Recent research has found damning statistics that highlighted less than half of professionals state their current mental health and wellbeing as positive, as staff find the lines increasingly blurred between their work and home life. Leaders have a greater responsibility now, more than ever, to prioritise staff wellbeing.

A key challenge for leaders in hybrid work models is helping staff stay positive, motivated and accountable – while some employees are not interested in returning to clinical box cubicles, others confirm that working from home has disrupted their mental wellbeing, both at home and at work.

Forced isolation and remote working has taught us that staff no longer need to execute long commutes just to do their work. So, it is important for us to ask ourselves what problems the office solves, and what opportunities it presents.

We have an opportunity to rethink the office, create better workplace experiences, introduce structures that allow staff to be more engaged, autonomous and accountable, and most importantly, happier in their workplaces.

Why wouldn’t we take this opportunity and do something with it?

At Everest Engineering, we’ve long been proving that distributed working can be easy, motivating and productive by focusing on building strong workplace culture, where staff are given the power to think autonomously, innovatively, and value the impact they can make in the world.

We know that hybrid working is here to stay but being able to adapt to these new work models requires a team you can trust, who is motivated to collaborate, and is purpose-driven. These traits became only more evident when our staff were forced to adjust.

We need to encourage our staff to be leaders and work collaboratively, rather than bureaucratically. As a globally distributed team that is a non-hierarchical, people-first workplace, we’ve always had to incorporate remote working across borders, while ensuring our team can continue to be social, supportive of one another and be a part of something greater than themselves.

Despite uncertainties, we believe we have embraced hybrid working. But of course, that’s what we think – so we decided to survey nearly 100 staff to gather data on how autonomy, flexibility and hybridity has impacted our teams, and how these new ways of working have impacted productivity, motivation, and most importantly, mental health.

On hybrid working and mental health

Many external studies have shown that the days of physical reporting to an office everyday will likely not return after the pandemic. Some studies show that employees believe working from home has been a critical component to benefiting their mental health and motivation, while some believe that finding the motivation can be challenging without the usual on-the-ground support.

Of nearly 100 respondents, more than 62% stated they preferred a mix of both. More than half stated they prefer to decide when and where they work – by giving staff the opportunity to make that decision for themselves, we’ve witnessed how much this boosts productivity and motivation.

While giving staff the choice to decide when they want to come to the office may seem contradictory to productivity, we’ve seen an increase in motivation and quality of work execution when they make that decision.

If staff only have important meetings in the morning, they can come in for that meeting with colleagues or managers and decide if they’d like to complete the rest of their work from home.

More than 96% of staff found that their mental health improved when they were given the agency and freedom to flexibly make decisions around the remote working circumstances. Less than 4% found that productivity and mental health was stifled when given the opportunity to make their own decision about where to work.

Not all meetings are efficient when taken over video conferencing or from home. Team-building activities and new-joiner inductions are most often preferred in person, at the office. While Town Hall meetings, for example, are preferably taken at home.

Collaboration and social interaction

So, what kind of activities and workflows are better face-to-face versus taken from home online?

That depends on the task at hand. When asked whether face-to-face meetings are essential for software, design and UX development, more than half said sometimes.

Respondents believe that face-to-face meetings are better for:

• Creative collaboration
• Building relationships between staff and clients
• Self-expression
• Increasing inclusivity in meetings
• Not struggling with internet and network issues on calls (unsurprisingly)
• Project inception and team-building activities
• In-depth workshops
• Training

Those who strongly agreed that face-to-face is needed believed in-person collaboration is important for:

• All-inclusive collaboration efforts where teams can be together to enjoy the work while having an opportunity to socialise over lunch
• Improving relationships and trust, and better understand peoples’ behaviour and needs, particularly for new team-mates.

Respondents stated that whether face-to-face meetings are essential is dependent on the type of meetings and the problems you are trying to solve. Sometimes it is more efficient to get into a room together to solve a problem.

But as a team working across multiple regions and timezones, respondents found that with the right collaboration and video conferencing, a lot of this work can be supported via video conferencing environments.

Client relationship building, design brainstorming, quick idea generation and prototyping and qualitative testing may require face-to-face meetings. In summary, it depends on the task at hand.

Styles of working: flexibility and autonomy

When it comes to working style, nearly 80% of staff found that they preferred a collaborative team-based autonomy. As a people-first workplace, we’ve always believed that micro-management approaches to leadership are counter-productive. Instead, we instil trust in our staff and provide the tools and space to ensure KPIs are met and staff can be their own leaders.

Respondents stated that team autonomy is the most effective approach for engagement, innovation and work efficiency. Only a number of respondents answered they achieve this with micro-management direction.

Micromanagement has already been proven to be a counterproductive way of managing staff. A part of making hybrid working work is by giving your staff more agency and autonomy.

Autonomous working doesn’t mean you don’t regularly check in with your staff. It’s all about training your staff to ensure you can instil a strong level of trust, with staff who are motivated to achieve high-quality work, to constantly innovate, and are willing to lead teams with an aligned goal and purpose.

This approach means we remove the need for hierarchy: staff are all considered equal and are encouraged to lead and initiate work execution strategies themselves, rather than be told what to do. When asked whether a non-hierarchical workplace culture boosts morale, more than 94% respondents agreed.

Re-establishing the office as a co-working space

We know that staff are more motivated to work when they are given the agency to make their own decisions about where the best place is to work – for them. A successful way of doing this is by reframing the way we view the office – by converting it into a co-working space.

Co-working spaces are highly collaborative workplaces where people come together because they want to be there. Co-working spaces help workers find work-life balance, come to a place they want to be at and not feel confined by the traditional 9-5 space that is too often unstimulating and uninspiring. 

Coworking spaces offer open-office planning that enable staff to move around the workplace and find the best areas to work and bump into their colleagues. They can also experiment with different spaces in the office, opting in for a permanent desk or hot desk, or find a new spot to work when they might be losing focus. 

By converting the office into a co-working hub, we’ve also removed the need for staff to feel they have to “impress” managers and other staff and can instead feel like they are a part of something much bigger, in a community, working towards a greater purpose. 

Some of the ways we executed this included creating spaces for both hot desks and permanent desks, creating spaces for collaboration – for team huddles, for brainstorming spaces with white-boards, or long tables staff can work at together. 

We created spaces for solitude and reignite focus and flow, as well as spaces for rapport-building and entertainment – via BBQ areas, meditation rooms or lunch areas with a café. 

When surveyed on the establishment of the office as a co-working and activity-based workplace, 70% of staff found it greatly improves mental health. When asked whether it motivates staff to work more productively, more than 62% respondents agreed.

Building a social community

And finally, we asked our staff about their motivations to participate in team-building and social activities. More than 83% of staff believe that coming into the office makes them more likely to participate in social activities.

More than 74% of staff stated they would definitely join social activities at the office. Some of the events our staff enjoy the most include activities like online games, general catch-ups and chit-chats both virtually and in-person. They enjoyed playing charades to karaoke, pictionary to painting. Staff enjoyed coming together for hackathons, insightful webinars and simple casual virtual coffee hangouts. Trivia is automated by a trigger via Slack on a Friday to ensure we’re having fun together every week.

It is important to create these spaces for staff – both in an online environment, as well as at the office.

All staff across the world have gone through substantial changes as a consequence of the pandemic, and as lockdowns return, it’s become even more important to ensure staff can maintain motivation to be a part of a team that prioritises exactly what they need to thrive.   

Regardless of where staff work, they must be provided with the best physical and virtual environments, and tools and support systems in place that will encourage powerful leadership within teams who are motivated to drive innovative and impactful execution. With greater trust, flexibility and accountability, they will be proud of their work, and be happy in the place where they work too.