The Hybrid Hype: After the lockdown, employees need to take back control about where they work.
Photo by Adomas Aleno on Unsplash

The Hybrid Hype: After the lockdown, employees need to take back control about where they work.

This article collects thoughts about designing a hybrid work model for tech startups retrieved in conversations across HV Capital's portfolio. With companies ranging from a small early-stage team to large late-stage companies, HR leaders take different approaches when planning the post-lockdown work mode. As this is unchartered territory for most organisations, we hope to share best practices and receive more input on aspects overlooked. We acknowledge this is a “work in progress”, as it should be, facing an ever-changing world we navigate.

This article covers two parts

  1. Where most organizations come from
  2. Hybrid Work Model: Design Considerations

We are eager to learn about other organisation’s approaches for hybrid work and encourage you to share them in the comments. 


1. Where companies come from

Pre-Pandemic, most companies offered "home office policies", with a small percentage for working outside the office. Some extended this to "work from anywhere" and not necessarily just the home.

In most tech companies with a predominantly younger workforce, employees considered limited home office policies not to be flexible enough. Especially young parents with a capped amount of hours a day to allocate to their jobs would have benefited from not wasting time commuting.

Offering on average two days/week to work location-agnostic would have already been considered an increase in work-life balance.

Thus, the enforced home office caused by the lockdown flipped the conversation on its head. Restricted to not work from anywhere but your home was anything but a choice or flexibility. Additionally, employees had to accept that their job intrudes in their private space. This blurred line between work and leisure added to the mental load. Working from home didn't feel like the promised land some sought. 

The demand for making your own decisions

At the end of this long lockdown period, organisations now balance location-agnostic work and onsite socialising. Flexibility is at the core of this debate. After more than a year in which workers had no say in where they choose to work, organisations cannot force location restrictions of any kind on them.

The acknowledgement of different personalities

Surveys show that employees across workforce demographics carried the mental load differently. Yet whatever form of long-endured "sameness" people suffered from, not being in control was the overarching burden. As a result, some felt isolated as they lived alone, and others had to add full-time care work to a full-time job. Either or, people felt trapped in a draining monotony of some sort.

Still, there are bits and pieces some people learned to appreciate. For example, wearing an expected business uniform each day means leaving your individuality in the closet. Will this still be necessary?

For most, office days also mean watercooler conversations, presenting in front of people and mingling with strangers in the canteen. For shy introverts, doing this costs extra effort and energy. Others might want to optimise their workspace to be undistracted, whether visual, acoustic, or aesthetic. Organisations working in diversity and inclusion need to offer individuality in work setups. 

 The ever more so talent-driven startup economy

Employees in tech startups have seen the job market evolve in their favour. Agile startups could reduce workforces quickly when cash was tight last year or raise funds to sustain their business mainly were not hit too hard. At the same time, Venture Capital funding increased tremendously this year. Until last year, investments relied on in-person meetings to decide, so some decisions were on hold. Now, some investors have come around with meeting founders just virtually. This effect, and a flourishing tech economy, lead to an increase in venture capital. 

In Germany alone, by mid-2021, around 10.5bn€ in venture capital have been invested. Previous years averaged at 7.6bn€ for a full year.

At the same time, fewer employees changed jobs in 2020 and put their career on hold, too. Relocating or joining a company or boss you have only met virtually was a decision most uncomfortable making. Some fear an increase of churn caused by an unknown chunk of their workforce silently becoming a flight risk. The momentum of people no longer "waiting it out" is accelerated by the rise in job choices caused by unprecedented funding rounds. Salaries skyrocket as more employers with substantial cash hunt for a dense talent pool.

Employers facing talent scarcity, which leads to increased competition and ridiculous salaries locally, now need to retain their employees and hire globally. So benefit packages get revised to offer "more" of whatever might matter to the ever so scarce tech talent. 

It's the employees negotiating the terms - at least in the tech space these days. So, naturally, this works well into the demand for flexibility. Employees want to be able to choose where, when and how to get work done.

Why hybrid matters

Looking ahead to restrictions of "forced home office" phasing out, organisations need to plan for the post-lockdown phase. However long or lasting this might be. Employers acknowledge that they need to be flexible to adapt to potential future waves of pandemic effects. 

So the situation most organisations have to solve is, combining both sides' flexibility demands without discounting efficiency and productivity.

Options are anywhere on a spectrum between "working fully onsite" to "working fully remote". In between lies "hybrid" where there is a bit of both - and precisely the flexibility everyone wants.

Historically, most organisations leaned towards onsite as this was in line with overall control mechanisms installed in their organisations. For decades in most industries, controlling where, when and how long people work, seeing their output, has been the modus operandi. 

Startups and some pioneering employers have played around giving their employees control back, thereby showing more trust in their decisions. 

But now, every organisation is facing the same challenges - across industries, geographies - and across organisational designs and cultures.

Merely adopting best practices or blueprints from others won't work this time. Instead, as the leadership capabilities, information flow, and tools in place, the culture and climate of a workplace define the possible work mode. Leaders do good thinking about design principles for their future setup to avoid organisational design misfits before "switching to hybrid". 

Every workplace is different due to different business models, levels of trust and leadership styles. 

There is no silver bullet in changing to a hybrid work mode for organisations previously working traditionally onsite. Yet, the talent demands in some industries force employers to take a stand now and deliver strategies. 

One must not forget that all of this can only be in flux. The pandemic is not over; the talent market might be a temporary bubble, and even if not: organisations don't change fast. So even with the best of intentions, it will take a while to find the right balance. As for more traditional management styles, what individuals want and what the organisation needs to deliver on seems to be opposing interests. For some, less so, but even they will need to reconfigure processes, systems and flow of information across an organisation.   


2. Hybrid Work Design Considerations 

Hybrid means to combine two demands that are not only a choice of a place. For example, on the surface, some employees prefer to not only work in the office. But, at the same time, some activities or business models depend on people being in the same place, e.g., brainstorming or decision-making. 

It has become clear that trust is the currency of healthy organisations, and establishing it relies on in-person interactions. For example, humans trust other humans when they can read their mimicry and body language. Therefore, at least for some time, a relationship needs in-person interactions to build the level of trust required to create psychological safe work environments. 

Leaders now need to balance out at least these three demands:

  1. Location: Offer flexibility of work location to employees as if not, organisations might neither hire nor retain sought-after talent.
  2. Efficiency: Enabling in-person interactions to get specific tasks done most effectively.
  3. Culture: Build layers of trust across the organisation, so people bond and feel included.

The following aspects might help to guide discussions around designing any hybrid work model. As said, this is very much ingrained in your company culture and legacy of leadership, processes, information flow.


Hybrid is a fundamental organisational change.

Leaders must remember that changing to "hybrid" is more than just writing an extended home office policy. 

It not only changes your organisational design and the configuration of your organisation (i.e. the OrgChart) - it also can only build on your existing structures, climate, information processing capabilities and needs and leadership capacities. Some business models will ease into hybrid, e.g. Saas companies. But for hardware or robotics startups, this might look very different. Few startups are already fully remote to maximise their talent pool, but others still need to hire locally. Some companies have seasoned, well-rounded leaders who can manage remotely. Others have leaders with less experience, for which onsite management is already a steep learning curve.  

Ultimately, all organisations will need to design their setup to align with their overall culture and strategy. 

Who goes hybrid, and who decides upon this?

Leaders must also decide not only the hybrid design but also: 

  1. to whom it applies
  2. who decides about to whom it applies

As pointed out, many employees, especially in tech companies, will want flexibility and ownership of their workplace. It, therefore, can be assumed that a majority of the workforce of tech startups will want to be hybrid. 

Companies do well with regulations to plan capacities and demands for space in the offices and onsite interactions. These are just some approaches to hybrid design that are trialled at companies these days:

  • Everyone can choose to work hybrid.
  • Specific roles are excluded from work hybrid, as their presence on site is required all the time. E.g. office managers.
  • Teams can decide as units to work hybrid to simultaneously allow (and trial) various approaches across an organisation.
  • New joiners to the company cannot work remotely throughout their onboarding. Only afterwards, hybrid work is allowed.
  • Employees place themselves into one of these three groups: 1) remote-first, 2) hybrid or  3) office-first

Some companies struggle with forcing a regulated hybrid design upon their workforce. For them, this should not come from the top. So task forces across the staff are called to give ownership of this decision to the employees. Depending on the organisation's culture and responsibility structure, this can be very much in line. However, it can also create a misfit to other decisions where employees are not equally involved.

Hybrid principles

Hybrid touches multiple components of an organisation's design, mainly:

  • the physical space(s) of where work takes place 
  • the core working hours
  • interactions & decision-making
  • information flow (both: demand and capacity to process information)

Therefore having underlying principles to what a hybrid looks like in a specific organisation.

The percentage of "remoteness." 

Even "fully/first remote" employees are required to be onsite for specific interactions. It can be either an annual meeting or defined as "20% of the time". For the hybrid group (which, as said, can apply to everyone), this can be a balance of 60-40 hybrid-onsite. "Office first" workers might also want at least 20% of their time flexible, whether a fixed day per week or a more extended period once a year. 

Some companies ask employees to plan or work on a set routine to switch between offices and other places to plan capacities onsite. When an organisation partitions their workforce into the three groups mentioned above, they get different workspace setups:

  • Remote first: the main workspace is either a home office or coworking solution sponsored by the company. Yet, there won't be any desks kept in the office, so employees book flex-desks when they come in.
  • Hybrid: a fixed desk at the office that employees will share with colleagues when not at the office. A clean desk policy and booking tool must be part of this. They also get some budget to equip a home workspace that is equally functional to an office. 
  • Office first: The traditional setup of a fixed desk to themselves but no budget for home office. 

Given that employees in tech companies work primarily with mobile devices, switching places is never really problematic. However, a fully productive desk requires specific monitors, standing desks, or other furniture for some roles or individuals. So employers need to decide where to spend budget and enable all individuals to be most productive location agnostic. 

When to be where?

As pointed out, some interactions benefit from in-person meetings. Which interactions should be defined in the hybrid policies, so employees know when to come into the office. Depending on the business model, culture, tool setup and leadership capabilities, this can include:

  • customer meetings
  • executive meetings & decision making
  • critical conversations, resolving conflict
  • brainstorming and ideation
  • onboarding
  • interviewing finalists for key hires
  • feedback and development conversations
  • team meetings

Companies will need to define which interactions are preferred vs required to be held in an office space. Some companies also give more flexibility and offer budgets to teams to book any room of their liking for their interactions outside the office. 

Depending on customer interactions, other companies require specific team members to ensure they can always travel to the office within 24 hours. 

Emotionally literate leaders

Strengthening the leadership team and giving them guidance on communication with remote employees is crucial. In addition, with widespread debates about mental health, psychological safety and inclusion, managers need to increase their emotional literacy. Becoming aware of the mental load of employees you hardly see is more complex than when you have more interactions and visibility in an office. Finally, leaders need to engage differently and create more trust so employees feel encouraged to open up. Showing their vulnerability as an authority can support building a trusted relationship between managers and their team members. 

Culture of Cohesion and Inclusion

Having parts of your organisation work in different locations creates a fragmented information flow. Information loss can be mitigated through clear communication rules and dedicated tools. Defining what communication should always occur in, e.g. Slack or Teams, makes sense, so employees don't feel they miss out. For example, some companies don't have meetings when not every team member can join, even virtually. But others struggle with aligning the office atmosphere with including their remote colleagues. For example, an impromptu celebration at the office will only involve remote colleagues when someone remembers to invite them. 

Legal Aspects

Some employers will need to ensure their hybrid policies align with labour law, taxation, insurance and other local regulations. In addition, there are numerous "Employer of Record" service companies to help hire individuals across the globe without opening up legal entities everywhere. Leaders, therefore, must check not only legal issues but also benefits they can offer for their employees. 

Hybrid is in flux.

With all the complex decisions going into any hybrid design policy, it is also clear that this is an experiment for most organisations. The road ahead will include adjustments, feedback from the team, new leadership skills and finding the perfect setup and tools for consistent information flow. 

At the same time, we must not forget that the lockdown might be gone, but the pandemic is not over. Organisations, therefore, roll out "interim hybrid" plans for, e.g. year's end, and acknowledge there will be new versions of hybrid in the upcoming years. 

With the talent market being in a whirlwind these days, leaders also do good to monitor churn or flight risks. Some already offer mental health services to their staff, from which also remote employees will benefit a lot. 

Final thoughts

The pandemic put Human Resource Departments on the map in some organisations or industries. With a new chapter of pandemic challenges starting now, HR finds itself at the focus of these decisions. But as with many others, this is not an HR initiative. Instead, it is a fundamental change to organisational design going beyond "where people work". It defines how a company works effectively and efficiently while building a cohesive culture. Leaders need to act as role models. Executives need to ensure that any change in the organisation aligns with the strategy. 

The human in an organisation has never been more the centre. Organisations do well not to weigh this against a business case.

Sarah Needham

Inclusive Leadership Accelerates Results | Executive Leadership Advisor - ICF Professional Certified Coach | Chartered Engineer | B-Corp Certified Business

3y

Anna, thanks for sharing!

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Stephanie L. Stein

Head of Comms @ DTCF 🦾💚 | Storytelling is my Roman Empire

3y

Schaut mal Daniela und Steffen, wie spannend! 🚀

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Sebastian Holmer

Director Senior Talent Acquisition | Executive Search | Leadership Advisory | Technology | Digital | Startup | Private Equity | Venture Capital

3y

Thanks a lot Anna for the great impluse(s), which slowly but constantly cover my thoughts. A wonderful part: "The human in an organisation has never been more the centre. Organisations do well not to weigh this against a business case." - However I want to add a personal thought: Organisations (or better the term in itself) don't weigh anything, the term lacks the dedicated responsibility. Management does. People do, meaning: We do, and we should be constantly aware of it - and let's face it, we very often (way too often probably) aren't.

Alexandra Deisler

HR Professional with strategic and operational experience

3y

Very interesting points and food fot thought for the time ahead

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Martin Kassing

Founder & CEO of Upvest

3y

Thanks for sharing this great article Anna. What I find fascinating: If software eats the world then most companies will work sooner or later mostly digital. If that is true then the on-site model will die out. Big question for me is: hybrid vs remote-first? Trust and culture are key to move fast towards a common mission. However, work in the office is often less effective (noise, space, coordination, commute, beer). My bet is that successful companies develop regular company-wide retreats to connect with their entire workforce and use offices as experience studios similar to IDEO. However, this is really expensive (travel, hotels, etc) and limits growth (hires). Just a few really successful companies can create those personal experiences. If software really eats the world, then hybrid might just be an intermediary step for us before turning into cyborgs :-)

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