Is hybrid remote working the future of workplace?

Shyam Sundar Nagarajan
2 min readSep 3, 2020

Much has been going on the interweb on how different companies are imagining their future of workplace. This chatter has not just come from the tech companies but also some not-so-tech companies.

Here’s what they said:

The Future of Workplace

The Future of Workplace certainly looks hybrid for times to come. It would be a hybrid model with the following elements :

  1. having a smaller, more flexible HQ
  2. work from home and
  3. work from the neighbourhood.
The Future of Workplace

While GoFloaters was a pioneer in this hybrid remote & work from neighbourhood model, we saw that larger organizations were going through a flux. We wanted to understand this further. As part of this, I have been in conversation with many leaders, founders and decision makers over the last few months. Everyone has given a 👍 for hybrid remote working. The percentages of the above three elements vary from one organizations’s idea of hybrid and the other. One thing all of them told is that they dont have a formula yet and they would be doing a series of experiments to figure out the formula that works for them.

Role of coworking spaces

Coworking spaces, that IMHO, had moved away from why they even came into existence will have to now go back to the basics and start solving the on-demand work and meeting space needs that arise with this new way of working.

A few ways they should embrace the future:

  1. Change leases and rental subscriptions into subscriptions
  2. Increase % of hot desks on the floor
  3. Provide private workspaces for teams on flexible basis
  4. Provide a smooth experience for booking of their spaces
  5. Stay close to organization and their experiments with hybrid remote

The few months ahead into 2021 are going to be very interesting. Every organization irrespective of their size is going to be performing a lot of experiments to figure out their version of hybrid remote working. This opens up huge opportunities for startups to solve for.

One word of caution that I want to leave behind and I quote Kyle Tibbits and Paul Graham here is that organizations should not be overcorrecting for remote working. There is a lot of merit in working together in-person as a team.

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Shyam Sundar Nagarajan

Founder & CEO of GoFloaters (On-demand work spaces) | Champion of #Responsible #WorkFromAnywhere