Remote vs Hybrid Working Culture: Understanding the Future of Work

Remote vs hybrid working cultures come with unique nuances and pitfalls. Organizations have quickly adapted to a remote working culture while ensuring collaboration and finding new ways to track productivity.

A Microsoft team study shows that their employees collaborated through online mode for more than 4.1 billion meeting minutes across its education and business, which was just 900m in early March 2020.

Understanding your business requirements and, accordingly, adopting the right workspace matters the most. Hybrid culture involves teams working in direct human proximity and minimizes communication gaps greatly before employees start working remotely, which impacts operational efficiency.

What Includes a Hybrid Working Culture?

As the word “hybrid” suggests, it refers to a working culture where some employees work remotely, and others work from a common office space. Adopting a hybrid work culture allows the employees to choose between working from home or in an office and alternating between the two.

Firstly, this innovative approach permits your team to have face-to-face communication space for team members in remote vs. hybrid working cultures. Secondly, it allows a company to hire beyond a particular geographical area.

Another good reason for this approach is that it comes with the work flexibility option, making it even more popular among millennials. A study by Catalyst shows that by 2025, millennials will take up almost three-quarters of the global workforce.

This is why it is a good opportunity for companies to set their workspace according to these new digital natives’ preferences. Most importantly, looking at a team’s productivity is important for the management team to adopt a successful hybrid–remote work environment.

3 Types of Distributed Teams

Three types of distributed teams are usually preferred based on the workspace setup.

1. Split Teams

Companies prefer split teams when their business processes are expanded in multiple nations. For example, it may be good for a US-based company with a branch office in New Delhi.

In this setup, both teams are located in two countries but work remotely to achieve a common goal. However, they need to ensure the use of strong remote team collaboration software and a good strategic approach to handle it best.

2. Hybrid Teams

A hybrid team is a customized form of new remote work. Generally, under this work culture, less than 50% of employees work outside the office or remotely, and the rest from a common office space.

In case of any need, the remote counterpart visits the office and works with the “in-house” team members. Hybrid culture has a mix of onsite and remote operations that comes with the flexibility perk of remote work while eliminating some major bottlenecks.

3. Fully Remote Team

A fully remote team is when all employees of an organization work from their location. This helps the employee maintain a work-life balance and allows the company to complete the task simultaneously.

It eliminates daily commuting time and ultimately increases productivity. Screen monitoring software plays a key role in employee activity tracking during remote work situations.

A technically strong system will further enhance your team’s efficiency. It is up to the organization to decide what kind of tea will be best for its employees.

However, we recommend you look out for the following parameters to make your decision:

• Business needs
• Importance of human proximity to make future business decisions
• Technical strength
• Geographical constraints

Why is Hybrid Working the Future of Remote Operation?

In the present Covid-19 era, technology and digitalization have made remote working popular. Offices have now opened with minimal staff, certain restrictions, and social distancing rules in mind.

Making all the employees work from the office will not be a great choice; hence, most originations have adopted a hybrid culture. Internal collaboration and communication like staff meetings, brainstorming, or any work involving employee participation are best when operated from one location.

This is why a hybrid working culture always has an advantage over complete remote culture and traditional work, as it covers both areas. Whether it is a post-pandemic situation or normal circumstances, below are a few reasons for organizations to count on “hybrid working cultures.”

1. A Mix of Both Worlds

In a hybrid working culture option, you simultaneously have office- and home-based employees. You can hire talented employees not restricted to a geographic location.

A diversified team is always helpful if you have customers or clients from different parts of the world and different time zones.

2. Cost Efficient

Minimize the rental space and office supplies cost when half of your employees work from home. Besides saving annual rental costs, employees also save time and money simultaneously.

3. An Enhanced Approach to Employee Collaboration

A hybrid workspace allows employees to communicate through virtual and face-to-face channels simultaneously. You can discuss matters via video calls or documentation.

The entire “onsite” team can sit in a meeting room and meet their remote employees for a discussion. If business workflow demands, the remote team members can also visit their office location.

4. Emergency Situation

A hybrid working culture gives employers the advantage of coping with certain emergency situations, such as natural calamities, war, virus outbreaks, or medical emergencies. This step ensures business continuity and keeps employees safe.

Another point to note for this blended work environment is that most workplace success depends on millennials. They currently make up almost 35% of the workforce, and this number will increase in the coming year. They prefer work-from-home and job flexibility over the traditional 9-6 work window.

2 Major Bottlenecks of Hybrid Work Culture and How to Overcome Them?

1. Team Collaboration

In such a blended work environment, remote employees may feel left out regarding company culture. In this case, the management team can make a rotational visit option for every remote employee working from their location.

This strategy builds strong group dynamics and ensures good rapport among employees. Choosing the right virtual communication channel is also important for collaborating with employees from different locations.

2. A Need for a Strong Strategic Approach to Lead Teams

In this case, the strategic approach involves tracking productivity and properly compiling work for remote employees. Team coordination and productivity monitoring should be your topmost priority for a successful management approach.

To maintain this, a common monitoring and collaboration platform with a report management platform is required. It is even more important when your business operates under a hybrid team culture.

Remote Operation or a Hybrid Team: Which is Best for Your Company?

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, employees worldwide have been forced to settle into their homes. Breaking government norms of the social gathering was dangerous for the entire workforce.

Companies are adopting a hybrid workspace strategy, where the number of in-physical present staff can be customized. Regarding remote vs hybrid working cultures, fully remote work is flexible.

Although physical presence might be required for tasks like orientations, team-building, and project kick-offs, looking at the current pandemic situation, it’s not necessary for a particular person to visit the office regularly. Rotational shifts are a new go-to strategy.

Remote work will promote individual focus for an employee, whereas other office days will ensure team meetings function efficiently. Employees in staggered groups will definitely solve the purpose of social distancing while simultaneously ensuring productivity monitoring and in-house employee engagement.

In fact, most employees want to return to their desks and resume their office-social life. A survey report published by the Institute for Economic Policy Research of Stanford University showed that 55% of US workers want a mixture of home and office work.

Another study conducted in the UK reveals that employers expect the proportion of regular home workers to double, from 18% pre-pandemic to 37% post-pandemic. The pros and cons of remote vs hybrid working cultures vary based on your business type and needs.

However, both require a common platform where managing the entire workforce is easy, proactive, and secure. Three major aspects of team management are –

• Accurate Employee Monitoring
• Data Safety and Security
• Employee Collaboration Platform

An employee monitoring software solution that covers all three major aspects of remote and hybrid workspace solves every difficulty of remote culture operation. Leapmax, as a remote working solution is developed to cover all three mentioned facets.

For WFH culture to succeed; Leapmax ensures an effective performance review system that is fast and accurate. The answer is not about adopting a single workspace but deciding based on business requirements and technical capacity. Only then, a business can choose the right workspace for its continuity and prosperity.