Companies struggle with hybrid work plans: awkward meetings and overcrowding between weeks

The insurer Prudential Financial Inc.,

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which expects most of its approximately 42,000 employees to work in the office half the time from Labor Day, wants to make sure not all employees decide to stay home on Mondays and Fridays and then work at the office on weekdays. In the travel company Expedia Group Inc.,

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executives try to figure out how to have face-to-face meetings that don’t disadvantage those who aren’t in the room. Other entrepreneurs, including software company Twilio Inc.,

predicts that the new era of work could lead to the mix between teams, with employees gravitating towards bosses adopting their favorite work styles.

Hybrid work “will redefine expectations, rules, and permissions,” says Kevin McCarty, executive director of Chicago’s West Monroe consulting firm, which employs 1,360 people, and rethinks when its employees should work from home or enter your home offices.

The new style of work will surely be another transition for workers who a year ago had to adjust to life at home. While executives say it would be easier to manage if all employees returned to an office or stayed away, 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 recruitment and personnel company, most companies said they would adopt a hybrid model.

Companies have also surveyed their organizations to find out how employees feel. A Prudential,

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most employees indicated they enjoyed working remotely, but lost the planning, ideation, and collaboration that takes place in person, says Rob Falzon, the company’s vice president.

Prudential has been redesigning its floor-to-floor office space and restructuring most of them for meeting rooms, collaboration, and open spaces so that people are more likely to interact. Falzon says he insisted on adding video capability to smaller meeting spaces, not just conference rooms, so people working from home don’t feel excluded.

Like many employers, the company is shrinking its physical footprint, so there will be no desks available for people who want to go to the office more often, with exceptions for some employees, including retailers. “We don’t have a desk for you every day,” Falzon says. “We have a desk for you three days a week.”

The range of hybrid models by company. The technology company Adobe Inc.

plans to allow employees to work from home up to two or three days a week, with employees able to make reservations for office desks, says Gloria Chen, the company’s people director. Other companies hesitate to post a specific number on the days allowed at home. Factors such as the length of a daily commute, the type of job, and the seniority of an employee could determine how often an employee needs to visit an office, executives say.

“We won’t prescribe” at the enterprise level, says David Henshall, CEO of technology company Citrix Systems Inc.

“Depending on the type of role you have, you’ll find the right balance.”

With flexibility, challenges can present themselves. If a team meets in person, but not everyone can get it, this potentially creates a lesser experience than those not in the room, says Peter Kern, CEO of Expedia. The travel company opened the first phases of an extensive campus, complete with Wi-Fi-equipped rocks, on the shores of Seattle’s Elliott Bay before the pandemic, and plans to initially allow team meetings. group spaced at their headquarters.

Kern, however, says he has questions about whether those in Zoom will get the same level of learning, encouragement, and professional growth as those in the room. Then there are the programming issues.

Managers may need to “set up group meetings according to a crazy algorithm of: Who is available when?” Who has a flexible day, when? “There’s a lot of friction in all of this. It’s much easier to say, ‘Everyone’s going to work.’ Now someone’s calling a meeting and you’re all there.”

A new way of working will require the company to think differently about performance, Kern says. Managers need to be careful not to have biased judgments against those who may spend less time in the office, which requires the company to be “very careful about how we evaluate people and give opportunities to people so that we don’t end up with results. biased “.

Training and incorporation can be more difficult in a hybrid environment, especially if new employees have more difficulty understanding company culture without regular, face-to-face interaction with colleagues, says Tom Gimbel, CEO of LaSalle Network. With younger employees, “in order for them to learn anything, they need to be around the most experienced people,” he says.

Other companies have said they would allow remote work in limited circumstances. In a note, New York Times executives Co.

he said the company had planned to reopen its head offices in September and did not intend to stay completely away. The company “would approve remote work only in places where the team and the nature of the work can accommodate it.”

Some HR professionals say companies will have little choice but to meet the demands of workers, as an inflexible job could drive employees away as the economy bounces and because many workers have proven adept at working at any place.

“The employer used to be able to say,‘ This is our culture, ’” says Tara Wolckenhauer, human resources executive at Payroll Processor Automatic Data Processing Inc.

“Employers have to step back and think about it very differently.”

—Krithika Varagur contributed to this article.

Write to Emily Glazer at [email protected] and Chip Cutter at [email protected]