Hybrid Working
When talking to companies about my next adventure, and the idea of Hybrid working occasionally comes up, and one of the most illuminating questions I try to ask is “Why?”
Some companies come up with good, solid, answers. For example, the folk at one company talked about my role potentially involving talking at conferences, and understanding how customers currently work. Those things are far easier to do on-site (you’ll be amazed at how open folk can become when you’re chatting over coffee compared to a video chat), and as a result these are hybrid companies that I’m interested in, along with those that are remote first.
Other companies and recruiters say “it’s just what the company wants”. These companies are the ones I say “pass” to very quickly.
Commuting isn’t a light-weight thing for many people, or for the environment. It involves cost (both financially and time-wise), and if you’re expecting folk to get up at a set time and spend the several hours per week travelling at the busiest times of the day, just because of some arbitrary feeling that it’s a good thing, it makes me wonder how many other parts of the business are run on trying to align with old-fashioned ideas, rather than being based on a solid evaluation of business advantages.
One of the more extreme examples I know of is someone, who I know well, who has most of their team outside of the UK. At home they can easily time-shift their working day depending on who they’re working with, and that’s how they worked, for several years, very successfully (according to their performance reviews).
Then their company decided it wanted a three day per week hybrid working pattern.
Now they get up an hour earlier, three days per week, spend 9 hours per week commuting (yup, more than an extra working day per week purely spent on commuting), spend less time actually working because they’re commuting rather than time-shifting, all to sit in an office where, for two of the three days, they spend the day in meeting rooms having VCs with folk in other countries.
No-one benefits from that, yet, it’s company policy, and it’s a pattern the company wants folk to work.
So if you want folk to do Hybrid working, have a reason. It’s not unreasonable to ask for it, but asking folk to do it when there’s no clear benefit on either side, doesn’t give the impression of a caring, well run, company.