Entrawood: Hybrid Work and What it Means

The hybrid workplace combines remote work (whether that be from home, a cafe, co-work or shared office) and work in a traditional office space. The goal of the hybrid workplace is to support every work style and every employee.

This model may look different for different companies and individuals, the main thing is that the policies, infrastructure and technical support, make flexibility possible. Let’s look at a few popular models:

• Full flexibility pairs Flexi hours with KPI’s, employees can work whenever and wherever they wish as long as they meet their work goals/targets/budgets.
• Flexi business hours, the company asks that all employees be at work during the hours of say 10 am-3 pm, to ensure that it is easy to schedule meetings and teamwork.
• A rotation package where you commit to being at/in the office for a specific number of days or time slots per week. Example 3 days at work, 2 days from elsewhere. This also helps the company to rent a smaller office, with fewer desks (than there are employees) and rely on the rotation schedule to make sure that there is always a desk available for those in the office on any given day.
• Remote working, a decentralised workforce, with no central physical office space. This is possible when the nature of the work is not team-oriented and performance can be tracked online, such as a call centre. Employees can choose to work from a shared office space, home, cafe’s or another country.

There are still many benefits for a company to have a base camp/office such as dedicated tools and spaces for specific tasks, convenience, connectivity, ease of training new recruits and mentorship. So let’s look at how an office can be planned around flexibility, regardless of whether it is a downsized version of the pre-covid times, shared office space or a full-blown dedicated campus.

A flexible office should cater for various activities throughout the day.

Create zones:

• Dedicated to focused work with few distractions.
• Dedicated to collaborations, meetings and teamwork
• Dedicated to comfort such as coffee stations, outdoor patios, work lounges
• Dedicated to clients, reception and waiting area, meeting rooms (provide clear signage)

The office should be the Hub that supports productive work, collaboration, innovation. It should provide comfort and convenience. It should utilise technology to ensure all staff whether at the office or remote can check-in, connect and contribute. Employees should be able to seamlessly move from one activity to the next with minimal disruption, this could range from something as simple as providing desktop power to automating the office to provide info on an app about the availability of desks, meeting rooms and phone booths.

Entrawood has been designing and manufacturing office furniture for over 30 years. They have done hundreds of office layouts and design custom solutions for many clients. The team stays abreast with international trends, keeping a close eye on local preferences and offering superb quality products in 10 to 15 working days.

If you are interested in upgrading, downsizing, moving or refurbishing your office then talk to Entrawood.