When Klara was offered a hybrid work arrangement, she thought it would be the best of both worlds.
The account manager had joined a company in London (United Kingdom) with a contract that forced her to go to the office full time, but the successive waves of covid-19 forced her to work from home.
Klara’s boss introduced the hybrid policy in September 2021, when the British government’s guidelines recommending working from home were coming to an end: On Tuesdays and Thursdays she would work from home, and the rest of the week she would go to the office during normal contracted hours.
“At first, having a permanent hybrid setup was a relief,” said Klara, whose last name is being withheld for job security reasons. “After years of full-time office work, I felt like I was finally in control of my busy schedule and family life.”
However, as the months passed, the novelty of hybrid work soon gave way to discomfort.
“On the days that I work from home I feel comfortable and focused,” Klara recounted. “But in the afternoon I dread going back to a noisy office and spending eight hours staring at a screen, readjusting myself to exactly how I was before Covid-19,” she acknowledges.
Klara related that she feels like she now has to maintain two workplaces: one at the office and one at home.
“It involves planning and a stop-start routine: bringing my laptop to and from the office every day, and remembering what important things I’ve left where,” he explains.
“It’s the psychological change – the change of scenery every day – that’s so exhausting, this constant feeling of never being settled, stressed and that my productive work at home is always interrupted,” she adds.
New data begins to back up this anecdotal evidence: Many workers say the hybrid shift is emotionally draining. A recent global study conducted by the Tinypulse platform revealed that more than 80% of managers reported that this modality was exhausting for employees.
Employees also noted that hybrid work was more emotionally taxing than fully remote and, worryingly, even full-time office work.
Considering that many companies plan to implement permanent hybrid work models and that employees want to spend their working weeks between home and office, these figures raise alarm bells.
But what is it about hybrid work that is so emotionally draining? And how can workers and companies avoid the pitfalls to make hybrid working really work?
As the pandemic has dragged on and flexible working habits have taken hold, returning to the office full-time seems like a relic. However, although some companies have implemented work-from-anywhere policies, others have opted for the hybrid modality.
In theory, the hybrid model is the best option for both employer and employee, combining pre-Covid-19 office work patterns with remote work days. This would allow for in-person collaboration and team building, as well as greater flexibility and the opportunity to focus on housework.
On paper it looked like the workers would come out on top. A study conducted in May 2021 found that 83% of workers wanted to work hybrid after the pandemic.
“There was a sense that this option would be the best of both worlds,” says Elora Voyles, an organizational psychologist and industrial scientist at California-based firm Tinypulse.
“For managers, it means they retain a sense of control and can see their workers in person. For employees, it offers more flexibility than working full-time in the office and means they can work safely during the pandemic,” he adds.
However, as the novelty of hybrid work has faded, so has the enthusiasm of workers. “We found that people were less positive about hybrid work as time went on,” explains Voyles.
“In the spring and summer months, a lot of organizations were really keen to implement it. They put employees on a hybrid schedule, but then they quickly ran into difficulties,” he says.
Organizations that never implemented the hybrid system were forced to make policies on the fly, often without consulting their employees. So, as in the case of Klara, workers were forced to work partly in the office and partly at home.
The optimism of the workers soon gave way to weariness. In Tinypulse’s survey of 100 employees around the world, 72% said they were burned out by hybrid work, nearly double the numbers for fully remote workers and also higher than those working full-time in the office .
Despite the small sample size, Voyles says the study reflects the problem: The disruption to employees’ daily routines — and the choppy nature of the hybrid mode — is what workers find so tiring.
“A predictable and consistent routine can help people cope with feelings of stress and uncertainty, especially during a pandemic,” he says.
“However, hybrid requires frequent changes to those daily habits: workers have to constantly change things, so it’s hard to find a routine when your schedule is always in and out of the office,” he explains.
A familiar routine can act as a well-laid groove that allows for flow, but forging new daily habits—involving a less consistent schedule between workplaces—can deplete cognitive resources.
“Going into hybrid modality can disrupt the routine of working at home,” warns psychologist Gail Kinman, a member of the British Psychological Society.
“Hybrid practices have not yet become second nature, so you need more energy, organization and planning. You have to create new strategies (job sharing, travel planning) that would not be needed if you worked remotely or in person,” he says.
Physically moving work from home to the office can also have a psychological impact for some.
According to a recent study, 20% of UK workers reported having difficulty unplugging from work and feeling “always on”; Difficulty adjusting to hybrid mode and permeable boundaries between home and work was cited as a major factor.
The hybrid mode can also carry a higher risk of digital presenteeism, Kinman added, compared to fully remote jobs, which involve employer trust from the start.
“If an employer goes hybrid without trusting their staff, it can become little more than a symbolic gesture: workers feel pressured to prove to their boss that they are making the most of working from home. That can lead to overkill. of work and exhaustion, the effects of which can be devastating,” he points out.
For some workers, frustrations with the hybrid system mean they’re gravitating toward jobs that allow them full control of their schedules.
“I thought hybrid was for me, but splitting my time between home and work was too disruptive,” admits Klara, who will be starting a new fully remote role soon.
“The office distracts me: you can be disturbed at any time. The longer I worked hybrid, the more I felt like it was one more obstacle to doing my job: from commuting to knowing I’d be working somewhere else the next day. turned into a chore,” he adds.
However, Klara’s experience doesn’t necessarily mean that workers should return to their office desks five days a week, or seek jobs that are permanently remote.
The hybrid modality can be a perfect harmony for workers, as long as their employer gets it right.
“The hybrid work cases that fail are those dictated by the supervisor,” explains Voyles. “Employees end up having a workweek that they have no control over: it’s like the fixed full-time office hours of yesteryear, which happens to be at the worker’s house twice a week.”
Kinman says it all boils down to what organizations mean by “hybrid.” “It’s a broad definition that can be interpreted in many ways: from going to the office three days a week, to once a month. Hybrid may still be the future of work and represent the best of both worlds, but we still have to perfect it,” he explains.
The hybrid mode can be successful when management contacts their employees, preferably on an individual basis, to define how the setup works for them.
“Both the employer and the employee must set the limits. But the worker needs to have autonomy to self-manage their schedule: flexibility must be dictated by the individual, not by the boss,” says Voyles.
Additionally, hybrid staffing could be aided by a more robust remote work setup, which would help ease the psychological shift between office and home.
“Hybrid is a state of mind,” adds Kinman. “It’s the idea that we move and work seamlessly from one environment to another. So mechanisms have to be put in place to ensure that employees have the right software and tools to work from home,” she says.
Kinman admits that we are in the midst of a great labor experiment and predicts that the problems will last for years.
“Currently, we know more about full-time remote work during a health crisis than we do about long-term hybrid work,” he adds, while saying that if workers are allowed some degree of choice and control over their work schedules, of work, the rewards will be juicy.
“Both individuals and organizations say they want hybrid working. So there’s a huge opportunity to change the way you work. But you have to go beyond the hours set by bosses – it has to be a mindset that works both for the employer as well as for the employee,” concludes Kinman.
This story was originally published on BBC Worklife. Read the article in English here.
Now you can receive notifications from BBC World. Download the new version of our app and activate it so you don’t miss out on our best content.
