HR in hybrid work
environments
BROWNE AND MOHAN, 2021

02 | Browne & Mohan 2021
Covid 19 has been a tsunami disrupting lives and
business. While sales and marketing functions
have been quick to embrace virtual engagements,
HR, operations and finance have been undergoing
fundamental changes to the way they work. Gone
are the days when HR meant payroll, attendance,
policy management, benefits and broad employee
relations. Now it has been pivoted to re-imagine
and rewire itself to support companies in building
robust workplaces.
With economic green shoots emerging everywhere
and reopening of offices at different levels, HR
leaders have an arduous task of devising systems
and process to support their business. While some
businesses have completely moved online, many
will resort to a hybrid model of work where they
move a complete section to work permanently
online (especially sales and marketing), or actively
encouraging associates for 2 days-a-week at office
experience.
For economic and social reasons hybrid work
environments are here to stay and grow more
pronounced in future. Martin Seligman’s PERMA,
Carol Ryff’s Well-being Model and other
frameworks can serve as useful models to build
hybrid work-environments.
HR now has to hone systems and process to foster
talent, and deliver compelling workplace
experience. A fundamental change we see is HR
function becoming more systemic. HR has to move
away from a narrow function to one that provides
agility to business and retains unique culture of
the company. From a functional view, HR has to
cover “hire to retire” process in totality. HR needs
to automate and deliver smooth coordination,
communication and collaboration by breaking
down functional silos and human errors.

From a managerial point of view, more fundamental change is that HR quickly move away
from a staff function to a line function. The manager is provided with requisite support to
hire, grow and manage her team members. With a short span of control and high visibility
into an associate inputs and results, HR has to become a sense and respond support
function. Data and analytics, right from evaluating the right psychometric tools to on-the
job performance reporting will be the key.
Goal setting must become simpler and short-term focused. Goal setting must become more
participatory, tracking and measuring goals and results become instantaneous. Companies
may deploy OKR systems to propel employees meet their annual targets. Employees then
can plan and own their daily, weekly and monthly goals aligned with organizational goals.
With this sense of ownership and sense of urgency at all levels could be achieved.
Future work environments require what and when a task is to be completed with what level
of quality but with sufficient autonomy for employees to pace the work allowing their work-
life balance. Hybrid work environments require companies offer little leeway with employee
timings and continuous work hours. Wherever possible bring online flexibility to work from
office tasks too.
Only way to deal to uncertainty and virtual teams is to break down the tasks to smaller
units. With smaller teams bonding costs and monitoring costs are lower. Small, agile teams
help to quickly react to changes. They also keep the bureaucracy in check with quicker
decision-making. With more information flowing within organization, the focus has shifted
to collating and analyzing information.
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In many companies marketing is tasked with both
internal and external communications. Given the
sales priority and leadership focus, internal
communications may receive step-motherly
treatment. Hybrid environments require HR function
to hold internal communication as they are forced to
engage regularly with employees to keep their morale
up, address mental health challenges and create an
organizational identity when many are working
online with all the challenges of children howling in
the backgrounds. HR now owns the responsibility to
ensure regular interactions take place among all the
team members. Clear documentation of expectations
and outcomes can remove subjectivity and its likely
impact on wrong inferences.
For many companies organizational culture meant
the daily rituals of assembly of employee in the
portico, or cushy canteens and happenings in open
air Amphitheatre. HR has been forced to step into
build corporate identity and relationship building
activities including weekly online lunches, midweek
zoom celebrations, live birthday celebrations, team
health challenges, virtual coffee-breaks etc. HR has
to initiate gratitude and appreciation posting
sessions to highlight those who have been the
employees in these months. These activities are
carried out to include a wide sense of community and
vital information sharing. HR now owns the task of
building an inclusive organization (gender, age,
orientation, race, caste do not matter).
One key process that has significantly gets altered is
the rewards and recognition. HR must abandon Half-
yearly or annual rewards and shifts to celebrate small
wins, minor goals to keep the achievement
orientation high. Line managers can encourage
employees by appreciating smaller achievements to
keep the motivation high as well as increase their
team’s output. With line managers involvement R&R
is extending to the realm of life goals and meaning of

life discussions and reinforcement. For an employee, he might wish to upskill himself or
advance in the career ladder. By accomplishing the tasks, the goals are reinforced,
leading to further cementing their purpose in life. Managers are actively encouraged to
help their associates reviewing their activities on a monthly or a quarterly basis.
The role of HR in many hybrid environments will be to act as a diplomat, regulatory
expert (Covid prevention, office rules, etc), brand custodian, but also tech liaison. In
hybrid work environments online security is a major concern. Compliance, proactively
updating anti-virus and other files, resisting downloads of unknown files and social
media activities is becoming more a HR issues than IT related issues. HR therefore must
create and communicate clear policies on an ongoing basis, but also must facilitate tech
systems that operate with bolstered security for employee safety and data integrity.
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