Will Hybrid Office Challenges Ease in 2023?

As we prepare to enter year four of life with COVID-19, it’s become clear we’ll spend a good part of 2023 talking about bringing people back into the office. Workplace consultant Gleb Tsipursky suggests the best approach for the future of work is a flexible team-led approach, where team leads “make the call on work arrangements,” because, “team leads know best what their teams need.”

One example of how this approach is a benefit is that it relieves pressure on middle managers, who’ve been asked to pick up a lot of slack through the pandemic while lacking much in the way of autonomy or training. A team approach gives them the ability to conduct their own assessments.

There are some inherent risks to the idea as well, such as creating or perpetuating silos, making different departments compete with each other, and more difficult to manage across teams.

Obviously, any kind of hybrid environment, no matter who’s in charge of it, will require training and acclimation, and part of that process should involve a conversation about what people come into the office for, and what kinds of skills are useful in the office, and what can be successfully accomplished remotely.