Employers and employees must be flexible if the hybrid working model is to succeed

Last week, the second State of Work America survey found that 80 percent want flexibility in where and when they work. Fair enough, but 25 percent said they would ideally never work onsite — a 10 percent jump from last year.

Talk about being inflexible. Certainly there has to be some give and take if the hybrid model is to work.

Two conversations this week were very insightful for me.

One was with a company boss who said a senior colleague had been wandering the country during the lockdown and decided to work from there. From the boss’s point of view, the colleague should be in the office at least three days a week, but that’s out of the question.

Then I had a friend who was outraged that his company wanted him in the office three days a week and had the cheek to name the days.

I wanted to point out that the problem was that when they didn’t set the days he complained that he had bothered to go in but found that everyone was home.

There is always another side to a story. Perhaps the elderly colleague mentioned above moved to the country to be around elderly parents. Maybe my buddy is a sports enthusiast and the weekends at competitions keep him going – it suits him better not to be tied to fixed days when he has to report for duty.

But honestly, if a company could manage to do just as well by working entirely remotely, they would do it and save on rent. There’s a reason they want employees to be personal: collaboration, training, culture, customer relationship building, and more. Going to the office 50 percent of the time is sweeter than the 100 percent before.

And what about all those workers for whom hybrid working is a fantasy? Complaining about not being able to pick your days seems trivial when you look at terms and conditions elsewhere. A survey by the Irish Medical Organization warned of burnout this week, finding that 40 per cent of non-consulting hospital doctors had to work more than 24 hours in a shift.

I work from home, can work from anywhere and love the freedom. But I have no financial security. My boyfriend who wants to pick his days has a high salary. I (barely) resist the urge to tell him to suck it up.

Without a doubt, it’s a good thing that the office’s empire has crumbled, giving employees more autonomy and a better quality of life. Nice to see how many fathers picked up their children from the Easter soccer camp yesterday at 2 p.m.

And many of the traditional practices now seem pointless: why commute to sit in an open space to write a report when you can do it in the quiet of your home?

Offices have been around for 200 years. The hybrid path will take some time to become established, so employers and employees must remain reasonable and open-minded.

The results of a survey of business leaders this week show things are still in flux, with 30 percent believing it’s too early to tell if a hybrid work model has been good for their business and 9 percent saying it is it wasn’t good.

Nearly half of the 314 executives surveyed in the Institute of Directors survey said they feel hybrid working is a success for their organization right now.

This bodes well for the new way of working.

However, there was a whiff of irritation when 35pc said the draft of the 2022 Remote Work Demand Right Bill does not balance the rights and demands of workers and employers.

The full quarterly Director Sentiment Monitor survey will be released in a few weeks. It will be interesting to hear business leaders speak ahead of the bill’s expected passage this summer, because as drafted it is a paper tiger and much cheaper for employers than the UK equivalent, which has a defined set of reasons for a Request for remote stock can be denied, in contrast to a seemingly endless work.

The fact that so many are unhappy with the bill leads me to believe these employers genuinely want people back in the office and at least retain the ability to control that without fear of demands from the Workplace Relations Commission.

And maybe they have good reasons if their industry is better suited to having employees on-site in person.

You want happy, productive employees; However, employers and business owners are also driven by the need to protect a company’s profitability and will filter their perception of flexible working requests through the eyes of the customers and customers making the profit.

Overall, though, so far so good for the laptop classes that most companies are preparing to return with a mix of home and office days – and people seem content.

A friend works for a law firm that runs a hybrid trial run of three or four days in the office, depending on role, with slightly flexible start and end times, like public service has done for years. The manager determines if these are specific days and will review the agreement in six months.

She’s happy to be back and says most of the staff are happy, but there is a cohort who don’t want to come, even though it’s not good for their business. Well I suppose they have to like it or lump it together which sounds unfair as people have different family situations.

But then again, it’s a job, not a summer camp, as my boss at a breakfast restaurant in Montauk reminded me daily.