Companies Brace for Reality of Hybrid Work

"After months of discussions, big employers from Humana Inc. in Louisville, Ky., to Nike Inc. near Portland, Ore., said they are cementing plans to return to corporate complexes after Labor Day -- in some cases relaxing capacity restrictions -- while promising employees some measure of flexibility in where they work.

Covid-19 isn't the only factor weighing on workplaces. Many managers now worry about a brain drain from their ranks. Some companies that are hiring said they can't find knowledge workers willing to come into an office five days a week, according to chief executives, human-resource chiefs and recruiters.

OnSolve LLC, a software company in Alpharetta, Ga., is hiring for about 90 new positions this year. CEO Mark Herrington said he is eager for office life to return to normal, but a number of applicants, particularly in technical and engineering roles, insisted on having the option to work from home at least some of the time.

"It's become really sort of a requirement if you're looking for top talent," Mr. Herrington said. "Those folks are pretty much saying, 'Hey, if I can't have a bit of a hybrid work environment, then I'm probably not going to be interested.' "

Research has shown most employees prefer some form of flexibility in where they work. A coming survey of 9,000 workers by Accenture PLC found 83% of respondents viewed a hybrid workplace as optimal, which means companies need to figure out the new mores of work, and fast.

Sabre Corp., the travel-technology company that powers major hotel and airline booking systems, has slimmed down to one building from a four-building campus in a suburb of Dallas. Sabre said it plans to bring about 25% of office workers back on site at least three days a week.

The company surveyed its thousands of workers about their preferences and talked extensively with leaders about what worked -- and what didn't -- over the past year. The result: About 25% of Sabre's 7,500-person staff will likely resume a standard office workweek, said Shawn Williams, Sabre's chief people officer. About 30%, or 2,250 people, will stay remote, and the remaining 45% will come into the office to collaborate with peers one or two days a week.

Sorting out who falls into each category takes some work, Mr. Williams said, adding who stays home and who comes in -- and when -- depends on job function and manager approval. Even Sabre executives who had assumed workers would be more engaged in an office setting came to conclude that a flexible approach better suits the new realities of employees, many of whom care for children or elderly parents, or have found a lower cost of living farther from Sabre's headquarters.

Jon Stross, a co-founder of Greenhouse Software Inc., predicts most companies will find hybrid work difficult to navigate. Several years ago, the recruiting-software provider split some of its engineering teams between a New York office and remote locations.

"It didn't work nearly as well" as when everybody was all remote or working together in the office, he said, adding distributed workers complained of feeling left out while people who could meet easily in the office or for happy hour appeared to solve problems with each other in person. Greenhouse opted to run teams either fully remote or fully in offices in cities such as New York or San Francisco.

The company said it is impossible for everybody to be in the same room all the time, so it developed norms for meetings, making sure in-office colleagues don't have side conversations that those dialing in can't hear, Mr. Stross said.

"There's going to be a bunch of unintended consequences that we'll be grappling with," he said of the new era of hybrid work. "It's going to be a mess."" [1]

1. Companies Brace for Reality of Hybrid Work
Cutter, Chip. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]26 May 2021: A.1