Want Hybrid Work to Work? Gallup Says You Need a “Workplace Value Proposition”

I CAN’T TELL YOU how many times I longed for hybrid work.

It wasn’t called that back when I first asked my boss about it in 2000, or again in 2007-2008, or even as recently as 2016. It wasn’t called hybrid, or remote, or anything back then, but it didn’t matter because I worked for people who didn’t believe in their employees ever working outside the office.

That was then; this is now.

Gallup made that perfectly clear — again — when they recently detailed just what their data showed about the state of the hybrid workplace in 2024:

“Today, 54% of remote-capable workers are working hybrid and finding themselves weighing the costs and benefits of the daily commute. In 2019, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that the average one-way commute to work was 27.6 minutes. That’s 230 hours a year simply getting to work, the equivalent of 29 eight-hour workdays.”

The painful realities of commuting to work

Wow — 230 hours of commuting nearly a month per year is a waste of time and energy.

Anyone who makes a daily commute knows all too well that it’s a big time sink, especially for people in metropolitan areas. I commuted for years in California, and it wasn’t until I went to work at a company with a completely remote workforce that I truly understood how much time and energy was lost while commuting.

But it took a global pandemic and lockdown to get employers to finally allow remote work, although now that’s morphing into a hybrid schedule for many, where people get to split work between home and office.

Gallup points out that commuting is still an issue for many even when they have a hybrid schedule, and they have come to this conclusion:

“If an organization gives employees some amount of discretion and autonomy over when they come into the office, it’s imperative that leaders offer a compelling reason to invest in the commute. We call this reason a ‘workplace value proposition,‘ which is not just a promise to make going into the office worth it but also a strategy to improve organizational productivity.

A workplace value proposition represents the organizational culture, benefits and interactions employees experience when working on-site. Essentially, it’s the ‘why’ behind coming to the workplace.”

That’s an interesting notion, because they are absolutely right that “it’s imperative that leaders offer a compelling reason to invest in the commute.” It’s probably the best way to convince the hard-line remote work holdouts to come back to the office, even on a limited basis.

4 keys to a workplace value proposition

But this makes you wonder —  What goes into an effective workplace value proposition?

According to Gallup, “an inspired workplace value proposition makes the most of what working in person offers.”  That includes:

• Connection and camaraderie — From Gallup: “It might feel counterintuitive, but it’s true: Socializing and building relationships is good business. Gallup’s meta-analysis of … 2,708,538 employees and 54 industries (globally) proves that people with a best friend at work are substantially more likely to be engaged in their jobs, are better at engaging customers, and produce higher quality work. That’s because strong relationships are the foundation for trust, support and meaningful work.”
• Collaboration — From Gallup: “Some collaborations still work better in person, especially for roles requiring highly complex interactions. In-person collaboration allows for easier visibility, faster communication and increased trust … Even fully remote workers acknowledge that collaboration tends to be more difficult online, with only 35% reporting collaborative work is best done remotely.”
• Creativity — From Gallup: “When it comes to creativity, being together in person helps. … The office environment fosters spontaneous creative moments and intentional collaboration. Hallway conversations, lunch and coffee breaks, and the “meeting after the meeting” all contribute to problem solving and innovation and are difficult to replicate in a virtual workplace.”
• Culture — From Gallup: “Employees in the U.S. are experiencing a concerning decline in feeling connected to their organization’s mission and purpose. This detachment from the organization tends to be most extreme for fully remote workers who are both physically and psychologically distanced from their co-workers. … Culture is the unique way that an organization lives out its purpose … There are many implicit and unspoken expectations … that are part of any organization; grasping these expectations can be challenging for individuals who have never or rarely spent time in proximity with their teams.”

Hybrid is a good solution for a lot of people

HERE’S MY TAKE: I often say that I was working remotely long before remote work was cool. I began working at home some 15 years ago after a career that included daily commuting on Southern California freeways and, for a few years, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

Remote work removed the challenging commute, and that was great, but I found that it also eliminated the workplace camaraderie and culture I enjoyed so much. In fact, I didn’t really know how much I would miss that part until it was gone.

That’s life, of course, but it’s also why hybrid work is a really good solution for people like me.

One of the things I missed about the workplace was that a lot of the solutions to daily work issues could be found in the sometimes mundane office interactions everyone gets involved in.

I can’t tell you how many times a solution to a problem came out of an unplanned chat at the office coffee pot, or during an impromptu conversation with a co-worker about something else. You may have experienced that too, but those kinds of conversations just don’t happen much (if at all) when you work remotely.

A friend of mine who is familiar to many who work in the talent management and HR space once told me that she thought I was putting more stock in those unplanned office conversations than I should. Her belief was that they were something like the nostalgia so many feel for the past, and that it didn’t factor in how nostalgia usually includes forgetting the less-then-wonderful things from the past as well.

It was a good point, and while it may have reflected the office encounters in her career, but it certainly didn’t square with the workplace encounters in mine.

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good

That’s why I thought hybrid work made a lot of sense, because you cut down on the commute but also keep a reasonable dose of office culture and camaraderie in the bargain.

Gallup zeroed in on this point, and here’s how they put it:

“Why do we come to the office? For connection, collaboration, creativity and culture. All in support of doing our best work for the organization’s mission. … Developing and delivering a workplace value proposition is now a vital part of an organization’s strategy to attract, engage and retain talent while achieving high performance. This approach also provides an opportunity to make the office even better than it was before.

There was always a workplace value proposition. Now leaders need to be much more intentional about creating one that shapes their workplace culture.”

Hybrid work may not solve all the workplace issues that managers and employees have, but it’s a reasonable attempt to build a bridge between remote work and a full-time office job that includes a time-wasting commute.

It may not be the perfect solution, but what is? It may be that hybrid work is simply a good but slightly flawed solution that will work until something better comes along.

Like they say, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

Other trends and insights 

And your latest dose of AI news … 

• Microsoft invests biggest ever amount in Indonesia AI (From AIToolReport.com)
• AI Startups Have Plenty of Cash. They Often Don’t Yet Have a Business (From WSJ.com)
• Recruiters Are Going Analog to Fight the AI Application Overload (From Wired.com)
• U.S. productivity is popping. And it’s not because of AI (From WashingtonPost.com)
• Why we may be headed for a new “AI Winter” (From FastCompany.com)
• ChatGPT in trouble with the EU — again (From AIToolReport.com)
• Microsoft bans U.S. police departments from using enterprise AI tool for facial recognition (From TechCrunch.com)

ALSO: Out here in California, non-compete agreements have been banned and a non-issue for quite a while. That’s why I’m a little slow on the uptake about non-competes everywhere else, but thankfully my friend Lance Haun is not. He tackles this timely topic in Why Employees and Employers Alike Should Celebrate the End of Non-Competes, and he makes a good point — “Modern workplaces thrive on adaptability, and that extends to managing the natural movement of talent. Overreliance on non-competes breeds complacency in a rapidly changing workplace.”  Lance’s take on non-competes is well worth a read.

Readers: I’ve been writing this weekly wrap-up for 20 years — from Workforce.com to TLNT.com to Fuel50 and now here on The Skeptical Guy. I’d love to hear what you think, so email me at  johnhollon@yahoo.com.