Hi 👋 ,

Welcome to this week’s edition of INFUZED. The COVID pandemic wasn’t even a week old (for most of us in March 2020), when the discussion about returning to the office and the impact on the future of work it would have was heating up. Some can’t wait for the daily commute to the office to see, but even more interact with, their colleagues and immerse themselves in the office life - hey, we’ve built beautiful offices in the past few years that serve as a second home. For others that work-from-home, remote thing was the lifestyle they’ve been waiting for and are willing to fight for keeping it. 

The stereotypical attitude towards a future setup appears to be that employees cherish the freedom of remoteness and employers with their managers can’t wait to have everyone back in their oversight - for productivity reasons obviously. 

Well, then let’s just compromise, take the best of both worlds and find the ideal hybrid model for each respective company. Problem solved. Not so fast. (We’ve discussed the issue with compromises in INFUZED #16).

The „Hybrid Office“ might not be the future of work

In their corporate blog, Panther - though biased as they are servicing remote companies - point out that there are some fundamental differences in fully remote and a hybrid setup. The hybrid setup comes with a plethora of complexities that are worth addressing before deciding what kind of setup you want to champion at your company for its future. 

Here are the four greatest things of remote work that most hybrid models would kill as Panther argues:

• People don’t get to choose where they live.
• People don’t get to be fully flexible about when they work.
• If some people are remote-only and some aren’t, inequality quickly arises.
• You’re still mostly limited to hiring people from your area.

It’s worth thinking that thing through, as you won’t be able to cherry-pick the best of both worlds. Here are some examples of consequences most people don’t think about:

• You can’t have the freedom of being allowed to work fully remote without then competing with the entire world for your job.
• You can’t have a partly remote team without mostly asynchronous communication in place and everyone always available, when you might need something.
• You can’t just show up for the mandatory meeting and expect to build a relationship with your peers that will forge bonds for your company's success.
• You can’t cut cost getting rid of the office without replacing the sense of identity an office will give your company (especially, if you don’t have product to rally everyone around).

CHALLENGE

What are the disadvantages of your preferred model of work?

Do you still champion it?

I hope this can help you define your preferred way of working and by that help you create the ideal future of work for yourself and your company.

Have a great week! 

David