How to maintain hybrid work for the long-haul

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When the pandemic hit in early 2020, we were all sent home and had to pick up the pieces from there.

For many organisations this was a real challenge; staff needed computers and phones, and the systems had to work as well remotely as when everyone was gathered in the same location.

This led to a boom in laptop, screen, and peripheral sales, as well as all the other bits and pieces needed for a staffer to get their job done from a home office. And it also meant the nature of work changed forever.

According to a recent report from the Adaptavist titled the Reinventing Work Report, just over a third of Australians are still working from home at least some of the time. This compares to a global average of just 29 per cent globally.

This finding also aligns with the public sector experience, says Naveed Husain, VP for Worldwide Vertical Sales at RingCentral.

“Government used to be a legacy organisation, which was used to butts on seats,” he says. “Now government has people working from home, working from anywhere but it still needs to supply the same level of service – or better – to taxpayers.”

The real question is how do agencies and departments maintain productivity while meeting service delivery obligations?

Or, more pertinently, how can you maintain hybrid work for the long haul?

The public sector steps up

As of January 2023, there were 47,400 vacant jobs in the public sector in Australia, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

This represented a six per cent increase on the figures for August 2022, highlighting the fact the skills crisis is real for government, as well as the private sector.

One of the ways governments can attract and retain workers is by offering the same hybrid work benefits offered by industry, says RingCentral’s Husain. “People are saying, ‘well, why shouldn’t I be able to do this and why should I come into an office five days a week?’” he says, noting a lack of hybrid work is a significant barrier to the public sector filling those vacant jobs.

It’s something Daniel Lewis, general manager, digital operations, Casey Cardinia Libraries, has noticed. Lewis says there’s a widespread view COVID is over and so government (and, it must be said, the private sector) is going back to requiring people in the office all week.

“I see organisations returning to the old way of doing things, but anyone who thinks that way is literally going to be left behind,” he says.

For the Casey Cardinia Libraries, a network of public facilities made up of eight libraries in Melbourne’s South-East, COVID created an opportunity to reinvent not only how it delivered services to its 135,000 active members, but also the way it managed its staff and their day-to-day work.

Lewis says government organisations – and all organisations, really – need to be digital first, which is why when COVID hit, CCL moved its staff home and shifted to an activity-based work environment. In essence, for many staff, so long as they got their work done, it didn’t matter how or when they did it.

Not all CCL’s staff could work this way, however. The pandemic meant the Libraries established inbound and outbound call centres, with staff using their personal devices coupled with Microsoft Teams and a RingCentral app.

When library members phoned in, the call was automatically routed through the cloud to one of their softphones, enabling them to serve customers just as if they were in a physical call centre.

The importance of strategy

“Most organisations have this mentality that they’ll have an IT manager, but they won’t have an IT executive overseeing seeing things,” says Lewis. “They won’t have this digital mind behind the scenes planning where the company is going and making sure all the investments, software, hardware and, most importantly, staff training is in place.”

Maintaining hybrid work for the long haul is not only an HR function; it’s also a digital function.

This is how Lewis sees his role. “My CEO brought me onboard and gave me that control and power,” he says.

It’s a strategy role, making sure CCL has made, and continues to make, the right investments and decisions to not only serve its customers and the wider community, but also serve its most important asset – its staff.

Hybrid work is here to stay.

For government, it’s key to attracting and retaining staff, and it’s also a critical function, with the right strategy and investment, to ensuring taxpayers get the service and support they are demanding.