Does Hybrid Have to Be
the Worst of Both Worlds?

Here are 3 tips for using empathy and emotional intelligence to create remote work policies – for you, your organization, or your clients – that prioritize people and create a new normal that’s even better than pre-pandemic norms. 

by Michael Miller

A friend of mine, Sarah, works at a major university in the Midwest. Like most people, she had always gone into the office on a typical schedule – Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 – until the pandemic started in March 2020. She then worked fully remotely for over a year. Since June 2021 she’s been back in person full-time – and she’s not happy about it.

“It’s literally the worst of both worlds,” she told me recently. “Most of my meetings are too big to have in person, per the university’s policies, so I’m literally going into the office to sit on Zoom meetings all day. I’m paying for parking, for petcare, for after school childcare, and sitting in traffic twice a day. And they can’t even give me a good reason why.” She’s considering quitting, and admitted to having searched on LinkedIn recently for a similar job with more flexibility.

Situations like these are playing out across the globe, as employees and companies grapple with the most seismic changes to work culture and expectations that we’ve seen in our lifetime. The stakes are high: A full 40% of the global workforce is considering leaving their employer this year, per research from Microsoft. And if the job market in the US is any indication, with record numbers of people quitting jobs every month, employees aren’t bluffing. “The game has changed,” says Derek Thompson, staff writer at The Atlantic. “A large share of white collar workers are simply never going to think of the office the way they did in 2019, ever again. They will think of it as something optional, part-time, that they do on a hybrid basis.”

As a leader, how does that make you feel? Are you ready to handle the increased emotional complexity that hybrid work presents, and is it possible to honor employees’ desires for autonomy while also maintaining a cohesive company culture? Here’s what the data says about the pros and cons of hybrid work, for both employees and organizations, and tips for using emotional intelligence to develop empathic policies that meet both employees’ needs and the organization’s goals. 

First, let’s start with the source of potential conflict between employees and employers.

Employees crave flexibility more than ever

Even before the pandemic, the biggest gap between companies’ values and those of their employees came down to autonomy, per research by Slack. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and many knowledge workers experienced near total autonomy for the first time. Most realized they could do jobs just as well – or even better – at home. And they liked it more. “There were a lot of things in place that were totally arbitrary,” says Ann Helen Peterson, coauthor of Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home. “Like when you had to leave the house, which happened to be when everyone else was leaving their house, so you had to sit in traffic. Or when you could pick up your kids, which created childcare gaps. People did these things out of habit or compulsion, but they didn’t have to be that way. The shift to remote is allowing people to make their schedules flexible in a way that works for them and works for their families… to make work rotate around life, instead of your life rotating around work.”

The data suggests that, having experienced this autonomy, employees aren’t eager to go back to the way things were: A LinkedIn study found that applications for flexible jobs get 2.5x as many applications on average as jobs without flexibility, fueled by frustrated employees like my friend Sarah who’s sick of her university’s WFH policy. Even more wildly, a survey from an app called Blind found that among 3,000 employees from over 45 top companies (such as Apple, Twitter, Salesforce, Visa, CapitalOne) 64% of employees would rather have flexible work than a US$30k increase in salary. “Employees are demanding it,” says Thompson. “We should be prepared for a future in which remote work is a much bigger part of the landscape.”

The story, however, isn’t as simple as employees just wanting to work from home. They miss the office, too – adding to the complexity for leaders as they navigate this new terrain.

The Great Paradox: Employees want connection, too

“It’s not that I’m opposed to going in,” Sarah told me. “I love going to campus. Seeing my coworkers and students, feeling the energy. I would not want to work from home all the time. No way.”

Most employees agree, per Microsoft’s Work Trends Index report. While over 70% of employees want flexible remote work options to continue, over 65 percent are craving more in-person time with their teams. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella calls these competing impulses The Great Paradox.

How can companies set WFH policies that respect both of these employee desires, while also keeping in mind what’s best for the organization? Here are emotional intelligence tips for navigating a shifting landscape full of challenges and opportunities.

3 Tips Using Empathy and Emotional Intelligence to Create Remote Work Policies

How can leaders apply emotional intelligence to the creation and evolution of hybrid work policies?

1   No one-size-fits-all solution: Customize remote work policies for people

The most innovative companies will do the best they can to customize hybrid work policies for individual teams and employees, because the perfect schedule for someone depends on a complex mix of personality, job type, career stage, and more.

“First of all, people are psychologically diverse,” says Thompson. “Some people are more productive, and more psychologically healthy, when working remotely.” Other people, however, would struggle with loneliness and disconnection working remotely, with negative consequences both personally and professionally.

In addition to people’s unique psychological makeup, different jobs lend themselves to varying amounts of remote vs. in person time. My friend who works as an IT security analyst has no practical reason to ever set foot in the office ever again. My other friend who manages accounts and client relations for a major bank has to be in at least 3 days per week. Interestingly, though, they both recently expressed a desire for a hybrid schedule, albeit in different ratios. The security analyst wants to go to the office once or twice a week to catch up and get out of the house, while the account manager wants to work from home once a week so he can power through emails and sales reports without getting interrupted, break up the monotony of the daily commute, and maybe sneak in a midday workout. 

Finally, an employee’s attitude toward remote work will change depending on where they are in their career and in their life. For someone just starting out in their career or at a company, they may want more in-person time. “Without hallway conversations, chance encounters, and small talk over coffee,” says Hannah McConnaughey, a Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft, “it’s hard to feel connected even to my immediate team, much less build meaningful connections across the company.” On the other end of the spectrum, many new parents would cherish more flexibility, and offering it could be the difference between watching them burn out and having the transition go relatively smoothly.

Instead of starting with a focus on policy, focus on people – and craft policy based on that:

How are people doing and what do they need? Who will be able to work remotely, and who might have to come in? How often? How can we leverage remote work to take care of employees’ emotional wellbeing?

Leaders must have the empathy and emotional intelligence skills necessary to ask these questions and craft policies to match. 

2 Beware of silos: Prioritize collaboration in remote settings

One interesting finding in Microsoft’s Work Trends Report is about how remote work impacted the way we communicate at work. In short, the shift to remote shrunk our networks. While total communication remained the same, silos deepened. Teams talked more amongst themselves, but far less with other teams across the organization. This could, of course, have negative consequences. “When you lose connections, you stop innovating,” says Dr. Nancy Baym, Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft, “It’s harder for new ideas to get in and groupthink becomes a serious possibility. Leaders must look for ways to foster the social capital, cross-team collaboration, and spontaneous idea-sharing that’s been driving workplace innovation for decades.”

As a leader, ask yourself: For those staying remote full-time or part-time, is it a priority to communicate with people outside one’s immediate team? How will you do that or encourage that?

3 Shared vulnerability: Leverage the authenticity of work from home

While the Microsoft research revealed  a deepening of silos, it also found that remote work increased the authenticity of team’s interactions. With pets, children and people’s homes suddenly on Zoom calls, employees became… people. “Before the pandemic, we encouraged people to ‘bring their whole self to work,’ but it was tough to truly empower them to do that,” says Jared Spataro, CVP at Microsoft 365. “The shared vulnerability of this time has given us a huge opportunity to bring real authenticity to company culture and transform work for the better.”

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