflect on any changes they make to their work structure before implementing them and ensure they’re “communicating the vision” for the outcome.
“Are you responding to a fad or a trend? Are you trying to do something that another organization is doing that really doesn’t make sense for your organization to do? How are you going to measure the success of that particular change that you’re asking people to make? If you’re not able to define that, then you’re not able to bring people on board and invite them in to be excited about that change,” she said.
The Robert Walters Canada poll surveyed 2,500 white-collar Canadian professionals and was published in February.
