Hybrid Work: The Challenges of Combining WFH with IRL

After a year of remote work, corporations are slowly combining WFH with in-office time — but the transition to the hybrid work model still comes with its own set of challenges. As employers and employees alike continue to grapple with the choice to stay home or return to the office, there are three key considerations:

Career Advancement

Working from the comfort of your own home has its perks, but in-person interactions have long been seen as crucial to career growth. Serendipitously getting invited to that client meeting or grabbing coffee with the CEO offers visibility you might not get otherwise. But both the hybrid and remote work models call into question the very real concept of “proximity bias” — the skewed bias that physical presence adds to a relationship. If a manager sees Hybrid Employee A at their desk twice a week and IRL Employee B at their desk every single day, that manager is more likely to think Employee B works longer, harder, or better.

So how can employers and employees ensure equitable access to career advancement opportunities? According to Ashley Zak, “Your goals have to be measurable. That’s what’s going to be so key as we look at this next year of performance. Can you track it, can you measure it, can you prove it?” Since visibility doesn’t equal value, ensuring quantitative performance outweighs quantitative intangibles is crucial to level the playing field.

Corporate Culture

Maintaining a strong company culture is no easy feat, but the absence of or limited access to physical spaces presents a new set of challenges — and opportunities. Chester Lantin put this into our current context: “One thing I feel like the pandemic did was force companies to define what their culture is. Prior to the pandemic, people would talk a lot about culture, but then you’d see ‘Best Places to Work’ and it was just about who had the coolest bowling alley in their office. You take that away and then you really have to figure out what it is you stand for.” Companies might not have table tennis and beer on tap anymore, but now organizations can replace these office perks with meaningful experiences and corporate values instead.

Creating Boundaries

Whether physical or figurative, guardrails are essential to a healthy work environment — and during the COVID-19 pandemic, many have had their boundaries blurred. Returning to an office space allows physical separation between your home and your work, and these workspaces are more purposeful than ever before. Suzanne Mehta of Cushman and Wakefield says, “Now where we are today is really defining the purpose of the office and utilizing the office in a way that is very intentional — things like innovation, collaboration, socializing, and building community.”

And if you don’t return to an office, mental boundaries are just as important. It’s easy to get lost in your work when in the comfort of your own home, especially if you don’t have any post-work responsibilities. That said, you shouldn’t need any justification to close the laptop and step away once the workday is done. Like Zak said, “You have an excuse to turn off because you are a human who should not be working 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

Remote, hybrid, or fully back in the office, you aren’t alone — everyone is navigating this unique challenge together as we (slowly) move toward a post-pandemic state. In a reminder to us all, Mehta said, “It’s all valid, and I think that a lot of organizations are still navigating this. I don’t feel like I’ve heard of anybody who has really come up with the holy grail here.”