The big debate over hybrid work is pretty much settled. But how to brand the policy is a whole other matter
Hybrid work is all but guaranteed to remain a key feature of work culture for the foreseeable future. Return-to-office plans are stopping far short of a full return and the fears of productivity loss from remote employees haven’t borne out.
So, and perhaps not surprisingly, now that we’ve settled into a place where hybrid work is generally accepted, employers are putting their marketing departments on the case, branding and promoting their flex-work arrangements with catchphrases and corporate jargon.
At KPMG, it’s called “Flex with Purpose.” A couple years ago, 3M branded its hybrid structure as “Work Your Way.” American Express (the best in this writer’s opinion) went with “Amex Flex.”
Some of these are corny, and everyone knows they all refer to more or less the same thing, but these rebrands can still be important, say experts.
“This is an opportunity for organizations to loosen the strictures they had in the past and say, ‘We are a different kind of organization now,’” said Denise Rousseau, organizational behaviour professor at Carnegie Mellon, in an interview with Bloomberg.
To employers, it’s about ushering in new ways of thinking about hybrid work, which is now seen as a bit of a buzzword. Ditching the pandemic-era terms and going with something that is unique to the company has an air of permanence and forward-thinking-ness about it.
“We’re sort of freeing up the conversation to ask questions that we never really thought about asking, and pushing,” said Colleen McCreary, chief people officer at Credit Karma. “The leaders of companies to think about what is best for the bottom line, for our customers, and for our employees, all at the same time.”
Content written by Kieran Delamont for Worklife, a partnership between Ahria Consulting and London Inc. To view this content in newsletter form, click here.