How a hybrid workspace strategy leads to a more resilient workforce – and business
Allowing employees to work from multiple locations increases trust and builds a more resilient enterprise
In recent years, businesses have had to adapt and test their resilience. In some cases, the post-pandemic impact has altered company operations so dramatically that organisations worldwide have adopted hybrid and remote work as part of their future office plans.
Many executives expected problems, but businesses and employees often thrived. Employees adapted and enjoyed new ways of working. Working from home offered clear benefits—better balance, less commuting, and more savings.
And yet, soon the reality of dispersed teamwork set in. Sometimes, trust suffered.
Never working together in real life reduced team chemistry and cohesion, leading to weaker business performance. Leaders recognised the need to deliberately foster trust and resilience both within teams and across the wider organisation.
Many addressed this need through hybrid working. By enabling employees to work from home, a central office, or locations closer to home, companies improved operational efficiency while meeting employees’ preferences for flexibility.
Businesses now have the opportunity, like never before, to revolutionise the way they work. Work life can deliver a unique trifecta of benefits for employees: it can be more flexible, more productive and more satisfying. And those employee benefits can, in turn, pay back for an entire enterprise in the form of increased productivity, increased employee engagement and reduced fixed overheads.
But hybrid working doesn’t only benefit employees; it also strengthens business resilience by reducing reliance on a few permanent sites. By operating from thousands of global locations, an enterprise can continue functioning even if disruptions, such as a COVID-19 lockdown, affect multiple areas. Employees in other places can maintain operations and minimise downtime.
These can be part of a formal disaster-recovery plan for businesses facing disruption. This approach may include ‘plug-and-play’ office space on the same or next business day, permanent back-up workspace for critical team members, or on-demand back-up office space for clients. These new locations can also become part of a new everyday working model, such as a ‘hub and spoke’ approach with a distributed workforce.
A new way of working
Once considered an exception, working from multiple locations can be hugely beneficial. These benefits extend beyond employees, positively impacting overall business performance. Here are some reasons why:
- Allowing employees to work from various locations builds mutual trust. They can choose to work from home, a central office, or a local workspace. Face-to-face work for part of the week helps maintain relationships and strengthen trust across teams.
- Working from different locations gives employees greater control of their day. They save time on commuting without losing essential connections with each other.
- It can also create better working relationships between team members. Employees can collaborate face-to-face or work alone when they need to focus or reflect.
- From a business perspective, wastage is reduced because companies do not pay for unused office space or expend energy maintaining empty buildings. Instead, people rotate between designated areas, optimising space usage. Additionally, risk is spread across multiple locations rather than being concentrated. For the C-Suite, this means that if one site faces disruption, the entire organisation is less likely to suffer significant harm.
This is a crucial moment for many enterprises. No less an authority than The Harvard Business Review concluded that leaders need to “work to rebuild and maintain trusting relationships –with and among their employees… Those who don’t risk far more than lower morale. The chances of increased attrition, lower productivity and stalled innovation also loom large when trust plummets.”
Provided that businesses can link their IT systems and HR processes to their operations team, enabling employees to work from multiple locations, it need not threaten collaboration or trust. Quite the opposite, in fact. Offering teams the freedom to choose how and where they work can actually strengthen relationships. It can also strengthen entire businesses.
Regardless of its size, an enterprise depends on individuals. When individuals are given space to grow, trust, productivity, and the organisation's resilience all increase.
Find out how IWG can strengthen your business's resilience and recovery capabilities.
About International Workplace Group PLC
International Workplace Group (IWG) is the world’s leading platform for work enabling companies of all sizes to work more productively and profitably. We create personal, financial, and strategic value for the most exciting companies and well-known organisations on the planet, as well as individuals and the next generation of industry leaders. All of them harness the power of IWG’s platform to increase their productivity, efficiency, agility, and market proximity.
International Workplace Group’s unrivalled network coverage includes more than 4,000 locations across 120 countries and 83% of Fortune 500 companies are amongst our growing customer base.
Our brands including Regus, Spaces, HQ and Signature serve millions of people, providing professional, inspiring and collaborative workspaces and all our digital services are available via the IWG app.
For more information
Visit www.iwgplc.com and for more information on partnering with International Workplace Group, see: https://www.iwgplc.com/develop-a-location
