While employers may be encouraging or even mandating more days in the workplace, employees and their managers may be choosing to turn a blind eye to official policy. Mini Chandramouli examines the implications of ‘hushed hybrid’.
This year has seen businesses globally set a firmer stance on their approach to working practices. Whether it is a commitment to ongoing hybrid work or a full move back to traditional office working (most recently announced by tech giant Amazon), mandates are being set at board level.
However, after a period where employees have had wide discretion on working location, many of these mandates are being met with resistance. We recently saw headlines that government ministers were quietly ignoring rules requiring civil servants to be in the office three days a week and this seems to be a common view, with managers across industries “unofficially” allowing their team to continue to work contrary to company mandates.
This silent practice, where hybrid working policies are inconsistently applied or quietly ignored has been coined “hushed hybrid” and it doesn’t come without risk. From legal challenges and HR headaches to broader commercial impacts and cultural disruptions, the issues with “hushed hybrid” are manifold.
So how can businesses understand and address the hidden legal and commercial pitfalls of allowing a “hushed hybrid” practice to persist unchecked to ensure long-term success?
Legal and HR considerations
The primary issue with hushed hybrid is that it results in staff across an organisation being treated inconsistently. If an employee in the IT team is being disciplined for not coming into the office three days a week, whereas an employee in the sales team, who is equally flouting the policy, is not spoken to at all, this raises two key issues:
- Discrimination issues: Unequal application of the policy can lead to a perception of favouritism and unfair treatment. Where a difference in treatment has no obvious objective basis it raises questions and if an employee being disciplined under the policy sees, for example, their female counterpart being permitted to ignore the policy, they may query whether the inconsistent approach is due to sex or another protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010.
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Even in circumstances where any difference in treatment is clearly not related to a protected characteristic and simply due to management inconsistency, it creates issues from an HR perspective as differences in treatment without a “fair” basis breed animosity and consequently grievances, while also leading to decreased morale and productivity.
- Policy enforcement issues: If a business is taking a strong approach to the enforcement of its policy and proposes disciplinary action for repeated breaches, such action is undermined when some employees are not required to comply with the policy at all.
For example, if a team’s best performer is not disciplined for disregarding the policy, then any disciplinary action the manager takes against another team member for non-compliance, if challenged, would be considered unreasonable due to the inconsistency. Therefore, the company’s ability to enforce its own policy is significantly weakened by hushed hybrid.
Where a departure from policy is permitted for a long period and becomes entrenched in an employee’s routine, depending on the express terms of their employment contract, this also poses a risk of creating an implied contractual term that permits the individual to maintain the status quo of their working arrangements. This results in a situation far from ideal, where a policy applies to some but not others, simply because a manager chose not to enforce the policy appropriately.
Commercial and cultural impact
The legal implications are only compounded by the commercial and cultural implications, which can lead to deeper-rooted issues for an organisation that reduce productivity and propagate legal claims.
Return-to-work policies are generally a result of deliberate decisions about the type of culture an organisation wants to foster – whether that is one that places greater emphasis on employee flexibility or focuses more on facilitating collaboration and brainstorming, boards are actively aligning policies with their cultural and strategic goals. It follows that if the policy is consistently ignored, the business objectives underpinning it are weakened.
Of even greater concern is what ignoring policies says about management “buy-in” on company goals or the way those are trying to be achieved. It indicates a misalignment between the top and the middle or worse, disregard for board direction and company policy by managers. Employees will often model their approach on their managers, which in this case would lead to more embedded tension with board-level decisions and reduce staff connection to company values and purpose.
Ultimately, hushed hybrid can lead to a cultural disconnect and an impression of an employer that “says one thing but does another”. This mentality diminishes trust and makes it much more likely that employees will seek to address perceived injustices through legal channels rather than resolve them internally because their confidence in the company’s sense of “fairness” is damaged. Poor culture and legal claims go hand in hand.
Practical steps to consider
If your organisation is changing its approach to hybrid working or taking a stricter view on enforcement, then to limit “hushed hybrid” consider the following:
- Ensure you have genuine business reasons and objectives to support your policy. Staff are likely to see through a “knee-jerk” approach that isn’t grounded in clear business reasons.
- Take steps to anticipate the initial response the approach will receive from staff, particularly managers tasked with enforcing the policy. If there is likely to be resistance, work with managers to understand those concerns and address them as far as possible. As part of that, try to ensure staff understand, and to some extent accept, the business reasons for the policy even if it is not necessarily their preferred approach personally. Focus communications on benefits for both the organisation and employees.
- Implement broader oversight on compliance with the policy, so that if managers are avoiding enforcing the policy or taking an inconsistent approach, this is recognised and addressed quickly.
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