Guiding principles for designing mentally healthy hybrid work
Four key principles for hybrid work will help your organisation develop a model that suits your context.
Part of the Hybrid work module.
4 principles of mentally healthy hybrid work
No ‘one-size-fits-all’ hybrid work model suits all organisations; each presents opportunities and risks (summarised in the earlier chapters). There are 4 guiding principles for hybrid work that will help your organisation develop a model that suits your context.
Together, the principles help you clarify when and where people work, create effective communication channels, identify the technologies that enable people to move seamlessly between locations, and design mentally healthy work.
Principle 1: Establish clear parameters about when and where workers are expected to work and how much flexibility they have, to reduce uncertainty and clarify the new way of working.
Principle 2: Implement effective communication and consultation processes that account for workers on different time schedules and in different locations.
Principle 3: Implement enabling technology that allows workers to move seamlessly between remote and on-site locations.
Principle 4: Design meaningful and motivating SMART work—i.e. work that is stimulating, fosters mastery and agency, and is relational and tolerable.
We need to shift from asking ‘Flexible working or not’ to ‘How do we design quality work (SMART work) when remote and when in the office’.
Professor Sharon Parker, ARC Laureate Fellow, Future of Work Institute, Curtin University
Designing SMART work
The following elements of the SMART model for good work design must be considered when developing the hybrid work model that suits your organisation and workers:
- Work location suitability – Ensure the optimal location to execute different types of tasks.
- Role clarity – Provide clarity around tasks, timelines, team dynamics and outcomes.
- Learning and development – Explicitly foster learning from social and informal interactions.
- Autonomy – Give workers some control over when, where and how they do their job.
- Workplace relationships – Foster social relationships as well as task-based relationships. Be aware of proximity bias, and recognise and support staff fairly and equitably.
- Work–life boundaries – Support workers to manage work–life boundaries as they become increasingly blurred.