How to Do Hybrid Right

2020年2月下旬，新冠疫情（以下简称：疫情）的影响逐渐凸显，富士通公司全球人力资源负责人平松浩树（音译，Hiroki Hiramatsu）意识到，公司会受到冲击。

By late February 2020, as the implications of Covid-19 were becoming clear, Hiroki Hiramatsu, the head of global HR at Fujitsu, realized that the company was in for a shock.

多年以来，富士通一直致力于建立弹性工作制度，但并没有取得什么实质性改变。日本办公室的大部分管理者依然看重面对面交流和长时间在办公室加班，此外，不久之前的一项内部问卷调查结果显示，全体员工里有74%以上的人认为办公室是工作的最佳场所。至2020年3月中旬，富士通日本的大多数员工（8万多人）居家办公。但没过多久，他们就感受到了弹性工作制的好处。根据一项后续调查，同年5月，只有15%的富士通员工认为办公室是工作的最佳场所，30%的人说最佳场所是自己家里，还有55%的人倾向于家和办公室的混合工作制。

For years, flexible work arrangements had been on the agenda at Fujitsu, but little had actually changed. Most managers in the Japan offices still prized face-to-face interaction and long office hours—and according to an internal survey conducted not long before, more than 74% of all employees considered the office to be the best place to work. By the middle of March, the majority of Fujitsu’s Japan-based employees—some 80,000—were working from home. And it didn’t take long for them to appreciate the advantages of their new flexibility. By May, according to a follow-up survey, only 15% of Fujitsu employees considered the office to be the best place to work. Some 30% said the best place was their homes, and the remaining 55% favored a mix of home and office—a hybrid model.

员工逐渐适应新的日常工作方式，平松浩树发现，某些深远的变化发生了。“我们不会再回到以前的模式了，”2020年9月时，他告诉我，“很多员工花两小时的时间通勤，纯属浪费时间——这段时间可以用来学习和接受培训，也可以陪伴家人。我们需要很多关于如何提升远程工作效率的创想。我们开始着手进行工作生活方式的转换。”

As employees settled into their new routines, Hiramatsu recognized that something profound was happening. “We are not going back,” he told me this past September. “The two hours many people spend commuting is wasted—we can use that time for education, training, time with our family. We need many ideas about how to make remote work effective. We are embarking on a work-life shift.”

十年来，我领导的未来工作方式联盟（Future of Work Consortium）集合了全世界100多家公司，研究未来趋势、寻找当下的好方法，并从新的实验中学习。疫情以来，我们的研究重点是新冠对工作方式的重大影响。在这组研究中，我与许多企业高管进行了交流，其中许多人像平松浩树一样，表示自己在大家齐心协力应对疫情的努力中看到了一线希望。他们告诉我，企业以惊人的速度引入了远程工作技术，而大部分员工不愿再恢复以往的工作方式，在这种状况之中，他们看到了千载难逢的将工作重置为混合制的机会——倘若把握得当，混合工作制将会令我们的工作生活更有意义、有成效、敏捷且灵活。

For 10 years, I’ve led the Future of Work Consortium, which has brought together more than 100 companies from across the world to research future trends, identify current good practice, and learn from emerging experiments. Since the pandemic I’ve focused our research on the extraordinary impact that Covid-19 is having on working arrangements. As part of that effort, I’ve talked extensively to executives, many of whom, like Hiramatsu, report that they’ve detected a silver lining in our collective struggle to adapt to the pandemic. These executives told me that given the astonishing speed with which companies have adopted the technology of virtual work, and the extent to which most employees don’t want to revert to past ways of working, they’re seeing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reset work using a hybrid model—one that, if we can get it right, will allow us to make our work lives more purposeful, productive, agile, and flexible.

不过，领导者和管理者如果希望成功转型，就需要做一些不太习惯的事情：设计混合工作制时记得关注员工个人，不要只关注制度。

If leaders and managers want to make this transition successfully, however, they’ll need to do something they’re not accustomed to doing: design hybrid work arrangements with individual human concerns in mind, not just institutional ones.

混合制的要素

The Elements of Hybrid

具体实行起来并不容易。因为要设计合适的混合工作制，必须从时间和空间两个维度进行考量。

Figuring out how to do this is far from straightforward. That’s because to design hybrid work properly, you have to think about it along two axes: place and time.

眼下空间维度备受关注。今年全世界有几百万人像富士通员工一样，从有空间限制（在办公室工作）的工作模式突然转为无空间限制（在任何地方工作）的模式。相比较而言，时间维度上的转变则没有引起太多关注：许多人从有时间限制（与他人同步工作）的模式转为没有时间限制（在自己选择的时段非同步工作）的模式。

Place is the axis that’s getting the most attention at the moment. Like Fujitsu’s employees, millions of workers around the world this year have made a sudden shift from being place-constrained (working in the office) to being place-unconstrained (working anywhere). Perhaps less noticed is the shift many have also made along the time axis, from being time-constrained (working synchronously with others) to being time-unconstrained (working asynchronously whenever they choose).

为了帮助管理者理解这个问题的二维性，我一直用一个简单的2×2矩阵来说明（见图表“工作的空间和时间安排”）。疫情之前，大部分公司在这两个维度上提供的灵活性都很低，因此属于矩阵的左下象限，员工在规定时间内在办公室工作。一些公司开始尝试进入右下象限，允许员工更为灵活地安排工作时间；还有一些公司尝试左上象限，让员工在工作地点上更灵活，大部分人时常居家办公。很少有公司直接进入右上象限，让员工自主安排随时随地办公，亦即混合工作制。

To help managers conceptualize the two-dimensional nature of this problem, I’ve long used a simple 2×2 matrix that’s organized along those axes. Before Covid-19, most companies offered minimal flexibility along both dimensions. This put them in the lower-left quadrant, with employees working in the office during prescribed hours. Some firms had begun to venture into the lower-right quadrant, by allowing more-flexible hours; others were experimenting in the upper-left quadrant, by offering employees more flexibility in where they work, most often from home. Very few firms, however, were moving directly into the upper-right quadrant, which represents an anywhere, anytime model of working—the hybrid model.

但这种情况正在改变。疫情之中，很多公司十分关注如何利用灵活工作制提升员工效率和满意度。我在研究中发现，要实现这一点，需要管理者从四个不同的角度思考问题：一、工作和任务；二、员工偏好；三、项目和工作流程；四、包容和公平。下面逐一阐述这四个角度。

But that’s changing. As we emerge from the pandemic, many companies have firmly set their sights on flexible working arrangements that can significantly boost productivity and employee satisfaction. Making that happen, I’ve learned in my research, will require that managers consider the challenge from four distinct perspectives: (1) jobs and tasks, (2) employee preferences, (3) projects and workflows, and (4) inclusion and fairness. Let’s look at each in turn.

[ 1 ] 工作和任务

[ 1 ] Jobs and Tasks

思考工作和任务，首先要了解驱动效率提升的关键因素——精力、专注、协调与合作。接下来考虑工作在时间和空间维度上的改变会如何影响这些因素。

When thinking about jobs and tasks, start by understanding the critical drivers of productivity—energy, focus, coordination, and cooperation—for each. Next, consider how those drivers will be affected by changes in working arrangements along the axes of time and place.

下面用几类工作和任务、关键驱动因素及其相关的时间空间需求来具体说明：

To illustrate, let’s consider a few kinds of jobs and tasks, their key drivers, and the time and place needs that each involves:

战略规划者。这个职位的关键驱动要素是专注。规划者通常需要不受打扰地工作三小时以上，处理收集市场信息、制定经营计划等任务。就专注而言最重要的是时间维度，特别是非同步的时间。如果规划者能够摆脱别人规定的日程，空间就不那么重要了：规划者在家和在办公室都能如常工作。

Strategic planner. A critical driver of productivity for this role is focus. Planners often need to work undisturbed for stretches of at least three hours in order to, for example, gather market information and develop business plans. The axis that best enables focus is time—specifically, asynchronous time. If planners are freed from the scheduled demands of others, place becomes less critical: They can perform their work either at home or in the office.

团队管理者。这个职位的关键要素是协调。管理者要定期与团队成员沟通，提供即时反馈。他们需要参与交谈和争论、分享最佳做法，并为团队成员提供指导。对于这方面最重要的依然是时间，不过在这里需要的是同步的时间。如果能有同步时间，空间同样并不特别重要：管理者和员工的协调工作可以在办公室完成，也可以在家里通过Zoom和Microsoft Teams等平台完成。

Team manager. Here the critical driver of productivity is coordination. Managers need to regularly communicate in-the-moment feedback with team members. They need to engage in conversation and debate, share best practices, and mentor and coach those on their team. The axis most likely to encourage this aspect of productivity is once again time—but in this case, the time needs to be synchronous. If that can be arranged, then place again becomes less critical: Managers and employees can do their coordination tasks together in the office or from home, on platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams.

产品创新者。这个职位的关键要素是合作。但这里的重要维度是空间。创新是由与同事、伙伴和客户的面对面接触激发的，这些人可以通过各种方式催生创意：小组头脑风暴、在走廊里偶然相遇、在会议之间的空余时间闲聊、参加分组会议。最能促进这类合作的就是同在一个地方——同一个办公室，或者某个创意中心，让员工有机会彼此认识并社交。因此，合作任务必须在时间上同步，还要有共享的空间。我们可以期待未来会出现更复杂的合作技术，让共享物理空间不再是问题。

Product innovator. For this role, the critical driver is cooperation. But now the important axis is place. Innovation is stimulated by face-to-face contact with colleagues, associates, and clients, who generate ideas in all sorts of ways: by brainstorming in small groups, bumping into one another in the hallways, striking up conversations between meetings, attending group sessions. This kind of cooperation is fostered most effectively in a shared location—an office or a creative hub where employees have the chance to get to know one another and socialize. To that end, cooperative tasks must be synchronous and conducted in a shared space. Looking to the future, we can expect that the development of more-sophisticated cooperative technologies will render shared physical space less of an issue.

营销管理者。这个职位需要持久的能量（其实大部分职位都是这样）。时间和空间可能都很重要。我们在疫情中了解到，很多人觉得自己居家办公时精力充沛，因为摆脱了长时间通勤的负担，可以抽出时间锻炼身体、健康饮食，而且有更多的时间陪伴家人。

Marketing manager. Productivity in this role—indeed, in most roles—requires sustained energy. Both time and place can play a role here. As we’ve learned during the pandemic, many people find being at home energizing, because they are freed from the burden of long commutes, they can take time out during the day to exercise and walk, they can eat more healthily, and they can spend more time with their families.

设计混合工作制，难点在于不仅要最大限度地发挥其益处，还要将其弊端最小化，做出权衡。居家办公可以让人精力充沛，但也可能令人变得孤独，阻碍合作。同步工作有利于促进协调配合，但这种模式下的随时沟通可能会造成干扰，影响需要专注工作的人。

The challenge in designing hybrid work arrangements is not simply to optimize the benefits but also to minimize the downsides and understand the trade-offs. Working from home can boost energy, but it can also be isolating, in a way that hinders cooperation. Working on a synchronous schedule can improve coordination, but it can also introduce constant communications and interruptions that disrupt focus.

为了应对这些潜在的负面影响，平松浩树和他在富士通的团队努力建立了一个空间生态系统，组成“无界办公室”。这些空间可以根据员工或团队的具体驱动因素发挥不同作用：最大限度强化合作的“枢纽”、加强协调配合的“卫星”，以及有利于保持专注的共享办公室。

To combat these potential downsides, Hiramatsu and his team at Fujitsu have committed to creating an ecosystem of spaces that together make up what they call the borderless office. Depending on employees’ or teams’ specific drivers of productivity, these spaces can take several forms: hubs, which maximize cooperation; satellites, which facilitate coordination; and shared offices, which enable focus.

富士通的枢纽空间，专为跨职能合作和增加员工不期而遇的机会而设计。这类空间设在大城市，是令人舒适惬意的开放空间，配备了头脑风暴、团队建设和共同创造新产品所必要的先进技术。富士通员工若想与客户或合作伙伴进行创意工作，就会邀请对方一起去枢纽空间。

Fujitsu’s hubs are designed with cross-functional cooperation and serendipitous encounters in mind. Located in the major cities, they are comfortable and welcoming open-plan spaces, equipped with the advanced technologies necessary for brainstorming, team building, and the cocreation of new products. When Fujitsu employees want to work creatively with customers or partners, they invite them to a hub.

卫星空间是为了促进团队内部或合作项目的团队之间协调配合而设计的，包括能让团队在线上或线下聚集的会议室，提供安全的网络和先进的视频会议技术支持。这样的机会，特别是面对面交流的机会，在一定程度上缓解了员工居家办公的隔离感和孤独感问题。

The company’s satellites are spaces designed to facilitate coordination within and between teams that are working on shared projects. They contain meeting spaces where teams can come together, both in person and virtually, supported by secure networks and advanced videoconferencing facilities. These opportunities for coordination, especially face-to-face, address some of the isolation and loneliness that employees may suffer when working from home.

共享办公室占了富士通空间生态系统的大部分，遍布整个日本，通常在都市地区及其周边，或是靠近郊区的电车站。这样的空间可以供员工拜访客户时稍作停留，抑或作为居家办公的替代选项。这类空间的设计理念是方便员工的安静空间，可以最大限度地减少员工通勤时间，旨在促进专注。共享办公室配有办公桌椅和网络，让员工能够不受干扰、独立工作，或者参加网络会议和网络学习。

Shared offices, which make up most of Fujitsu’s ecosystem of spaces, are located all over Japan, often near or in urban or suburban train stations. They can be used as short stopovers when people are traveling to visit customers, or as alternatives to working at home. They are designed to function as quiet spaces that employees can easily get to, thus minimizing commuting time. The productivity aim here is focus. The shared offices are equipped with desks and internet connections, allowing employees to work independently and undisturbed or to attend online meetings or engage in online learning.

[ 2 ] 员工偏好

[ 2 ] Employee Preferences

我们以最佳状态高效工作的能力，在很大程度上受到个人偏好的影响。因此，在设计混合制工作的时候，要考虑员工的偏好，并让其他人理解和适应。

Our capacity to operate at peak productivity and performance varies dramatically according to our personal preferences. So in designing hybrid work, consider the preferences of your employees—and enable others to understand and accommodate those preferences.

比方说，想象一下有两位战略规划者在同一家公司，有同样的工作，工作表现的关键驱动要素都是专注。其中的一位，这里称他为豪尔赫，40岁，跟家人一起住在离办公室有段距离的地方，每天通勤单程一小时。他家里的办公室设施完备，孩子白天上学——因此，豪尔赫理所当然地觉得自己避开通勤、独自留在家里工作效率最高。他比较喜欢每周只去办公室一两次与团队会面。

Imagine, for example, two strategic planners who hold the same job at the same company, with focus as a critical driver of performance. One of them, Jorge, is 40. He and his family live some distance from his office, requiring him to commute an hour each day to and from work. He has a well-equipped home office, and his children are at school during the day—so, not surprisingly, Jorge feels he is most productive and focused when he can skip the commute and stay home alone to work. He prefers to go into the office only once or twice a week, to meet with his team.

另一个人——莉莲的情况则截然不同。她28岁，在市中心跟其他三个人合租一个小公寓。这样的生活环境下，她在家无法不受干扰地专心工作。为了专注，她更愿意去离住处不远的办公室。

Lillian’s situation is very different. She’s 28. She lives in the center of town and shares a small apartment with three other people. Because of her living situation, she can’t work for long stretches of time at home without being disturbed. To focus, she prefers to be in the office, which is not far from where she lives.

豪尔赫和莉莲还有另一个不同之处：任职时间。这个因素也影响了两人的偏好。豪尔赫已在公司供职八年，建立起了强有力的人脉，所以在办公室的时间对于他的学习或发展影响不大。莉莲则是新人，迫切希望得到指导，而想要获得指导就需要跟其他人一起在办公室。

Jorge and Lillian differ in another way: tenure with the company. This, too, affects their preferences. Jorge has been with the firm for eight years and has established a strong network, so time in the office is less crucial for his learning or development. Lillian, on the other hand, is new to her role and is keen to be mentored and coached, activities that demand time with others in the office.

向混合工作制转型的公司正设法了解员工的视角。未来工作方式联盟中的一家科技公司，还有其他许多公司，都为管理者提供简单的诊断工具，用于更好地了解员工的个人倾向、工作环境和关键任务。利用这样的工具，管理者可以了解团队成员在什么地方最为精力充沛、家里的办公情况好不好，以及他们对合作、协调和专注的需求。

Companies on the hybrid journey are finding ways to take their employees’ perspective. Many, like one of the technology companies in the Future of Work Consortium, are providing managers with simple diagnostic survey tools to better understand their teams’ personal preferences, work contexts, and key tasks—tools that allow them to learn, for example, where their team members feel most energized, whether they have a well-functioning home office, and what their needs are for cooperation, coordination, and focus.

挪威能源公司Equinor前不久采用了一种巧妙的方式了解员工：用问卷调查员工的偏好，总结出九种复合类型，每一种都有对应的混合工作安排指导。例如其中一种类型的描述是：“安娜”是奥斯陆的一位部门经理，已经在公司供职20年。她家里有三个青春期的孩子，上班骑自行车要走40分钟。疫情之前，她每隔一周就在家办公，主要是为了专心工作。但现在孩子们在家里上网课，她居家办公常常受打扰。等到疫情过去、孩子回学校之后，她希望能每周居家办公两天，处理需要专注的工作，其余三天在办公室与团队成员合作。

Equinor, a Norwegian energy company, has recently taken an ingenious approach to understanding its employees: It surveyed them about their preferences and developed nine composite “personas,” with guidelines for hybrid work arrangements tailored to each one. One of the personas is described like this: “Anna” is a sector manager in Oslo who has been with the company for 20 years. She has three teenagers at home and a 40-minute bicycle commute into the office. Before Covid-19, she worked every other week from home, primarily to focus. But with her teenagers now doing remote schooling in the house, she is often distracted when working from home. When the pandemic is at last behind us, and her kids are back at school, she hopes to spend two days a week at home, doing focused work, and three days in the office, collaborating with her team.

Equinor管理者要为团队找到最合适的混合工作安排，比如上面这位“安娜”：她所处的环境和个人偏好会如何影响她的合作能力？推而广之，管理者还会考虑各种类型跨团队在线协作的影响。安全保障和运营效率方面有什么风险？改变会对合作、领导和文化产生怎样的影响？税收、合规和外部声誉总体会受到怎样的影响？

As managers seek to identify the hybrid arrangements that are best for their teams, they consider, for example, how they would respond to an “Anna”: How would her circumstances and preferences affect her capacity to collaborate with others? More broadly, managers consider the implications of coordinating a variety of personas across virtual teams. What are the risks to the safety, security, and effectiveness of operations? How will changes affect collaboration, leadership, and culture? What might the overall effects be when it comes to taxes, compliance, and external reputation?

[ 3 ] 项目和工作流程

[ 3 ] Projects and Workflows

要想打造成功的混合工作制，管理者必须思考工作该如何完成。负责管理上文中的豪尔赫与莉莲的高管不仅要考虑他们两人各自的需求和偏好，还要协调他们和各自团队中其他人的工作、其他部门的工作以及终端消费者。如果团队成员都在同一时间、同一地点工作，协调相对比较简单。但在混合工作制的时代，协调的难度大大增加。据我观察，高管主要有两种应对方式：

To make hybrid a success, you have to consider how work gets done. An executive who manages Jorge and Lillian, the hypothetical strategic planners mentioned above, must not only consider their needs and preferences but also coordinate the work they do with that of the others on their team—and with other functions and consumers of their work. That kind of coordination was relatively straightforward when team members all worked in the same place at the same time. But in the era of hybrid work it has grown significantly more complex. I’ve observed executives tackling this in two ways.

一是大幅增加技术的使用，在员工逐渐转为灵活工作的时候，协调他们的行动。例如Equinor员工乔纳斯，他是科尔斯奈斯工厂的检测工程师，该工厂在北海开采天然气。疫情来临后，工厂管理者设法让乔纳斯及其团队在家处理部分检测任务，为他们提供前沿的视频和数字工具，如在工厂周围活动、详细记录当下视觉资料的机器人设备，之后会将数据传送给全体团队成员进行分析。有了这些改变，乔纳斯和团队现在可以远程进行十分高效的油田安全检测。

One is to significantly boost the use of technology to coordinate activities as employees move to more-flexible work arrangements. Consider the case of Jonas, an Equinor employee. Jonas works as an inspection engineer in the Kollsnes plant, which processes gas from fields in the North Sea. After the pandemic hit, the plant’s managers made it possible for Jonas and his team to carry out some inspection tasks from home, by supplying them with state-of-the-art video and digital tools. These include, for example, robotic devices that move around the plant recording detailed in-the-moment visual data, which is then streamed back to all the team members for analysis. As a result of these changes, Jonas and his colleagues can now conduct very effective remote field-safety inspections.

富士通的管理者利用一系列数字工具，对团队成员的工作类型进行分类和总结，并据此在时间和空间层面尝试新的配置。这令他们能够更好地评估个人和团队工作负担，分析远程工作条件，确认工作计划。团队领导者还可以通过研究详细的移动状况信息、考察空间利用率和人员密度数据，理解员工的工作模式。凭借这些，富士通管理者能够妥善安排工作流程和项目。

Managers at Fujitsu, for their part, use a range of digital tools to categorize and visualize the types of work their teams are performing as they experiment with new arrangements on the axes of time and place. That, in turn, has enabled them to better assess individual and team workloads, analyze remote working conditions, and confirm work projections. Team leaders are also able to understand employee working patterns by studying detailed movement data and examining space utilization and floor density data. This allows Fujitsu managers to design the right arrangements for their workflows and projects.

其他公司把握住现在这个机会重新设想工作流程。新的混合工作制不应当像数十年前企业刚刚开始自动化工作的时候那样，照搬原有的陋习。许多公司并没有利用新技术重新设计工作流程，只是把新技术硬套到原本的流程上，无意间使得原本的缺陷、特性和权宜之计全都保留下来。直到几年以后，经历过许多轮艰难的流程重塑，公司才会真正开始充分利用新技术。

Other companies are using this moment as an opportunity to reimagine workflows. New hybrid arrangements should never replicate existing bad practices—as was the case when companies began automating work processes, decades ago. Instead of redesigning their workflows to take advantage of what the new technologies made possible, many companies simply layered them onto existing processes, inadvertently replicating their flaws, idiosyncrasies, and workarounds. It often was only years later, after many painful rounds of reengineering, that companies really began making the most of those new technologies.

设计混合工作制的公司，必须努力在第一时间确定合适的工作流程。我们未来工作方式联盟所属的一家零售银行，领导者分析和重新设想工作流程的方式是提出下面三个重要问题：

Companies designing hybrid arrangements need to work hard to get workflows right the first time. Leaders at one of the retail banks in our Future of Work Consortium analyzed and reimagined workflows by asking three crucial questions:

有没有冗余的团队任务？该银行高管在思考这个问题的时候意识到，新的混合工作模式中保留了太多传统会议。他们取消了部分会议，代之以其他非共时活动（如状态更新），使得工作效率大幅度提升。

Are any team tasks redundant? When executives at the bank asked themselves that question, they realized that in their new hybrid model they had retained too many traditional meetings. By eliminating some and making others (such as status updates) asynchronous, they boosted productivity.

有没有可以自动化或分配给团队以外其他人的任务？该银行高管意识到，很多新的混合制流程里都有这样的任务，比如为新的高净值客户开设账户，疫情之前大家都觉得需要面对面的会议和客户签名，而现在的流程令银行经理和客户都感受到了远程开户的便利和价值。

Can any tasks be automated or reassigned to people outside the team? In many new hybrid arrangements, the bank executives realized, the simple answer was yes. Take the process for opening an account with a new high-net-worth customer. Before Covid-19, everybody assumed that this required face-to-face meetings and client signatures. But now, thanks to the redesigned process introduced during the pandemic, bank managers and customers alike recognize the ease and value of remote sign-up.

能否重新设想办公场所的目的？这个问题的答案也是肯定的。为了让混合工作模式顺利进行，该银行高管决定调整目前办公室的格局，鼓励员工合作和创新，并加大了对远程办公工具的投资，让员工能够居家高效办公与合作。

Can we reimagine a new purpose for our place of work? Here, too, the answer turned out to be yes. To make their hybrid model work successfully, the bank executives decided to reconfigure their existing office space in ways that would encourage cooperation and creativity, and they invested more in tools to enable people to work effectively and collaboratively at home.

[ 4 ] 包容和公平

[ 4 ] Inclusion and Fairness

建立新的混合工作流程时，要特别注意包容和公平性的问题。这一点至关重要。研究表明，工作中的不公平感，会损害效率、引起职业倦怠、阻碍合作，并导致员工留职率下降。

As you develop new hybrid practices and processes, pay particular attention to questions of inclusion and fairness. This is vitally important. Research tells us that feelings of unfairness in the workplace can hurt productivity, increase burnout, reduce collaboration, and decrease retention.

过去公司尝试灵活工作制，通常是让管理者自行临时安排。于是，不同部门和团队的灵活自由程度各自迥异，最终不可避免地招致对不公平的指控。当然，许多员工的工作依赖于特定时间和场所，采用混合工作制难以发挥最佳效果，乃至根本无法实现混合工作制。这部分员工也常常感到自己获得的待遇不公。

In the past, when companies began experimenting with flexible approaches to work, they typically allowed individual managers to drive the process on an ad hoc basis. As a result, different departments and teams were afforded varying degrees of flexibility and freedom, which inevitably gave rise to accusations of unfairness. And many employees, of course, had time- and place-dependent jobs that made hybrid arrangements either impossible or far from optimal. They often felt treated unfairly.

英国保险公司（Brit Insurance）在包容和公平方面的工作令人钦佩。公司CEO马修·维尔松（Matthew Wilson）和首席投入官洛兰·丹尼（Lorraine Denny）在2020年年初开始设计和实行新的工作方式，做出了一个大胆的决定。他们没有找经常参与流程设计的人，而是从美国、百慕大和伦敦办公室随机选出了10%的员工（从前台工作人员到高级业务员）一同参与设计。

Brit Insurance has done admirable work on inclusion and fairness. As the company’s CEO, Matthew Wilson, and its chief engagement officer, Lorraine Denny, began the design and implementation of new ways of working, early in 2020, they made a bold choice. Rather than involving “the usual suspects” in the design process, they randomly chose employees from offices in the United States, Bermuda, and London—amounting to 10% of the workforce, from receptionists to senior underwriters—to participate.

之后的六个月里，这些部门、职级和年龄层各不相同的员工组成六人一组的团队，进行线上合作。首先用诊断工具分析和分享自己的工作能力和倾向，然后参加一系列学习模块，深入学习如何合作以更好地满足他人需求乃至公司整体的需求。最后有为期半天的“黑客马拉松”，让每个团队提出创意并向CEO介绍，成果汇总成《英国保险合作手册》（Brit Playbook），其中的新方法现在在全公司推广。

During the following six months, teams of six employees—each drawn from multiple divisions, levels, and generational cohorts—worked together virtually across Brit Insurance. They began with diagnostic tools that helped them profile and share their own working capabilities and preferences. Then they embarked on a series of learning modules designed to create deeper insights into how they could work together to better serve one another’s needs and those of the company as a whole. Finally, they engaged in a half-day virtual “hackathon,” during which they came up with ideas and pitched them to the CEO. The result was what they called the Brit Playbook, which described some of the new ways they would now all work together.

瑞典跨国公司爱立信（Ericsson）副总裁兼人才管理负责人塞利娜·米尔斯坦（Selina Millstam）前不久开展了一项与此相似的包容性方面的工作。她与高管团队决定，每一项新的工作安排都必须植根于公司文化，而公司文化的重要内容是“能够畅所欲言的环境”“同理心”和“协调合作”。

Selina Millstam, the vice president and head of talent management at Ericsson, a Swedish multinational, recently conducted a similarly inclusive effort. Every new work arrangement, she and the executive team decided, would have to be rooted in the company culture, important aspects of which were “a speak-up environment,” “empathy,” and “cooperation and collaboration.”

为了确保这几点，去年米尔斯坦及其团队让员工访问开放72小时的网络论坛发言，由主持团队提供支持并在结束后分析讨论串。2020年4月末的一个论坛发挥了重要的作用，让爱立信员工有平台讨论疫情中的混合工作制可能对公司文化产生的影响。来自132个国家的超过1.7万人参与了这场线上讨论。参与者留言约2.8万，提到疫情中的远程工作有哪些难题（如缺乏社交）和益处（如干扰减少、工作效率提升）。

To ensure that this would be the case, Millstam and her team last year engaged employees in “jams” that were conducted virtually during a 72-hour period and supported by a team of facilitators, who subsequently analyzed the conversational threads. One of these jams, launched in late April 2020, played a crucial role in giving Ericsson employees a platform to talk about how hybrid ways of working during the pandemic might affect the company culture. More than 17,000 people from 132 countries participated in this virtual conversation. Participants made some 28,000 comments, addressing how working during the pandemic had created both challenges (such as lack of social contact) and benefits (such as increased productivity through reduced distraction).

这类论坛帮助爱立信高层领导者更加细致地了解了员工关心的问题，在设计混合工作模式时加以考虑。领导者认识到，变化势必激起不公平的感觉，解决问题的最佳方式是尽力让更多的员工参与设计过程。要倾听员工的声音，并让他们倾听彼此，明白相关决策并非管理者个人的心血来潮。

This jam and others like it helped Ericsson’s senior leaders develop a more nuanced understanding of the issues and priorities they need to take into account as they design hybrid work arrangements. Change, they realized, is bound to create feelings of unfairness and inequity, and the best way to address that problem is to ensure that as many employees as possible are involved in the design process. They need to have their voices heard, to hear from others, and to know that the changes being made are not just the result of individual managers’ whims and sensibilities.

你要如何推动自己的公司转向随时随地办公的模式？首先确定关键职位和任务，确定每一类职位相关的影响要素，并思考有利于这些要素的安排。让员工参与设计，运用调查问卷、性格偏好分类和采访，了解员工真正想要和需要的东西。不同公司的状况相差很大，不能偷懒。要拓宽思路，发挥创意，注意不要重复目前工作模式中没有效率的因素。要广泛沟通，在每一个阶段让每个人都明白混合工作制对工作效率有益无害。为领导者提供管理混合工作制团队的培训，为合作工具投资，帮助团队统一工作日程。

So how can you propel your firm toward an anywhere, anytime model? Start by identifying key jobs and tasks, determine what the drivers of productivity and performance are for each, and think about the arrangements that would serve them best. Engage employees in the process, using a combination of surveys, personas, and interviews to understand what they really want and need. This will differ significantly from company to company, so don’t take shortcuts. Think expansively and creatively, with an eye toward eliminating duplication and unproductive elements in your current work arrangements. Communicate broadly so that at every stage of your journey everybody understands how hybrid arrangements will enhance rather than deplete their productivity. Train leaders in the management of hybrid teams, and invest in the tools of coordination that will help your teams align their schedules.

最后，想一想新的混合工作模式究竟有没有凸显公司的价值观和文化。仔细评估：你做出的所有变化，有没有为能让公司的每一个人都觉得有吸引力、公平、鼓舞人心且有意义的未来打好基础？

Finally, ask yourself whether your new hybrid arrangements, whatever they are, accentuate your company’s values and support its culture. Carefully and thoughtfully take stock: In the changes you’ve made, have you created a foundation for the future that everybody in the company will find engaging, fair, inspiring, and meaningful?

林达·格拉顿是伦敦商学院管理实践教授、未来工作方式研究咨询公司HSM创始人。她与安德鲁·斯科特（Andrew J. Scott）合作了最新著作《新的长寿：如何在变化的世界蓬勃发展》（The New Long Life: A Framework for Flourishing in a Changing World）。

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