BEYOND HYBRID WORKING

Midweek Subscriber Review 28 February 2024

Good Evening (or morning, or afternoon, depending on which time zone you you read this in).

Each midweek I plan to share a review of some kind in detail with my new paid subscriber base to draw your attention to a key book or podcast or idea. If you are reading and not a subscriber it’s because I’m showing you what you might be missing - but not for long as it’s mean to those who are….

BEYOND HYBRID WORKING by Andy Lake

By far the most interesting aspect of hybrid - more interesting than the politics of shouty ‘get back to the office’ or not - is the practical implementation of it, the realpolitik of working creatively and productively with others in a new (and for some not so new) landscape.

Because now anyone who uses a computer to work can work anywhere, and now the globalised world is coming into its own regarding mobility, certainly in multinationals. But the reason why we need this book - Andy is a leading specialist in Smart and Flexible working, he’s advised The Cabinet Office in Government, and is generally a behind-the-scenes strategist, planner and guide - is precisely because hybrid is hard. “Analysing Resistance” is a section in the book. So practical. And case studies, for instance the UK Atomic Weapons Establishment.

Published by Routledge, at a hefty nearly-500 pages, this is for the deeply committed implementer, strategist. But it’s also eye-opening in terms of how long this stuff has been around, and the success which a combination of common sense and contextual analysis can give you.

in an org chart entitled The Panorama of Post-Pandemic Working Andy identifies four different kinds of hybrid: 1) Unreconstructed, 2) Controlled Hybrid, 3) Flexible Hybrid and 4) Smart Maturity. Well let’s skip to the last one. Trust looms large. Of course it does. But what is also interesting is the location associated with these different modes. “Assigned Seating” moves from 1-2 into “Open Plan Hotdesking” -and then “Activity-based settings.”

In other words, if you get to the sunny uplands of Smart Maturity - big if, given the confusion, hostility and lack of proven norms regarding implementation across industry outcomes yet, then you get what Andy says ‘ought to be more productive’.

Two chapters dig deep into this but he is clear-eyed about pros and cons. For instance the question of “intensification” of work is important, not least because working too much due to the ability to be very efficient from, say your home computer, might not actually result in higher productivity.

That said, the author, who like me has no skin in the game to be in favour of hybrid working, but a lot of skin in the game for telling it like it is, says “there is far less evidence in the literature that being together in one place boost productivity than evidence to the contrary. So maybe this is a challenge to researchers, to show how productivity was boosted when people returned to the office after lockdown, or when Hybrid or Smart Working schemes are rolled back”.

This reads like a textbook because it sort of is, but in a good way. It’s forensic in its detail, it captures the edges and contours of what making hybrid work in workplaces is all about.

If this were a stock I’d say: BUY