Thriving in the Age of Hybrid Work

The Covid-19 pandemic has turbocharged the significance of data, AI, and digital technologies, together with their enabling human skills, and has rewarded fluid and flexible organizational structures — not to mention inclusive cultures. The world has experienced a rather sudden transition from tight labor markets, sustained growth, and scarce talent toward high job instability, growing unemployment, and worrying recessions. And those same organizations and people who, as a function of their skills composition, already appeared more future-ready and crisis-proof before the pandemic are emerging stronger from it — or at least more intact, making pre-existing inequalities even more pronounced.

One key term at the heart of this accelerated pace of change is hybrid, with the emerging new normal highlighting the combinatory power of historical opposites: where we were once ruled by “either-or,” we are now seeing the rise of “and.” Indeed, the ability to make seemingly incompatible alternatives coexist is unfolding as a pretty generalizable strength, both at the organizational and individual level.

Consider the following examples:

Hybrid talent. Data from Burning Glass Technologies, which uses AI to scrape about one billion past and current job postings, highlights a growing demand for individuals with soft and hard skills. If you are a Jack-of-all-trades, you can now expect to be in-demand, so long as you find a niche to apply your different skills and interests. For example, digital design skills are sought-after in more than 50% of IT roles, while generalist data science expertise can land you a job in HR, marketing, finance, or sales — all of which are heavily dependent on data mining (specifically, turning data into insights). And management skills, which are broadly general across functions and industries (e.g., they require EQ, empathy, curiosity, the ability to give feedback and manage performance, etc.), are of course needed everywhere.

Hybrid workplaces. Although the pandemic has intensified the discussion around the pros and cons of working from home, and what working without an office means, it is safe to conclude that the best alternative is not to opt between one or the other, but to give employees the option. This is also the only way to settle the false debate between whether people are better off working at home or in the office, because there are so many personal, psychological, and individual factors at stake. What this means for employers is simple: offer as much flexibility as you can — one size does not fit all, so you should let managers and employees curate their work experience at the individual level. Variety is the spice of life, especially if you are truly committed to building a diverse and inclusive culture. But in order to do it right, you need to remove the privilege or “brownie points” associated with presenteeism, and focus less on style and more on substance. People should not be rewarded or promoted for being in the right place at the right time and saying the right thing to the right people, but for actually adding value to their team and organization.

Hybrid cultures. We still hear managers and organizations self-congratulate on their attempts to hire for “culture-fit,” but this is often incompatible with the desire to harness and nurture a diverse and inclusive culture. Simply understood, culture is “how we do things around here,” and it comprises the formal and informal rules of interaction that govern the dynamics of social behavior at work, or indeed in society. On the surface, hiring people who “fit right in” seems like a great idea. But when you become really good at this you will inevitably overlook, if not reject, the people you may need the most: individuals who can bring a different perspective, set of values, and backgrounds therefore augmenting cognitive diversity and expanding rather than consolidating your culture. The challenge, then, is to manage for diversity, and this is precisely why you need an inclusive culture — a culture where people are celebrated for being different. Strong, uniform, clearly defined, homogeneous, and single-minded cultures make it easy to manage people because everyone thinks, feels, and acts in the same way (this is why culture and cult have the same root). But that is also how companies limit their adaptive capabilities. The Big Irish Famine of the nineteenth-century could have been avoided by having more than one type of potato crop. So, the only reason to hire for culture-fit is if your culture is diverse and inclusive to begin with, meaning you don’t have a well-defined culture.

Hybrid careers. Even if you as an individual haven’t mastered the art of developing a multi-skilled and interdisciplinary talent profile, you do have choices. The most important is to avoid putting all your eggs in one basket. Instead, broaden your career horizons to expand your self-concept, reimagine your potential in the most wide-ranging and diversified way, and be open to unusual choices. As terrible as this crisis has been, it is confirming what we’ve always known about humanity: we are incredibly resilient and adaptable as a species. You can see this in the millions of people who have already managed to successfully switch careers, such as flight attendants turned social workers, or retail managers who become online fitness instructors, and we’ll continue to see it, because human potential has never been more fluid. This is why we can expect hard skills to continue to devalue vis-à-vis soft skills (better described as power skills), why the CV will sooner or later become a relic, and why higher education needs to reinvent itself to fuel hybrid careers.

In short, there has never been a better time to keep your options open. Complexity is the natural currency for an uncertain future, so if you want to future-proof yourself, your team, and your organization, think about the skills, tools, and adaptations you can add to the mix, rather than what you can switch. And above all, think of your own potential as a set of flexible muscles that ought to be trained with a wide range of exercises and activities, rather than a single strength that you leverage and apply to exhaustion. In an increasingly hybrid world, hybrid skills will be key.