# Prediction 7: Hybrid and flexible working is here to stay - **Episode:** [19](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/19.md) (2023-01-04) - **Type:** other - **Tags:** hybrid-work, flexible-working, workplace-trends - **Time:** 4:24–9:24 (start 264s) - **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/19?t=264](https://truthliesandwork.com/19?t=264) --- [4:24] Leanne Elliott: My 7th prediction, hybrid working and flexible working is here to stay. I'm sorry, guys, if you don't like it and you're not on board with it. I think 2023 is going to be the year you're going to have to start to buy into it. It is here to stay. I think that we are going to see more, more patterns embedded of hybrid work. I think organisations are going to start to figure out exactly what it is that, that works for them in terms of hybrid. But I think it's here to stay. The employees have spoken, and hybrid and flexible working is something they want. In terms of here to stay, I think I think there will be a bit more of a shift back to the office. I think we will see probably 40% of the working week happen from the office. But importantly, to make this work, I think there needs to be intention behind why employees are being called back into the office. Yeah, we know onboarding can be more challenging, but we did it during the pandemic. We know that knowledge sharing and collaboration can be more challenging, challenging, but again, we've made that work. That said, if you're finding in your business that you're not getting the same level of knowledge sharing, you're not getting the same level of creativity and innovation happening within your teams, and you feel that bringing people back to the office is a way to enable that, fine. But make sure you actually enable it when you're in the office. Don't just use it as an excuse and then not do anything with it. And I think this is gonna have such a big impact, both in terms of employees wanting to engage in working in the office again, but also in terms of leaders actually seeing then the impact on what they're missing. So, I think you're probably as well having one day a week where people, or one day fortnight even, where people need to come back into the office, but that'll be for very specific activities, specific conversations that need to happen. And yeah, and you'll see the impact from those, I think [6:16] Al Elliott: Yeah [6:17] Leanne Elliott: I think it is going to be key to talent attraction and talent retention, which we talked about in the last episode. But again, I think it's going to have to link to culture. And I think, I think we've mentioned this on another episode, but if hybrid and remote working isn't currently working for you, it's probably indicating that something within your culture that's not quite working right. Either people don't have the right purpose, people don't have clarity over their role, they're not being supported by their colleagues or managers. It's more than likely going to be one of the 7 foundations of culture that we talk about in the RX7. Again, if you haven't listened, go back to episode— which one did we talk about that? [6:57] Al Elliott: Um, I can't remember, but I'll put it in the show notes [6:59] Leanne Elliott: I think it's Stefan on how to build great teams, psychological safety. We go through the 7 foundations there, but basically we've developed this framework to help leaders and businesses identify where the sticking points might be in the business, where the hotspot risk areas might be, and if hybrid and Remote working isn't currently working for you, I would argue it indicates some kind of challenge you're experiencing within your culture right now. So, my advice would be to figure that out first, and then figure out your policy around remote and hybrid working. And in terms of flexible working, I think this is also gonna be very important. So, you know, is that working day fixed? Is it a 9 to 5? Is it an 8 till 4? Is it a 10 till 6? Can people go out for a run in the morning and sit down at their desk at half past 9? Can they do a wash during the day? Can they have a hair appointment during the day? All these different types of flexible working, I think, will be a conversation as well. And I think we're going to see that extend to frontline workers, so non-knowledge-based roles. And in particular, I think things like more input into their scheduled— into their shifts, more fixed schedules potentially. I guess allowing that flexibility within roles that aren't as easily flexible. I think we're going to see that in 2023 [8:18] Al Elliott: Yeah. I mean, hybrid work isn't, isn't a new thing. If you know anything about other people, the makers of Basecamp, which are now called Basecamp, but were called 37signals, they were distributed across the world in lots of different time zones. There's, there's, I know HubSpot have got a similar sort of structure [8:33] Leanne Elliott: They're remote first. Yeah [8:35] Al Elliott: Remote first. So it, it, it's not a new thing. It can work. It was enforced on a lot of people and like anything, it was enforced. And so we, we had this adjustment period. We're, you know, you've had 18 months now to adjust to it, um, and it's what most employees want. Um, so, you know, why are we trying to fight it? We should definitely be, be thinking about that [8:56] Leanne Elliott: Yeah. And I think similarly, there are, there are employees as well that want to be back in the office, but they want to be back in the office for specific reasons. They want to be there to, to build relationships with their, their team members. They want to learn from their leaders. They want to be coached. They want to feel that they're part of something bigger. That purpose is going to be really important. Um, so yeah, I think there are going to be employees that want to be back in the office, but again, it's the intention behind that that is going to be so important in 2023