Professor Sir Cary Cooper, 50th Anniversary Professor of Organizational Psychology & Health at the University of Manchester, gives his view on the hybrid and flexible workplace debate.
Hybrid working has become the default option for many people in today’s workplace. This preference is prevalent in all generations, but is particularly valued by Gen Z and the millennials. In any case, well before the pandemic hit, the evidence was overwhelming that flexible working, in whatever form, delivered higher levels of job satisfaction, retention of talent, less stress-related ill health and where it was possible to accurately measure it, delivered higher performance/productivity (see Norgate & Cooper, Flexible Work, Routledge, 2020).
There is a difference however between flexible vs hybrid working. Hybrid working tends today to be a 2+3 or 3+2 model, that is, where the employer says ‘we expect you in at least 2 or 3 days a week’, whereas truly flexible working encourages managers and their direct reports to develop a psychological contract between them in a dialogue of ‘what works for the organisation and the individual concerned’, coming up with an agreed plan.
Being flexible for all
Flexible working for one person could be very different from someone else, but their agreed psychological contract has to deliver to the bottom line. There are more hybrid than flexible approaches in the majority of organisations where flexible options are offered. The question arises if the organisation mandates a 3 day in the office hybrid approach, will employees feel they are trusted less, given less control of their work-life balance and prefer an employer who provides them with truly flexible working arrangements?
One thing is for sure, few if any Gen Z/millennials want a 5 day a week return to the office mandated by senior management! Those organisations that demand the 5 day a week return, will have difficulty recruiting and retaining talent in this new world of work. As Mark Twain once quipped: “if you always do what you always did – you’ll always get, what you always got” – in the case of today’s workplace, lower levels of productivity (eg. UK bottom of the G7 on productivity per capita and 17th in the G20 countries) and lack of talent retention/attraction.
Managing exceptions
Two other issues we need to consider concerning hybrid working: how does an organisation cope with staff who need to be at the proverbial ‘coalface’, and can’t work flexibly given the nature of their job (eg. bus drivers, paced assembly line workers, etc.) – and is there an indirect prejudice against the promotion and career development for women at work who do less face time at work because of their child rearing responsibilities.
First, for those whose job demands in-person work or who can’t work flexibly, I would suggest we consider a 4 day working week (if affordable but for many it may not be, eg. nurses), given the evidence from a variety of countries (Sweden, NZ, UK) that this delivers to the bottom line in terms of productivity, lower sickness absence and increased job satisfaction. This would be a way of compensating them for the loss of an option for flexible working but won’t disadvantage them in terms of performance and other bottom line metrics.
Second, given that women tend to take primary responsibility for child rearing and the home, even though they are also engaged in paid work, they are more likely to need more time working from home and less time in the office. This might hinder them in the promotion stakes vs male employees. Attending more meetings, finding out about organisational political issues and development opportunities are only some of the benefits of in-person working in the office. It is important that HR leaders understand this indirect dynamic, and plan for it in some way. In the end, one’s development and promotion should be based on hitting targets and their performance, and not on how much face time they show!
As Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote: “The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it”.
Professor Sir Cary Cooper is the co-author of Remote Workplace Culture, published by Kogan Page, 2022.
