MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Four Principles to Ensure Hybrid Work Is Productive Work

Organizations have become more flexible about where and when employees work. Now they need to be more intentional about their choices and trade-offs.

Leaders and the teams they manage are experimenting with new ways of working — both in the short term during COVID-19 and longer term for a post-pandemic world. The axes of work are pivoting simultaneously in terms of both place and time, with leaders designing hybrid ways of collaborating that have few precedents. It’s tough and, not surprisingly, causing confusion. How much flexibility around where and when people do their jobs is best? What strategies are most effective? Some CEOs envision that work will happen “anywhere” going forward, while others are asking employees to return to central office spaces. Some are accommodating flexible time commitments, while others are requiring their staffs to be available 9 to 5.

To find the right way forward, leaders must understand the axes of hybrid work — the upsides and downsides of where and when people work — and align them so that they feed the energy, focus, coordination, and cooperation needed to be productive.

About the Author

Lynda Gratton (@lyndagratton) is a professor of management practice at London Business School and founder of the advisory practice HSM. Her latest book (with Andrew J Scott) is The New Long Life: A Framework for Flourishing in a Changing World (Bloomsbury, 2020).

Learn more about MIT SMR.