Creating an effective hybrid workspace
Like most organisations, h2h is continuing to evolve, part of which is making the transition to hybrid working. We thought you might like to hear about some of the plans we have put in place to make sure that this works as efficiently and fluidly as possible for our team.
We should probably start with a brief overview of how we are planning to work. For the last 17 years we have always held a team briefing/meeting first thing on a Monday morning where we take the opportunity to connect and hi-light our key achievements from the previous week and outline our priorities for the coming one. We continued to do this virtually through the various lock downs and have decided now that we can return to the workplace, we will always try to do this f2f on site each week.
Our collaborative /meeting space is a perfect area for us to meet and go through the agenda for the week. It is a great creative space for us to work together to brainstorm and design ideal, bespoke interventions for our customers and it also doubles as an informal social area where we can grab a coffee and share new ideas and catch up. This can often be when some of best ideas start to take shape.
We have always had good tech and are well-supported by 2 local businesses who enable to us to carry out our work across different platforms and time zones. We have used cloud-based storage for over 10 years which meant that when we all shifted to our home offices, we thankfully experienced very few issues at all regarding access to key materials and databases.
We have re-configured the main area of our office so that we have a flexible workspace with a standing desk for virtual interventions, client meetings etc which gives us more variety and choice over how and where we work and can also help to boost energy levels and reduce back pain.
Finally, we have still made sure that we have an area for quiet concentration and focused work at our 2 workstations where colleagues can plug into the monitors or use the desk risers to work independently whilst staying close to what is going on in the business.
We find that the Monday morning team meeting provides a key social anchor point each week and then dependent on activity type and input required we build in additional opportunities for the team to connect and collaborate on projects, as well as ensuring they have time working remotely to complete more independent, focused tasks. Our working model will of course continue to evolve and develop over time, but we believe that our hybrid, multifunctional office space allows us to take the best elements of both office based and remote working and to move effortlessly between the two models.
