“I have been working efficiently, diligently, and effectively remotely for the last 2 years. Why should I come back to office for work?”

A question which has startled many on numerous occasions. Yet remains without a definitive answer.

How many times over the past two years have you heard about the new normal or that the times have changed? There are many different perspectives on whether remote work is better or will be detrimental to our businesses.

Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings says “I don’t see any positives” whereas CTO of Walmart, Suresh Kumar said “We haven’t just coped. We’ve actually thrived.”

But what does the ground reality say? How can we know for sure that hybrid working actually works or not?

There are so many questions surrounding this.

What is the right balance of work from office vs work from home? Who can decide this? Managers or Employees? How long can the employee productivity last, working from home? What criteria should define it? Does this get bound by the nature of industry or company?

Should it be based on seniority? Questions galore but no simple answers.

These concerns are difficult to answer since we consider hybrid work design to be a single challenge. When there is just one difficulty to tackle, there are actually three.

The first issue is whether we can effectively deliver on our stakeholder commitments. This is referred to as the efficacy debate.

The second question is whether we will be able to attract and maintain the necessary talent. This is the staffing debate.

The final question is whether we can preserve, grow, or foster our culture. This is the discussion regarding social fabric.

Let us take a moment to highlight the difficulties that each one presents.

Over the last two years, we’ve worked with a variety of organisations to help them identify what their future of work should look like. Now, we are not here to make sweeping statements about whether or not remote work is uniformly beneficial. I believe we’re all aware that nothing works perfectly all of the time. However, a piece of advise that we must be cautious with our data.

Let us give you a few instances. Many people cite to their organization’s performance during COVID as proof that they are capable of doing remote work. It is now proof that the remote can function, but not that it will. COVID was a big sociological experiment with unusual circumstances. Most businesses responded with it by trimming the fat and focusing solely on short-term efficiency. We were actually productive because we were in survival mode. However, we must consider whether this is sustainable. Data from around the world reveal that people’s working hours have increased, and many think it is becoming more difficult to draw work-life boundaries. Data also demonstrates that everyone’s experience was not the same. According to “The Economist” data, parents of school-aged children endure far more stress than many others. According to Microsoft research, it is even affecting the way we work, with people working longer hours but less collaboratively.

The topic of whether we can effectively work remotely requires a contextual solution. Contextual depends on the individuals doing the work and the tasks that they are attempting to do. Remember, one size does not fit all, and we must consider the long-term viability of our effectiveness.

When it comes to hiring, ask anyone who has lately been involved in the process. The most frequently requested question of recruiters these days is, “What is your flexible-work policy?” In fact, we are witnessing the same escalation of benefits that was popularised by software businesses during the boom. Do you have a barista in the lobby who makes the perfect flat white? Have you got any nap pods? What is a ball pit? Is that a slide? What about on-site childcare? So, instead of working from home, we bring home to work.

Your present or prospective employees are now considering your hybrid work policies as a crucial factor in deciding where they want to work. That is the essence of the personnel problem. What you must understand is that the comparison is not between work from home and office work. Instead, the distinction is between the perception of work from home versus work from the office. You must recapture that narrative.

Let us offer you a few instances. The first is what we refer to as the recovered commute. Many people have said to our researchers, “I’ve saved so much time now that I don’t have to commute.” What is the challenge to them? What exactly did you do throughout your commute times? Maybe you read, maybe you caught up on phone calls or emails, maybe you just relax. I used to get an hour before I went home to shake off a particularly bad, irritating, or stressful day. It now takes me exactly six seconds to immerse myself in my family upstairs.

Another example would be the post-meeting postmortem debrief over coffee. We utilise it to heal relationships and possibly to make collective sense. The most important thing to remember here is that it is the experience that counts, not the policy. We need to recapture the narrative so that everyone understands what a certain approach buys or loses for them. This leads us to the social fabric. Consider what happened when you first joined your organisation. You most likely attended orientation. Perhaps you looked about, spoke with some folks, observed, and discovered what it’s like to work here. What difference does it make? Because our study suggests that working remotely reduces factors like psychological safety and trust, changes in power dynamics, and increased emotions of isolation and loneliness. Importantly, all of these factors shape our societies, making this discussion much more challenging. Furthermore, social systems are dynamic, emergent, and evolving human systems.

To be completely honest, we don’t know the solution to this. And, to be honest, everybody who tells you they do is attempting to sell you something. We do know about several ways to culture building and establishment in these circumstances. What we must recognise is that they function in ways that may differ from how we established culture when we were face to face. What we must keep in mind here is that organisational culture is a long-term game. What we do now has an impact on the social fabric of our organisations and will have long-term consequences. So, when it comes to the social fabric, we must consider not just today, but also tomorrow, next month, and maybe next year.

I hope you see that these are three distinct dialogues that are also not entirely independent. We also need to recognise that what makes this difficult is that they hold virtually ideologically opposing views on what produces value in your organisation. Is it about the output of what you create? Is it about the people in that organisation or something in the air, the culture?

The first and most critical step is to bring these topics to the table and have an open discussion. And this is not going to be simple. But if you find yourself disagreeing with someone on these problems, whether it’s a supervisor, a subordinate, or your leadership, I encourage you to ask yourself, “Do you really disagree on how to create effectiveness, deal with staffing, or the organisational culture?” Is it possible that you have slightly different priorities when it comes to those three separate aspects of the hybridity debate?