Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams by Gleb Tsipursky

The first step in crafting a customer-centric hybrid work plan is to gain a deep understanding of your customers' expectations and preferences. Related: A New Remote Work Trend is Helping Employers Retain Talent Amid Labor Market Pressures Understanding your customers Instead, leaders should adopt a more agile approach, one that prioritizes customer needs and adapts to the ever-evolving business landscape. A tailored hybrid work strategy takes these industry and role-specific considerations into account, ensuring that the work arrangement aligns with the inherent demands of the sector. On the other hand, industries or functions that rely heavily on in-person interactions, such as sales, may require more on-site presence to maintain customer service quality. For instance, in sectors like software development or creative services, a greater degree of remote work might be feasible without any loss in productivity or sacrifice of customer needs.

The effectiveness of a three-day work week varies significantly across industries and roles. However, the adoption of this model by numerous organizations has led to the misconception that it's universally applicable. As companies experimented with hybrid work models, this arrangement appeared to strike a balance between the benefits of remote work and the need for in-person collaboration. The three-day work week emerged as a popular solution amidst the uncertainty of the pandemic. This one-size-fits-all approach fails to consider the unique needs of the customers. The assumption that having employees in the office for three days a week is the optimal solution for hybrid work is misguided. Namely, they fail to ' start with why' and don't work from the end goal back to the policies required to make it happen for the sake of customer success.ĭebunking the myth of the three-day work week But the key is to prioritize customer needs in creating a successful hybrid work plan and business leaders need to build their strategies around this focus.Īs a globally-renowned expert in the future of work who helped 22 organizations figure out their hybrid and remote work policies, I can tell you confidently that this is the biggest mistake companies make in hybrid work. It might be that three, four, five, two, one, or no days in the office works best for your customers. Instead, what leaders need to focus on is how hybrid work arrangements will serve customer needs. No wonder: while there's a widely-held belief that three days a week in the office is the magic number - with a number of large companies adopting it - it's a fundamentally flawed approach. For example, a survey of 1,300 knowledge workers found that only 28% said their company is making it worthwhile to commute to the office. Ironically, executives fail to put this focus into action when figuring out their return to office and hybrid work policy.

Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams by Gleb Tsipursky