A question for leaders: What poses a greater threat to productivity, hybrid working or reduced workforce capacity and capability?

Business and government leaders claim to be evidence-based decision-makers, except when it comes to hybrid work. Will the evidence that remote and hybrid working benefits employees and organisations ever be sufficient?

Why would we expect the people we work with daily to behave less diligently when they work remotely?  

Why do we work the way we do? Is there a way to make the experience of work more ‘human’?

Hybrid and remote working challenge us to think more deeply about work, workplaces, and culture.

While some people grapple with the 'how-to' of flexible work, others in the contingent workforce wonder what tomorrow holds.

If we want the benefits of a flexible workforce, we must question how work could be packaged differently.

Flexible working should be a positive career choice for the individual and a benefit to the organisation.

Implementing workplace flexibility can be challenging. It requires us to think about flexible work not as a slimmed-down version of full-time employment but as a form of work that offers a different packaging of workforce capacity and capability.

It requires us to think closely and creatively about workplace processes and relationships grounded in the assumption of a full-time workforce.

Where once organisations might have made allowance for flexible work to ‘show willing’ in appeasing employee requests, today, not offering flexible work is to be left behind in the race to recruit and retain talent.