Why It’s Time to Retire the Term “Hybrid Work”

• Research from Future Forum and conversations with industry experts are helping employers cut through the noise about hybrid work and think more strategically about supporting flexibility. 
• Reframing the conversation from the when and where to the how and what of work gives broader support for employee autonomy. 
• An awareness of where and when work is done forms the basis of a flexibility strategy with appropriate space, technology and policies in place. 

The word “hybrid” gets used a lot relative to workplace strategy, but it may be time to retire the term.  

Hybrid can not only mean different things to different people, it can also lead to confusion and ambiguity within an organization. 

“It’s like the term collaboration from a few years ago,” describes Joseph White, director of design strategy of MillerKnoll. “It’s this huge overarching term that points to a tremendous amount of variety.”  

Instead, calling it a flexibility strategy may be a better approach. According to White, flexibility more accurately reflects what people expect from their work experience and what they’re looking for going forward. 

“The word hybrid keeps us stuck in the ‘where.’” 

 Cali Williams Yost 

“The word hybrid keeps us stuck in the ‘where,’” said Cali Williams Yost, the founder of the Flex Strategy Group, and a recent guest on a MillerKnoll Looking Forward podcast episode that dug into the business case for flexible work.  

Instead, by focusing on flexibility, organizations can take a more strategic approach to work and the workplace. It includes broader support for employee autonomy over not just where, but when, what and how work gets done. 

People want flexibility, and they’re more engaged and productive when they have it 

We know a more flexible approach to work delivers benefits for people and businesses. Long-term Gallup data has shown that the most engaged employees are ones who spend 1-2 days in the office, and the others at home.  

Yet is it not a universal solution, as the “ideal” number of days varies by job (independent versus collaborative roles) and the types of collaboration each role demands (back to the “how and what” of work). 

Likewise, workers who work from both the home and office reported the highest productivity and the highest level of support when compared to employees who work only at home or only in the office, according to Leesman research. At the same time, organizations benefit from an increased talent pool, more talent retention, and opportunity for real estate optimization. 

Our research with Future Forum shows that 80 percent of global desk-based workers say they want location flexibility (where they work), while 94 percent of those employees say they want schedule flexibility (when they work). 

They want to come to the office for activities like collaborating with coworkers and clients, attending in-person meetings, and building camaraderie. And for younger people and new hires, being in the office is highly beneficial for mentoring and development opportunities. 

“Flexible work helps companies win the battle for talent, engage employees, and build better results by having a proven positive impact in the areas of recruiting, retention, productivity, creativity, innovation, customer engagement, diversity, your bottom line.”  

Future Forum 

According to Yost, flexibility is increasingly the expectation of employees. She cited a Harvard study of 6,500 global executives who were asked about 14 future work factors that they were facing.  

“The top short-term factor they saw as being impactful to their business was the expectation of workforce flexibility,” she said, noting that the survey was done in 2018, well before Covid.  

However, when asked how prepared they were to address workforce flexibility, it ranked near the bottom at number 13. Such a low position illustrated that executives recognized they needed to rethink the way work was being done and take action, Yost said.  

She suspects the gap in expectation and preparedness pre-pandemic was likely stymied due to a combination of fear, inertia and lack of know-how on how to implement. Of course, those fear factors were rapidly overcome once Covid hit. 

“By focusing on flexibility, you can take a more strategic approach to work and the workplace that includes broader support for employee autonomy over not just where, but when, and what kind of work gets done. 

Tailor your flexibility strategy to the work experience you want to support

The question of where and when to work hinges on another important element: what kind of work is at hand? 

According to Yost, a flexibility strategy enables people to choose the best place in which to work on a particular task. 

For example, “If I’m doing a real deep-thinking piece. I’m sitting in my house. I didn’t commute. I’m not being interrupted. I’m doing this thinking work. And I’m being more productive at that,” she said.  

Alternatively, “If I’m having a brainstorming meeting, I’m going into the office, I’m sitting around with my team, we are cracking through this thing. And then we’re going home.” 

Breaking down the work itself can also boost creativity, explained Markus Baer, Ph.D., who spoke about Creativity is a Team Sport in a Knoll k. talk. He explained that teams not only need to be optimally sized, but often need to break down the types of tasks that are best done individually and together. 

“You don’t want to have teams that are too large, so it’s healthy to break them apart and have them work in parallel, and then integrate their efforts. For that you need some sort of process,” he explained. “We can kick it out and then we add to it the things that some teams may have come up with. Then we have a discussion whether or not all these points are valid.” 

By bringing awareness to where and when their people do certain types of work, organizations can ensure they have spaces, technology and policies in place to best support it. Following are some considerations on how to support each. 

1. Flexibility in place design 

The design of the workplace can play a significant role in supporting a flexibility strategy. 

For example, research shows that community socialization, group collaboration, and individual focus are often difficult to support while working from home. By providing modern, flexible spaces to support these types of interactions, we can create on-demand destinations that support these types of activities. 

Additionally, providing diverse types of spaces that incorporate inherently flexible solutions delivers a sustainable plan for change that helps organizations navigate economic uncertainty.  

“Our research with Future Forum shows that 80 percent of global desk-based workers say they want location flexibility, while 94 percent of those employees say they want schedule flexibility.”  

2. Flexibility in the technology that’s used 

An intentional approach to flexibility also allows people to adopt the technology that most effectively supports their preferred working location and schedules, as well as their desired level of collaboration. 

According to Ryan Anderson, vice president of global research and insights at MillerKnoll, it’s helpful to think of teams at work as college students choosing to collaborate either synchronously or asynchronously on a group project. 

“A group of college students will tend to work pretty well flexibly,” he said. “If they’re working on a presentation or a project, they’ll likely start by coming together and asking ‘How do we want to approach this? What tech tools we want to use? G Suite? Slack? Teams? Miro?’ 

“Next, they would look at how they divvy up responsibility,” Anderson continued. “And then it will become clear how often they want to get together.  

“If it’s something complex, like mathematical problems with formulas and other structures as part of a project, chances are they’re going to want to physically get together a lot. That way they can look at their information and work through the complexity together on a whiteboard, which is very difficult to do whenever when everyone’s separate. 

“But if it’s creating a paper, they may divide and conquer, and assign each person a section. They might not physically get together at all. They might do this asynchronously in Google Docs and just get on a call at some point to do the final edits,” he related. 

3. Flexibility in how people adopt new norms 

While aligning places and technology to support the work your people are doing is an important starting point, it’s only the first step of a successful flexibility strategy, Yost said. 

Once top leaders are on board and grasp that things need to be done differently, implementation needs to trickle down to next level of management for their buy-in. Once they understand what the strategy is and why they’re doing it, training should follow in a consistent process that allows independent teams to adopt the norms that best support the work they do. 

“By bringing awareness to where and when your people do certain types of work, you can ensure that you have spaces, technology and policies in place to best support it.” 

“You have to think through the guardrails based on the work that you want to get done,” Yost said. “Not just the tasks of the job, but the culture you want and all of those broader strategic objectives that you’re going to want to achieve. How, when and where do you do that best?” she challenged.  

“That’s not going to be a one-size-fits-all across your organization.” 

Prototyping the future of flexible work 

Implementing a flexibility strategy is an opportunity to reimagine how an organization works, but it can be difficult to decide where to start. Piloting provides a low-risk, low investment way to test new strategies. 

According to research from McKinsey, it’s important for organizations “to adopt a test-and-learn approach, executing while remaining adaptable.” Why? It yields more productivity. “Among organizations that lead in productivity, 16 percent continually iterate and tweak as the context shifts, a behavior that is completely absent in organizations that are laggards in productivity,” the authors write. 

Pilots bring the test-and-learn approach to life. They are a model of discovery that explore and test new activities in the workplace ecosystem. 

They’re designed to be iterative by nature, allowing organizations to test and revise based on hard data and user feedback. Additionally, giving users a voice in the process helps build consensus and buy-in for new furniture standards and place design. 

Recent MillerKnoll pilots deployed are testing multiple variables including new technologies and equitable hybrid meeting settings. 

In a time of global uncertainty, flexibility is critical. By embracing a flexibility strategy, organizations can align place design, technology and policies to better support desired work experiences, delivering benefits for their people and the organization itself.