Abstract
The post-Covid-19-pandemic shift to hybrid work has led to many changes and challenges for organisations and HR professionals. One of the challenges is ensuring that hybrid work is good for employee health and wellbeing.
The combination of different forms of hybrid work arrangements, personal preferences, working styles and circumstances, and job types means that it will never be possible to say that hybrid work is completely good or bad for employee wellbeing in every situation. Assessment will always depend on a range of organisational and individual factors.
But this presents a practical challenge for organisations: how can they ensure that hybrid work is healthy?
To address this, I collaborated with colleagues at Liverpool Business School, Hannah Wilson and Matthew Tucker.
We sought to identify how organisations can proactively support the health and wellbeing of hybrid workers, and mitigate any health risks. Our work began last autumn; we surveyed 412 hybrid workers in September and October 2023.
With the right strategies, business leaders can ensure that hybrid workers are both healthy and happy at work, research suggests, as Gemma Dale reports.
What’s new
Previous research has focused on the impact of remote work on employee wellbeing, but ours is one of the first to provide an in-depth understanding of employees’ experiences of wellbeing while in hybrid work, and to explain how organisations and individuals can support the health of hybrid workers. Our survey was a qualitative one, which means that respondents could describe their wellbeing experiences in-depth.
Key findings
Benefits and challenges
Hybrid work brings both challenges and benefits for employee wellbeing, and it is possible to experience both at the same time. For some, hybrid work can improve physical health and work/life balance, reduce stress and anxiety, and provide more time for personal and family pursuits, largely through reduced commuting. This additional saved time is of significant value for hybrid workers, and they use it in a range of different ways.
Many hybrid workers channel this time into activities that support their health such as exercise and hobbies. Some take the opportunity to get more sleep, or make healthier food. Others use it to undertake domestic chores and ‘life administration’, leaving their weekends freer for more valued and life-enhancing activities.
Read more: Hybrid working: what is the true impact?
At the same time, hybrid work can be detrimental to health. It can be isolating, and its sedentary nature can result in physical health problems such as musculoskeletal issues. Although some workers find that their work/life balance improves, others have trouble with boundaries and switching off at the end of the working day.
Hybrid work also results in what is known as work ‘extensification’ – a longer working day. There are several reasons for this. It can be related to difficulties in switching off, but it can also be a practical outcome of having no commute: without something to bring a natural end to the working day, it is too easy to carry on working beyond a normal finish time.
Overall, the wellbeing benefits to hybrid work are greater than the challenges. More than a quarter of all survey respondents said that they experience no challenges at all. When challenges do exist, many employees are happy to manage them, as they so highly value the benefits.
Joint responsibility
Our research established that making hybrid work healthy work is a joint responsibility: both individual employees and the wider organisation need to take steps to ensure that this way of working is good for wellbeing.
There are, however, no silver bullets or simple solutions. Nor is there a universal healthy hybrid checklist that will work for every employee, or every organisation. But our research also established that, when proactive strategies are put in place, potential wellbeing challenges can be mitigated or minimised.
Attending the office
Interestingly, many hybrid workers say that attending the office and spending time with colleagues helps to maintain their general health. It is a vital part of their wellbeing, reducing the potential for feelings of loneliness and isolation.
When in the office, workers want to get the most out of that time with other people, not work independently and online. It’s clear that employees still value the office, so organisations need to make this time purposeful.
The importance of hybrid working culture
While some employees do engage with organisational wellbeing initiatives and find them useful, this is not really the support that they seek. Where hybrid work is undertaken but not truly accepted by managers, this culture is detrimental to employee wellbeing.
Some respondents highlighted a lack of trust in their organisations, unsupportive managers and a perceived lack of acceptability of hybrid work, despite a policy allowing it. These all had a negative impact on wellbeing.
Our research suggests that having a culture that is supportive of hybrid work is key. Hybrid workers will be able to get the maximum wellbeing benefits from hybrid work when they work in an organisation, or for a manager, that supports and welcomes it – and trusts them to work in the way that best works for them.
Employee actions
Hybrid workers support their own wellbeing in a variety of ways. In addition to going into the office for social support, they use boundary management techniques to manage their work/life balance. These techniques including setting personal rules around work, such as a fixed finish time or breaks, and even reminders to stop working.
Often however, those who responded to our survey admitted that they know they need to do more to manage their time for their wellbeing, and can sometimes fall into bad habits. Employees also told us that their wellbeing benefits from creating a comfortable and separate home working space.
From research to reality
Organisations need to take a multifaceted approach to support hybrid worker health. Our research found that these five actions make an impact:
1. Support employees’ desire for social connection, and reduce the risk of loneliness by facilitating colleague relationships and creating opportunities for social activities. This might include in-person events but can also include fostering online collaborations too.
2. Help hybrid workers to establish a home working space that supports their ergonomic health. Where budgets allow, this could include providing suitable furniture or an equipment budget. At the very least, employers should provide guidance and training on safe and comfortable working.
3. Provide training to people managers on the importance of supporting the wellbeing of hybrid workers. Managers should be guided on the potential wellbeing challenges of hybrid work, how to spot signs of ill health, and be encouraged to discuss wellbeing regularly with hybrid team members.
4. Encourage employees to manage their working hours effectively, including building healthy digital habits, and switching off. Organisations can offer training and guidance, or even establish work/life balance policies suitable to their culture and business needs.
5. Maximise autonomy and choice around hybrid work arrangements. While hybrid work policies will vary from organisation to organisation, rigid policies, unsupportive managers and mandated attendance has the potential to negatively influence wellbeing, whereas autonomy can support it.
These steps, combined with action from hybrid workers themselves, can maximise the potential for hybrid work to be healthy work.
