Inclusive Hybrid Work Design
Design hybrid work around outcomes, collaboration, and employee realities
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 95%
Inclusive Hybrid Work Design treats workplace policy as an evolving operating system rather than a fixed attendance mandate. Leaders gather employee evidence, identify work that benefits from physical proximity, and preserve remote flexibility for tasks that do not. They then redesign technology, office space, management behavior, and benefits so employees can succeed in either environment. The inclusion mechanism is especially important: rigid office requirements can disproportionately burden caregivers and working mothers, worsening representation in industries that already lack diversity. Senior leaders reinforce the policy by using flexibility themselves instead of appearing in the office every day to signal commitment. Results are evaluated through collaboration quality, engagement, retention, recruitment, and investment or business outcomes, with the design revised as the organization learns.
Origin
Christine Hurtsellers explained Voya's post-pandemic hybrid strategy, including employee surveys, flexible attendance, upgraded home technology, renovated offices, and explicit consideration of working mothers. Extracted from Masters in Business.
Core principles
- 01Neither universal office work nor universal remote work fits every need
- 02Employee evidence should shape workplace policy
- 03Collaboration and flexibility must be designed together
- 04Leaders should model the flexibility they want employees to use
- 05Workplace design can either support or undermine inclusion
How to run it
- 1
Gather employee evidence
Survey employees and hold listening sessions to understand work patterns, caregiving constraints, collaboration needs, and preferred environments.
Pro tip Segment findings by role and demographic group so averages do not conceal unequal effects.
Watch out Preference data alone does not reveal every operational requirement.
- 2
Map work to environments
Identify which activities need in-person interaction, such as spontaneous idea generation, and which can be performed effectively elsewhere.
Pro tip Evaluate activities rather than assigning one rule to entire departments.
Watch out Do not use vague appeals to culture as a substitute for specifying required interactions.
- 3
Set flexible boundaries
Create expectations that enable necessary collaboration without mandating arbitrary office days for everyone.
Pro tip Let teams coordinate presence around shared work where practical.
Watch out A mandatory Tuesday-through-Thursday schedule is not meaningful flexibility.
- 4
Build supporting infrastructure
Equip employees' homes, redesign offices for shared use, and make meetings accessible to remote and in-person participants.
Pro tip Test common workflows with participants in both settings before rollout.
Watch out Hybrid work fails when remote participants become second-class attendees.
- 5
Audit inclusion effects
Examine how the policy affects caregivers, working mothers, people with disabilities, and other employees with distinct constraints.
Pro tip Track retention and advancement, not just policy satisfaction.
Watch out A superficially neutral attendance rule can deepen existing workforce inequality.
- 6
Model and iterate
Have senior leaders use the policy authentically, monitor outcomes, and adjust the design as evidence accumulates.
Pro tip Explain policy changes and the evidence behind them.
Watch out Leaders who privately ignore flexibility signal that employees should do the same.
In the wild
Voya surveyed employees, rejected both fully office-based and fully virtual work, considered new technology for employees' homes, and renovated its New York and Atlanta offices for more flexible use. Hurtsellers also declined to appear in the office every day merely to encourage imitation.
→ The company positioned flexibility as an inclusion, recruitment, and retention advantage while retaining in-person collaboration.
A product team schedules in-person sessions for quarterly planning and difficult cross-functional design work. Individual analysis and routine meetings remain location-flexible, while rooms and home setups are upgraded for mixed participation.
→ The team preserves high-value collaboration without requiring daily commuting.
Common mistakes
Mandating arbitrary office days
A universal three-day schedule may reproduce the rigidity of full-time office work without proving that those days improve outcomes.
Ignoring unequal burdens
Policies can disproportionately push caregivers and working mothers out of the workforce if leaders examine only aggregate preferences.
Modeling presenteeism
Executives who attend every day to set an example can make officially flexible arrangements feel unsafe to use.
Is it for you?
Best for
Organizations balancing culture and idea generation with flexibility, inclusion, recruitment, and retention.
Not ideal for
Roles whose physical tasks, safety obligations, or regulated environments require continuous on-site presence.
From the transcript
“we don't think a hundred percent in the office is right, nor do we think a hundred percent virtual is right.”
“let's listen to our people, let's figure out what's what works. We're going to learn as we go.”
“Do I think that people should be mandating you have to be in you know, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. No, that's also not flexibility.”
From the episode
Christine Hurtsellers on the Business of Trust (Podcast)
Christine Hurtsellers