Quixy Editorial Team

August 9, 2023

There have been many changes in the business world in the recent two years, so many organizations have turned their work environment into a hybrid work culture. These alterations brought many challenges to the organizations as they were unprepared for this adaptation.  

Now, as time passes, organizations also learned to adopt this hybrid working culture but not fully, as hybrid working styles and models are still the burning issues for the agencies. Currently, many agencies are switching from in-office to remote cultures or intending to have a mixture of both.  

Here, it brings a major concern for the organizations to decide which hybrid workplace model they anticipate moving on with, as there exist three classifications of the hybrid working model. This includes scheduling, categorization of employees, and work culture. Depending on your business, you can use one of these classifications as your starting point. 

Let us take a brief look through five types of Hybrid Work models: 

1. At-Will & Remote-First  
2. Office-first 
3. Split-Week 
4. Week-by-Week 
5. Designated Teams 

Each of the above models possesses some supremacy and delicacy. Organizations need to figure out a suitable model as per their working convenience. Since the model that proves to be fruitful for one big corporation may not give results to the smaller one, moreover, due to the diverse working culture among organizations in similar occupations, the same strategy might not be advantageous to all.  

As in one of the posts, Satya Nadella, a Microsoft Chairman and CEO, said, “Our motive is to attain a compatible environment in terms of task spaces, person, and reference for every employee, whether remote or on-site.” Hence, you need to boost up the compatibility of the workflow as well as scheduling and then look into the exciting results of the hybrid work. 

Therefore, the biggest task is selecting your compatible hybrid workplace model per your organization’s needs. This is not everyone’s cup of tea. However, this blog will help you make your decision easier after getting through the strengths and weaknesses of every model. 

Also Read: Top 44 Remote Working Tools you need to work from anywhere

Types Of Hybrid Working Model

56% of the employees wish to move forward with a mixture of remote and in-person working schedules, as per the LinkedIn survey. However, before taking such a challenging and complex decision, you must know the various hybrid models. These models can be categorized as per the following perspective: 

1. Work Culture

• At-Will/ Remote-First 
•  Office-First 

2. Scheduling

• Week-by-Week 
•  Split-Week 

3. Categorization of Employees 

• Designated Teams (on-site/remote) 

Types of Hybrid Work Model As Per Work Culture

Let us consider the working models according to the organizations working culture.  

At-Will/ Remote-First Hybrid Models

There is no significant difference between the remote-first and at-will hybrid work models, which are synonymous. In both the work culture, workers can give precedence to remote work. And however, they are still allowed to work on-site. 

In this model, employees are free to choose their preference of working from the office or staying back home, and the workers can opt for the workplaces wherever they are most productive. Therefore, this hybrid work model allows employees to choose the most efficient working environment, further optimizing the workforce. 

A physical workplace is an exact place for meetups or inbound discussions. Hence, this culture can be advantageous for organizations with regular client meetups. These hybrid work models will generate an in-person relationship and trust with an employee, eventually stimulating workers to perform best. 

Also Read: Hybrid Workplace Model: The Future of Work

Office-First Hybrid Model

As the name suggests, employers must prefer attending the office most of the days. However, this model also provides the reliability of either working from the office or home. 

The office-first model is straightforward and unchallenging to implement for organizations whose production depends on teamwork and collaboration. Organizations need not alter their protocols or make many digital adjustments. 

For many organizations, there might be a choice to opt for another hybrid model, but for the industries like manufacturing or construction, the office-first hybrid model remains the only choice for a hybrid working model. This model offers only specific flexibilities to its workers, and is ineffective for the employees who stay away from the geographical location of the office. 

Types of Hybrid Work Model As Per Scheduling

The hybrid work model can also be distinguished into various types per the work culture’s scheduling. The week-by-week and split-week working models enables employees to attend the office at the varying time of the week. Let us dive deeper into these perspectives. 

Split-Week Hybrid Model

This setup also comes under a hybrid workplace model where the employees are allotted a specific number of days in a week to work on-site or remotely. For instance, a particular team can work on-site for the first half of the week, whereas another team can work on-site during the second half of the week. Likewise, the departments can schedule their workplace to avoid overcrowding. Moreover, the team will get enough chances to collaborate consistently. 

Additionally, the organizations can reduce the team’s working hours per week, but this step must boost productivity. For Instance, Microsoft Japan staff says that its productivity gets increased by 40% while experimenting with working four days per week with total compensation. 

Conversely, a split-week hybrid workplace model can enhance the organization’s expenses. Companies need to pay remote working expenses to their employees. Moreover, there will be a null possibility of inter-team interactions as the number of on-site working days is different. 

Week-by-Week Hybrid Model

If you are not getting enough production with the split-week hybrid workplace model, you can opt for week-by-week hybrid work culture. In this type of schedule, the work weeks are assigned to the employees, for which particular week they need to be physically present in the office. The rest of the weeks can be spent working at home. 

In other words, you can select specific team members to work from the office for a particular week.   Then these teams can switch to working from home for the next week. This type of hybrid work setup is beneficial for companies having more employees. With this, you can easily dampen the office space and secure overhead costs. 

However, the model does not prove fruitful sometimes because of insufficient flexibility. Moreover, unprecedented meetings can spoil the weekly schedules to come true. 

Types of Hybrid Work Model As Per The Categorization of Employees

This approach can be adopted as per the work assigned to the employees. This setup can also be termed a designated team hybrid model. Let us look closer at this type of hybrid work setup. 

Designated Team Hybrid Work Model

Companies assign designated teams to work on-site or work from home in this hybrid working setup. Such a working setup benefits companies that need specific workers to work from the office. 

For instance, organizations requiring consistent security checks, including factories, power plants, and networking, require in-office workers. At the same time, other staff like IT experts, sales, or administrative workers need not always work on-site. 

This setup moreover saves the overhead costs of the office expenses like electricity bills, utilities, etc. This also improves the efficiency of the workers. 

Digging a bit deeper 

With some advantages, the setup also brings some disadvantages, like this hybrid model generates complex feelings among the employees working from home and office. The remote employees think on-site workers are getting more opportunities and better bondings with the managers. In contrast, on-site workers think companies are not bothered about their work-life balance. 

However, to adopt the best hybrid working environment, you must ensure that nothing bothers your employees. After all, employee satisfaction is a paramount factor in growing your productivity. 

Integrating other hybrid working models into a designated team model is also possible. For instance, you can incorporate remote-first or office-first hybrid models to allow them to work at their convenience. 

We have discussed the types of the hybrid workplace model in detail with their strengths and weakness. Here comes the need to execute these models at the company’s convenience. 

Executing Hybrid Work Model

With the specified strengths and weaknesses of the different hybrid models, you must have figured out which one will best suit your organization. However, with any of your choice, there also come many challenges as adopting a new working structure for your company will not only offer profits. It will come up with inherent difficulties.  

Hence, focusing on some conscious perspectives will help you overcome these difficulties, or I should say, will teach you to be pre-prepared for the coming challenges. 

Foremost Investment in Cybersecurity

Per HP’s survey, 238% enhancement in cyberattacks since Covid-19 initiation.  This is a major hint that you should priorly invest in cybersecurity. The hybrid working culture regularly involves digital communication, and sharing delicate documents online can be unsafe and harm your progress. Hence your prior step should be to focus on the secure network.

Better to invest in providing training to your employees to execute amazing cybersecurity practices in such situations. 

Consistent Breaks To Focus On Employee Wellness

Working hybrid often results in stress or mental tiredness for the employees. The employees working remotely give extra working hours in comparison to on-site workers.  

To overcome such circumstances, for the sake of your employees and the company’s productivity, ensure to conduct regular wellness breaks. You can prefer conducting informative wellness seminars on:  

• Stress Management 
• Fitness and Exercise  
• Meditation 
• Yoga 
• Nutrition Intakes 
•  Proper Time Management, etc.  

Doing so will gain the trust of your worthy employees, which eventually stimulates them to be more productive for you. 

Boost Up Technical Support For Workers

Offering firewalls and network security measures will not be enough for your organization to secure. You need to enhance cybersecurity practices for each individual.  

It would help if you offered your employees the required software and gadgets to avoid any loss due to scarcity of resources. For instance, you should give the company’s laptops and network facilities to remote workers, and this will secure your crucial files and data on the company’s laptop.  

Also, determine whether all the necessary software should be installed on the laptop before it is delivered to the employees to avoid any later inconvenience. 

Revision To Company Benefits

The more you care for your employees and make them feel empowered, the more they stay longer with you and perform efficiently. Moreover, you have to make them feel like you care for them. This job can effectively be done by offering compensation and profits apart from their usual pay. 

While working remotely, employees may feel an enhancement in their utility bills. Hence, you can compensate for such issues by increasing their salary or offering utility bills per the revision to your company benefits. Therefore, you need to figure out your employee’s personal needs to improve your productivity. 

There can be many more ways through which you can manage your hybrid workplace and make it more productive.  

Conclusion

Hybrid workplace models are in-real low, densely populated environments rather than fully overloaded office environments. This, moreover offers flexibility for every single employee to attain a work-life balance. Hybrid workplaces, if appropriately managed, enable workers to be more productive and efficient. 

All in all, now you must be well aware of the hybrid working models’ necessity and their positive and negative sides. With this information, you can easily decide which model to adopt that suits you best and make your company more productive for you and your employees.