As employers firm up plans to bring white-collar workers back into offices while still allowing them to do some work at home, many are encountering obstacles. Companies are grappling with what new schedules employees should follow, where people should sit in redesigned offices and how best to prevent employees at home from feeling left out of impromptu office discussions or being passed over for opportunities, say chief executives, board directors and others.
The insurer Prudential Financial Inc., which expects most of its roughly 42,000 employees to work in the office half the time starting after Labor Day, wants to make certain not all staffers choose to stay home Mondays and Fridays and then work in the office midweek. At the travel company Expedia Group Inc., executives are trying to figure out how to have in-person meetings that don’t disadvantage those who aren’t in the room. Other employers, including the software company Twilio Inc., predict that the new era of work could lead to shuffling between teams, with staffers gravitating to bosses who embrace their preferred styles of working.
Hybrid work “is going to redefine expectations, rules, permissions,” says Kevin McCarty, chief executive officer of the Chicago-based consulting firm West Monroe, which employs 1,360 people, and is rethinking when its employees should work at home or come into its offices.
The new style of work is bound to be another transition for workers who a year ago had to adjust to life at home. Though executives say it would be easier to manage if every employee returned to an office, or all stayed remote, surveys have repeatedly shown that most workers want a mixed approach as more adults are vaccinated. In a February survey of 1,000 companies commissioned by LaSalle Network, a national staffing and recruiting firm, the majority of companies said they would adopt a hybrid model.
Companies have also polled their organizations to find out how employees feel. At Prudential, most employees indicated that they enjoyed working remotely but missed the planning, ideation and collaboration that takes place in person, says Rob Falzon, vice chair of the company.
Prudential has been redesigning its office space floor by floor and repurposing most of it for meeting rooms, collaboration and open space so people will be more likely to interact. Mr. Falzon says he insisted on adding video capacity in more small meeting spaces, not just conference rooms, so people working from home won’t feel excluded.
Like many employers, the company is reducing its physical footprint so there won’t be available desks for people who want to go to the office more frequently, with exceptions for some employees including traders. “We don’t have a desk for you every day,” Mr. Falzon says. “We have a desk for you three days a week.”
Hybrid models range by company. The technology company Adobe Inc. plans to allow employees to work from home up to two to three days a week, with staffers able to make reservations for office desks, says Gloria Chen, the company’s chief people officer. Other companies are hesitant to put out a specific number on days allowed at home. Factors including the length of a commute, type of job and an employee’s seniority could determine how often an employee needs to visit an office, executives say.
“We won’t prescribe” from a company level, says David Henshall, CEO at the technology company Citrix Systems Inc. “Based on the type of role you have, you’ll find that right balance.”
With flexibility can come challenges. If a team comes together in-person, but not all can make it, that potentially creates a subpar experience for those not in the room, says Expedia CEO Peter Kern. The travel company opened the first phases of an expansive campus—complete with Wi-Fi-equipped rocks —on the shores of Seattle’s Elliott Bay before the pandemic, and plans to initially permit spaced group team meetings at its headquarters.
Mr. Kern, though, says he has questions about whether those on Zoom will get the same level of learning, encouragement and career growth as those in the room. Then there are the scheduling issues.
Managers may need to “set up group meetings according to some crazy algorithm of: Who’s available when? Who’s got a flexible day, when?” Mr. Kern says. “There’s a lot of friction in all of that. It’s a lot easier to say, ‘Everybody go to work.’ Now someone calls a meeting, and you’re all there.”
A new way of working will require the company to think differently about performance, Mr. Kern says. Managers must be careful not to have biased judgments against those who may spend less time in the office, requiring the company to be “really thoughtful about how we assess people and give people opportunity so that we don’t end up with skewed outcomes.”
Training and onboarding might be more challenging in a hybrid environment, especially if new employees have a harder time grasping the company’s culture without regular, in-person interaction with colleagues, says Tom Gimbel, CEO of LaSalle Network. With younger employees, “for them to learn anything, they need to be around the more experienced people,” he says.
Other companies have said they would allow for remote work in limited circumstances. In a memo, executives at the New York Times Co. said the company planned to reopen its main offices in September and didn’t intend to become fully remote. The company would “approve remote work only in places where the team and nature of the work can accommodate it.”
Some human-resources professionals say companies will have little choice but to accommodate workers’ demands, as an inflexible workplace could drive employees away as the economy rebounds, and because many workers have proven themselves adept at working anywhere.
“The employer before just could say, ‘Our culture is this,’” says Tara Wolckenhauer, a human-resources executive at the payroll processor Automatic Data Processing Inc. “Employers have to take a step back and think about it very differently.”