“Say, anyone seen Zack at his desk recently?”
If questions like this are being heard regularly around the office water cooler, it could be a case of “hush hybrid”—a rising workplace phenomenon which finds certain employees slowly crafting a work-from-home schedule despite a company’s return-to-office policies.
With the pandemic fading in the rearview and many companies mandating formerly remote workers return onsite, many staffers grown accustomed to answering emails from their living room couch in little more than their jammies and pair of Uggs are having a hard time adjusting.
In a survey by Owl Labs, a UK marketing company, about 70% of managers said they’d allowed team members to work remotely in violation of company policy. Other forms of “hush hybrid” practices include employees slowly increasing the frequency of their occasional requests to work from home, and others carving out individual secret agreements with managers for flex scheduling.
While the Owls Labs survey found 87% of employees agree an “unofficial” flex policy can boost morale, HR officials say secret hybrid arrangements can create a toxic sense of favoritism at a workplace. Luck Dookchitra, vice president of people at Leapsome, told Forbes the trend stems from companies falling back on the mistaken assumption that presence equals performance. She said managers are skirting the no-exceptions return-to-office policies as a way to maintain morale and retain staff.
On the downside, employee relations expert Jim Moore cautions that hush hybrid breaks a “cardinal rule” of HR—to treat everyone fairly. Staff members will “invariably talk among themselves, and it won’t be long before any arrangements become common knowledge,” instilling a sense of resentment from those who follow company policy, Moore told People Management magazine.
Or, as Molly Johnson-Jones, co-founder and CEO of job-search company Flexa, puts it: “Company policies exist for a reason. They help ensure that all staff are treated equally and have access to the same benefits.”
