The other side of a hybrid world

Latha (name changed) works as an account manager in a product company. Through the pandemic, she moved to their family farmhouse near Coorg as companies switched to remote working. Today, she has no plans of returning to Bangalore and has agreed to forego any career advancements that may have come her way.

The last couple of years have given her the blueprint of a life that seems right for her, her family and her extended family at the workplace. Life is good and it doesn't have to get any better for her.

She is not alone. Mckinsey reports that nearly 70% of the workforce now prefers to work in a hybrid mode.

While these figures may vary across countries, the hybrid mode of working, whatever that may precisely mean, emerging as the preferred choice globally is hard to dispute. In fact, inability or more commonly the reluctance to provide a supportive, hybrid work environment is set to become one of the biggest headaches for organisations, even as they struggle to recover from pandemic induced setbacks.

How have organisations responded?

By and large companies are listening, especially in industries that are conducive for remote working and startups. This is amidst a growing debate about how vital physical presence is to creating a supportive, collaborative work culture. At its extremes, organisations are hardening their perspectives on this subject, evangelising the completely remote office or, the erstwhile world of 'work-in-office' everyone else seems to have left behind. In both extreme scenarios, there is either a strong echo-chamber or an alternate, not-so-obvious agenda driving the conversation and shutting out other voices, especially those that challenge their position, regardless of how reasonable they may be.

However, whatever position organisations may take might seem justified when viewed from the lens of survival, which remains a necessity for companies stuck in industries with dwindling or uncertain demand. After all, the mode of working, especially so any preferences around it are always a fair distance behind the more existential crises or growth pains that companies must first endure. So, the looming threats of a recession and slowing demand are only going to amplify the survival mode of thinking and operating on both sides. While we don't exactly know how the next recession might affect the employee psyche, an Amazon India survey found 68% looking to switch industries, either in search of what Latha found or at least a better paying job.

So, how are companies coping with this scenario?

Besides supporting a hybrid work environment, most organisations are investing in wellness, capability building, with growing concerns and awareness about burnout (more on burnout here). How much of it is working is a question every organisation must find answers for themselves, keeping any prejudice, however well-intentioned aside because there is a different, more serious collateral damage seeking attention.

The other side

Like with most other challenging external circumstances beyond organisations’ executive control, the onus of managing this situation falls squarely on the manager. In addition to employees’ workplace concerns, managers need to understand how their team members might still be caring for a family member/elders, recovering from Long Covid themselves, coping with grief from the pandemic and perhaps even deeper, trauma related issues. If that’s the life portrait of a certain demographic, a recent Microsoft survey highlights how younger workers are less engaged by their jobs and less eager to bring in new ideas.

So, managers are now expected to be more sensitive than ever to employee concerns and simultaneously, more responsive than ever to organisational demands.

Not surprisingly, Gallup found in 2021 that managers are facing more burnout symptoms than individual contributors. In case that sounds unrealistic, one needs to revisit the meaning of burnout symptoms and how they can go unnoticed for a long time.

The purpose of this post is not to create or add more panic to an already exhausting rhetoric. Instead, it is a call to turn our collective thinking towards an area that may offer us the best return for our efforts, through what might be another period of uncertainty, where most factors influencing the transition might be out of our control.

However, even when something seems out of control, we seek to get a sense of the challenges it presents to us to assess and exercise our choices. It is an essential survival mechanism in collective crises like wars, through a raging pandemic or individually, even a challenging phone call, where we make a decisive turn towards a certain principle or ideal to which we subordinate everything else, and act. We learn to size up the magnitude of what we find daunting through references we have in our own lives and of those in our remembered history. We only need to look back into the 20th century to appreciate what previous generations have endured in what might have arguably been significantly harder times, in every sense of what that expression means to us today.

Restoring the essential capabilities

Therefore, we need to remind ourselves of the individual and collective resilience we have developed as trait and, as a regenerative process in response to numerous transient exigencies over the larger arc of our existence as a species. This well-researched subject (find more information here) calls for a thoughtful, relevant inclusion into what we call leadership development today. It is not as if managers are ill-equipped to perform their jobs or haven’t managed such challenges before that makes this scenario critical. This call to intervene comes from research which shows that prolonged impact of multiple stressors on different areas can weaken our innate resilience, making us more vulnerable unless supported by external regenerative agencies.

People managers today need to reconnect with that innate capability and to allow for its expression, enabled with precise tools. Such an approach will then empower them to carry out the same responsibilities they are entrusted with today, but from a different centre, a more resilient core that keeps them balanced amidst multiple conflicting interests. As a result, their own ability to self-regulate, hold perspective and bounce back from setbacks gets enhanced and, in extension, their ability to support others through the same process.

The framework of this support process is an interplay of two fundamental factors of our overall wellbeing – psychological safety and sense of purpose. Psychological Safety is an embodied experience that allows us to be ourself in a given environment, express our views and more importantly, remain honest about our vulnerabilities and failures.

When we are safe, ownership of almost anything is automatic.

A clear sense of purpose connects us with reasons that encourage us to move out of safety and into flow, a state where we start creating value for others. Without a shared, yet personal sense of purpose, the capability and will to find navigate through complexity gets compromised. We need both factors in the right proportions for the specific demands of our environment to be at our best.

Somajna’s latest offering is an attempt to fill this void through an intervention that combines self-paced learning, facilitator-led workshops and, optional one-to-one coaching. This is designed for people managers with less than five years of managerial experience – a demographic that has nearly had an equal amount of managerial experience before and after the pandemic.

When left to our own devices and compelled enough by circumstances, we almost always find a way to get by, which is what this particular set of managers has quite admirably done so far. However, it is an institutional and individual responsibility to extend our empathic reactions into actions and resources that can make a meaningful difference. After all, that's the invisible promise Latha has come to trust from those she supports and is in turn held by.