As the pandemic wanes, office managers and employers are asking themselves if they should bring their remote teams back into the office. What the last two years have shown, however, is that there is little need for an actual office since work was getting done just as well remotely.
That isn’t to say that there is no value or need to have people physically in the office. There are benefits to both. Luckily, there is the idea of running a hybrid office in which you have some people in the office and some remote with them all linked up with Trello. They can even be rotated to make sure it’s fair. In this article, we will go over what it takes to run a hybrid office effectively.
1 – Do you even need an office?
Before you can ask anybody to come back to the office, even if it’s a limited number of employees, you have to ask yourself if it’s even necessary. What are the advantages of having people return to the office? You need to have a very clear answer for this because many workers don’t want to face long commutes again and will ask this very question.
They have gotten used to the way things work and are productive. With software like ServiceNow Technology, they are all able to coordinate and communicate remotely just as well as if they were in the office.
Try to find some of the things that can be done better with people in the office and go from there. The idea of a hybrid office is that you don’t need everybody to come back. Only the ones that perform a function that is best done in person should be called upon to work in the office again.
2 – Plan the Transition
When you have some people working remotely and some in the office, integration between them is essential. This means that there has to be a plan for the transition to them working in this new way.
The first step is to get all the tech ready that will be needed for teams to continue to coordinate in a meaningful way. There will be a lot of software to integrate for this to be seamless.
There will also need to be a plan on who is coming back to the office and outfitting them with what they need to be able to work there and with the others who are remote.
3 – Keep Things Fair
Everybody should have the same opportunities regardless of if they are remote or in person. This means that there shouldn’t be any preferences given to the workers who are in the office for things like raises and promotions. It’s ok to give things like an extra bonus for transportation and things like that since they will have some extra out-of-pocket expenses.
Make sure that everybody is treated equally and that there will be no teams pitted against each other.
