How Hybrid Working Boosts Productivity, Flexibility, and Wellbeing
The era of rigid work is over: working flexibility refreshes our minds and uplifts our wellbeing.
We’ve all experienced it at some point in life: the 'Sunday Scaries'. The looming final hours of the weekend, dreading the incoming Monday morning alarm, followed by hours of commuting, tedious schedules, day in, day out. It takes up our personal time, sours our mood, and traps us in an endless cycle of monotonous exhaustion…
One solution to banishing the Sunday Scaries? Hybrid working!
Changing up our workstyle, work location, and work patterns regularly allows us to dictate our schedule - not our schedule to dictate us - and prioritise rest, mindfulness, enrichment, hobbies, exercise, and more… In a way that healthily balances work with wellbeing.
This New Year, why not make your resolution to switch up your workstyle and staff wellbeing policy to suit you? Let’s talk through the whats, whys, and hows of hybrid working, flexibility, and changing up your work environment to boost your productivity, work-life balance, and wellbeing in 2024.
What is Flexible 'Hybrid' Working?
The pandemic accelerated the adoption of remote work, prompting companies to rethink their traditional office setups. Since then, the hybrid work model has emerged as an ongoing work-life balance solution, offering flexibility and fostering work-life balance. According to the Office for National Statistics, 1 in 4 UK working adults take a hybrid working approach as of 2023.
As a result, a lot of exciting but somewhat confusing new terms and buzzwords have been floating around that are revolutionising the world of work (and how it intersects with our personal lives).
We’ve broken down some of these terms to demystify their meaning:
What is ‘remote work’? Remote work involves individuals working away from a traditional HQ office space anywhere they have access to a computer and WiFi, such as their home, a coffee shop, a co-working space, or even halfway across the world as a digital nomad!
What is ‘hybrid working’? Hybrid work combines the world of remote work with traditional in-office working, so employees can flexibly choose when and where they want to work. Another term for this is ‘flexible working’.
What is ‘WFH/WFA’? WFH stands for ‘Work From Home’, a form of remote working in which the individual works from their home. WFA stands for ‘Work From Anywhere’, an umbrella acronym to describe all forms of remote / non-in-office working.
What is a ‘co-working space’? Similar to, but different from, a traditional fixed office space, a coworking space is a shared working environment (often in multiple locations) where individuals from various professions or companies work independently or collaboratively in a communal setting.
What is a ‘digital nomad’? A digital nomad is someone who uses technology to work remotely while frequently travelling and living in different locations, often globally. Short term, this can be done as simply as booking a train or plane ticket. Long term, this requires tax considerations and visa implications, depending on the location selected.
Hybrid working leverages technology and adaptable policies to create a balance between the benefits of remote work, such as increased flexibility, and the advantages of in-person collaboration and connection within a physical workplace.
What Are The Practical Benefits of Hybrid Working?
Unlike the traditional 9-5, in-office, 5-day work week, a flexible, hybrid approaches allow individuals to divide their time between working remotely, often from home or other locations, and working from a designated office space.
For both employees and employers, this offers multiple practical benefits, such as:
Shortened commute (or no commute at all)
Saving money on commuting fees
Increased productivity
Re-energises in-person collaboration
Access to wider talent pools
More efficient use of time
Control over work life and personal life
Improved work-life balance
Boosting individual and team wellbeing
Think of hybrid working as the best of both worlds - the in-person collaboration, energy, and socialisation of an office, and the convenience of remote working.
Hybrid working often means individuals can be flexible with their office hours too. This makes it easier to factor in those everyday life occurrences without interrupting an entire workday - a Doctor’s appointment, picking up the kids from school - as well as accommodating personal productivity patterns. For example, some find they are more productive early in the morning and start at dawn; others find they are more productive at night and prefer to be night owls.
Embracing Hybrid Working for Wellbeing
The most important benefit of all of flexible working is the boost to our wellbeing. Hybrid working allows us to switch up the routine, get away from the same run-of-the-mill location, and break free from the typical Monday-to-Friday race.
Regularly changing work environments offers multiple advantages for wellbeing:
Physical & mental refreshment
Altering work locations provides a mental break and a stimulating change of scenery, boosting productivity by refreshing workspaces and breaking routines that may lead to stagnation.
Increased stimulation & creativity
Different work environments stimulate creativity and offer fresh perspectives, preventing monotony and fostering innovation. New views, new desks, and new faces all factor into our personal and professional health and wellbeing training.
Embracing variety and flexibility (in a way that suits you)
Establishing a balance between remote and in-office work allows for flexibility while also maintaining a structured routine to ensure a sense of stability. From an employer perspective, encouraging employees to explore and embrace diverse work settings allows them to discover what best suits their needs, fostering a culture that values experimentation, adaptability, and fresh perspectives.
Keeps us from burning out
Less time and money commuting to and from the same location 5 days a week means more time for ourselves, keeping overwhelm and burnout at bay.
Examples of different places to work from anywhere flexibly include:
At home
In-office at HQ
A co-working space (for example, free coworking spaces in Leeds, such as the Santander Work/Cafe and the Virgin Money coworking space)
Your local coffee shop
A library
A bookstore café
An art gallery or museum café (and browse on your break!)
At a friend or family member’s house
Hotel lounges
Using a hot-desk rental service
In different countries as a digital nomad (not whilst on holiday, to maintain a work-life balance)
Working flexibly makes it easier to change up your environment on your lunch break, too. Something as simple as visiting a new park or shop in your neighbourhood, checking out a museum you’ve never been to before, or spending the day working from a co-working space can help shift your mindset, boost your productivity, and uplift your mood.
Change Scenery, Work Flexibly, Boost Productivity
“I benefit from a change of scenery; it's always inspiring.” Kurt Vile
Change is the only constant in today's working world, and it's evident in the evolution of work environments.
The shift towards hybrid work models—balancing remote and in-office setups—has reshaped the way we perceive productivity, embrace new beginnings, and even declutter our professional lives. It's in embracing change that we discover the transformative power it holds for our overall wellbeing in the evolving world of work.
By implementing workplace wellbeing training programs that cater to the evolving needs of a hybrid workforce, focusing on mental health, stress management, and maintaining work-life harmony.
For more information on what we do, get in touch via info@mind-it.co.uk.
