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Earlier this month, California Governor Gavin Newsom's office released a memo mandating all state employees to work at least two days a week from the office, effective June 17.
The memo, first reported in The Hill, will effectively standardize a number of policies found in departments across the state administration. Since COVID, the memo reads, the administration has been forced to "regularly evaluate and update their telework policies based on their individual operational needs.”
The memo is neither exceptional nor surprising. Nor is the resulting resistance among state workers to the mandate, reported by CBS News.
"State workers are saying no," said Irene Green, vice president for bargaining at the Service Employees International Union, which represents state employees. "They are willing and ready to fight this."
Employees Want Hybrid. CEOs Feel Otherwise
While how this will shake out in California is unclear, what is clear is it isn't the first, nor the last, dispute of its kind.
In fact, the recent KPMG 2024 US CEO Outlook found that one third of CEOs in organizations making $500 million or more per year expect a full return to the office in the next three years.
This was underlined by 2023 McKinsey research which found employees identified flexible work as one of the top three employees benefits and critical to the success of the organization. The research goes on to suggest employees who work all remote or in a hybrid fashion are happier with their work-life balance and as productive as their colleagues working on site.
Related Article: Return to Office Mandates: Layoffs in Sheep's Clothing
Employee Engagement Hits a Low
These dynamics are playing out at a time when employee disengagement is on the rise. The most recent Gallup employee engagement report published in January found employees feel increasingly detached from their employers.
The research pointed to unclear expectations, lower levels of satisfaction and lower levels of connection to their employer's mission or purpose as key elements in the ongoing shift. Employees are also less likely to feel someone at work cares about them as a person.
Engagement has been on the decline since a peak of 40% in June 2020, following a decade of growth. One major factor for a slide in employee engagement is a breakdown of role clarity, “the most basic and foundational of the employee engagement elements,” wrote Jim Harter, Gallup’s chief scientist of workplace and wellbeing. "When people are not clear on their roles, and how their role relates to their co-workers’ roles, they are less effective in meeting customer needs and other important outcomes that leaders expect.”
Hybrid workplaces could potentially be adding to the confusion, if interactions between colleagues is limited to within team boundaries, resulting in a lack of understanding about other people's jobs and how their roles work together.
Related Article: Employee Apathy at All-Time High
Bringing Clarity to the Hybrid Workplace
The insights from Gallup's survey underscores the significance of role clarity in driving employee engagement and performance across the board, and is particularly important to enable the effective management of hybrid workplaces, Globy co-founder Vit Koval told Reworked.
When employees lack clarity in their roles and how they contribute to the broader objectives of the organization, it can hinder their effectiveness and ultimately impact customer satisfaction and other key outcomes.
“As organizations navigate the complexities of hybrid workplaces, clear communication and transparency are paramount. Leaders must ensure that employees understand their roles and how they align with those of their colleagues, regardless of their location or work arrangement,” he said.
TRAX Analytics CEO Tracy Davis CEO said her company implements a scalable digital dashboard providing not just role-specific data but also visibility into the broader impacts of an individual's work to counter exactly these kinds of issues.
This, she said, fosters an understanding among employees of how their tasks relate to and feed into their colleagues' responsibilities, directly addressing the complexities Gallup's Harter raised. “This system has made it easier for everyone, whether remote or on-site, to grasp the full scope of their impact within the company, reducing confusion and enhancing individual accountability,” she said.
Ensuring role clarity is not only crucial for maintaining productivity and team cohesion, it also leads to more effective collaboration, better task management and increased contributions from people working on-site and remotely.
Ultimately, this contributes to towards the overall success of the organization, added Ben Lamarche, general manager at Lock Search Group.
Related Article: Mapping the Hybrid Experience: An Exercise in Human-Centered Workplace Design
Keeping Engagement High, Wherever Employees Are Located
Other factors contribute to better engagement that do not depend on worker location. Some areas Lamarche highlighted include:
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Regular Team Check-Ins
Successful hybrid workplaces have managed project meetings and regular check-ins where team members can hear what everyone is working on. This, Lamarche says, acts as a substitute for the random in-office interactions and hallway conversations.
The discussion can be unpredictable, but definitely fruitful. The resulting team exchanges encourage mentoring and knowledge sharing, where experienced team members share their insights and guidance with newer employees to facilitate learning and professional growth. This too adds to role clarity across the workplace.
Aligning Communication on Working Location
Hybrid work leaders have clear guidelines on workplace expectations but balance that with allowing a certain level of flexibility at the individual and team level.
“Because of our defined remote work policies, our employees have realistic expectations for remote work arrangements, and team members understand the criteria for working from home,” Lamarche said. "These include aligning their otherwise flexible office days with their project teams [and] establishing guidelines for requesting additional remote work days and obtaining approvals when necessary."
Collaboration Tools: Where Work Gets Done and Progress Is Tracked
Organizations have turned to tools like Teams, Slack, Zoom, Trello, Google Workspace and OneDrive/Sharepoint to not only get work done, but also to help managers track work progress and ensure transparency in roles and responsibilities.
Working out loud, a practice that pre-dates the pandemic, has seen a resurgence of interest in recent years for precisely these reasons. The practice provides an inside look at what colleagues are working on and opens the door to potential collaboration from previously unrecognized experts. As author and researcher Jane Bozarth said, "We are very good at documenting explicit information: do this, do that, fill out the form, do this on Tuesdays, do this on Wednesdays. We are not as good at capturing and sharing tacit information, and honestly, that’s often how work really gets done. We're good at talking about what we do but not necessarily how we get things done.”
Belonging and Success
The cornerstone of a successful hybrid strategy should involve fostering a sense of community and belonging, irrespective of where work is being done, said Alex Ugarte, operations manager of Office Space.
This starts with robust communication tools that ensure all team members, whether remote or in-office, are just a click away from collaborating. Regular virtual town halls and team check-ins are scheduled to maintain open lines of communication. This helps in addressing any concerns promptly and maintaining a sense of community.
However, technology alone isn't enough. Organizations also need to prioritize regular in-person meetups that help strengthen team bonds. These should be more than work meetings, he said, to include social events and team-building activities designed to bolster relationships and reinforce a shared corporate culture.
To directly tackle the issue of declining engagement, when it arises, managers should be trained to engage with their teams on a more personal level. These regular one-on-one check-ins should go beyond work-related topics to genuinely understand and support each employee’s aspirations and challenges.