Principle 4: Design meaningful and motivating work

Having meaningful and motivating work helps optimise people’s experience of hybrid work. Find out how your organisation can design meaningful and motivating work.

Part of the Hybrid work module.

Why meaningful and motivating work is important for hybrid work

Good work design practices significantly affect individuals, teams and organisations. Hybrid work should reflect the SMART model for good work design:

Stimulating — Workers have appropriate job tasks.
Mastery — Workers have clear roles. They also have learning and development opportunities.
Agency – Workers have some autonomy over when, where and how they do their job.
Relational – Good work fosters meaningful social and task-based relationships.
Tolerable – Workers’ job demands must be tolerable.

Hybrid work requires an explicit and intentional approach to realise these key work design elements. For each element of job design, hybrid work presents unique challenges.

Stimulating

The challenge for hybrid work is deciding the best location for performing specific job tasks. Some tasks are better performed on site—e.g. problem solving, brainstorming, giving and receiving feedback. Other tasks are better performed remotely—e.g. tasks requiring deep concentration, routine tasks and information exchanges.

And organising where to perform tasks can be stressful when workers have to deal with issues such as last-minute meeting requests, conflicting schedules with colleagues or unexpected tasks from managers. Further, the more flexibility workers have over when and where they work, the higher the reported increase in job stressors.

Here are some tips for deciding on work location suitability:

Work with workers to understand where tasks are best completed.
Understand and mitigate potential resistance to time on site, which may reflect personal, practical or work-related factors. For example, you could experiment to understand which locations work for individuals and which locations do not. You could also highlight the efficiencies of working on site or appeal to workers’ sense of teamwork.
Coordinate work locations proportionally to the level of available flexibility. For example, develop a format for planning meetings, design procedures to plan and inform managers and workers about work locations, and review processes regularly.
Adapt your office space to provide an equitable or better work experience. For example, create collaboration spaces, as well as quiet spaces; introduce room and desk booking systems.

It will be difficult to please everyone when it comes to location, so be prepared to make the final call. Be open and transparent about your decisions.

Mastery

Hybrid work reduces role clarity because workers—especially newcomers—have fewer opportunities to interact with others and verify role requirements and expectations. As flexibility increases, so does complexity. This is particularly so for managers, who must balance the needs of workers and top management, and manage work across a dispersed team.

Here are some tips for establishing role clarity:

Engage with workers to reassess roles and improve role clarity. For example, identify changes under hybrid work, and look for incompatibilities, duplications and gaps. Establish a plan to address current and potential concerns.
Review managers’ roles to make sure their tasks are still compatible and feasible. For example, gauge what workers need from their managers to function well and how this differs from earlier and current practices. Provide training so managers have the technical and people skills they need to successfully fulfil their changed role.
Inform and intentionally connect new workers. As well as clarifying job requirements and tasks, newcomers need information about their team’s hybrid model and opportunities to build social connections. For example, give newcomers a mentor and a buddy, organise regular time on site when they first start, and provide clear documented guidelines on their team’s hybrid work model.

Many workers reported hybrid work created more opportunities to use a greater number of skills. But, it also changed what and how workers need to learn. For example, people needed to build new digital skills (e.g. new platforms and technologies). And support for informal and social learning must be more explicit and intentional. For example, online meetings provide few opportunities for side conservations or spontaneous problem solving.

Here are some tips for promoting learning and development:

Assess and enhance digital competency. Engage with workers to understand their level of proficiency and training needs, and then develop a structured personal development plan.
Review and test digital tools and platforms to identify those suitable for your organisation. Engage with workers to understand their preferences and experiences with different technologies and platforms.
Purposely create opportunities for workers to learn from each other. Examples include appointing mentors, coaches and subject matter experts; introducing a daily knowledge exchange or problem solving session; and offering internal rotations and secondments.
Create interpersonal learning conditions, where people feel comfortable to share incomplete ideas, suggest ‘out-of-the-box’ solutions and show personal vulnerabilities.

Proximity—created by an office or joint workspace—facilitates learning and tacit knowledge transfer. It also drives social interactions.

Agency

Workers in hybrid work arrangements report having greater control over how and when they do their work, and freedom to make judgements and decisions by themselves. However, workers’ desire for autonomy must be balanced against organisational objectives. Workers also fear being micro-managed in hybrid work arrangements; and it is a reality for some.

Here are some tips for fostering autonomy:

Co-create with workers what autonomy looks like in practice. It will be difficult to develop a model that suits everyone, so be prepared to negotiate a model that balances individual and organisational needs. Remember to be transparent and equitable, and be prepared to make the final decision.
Support managers to step back and reduce micro-management behaviours. For example, design principles that guide workers’ decisions and help them navigate their freedom. Have open discussions with managers about trust and why there might be mistrust. Give managers concrete examples of what a work focus versus a time focus looks like.
Find out if managers have changed their management behaviours by conducting 360^ofeedback.
Organise formal training on supporting autonomy.
Establish peer groups or buddy pairs for managers, so they can exchange experiences and best practices.

Focus on the outcomes that people produce—not the number of hours worked.

Relational

A benefit of hybrid work is that it can reduce workers’ exposure to poor behaviours like gossiping, offensive behaviour and aggressive acts. But, it also reduces opportunities for workers to establish and maintain workplace relationships, leading to isolation and loneliness. Often, these relationships become more transactional and task-based and less social. It can also increase the distance between managers and workers, leading to fewer opportunities for workers to experience support and appreciation as well as a sense of purpose. Proximity bias is also a risk with hybrid work (i.e. workers in close physical proximity to managers receive more opportunities for inclusion, influence and career advancement), particularly for women.

Here are some tips for nurturing workplace relationships:

Create opportunities for people to build social relationships with colleagues. For example, organise regular team lunches when on site together or out-of-hours social events. Celebrate successes and achievements, as well as birthdays and cultural events.
Be aware of potential isolation and loneliness. Remember, bringing workers on site may not solve all issues. Start meetings with questions such as ‘what made you laugh today’. Give people time to recharge and connect between meetings. Encourage workers to share stories about times colleagues have helped them.
Train managers in human-centred leadership behaviours such as empathy, listening and demonstrating trust.
Create awareness and provide guidelines on how to tackle proximity bias. For example, train managers to recognise proximity bias and make decisions based on objective criteria. Ensure procedures are fair and clear. Act on proximity bias when it is reported.

Invest in people managers, because they are the most important link with workers.

Tolerable

Hybrid work can support a better work–life balance, giving workers more time to be with family and do activities they enjoy. But it can also upset a healthy balance if people find it hard to switch off between home and work activities. Also, hybrid work can increase job demands if workers are confronted with inconsistent requirements and instructions.

Here are some ways you can support work–life boundaries:

Establish policies and norms that guide workers in managing work–life boundaries. For example, establish norms about communicating outside standard working hours, and a policy about when, where and how meetings occur. Lead by example and switch off at the end of the day. Support managers to stop and consider their expectations of workers, and which signals they give.
Evaluate the support services in place to support work–family dynamics. Work out if support services (e.g. child care, meals, dry cleaning) are still used. Ask workers what type of support would be most effective for them.
Ensure workers have a reasonable workload and work pace. In a hybrid work environment, it is more difficult for managers to gauge the pressures workers experience. So it is important to check in with workers regularly. Look for cues of blurred work–life boundaries (e.g. emails sent outside standard hours, working over the weekend, difficulties contacting people during work hours, taking longer to complete tasks).

Having more flexible time does not mean more personal time. So leave policies (i.e. part-time employment, job sharing and flexible leave) are still important.

Why meaningful and motivating work is important for hybrid work

Stimulating

Mastery

Agency

Relational

Tolerable

Further reading