"We are building the plane as we fly it": Davos attendees speak about hybrid work

Hybrid work is here to stay, but it’s been far from smooth sailing so far.

More technical development is necessary to support the future, said panellists at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week.

For decades humans have worked face-to-face, using speech, body language and social cues to read the room. The fast switch to remote working changed all of that, and as welcome as the change has been for work-life balance, tech is simply not at the stage where it can replace in-person meetings.

The panel of CIOs and IT leaders - including Ramesh Razdan of Bain and Co., Ed Waggoner of JLL, Vimi Grewal-Carr of Deloitte, Patrick McGrath of Savills and Alonso Bustamante of Cloudflare - agreed that hybrid work has been revolutionary for companies and workers, but said the new normal needs to be understood and managed properly to get the most from it.

McGrath and Bustamante said there is "no appetite" to return to the five-days-in-the-office culture their companies required pre-pandemic. However, every panellist acknowledged the importance of in-person interaction to encourage collaboration, mentorship and the free flow of ideas. About 80% of Cloudflare employees want "some form" of interaction in the office, said Bustamante.

Some companies try to dictate to staff about when they should be in the office, and every panellist agreed that this was a poor approach.

Grewal-Carr pointed out that new joiners don't have the benefit of past experiences in your office to rely upon, so may be less keen to commute in regularly.

"It's up to us as leaders to build a new set of muscles that show people it's worth the commute and what they are missing," she said. "It's time to learn again what hybrid means and what it means to feel included when [people are] in-person... But don't force people to come in to do a normal day."

"You need to be really clear about why they should come in and what they will get out of it," said McGrath. "Make appropriate investments in office for post-pandemic workstyles. A lot of leadership teams have tried mandates and not been successful."

Investing in office redesigns to incorporate hybrid work has been popular, stripping out banks of desks in favour of meeting spaces. Cloudflare has done exactly that, realising that what would make travel worthwhile for people was the opportunity for "ideation and mentorship, spaces for people to work as teams instead of individuals."

"One of the things that worked for us during the pandemic was that technologies like Zoom had a levelling function," said Bustamante. "Everyone was 2D and sounded the same. We thought, ‘How could we incorporate that when we redesigned our offices?' We actually stripped out videoconferencing facilities: there are no large meeting rooms with videoconferencing, but a lot of one-on-one meeting booths. We also have a rule where if one person in a meeting is virtual, everyone is virtual."

"Zoom was an equaliser during the pandemic," Waggoner agreed. "We have to push ourselves to adopt that change and to adopt new technologies that enable that inclusivity. It won't be one size fits all, but are we collecting enough data to realise what the top talent is looking for and structure around that? That's key to hiring and retention."

"We're building the plane as we're flying it," said McGrath. "We're in a messy middle transitional phase, and it can be exhausting. Everyone is training a new muscle, and it's a pretty challenging environment to operate in."

Razdan concurred. He said the current state of hybrid work is "still messy", and the technology is "evolving".

"We as people have emotions and non-verbal cues. How do we bridge that world [with technology]? There's a lot of experimentation going on now with augmented and virtual reality, AI detecting emotions, videoconferencing, the metaverse; we are experimenting with lots of tools...

"We're at an inflection point in technology. The metaverse and distributed web will play a much, much bigger role in the future, technology will evolve. I don't know if it will be there in two years [for Davos 2024], but it will have developed."

Waggoner said he expects future opportunities around hybrid working to be "bigger and broader" than anyone is currently thinking. Rather than focusing on tech, like Razdan, he told attendees that they had to "be people-obsessive. I love technology but it's only an enabler; it's about people."

Waggoner predicted that the companies everyone will want to hear from at Davos 2024 "will be those who created maximum flexibility for their people. The ones who put a focus on wellness, physically and mentally; the ones making people feel included whether they are remote or present. And it all needs to be delivered in a sustainable way."

While hybrid working is clearly the future for office work, its eventual shape is still to be determined. Videoconferencing, especially easy-to-use implementations from the likes of Zoom, was a great start, but we're still missing that development that enables true, seamless and accessible collaboration.