Hi Charlotte... and welcome to the community!

Good question.

Loads of resources here.

My view is that we are all still trying to work through this and there is no one-size-fits-all, even within an organisation. It needs to work for the business, but also for teams and individual employees. Flexibility and compromise required by all. It is not straightforward and it would be good to gather together some experiences below :)

Hi Charlotte,

It may be worth considering the kind of work that is happening on these 'team days'. For example, are they team days in name only or are they being used to take advantage of the kind of collaboration that can only be done face to face.

I have seen a similar set up where attendance on team days rapidly fell away once colleagues realised they were coming into the office just to sit on teams calls with people offsite.

Where I have seen a workable split is that rather than everyone being in the office on a set day per week, the office is used for 'heads up' collaborative and specific types of synchronous decision making - this can be achieved with a bit of forward planning. Conversely, WFH can be seen as a great opportunity to get through the 'heads down' concentration, solo work.

Hi Charlotte,

I’ve spent a lot of time working with businesses on this for the last couple of years. My first question is this - why three days? How have you reached this decision and do employees know why they are being asked to come in this often? It’s more than most people want to come in based on a range of surveys - so they need to see a purpose or rationale or push back is inevitable. Too often this just seems like a good number of days or it’s believed (not always backed by evidence) that this amount of days is needed for something or other. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn where I’ve shared lots of content on this topic. I write about it on my blog too where there is a post on this topic. Www.hrgemblog.com. Feel free to ask me any questions.
Gem

In reply to Gemma Dale:

Thanks, Gem :)

Hi Charlotte, I wrote about hybrid working in our linkedin group last week actually - topical subject still!

Basically this was the post, which calls out the key role of the line manager as well as issues of inclusion and fairness - evolving use of the workplace, and technology as a key enabler:



And the updated CIPD guidance I referred to is here and is well worth a look. 

"Best practices"? Ask people first and design with them. That's the best way of finding out what could work, and understanding what people want. Here's a small case study www.virtualnotdistant.com/.../hybrid-workplace-case-study

We're a tech firm, HQ in London and satellite offices in Asia and the US, in case our example is any use to you. What has worked has been involving people in designing the work pattern, listening to them, and trying to make sure that during office days there's a genuine benefit to being there.

We have ended up with different requirements for different teams - the teams that either need to use tools/equipment, or do manual work such as shipping and logistics, or are people-facing are in the office full-time (many of them never left the office, so this is not a big shift).

The teams who had become fully remote developed an approach collaboratively, which was essential for buy-in. We also had clearly defined transitional periods, i.e. "during April and May we would like you to start coming in at least 1 day per week" then following that up with either an expectation they would move to the new work pattern, or we would consider individual requests for flexible working.

For example, most of our software developers work on 2 or more projects at once. They therefore have to be in the office for their weekly "project day" which is when the planning, review and learning happens. It's when all the incidental chat and smalltalk about the project happens, that we can't replicate online. They also come into the office for 1 additional day per week to be involved in mentoring others and connecting with other teams (this has not been brilliant remotely, so it was the employees' preference to put more energy into this). So in practice they have 1 day for project A, 1 day for project B, and 1 day for team/wider company connectivity. Some choose to come in more than that, and some stick to their 3 days.

And as an HR team, we want to model what we're asking of others, so we're in up to 4 days a week (pro-rated for the part-time members), and we spread around our rota so that there is always someone present in the office if people need an in-person connection.

Charlotte, there are so many good points and resource links above. Gemma Dale has written books on this and there are many other authors in this space too.

I've worked for a lot of clients who, even before Covid, had differing approaches to working asynchronously, working in other locations, home working and hybrid. I'd endorse the comments made previously.

Engage with people and be prepared to have different approaches for different types of work and teams. Design with them and also make sure the tech and the space for working in a co-location space/ office works for the work they are doing, the activities and the purpose of being in the space. Open plan office space, lack of meeting rooms, quiet spaces or spaces to collaborate, poor tech experiences, bad working practices (so many meetings) & micro managing have often not gone away during the pandemic so folks might be less keen to come in if there's no pull only push factors.

I've worked recently for a remote first business and there were challenges with that too, although people came in to the office space for very specific reasons.

I strongly believe that part of the plan for working successfully in a more flexible way is development for managers and individuals and more support, signposting and making the space work for a clear purpose and reason for being there, above and beyond the we used to do that and we'd like to return to it.