Revisiting remote and hybrid work: How to find the right balance for your organization

forcing returns to the office, including the technology industry, which was an early proponent of remote work arrangements. The reasons given for this change range from the somewhat fickle desire for “ ad hoc innovation ” meetings driven by office change to more quantifiable concerns about onboarding new team members.

While most companies were forced into remote work arrangements in the early days of the pandemic, we now have the opportunity to take a more thoughtful approach to remote work versus banking policies or following what the big companies are doing . It may even seem tempting to regain control over employees who dominated during the post-pandemic boom in wages and benefits in a cooling job market.

Finding balance

Arbitrary biases are often easier to implement than weighted balance. Externalities have forced a trend toward remote work, and changing economic circumstances – and perhaps a desire for greater control over workers – are causing some companies to employ similarly unilateral return-to-work policies. Neither remote work, in-person work, nor hybrid work policies are inherently perfect in all situations and companies, and assumptions that blanket policies or one-size-fits-all approaches will be effective are short-sighted.

There may also be unstated factors that should be irrelevant to workforce decisions and that nevertheless influence those decisions. For example, significant existing investment in real estate and office space may create unstated pressure to utilize that space, although this argument is a variation of the sunk cost fallacy argument.

Clearly, there are certainly areas where in-person collaboration is generally easier, if not superior, just as there are areas where remote work is superior. For example, most organizations have struggled to onboard new employees remotely, amplifying the friction that often accompanies a poor onboarding experience.

On the other hand, few workers find the open seating in most offices a particularly effective place to get focused work done while facing chattering colleagues or countless other distractions. Few workers waste the time and money needed to travel to the office, and the quality of life and even the environmental benefits of reducing travel are obvious.

For organizations facing these decisions, it is important to remember that there is no perfect policy that will universally benefit all workers. Even individuals in similar positions, career levels, or roles can thrive in very different work environments.

Avoid punitive policies

Perhaps the biggest challenge with many general “return to office” policies is the perception that they are driven by some form of revenge by ruthless corporate overlords. During recent hiring booms, workers had a brief period of unprecedented bargaining power, demanding pay raises and perks. As hiring demand has stabilized, so have worker-centric benefits, including generous remote work policies.

Whether true or not, blanket policies create the appearance that bosses care little about employee performance, much less well-being, and are more focused on the direct control that comes with having people in the same physical space.

Employers certainly have the right to impose policies and working conditions, just as employees have the right to leave a company they consider unreasonable; However, creating flexible policies, or at least trying to understand what conditions best promote what types of work, can go a long way toward keeping workers productive and happy.

Multiple studies indicate that happier workers are more productive workers, creating a wonderful scenario where doing the right thing from a human perspective also results in beneficial results for the organization. Pursuing remote work policies that focus exclusively on productivity and are unconcerned with worker satisfaction can backfire, with any productivity gains being erased by disgruntled workers.

Use experimentation to guide policy

In the debate about remote work, many of the drivers are driven by hunches and anecdotes. Remote work advocates cite “better well-being,” while office work advocates often cite “better collaboration,” with neither side bringing any hard data to support their claims.

We've increased data on productivity, with COVID forcing one of the biggest experiments in modern history around remote work. Now that much of the passion around this stressful period has calmed down, it's worth analyzing your organization's data in conjunction with population-level data published by many academic and government entities.

Where there are no clear indicators, consider running experiments to guide your remote work policy. Experiments can be as simple as identifying vendor teams or organizations that currently work 100% remotely or 100% in-office and collecting quantitative data, or using tools like surveys or simple interviews to collect qualitative data. For more complex questions, look for individuals or teams who are willing to volunteer to test a working arrangement and evaluate some metrics to monitor its effectiveness.

Not only does experimentation help gather real results, but these results are obtained directly from your organization, reducing concerns that a policy is being applied without taking into account the nuances of your team or company. Additionally, you can use feedback from your experiments to not only guide policy creation, but also to facilitate any complex transitions. Individuals who participated in the experiments can share their experiences and knowledge gained during the experiment to help coworkers understand the motivation for and implementation of policy changes.

If you find that these experiments indicate that innovation actually increases during workdays, you'll have direct data to back up that claim and maybe even some tools and tricks to foster that collaboration. You could have a weekly “innovation day” or use in-office days for formal cross-team collaboration rather than mandatory office days that result in dozens of people shouting into Teams or Zoom calls from an uncomfortable bullpen rather than your home office.

Do what you say

As a leader, it's up to you to set an example for your team, whether you're the CEO or a first-year manager leading a junior team. If you strongly believe that remote or in-office work is the right approach for your team, avoid showing the opposite behavior . Leaders who set attendance days and then work from their home office are likely to undermine even the most well-intentioned and informed policies.

If you find that the policies you helped create as a leader do not allow you to be at your best, the policy may require review.

While remote work has its flaws, from onboarding challenges for starters or new hires to free-form collaboration, it's not unreasonable for software development companies to abandon it as an effective way for employees to be productive and also have more balance in their lives. Whether these companies are feeling pressure to mirror their industry peers or concerned about innovation, being thoughtful and using informed experimentation to set balanced policies can allow them the best of both worlds.