Why Hybrid Working is a ‘Disaster’ in 2023

Unsurprisingly, hybrid working has been a hot topic at this year’s Enterprise Connect, including the idea of turning office working into a “magnet, not a mandate.” Multiple vendors used this term in conference discussions around hybrid working, inferred as a post-pandemic update on the classic “carrot v stick” management conundrum.

Craig Durr, Senior Analyst at Wainhouse Research, explained the theory to UC Today: “We have this challenge right now of what to do with this office space and trying to get people back into it. So, the magnet is, ‘do we have something attractive enough to pull them in, or is it going to be top-level, CEO mandates that you must be in the office three or four days a week?’ You see it a lot in America right now, especially in financial services.”

Encouraging employees to actively want to work in the office more regularly, as opposed to mandating on-site days as company policy, creates natural challenges for businesses drafting hybrid working strategies. These challenges are especially problematic because we are still relatively early into the era of hybrid working as the new normal and businesses are still getting to grips with this reality.

However, a demonstrably successful best practice for hybrid working ultimately remains elusive. Zeus Kerravala, Founder and Principal Analyst at ZK Research, described the state of hybrid working in 2023 as a “disaster” to UC Today.

“Companies don’t know how to implement hybrid work,” Kerravala continued. “Some organisations are doing, ‘you must come in three days a week,’ some others have people come in shifts, others have elements of new employees coming in, so there’s no real best practices around hybrid work. I know the theory of ‘make the office a magnet, not a mandate,’ but most people in UC I talk to, their companies have mandated it.”

Vendors have produced great collaborative innovations and products to adjust to the growth of hybrid working in recent years, but Kerravala argued that developing the office “magnet” depends on building a collaborative hybrid working culture first.

“I was talking to a CIO here who works in a bank,” Kerravala said, “and they were saying they built two of those new collaborative rooms, but nobody uses them. I started asking them, ‘Well, did you have a collaborative culture before?’ They said no. It’s not a case of ‘if you build it, they will come’. Just because you’ve built some rooms doesn’t mean that people are going to use them.

“People have to come in for the right reasons, but companies are still struggling with what those reasons are. If you’re coming in to just sit on your Zoom calls, don’t come in.”

Durr also argued that creating tangible reasons for employees to come to the office formed the basis of a more successful hybrid working model. “I think what’s transitioning right now is that people are embracing the idea that you’re removing the friction from people trying to find each other,” Durr said. “They’re coming into the office after being given reasons for coming in.”

“People come into an office to do a thing called work, and that work used to involve a specific idea (of place),” Durr added. “‘I have a lab, I have a desk, I have someplace to go to,’ and now they have work to do with the idea of people. ‘I need to come in to have this meeting with X, I need to see them in person,’ or ‘I need to do something being around this team, to create this outcome or product.’”

Kerravala cited Cisco’s multi-camera rooms as an example of great collaborative innovations that vendors have developed. However, he also points out how Cisco has refined its culture around hybrid working to complement the innovations. Effectively, Cisco wants people to come into the office when working on use cases that benefit from occurring in person, including innovation, mentoring, and co-creation.

While this is a positive case study in building a magnet of an office environment, this hybrid working model is still far away from being recognised as best practice.