The New Normal: Bringing Value with Hybrid Working

Hybrid working – the new working model

It has a wealth of benefits to both businesses and its employees, but is it right for your business?

Our Chief Revenue Officer, Adam Turton has collaborated with our Head of Human Resources, Laura Williams and our Technology Director, Greg Voller, to discuss the value that hybrid working can bring to your business and how to navigate any potential issues when moving to a hybrid working model.

Speaker Showcase

Adam Turton|Chief Revenue Officer
Adam oversees Sales, Marketing and Customer Experience at Elite Group and is one of its longest standing board members, with almost 20 years of experience within the B2B Technology and Communications sector.

Find Adam Turton on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamturton/

Laura Williams|Head of Human Resources
With over 19 years’ HR experience in both the education and technology sectors and a wealth of knowledge of strategic and operational HR, Laura is responsible for leading and developing Elite Group’s HR team.

Find Laura Williams on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-williams-2689bb71/

Greg Voller|Technology Director
Greg has a proven track record of success within B2B, outsourced, technical services and consultancy with the SME and Corporate markets. With 20 years of experience in the tech sector, Greg has impressive insight into successful digital transformation programmes.

Find Greg Voller on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregvoller/

Handy Highlights

How beneficial is it for a company to offer hybrid working?

For the past year, many of us have been working from home and have adapted to a very different type of working environment. From improvements to our work/life balance to greater flexibility, we’ve seen the advantages of remote working.

“Now that we are able to return to the office safely in many cases, Laura Williams explained, the next logical step is to move to a more hybrid approach.”

Laura further elaborated that, according to research, achieving a better work/life balance produces better overall productivity and employees are motivated to stay working with an organisation that facilitates this.

Greg Voller agreed that work/life balance is key. “Taking myself as an example, Greg said, historically, I would be getting on a train to London early in the morning, not seeing the family at breakfast.  Now, working from home, I can take the children to school and still be at my desk even earlier than I would have been pre-pandemic.”

Hybrid working allows employees to have greater flexibility and an improved work/life balance which drives them to be more productive and stay loyal to your company. A business’ greatest asset is its people, so these benefits could be the key to successful retention of top talent.

How can businesses determine if hybrid working is suitable for them?

Although hybrid working has a wealth of benefits, it’s not for everyone.

“Organisations need to look at what’s worked well in the past 12 months and what hasn’t worked as well”, Laura said, “and then determine which roles would be suitable for hybrid working from that point onwards.”

From a technological point of view, Greg advised that businesses need to review their systems, the voice platform that they are using, their IT solutions and the security of the end-points which staff are accessing these systems from.

“The last thing a business needs is to have data stored locally on machines – not being managed and not being backed-up,” explained Greg.

Analyse your people and their roles – who can realistically work within a hybrid working model? Go over the success and trials of the last year – what has worked well and what could be improved? Finally, review your technology – can your technology support your staff’s productivity and keep your data secure away from the office? The answers to these questions will give you a good idea about whether hybrid working is possible and the areas you need to improve in order for it to bring value to your company.

How can you prioritise the success of the company whilst taking the opinions of employees into consideration?

Laura outlined that the overall success of the company is the main priority, regarding hybrid working, as we need to ensure that the business is a success for everyone’s long-term employment security. After we’ve established what is best for the company then we need to consider what the employees want – not an easy balance to ensure, but an important one, nonetheless.

“It’s certainly not one-size fits all and it will be an interesting space to watch and learn from,” Adam said.

Of course we want to ensure that our employees are satisfied with their working environment but it is paramount to ensure the working environment solution is both workable and possible for the business to be profitable and successful.

Key Quotes

[31:15]

“I think a lot of us are tired of that experience of speaking to people (as we are now ironically) through a camera and through a screen and are welcoming an element of hybrid working and getting back into an office – whether it’s for collaboration or just team meetings.” 

Adam Turton

[34:29]

“Utilise the business’s systems – the live dashboards, the reporting functionality and then utilise systems, like Microsoft Teams to have one-on-one conversations with the staff. Monitor and help to train up staff if they are struggling with that remote working element. The key is to manage the staff the same, whether they are office-based or remote.”

Greg Voller

[47:34]

“For employees, we need to be thinking about collaborative working and teamwork. It’s not just the manager’s responsibility to make hybrid working successful. It’s our responsibility, as an employee to make it a success as well.”

Laura Williams