The Benefits of a Hybrid Office Space: 3 Ways to Put This Model into Action
Companies of all sizes are working to redefine what their model for office work will look like as they begin to put a firm “return to work” dates on the calendar for this fall.
While major employers like Salesforce and Google are undertaking a massive hybrid work experiment that will yield a wealth of data on the success of their distributed workforce, smaller companies are facing the same questions with less information on hand. The good news is that the hybrid workplace your company needs won’t be defined by behemoths in Silicon Valley – leadership in every industry has the opportunity to find the right workspace for their team’s needs in 2021.
At Firmspace offices around the country, our proworking spaces have always offered private, flexible office space to members, and we’ll continue to do so in the months ahead. To support the growing need for hybrid office space, we’re adding a new membership option that allows three members to access one desk.
Here are the three ways our members are already shaping the hybrid office models their teams need to thrive.
The Executive Plus Hybrid Office Plan
One of the most popular uses of Firmspace offices is fairly traditional: members rent one private office that serves as a headquarters, and their chief executive tends to use this space most days of the workweek.
Executives that rely on a local assistant have the option of renting an adjacent office space or a two-desk office to accommodate their staff. Those with slightly larger teams also have the option of renting an additional desk that comes with keys for up to three members who can come in on a rotating basis.
We understand that folks have different levels of comfort with returning to a shared office space, and this Executive Plus model gives small firms and brokerages the space they need to accommodate the staff who would like to spend a day or two in the office each week, while providing the company with a strong anchor in a downtown office building.
A Fixed Schedule for a Hybrid Team
For companies with several teams that work closely together, it’s understandable that many folks will be eager to return to an office space a few days a week where they can count on getting facetime with their coworkers.
In this case, it may be wise to set a fixed schedule that ensures the right collaborators are in place on the same days.
This will help your employees establish a new routine that’s founded on consistency without requiring that everyone return to the office full time.
For managers who have found remote oversight challenging, these regular days together will help re-establish personal connections between colleagues.
The other major benefits of the Fixed Schedule Model are financial:
By maintaining half the number of desks you’d normally need to fully staff your office every day of the week, you can save on overhead without sacrificing the quality of the professional workspace and services available.
You can guarantee your employees, partners, and clients a level of privacy and security that simply isn’t available in anyone’s home office and other third places, like coffee shops.
By offering your employees a clearly structured calendar that communicates when they’ll be expected to work from your office, you’ll also preserve their sense of independence and the autonomy they gained while working from home. The financial benefit of this comes in the form of employee retention: every employee you retain through this transition is tremendously valuable. Every loss averted correlates to real dollars you won’t have to spend recruiting and training a new staff member in the midst of this transition.
The Revolving Hybrid Office Model
Your hybrid work model doesn’t have to look much like a “model” at all. To provide your staff with the same level of autonomy and additional office space, you can rent a number of offices with three keys each and let your staff communicate with each other when they plan to use this private office space.
If this sounds wishy-washy, it’s likely not the right approach for your company, but for managers whose teams have made it clear that they don’t want to work from home forever, handing employees the keys to private, secure office space and letting them choose when to go is the solution they’ve all been waiting for.
This does, of course, require coordination between staffers, but with the strong communication skills we’ve all honed over the past year, your team won’t need a complex scheduling system to share these desks.
The Revolving Hybrid Office Model puts private office space as the fixed element at the center of this model, and your teams can access it as needed.
The Hybrid Office Model in Practice
The hybrid office of tomorrow isn’t one thing – it’s whatever your team needs. It likely has less square footage, better ventilation, and fewer people in place every day, but the goal is to find a hybrid work model that achieves a few common goals:
Lower overhead costs
Preserve the benefits of a flexible schedule for employees and employers
Ideally, it should also continue to support productive work by providing private office space that can get your team safely through the tail end of this pandemic, next flu season, and beyond.
To check out your local Firmspace to see if it might meet your team’s needs, book a tour today.