Four Principles to Ensure Hybrid Work Is Productive Work
Article

Four Principles to Ensure Hybrid Work Is Productive Work

Organizations have become more flexible about where and when employees work. Now they need to be more intentional about their choices and trade-offs.

Lynda Gratton
MIT Sloan Management Review, 2020
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COVID-19 has spurred unintended worldwide experimentation regarding work-from-home. Companies and their employees have had several months to experiment with new work models and to discover the advantages and disadvantages of home versus corporate offices and of fixed versus flexible work hours. Writing in MIT Sloan Management Review, London Business School professor Lynda Gratton offers a helpful guide to implementing lessons learned about new work models to help companies and their employees thrive.

Summary

Future hybrid work models must optimize productivity.

Many companies have had employees work from home during the pandemic. This extraordinary period highlighted the advantages and disadvantages of remote versus office-based work. Post-pandemic, companies will want to reap the benefits of work-from-home and office-based work models by creating work arrangements that allow employees to thrive.

When implementing new hybrid work models, companies must consider two distinct components: The place where people work – be it home, a central office, a satellite office or a co-working space – and working time arrangements, that is, having people work during set blocks of time or letting employees set their own hours. The guiding principle of implementing hybrid work models is productivity, which consists of “energy, focus, coordination and cooperation.”

Considerations about location in hybrid work models should focus on boosting cooperation and maximizing people’s energy.

COVID-19 restrictions have reduced employee social interactions, serendipitous...

About the Author

Lynda Gratton is a professor of management practice at London Business School and founder of the advisory practice HSM.

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