How to Design a Hybrid Work Office

The heart of hybrid working is your office. It is where employees connect, collaborate, and learn – both in person and virtually. Your configuration and equipment choices can make hybrid meetings both easy and highly productive.

Six Steps to Create an Office Designed for Hybrid Work

1. Understand Your Employee Workstyles

Everyone works differently based on their role and preferences. A sales colleagues may spend most of their time on the road, a product marketer might hop from meeting to meeting, a graphic designer might dedicate their workday to their desk, and a technical writer might spend half the day in their cubicle and half in a quiet huddle room.

2. Examine How Your Group Meeting Spaces Are Used

Group meeting spaces can be the most in-demand real estate in your office – even if they are not always used for group activities. First, look at how your meeting spaces are being used.

Can they be reserved for video conferences or are they being used by individuals looking for a quiet place to work? Next, consider how often they are used.

3. Decide Whether Seating Will Be Assigned or Unassigned

How are workspaces distributed to employees? Three basic approaches are: fully assigned, where every employee who regularly goes to the office has a dedicated desk; hoteling, where employees reserve empty spaces through an app before they go in; and hot desking, where employees choose an unassigned space when they arrive.

4. Re-Distribute Your Office Space

Now, take what you learned in the three steps above to develop an office plan. Use the information to determine how much space you need for individual desks, how much space for meeting rooms and what size those rooms should be, and then to adjust the space to meet these needs.

5. Establish Your Hybrid Work Policies

These policies define the parameters of flexible work and are central to how the office will be used, including when and how the number of employees in the office will fluctuate. For example: Does everyone need to be in the office a few days a week?

Should each team coordinate a day for all members to be in for in-person collaboration? Are there events (like all-company meetings) during which the entire workforce will be in the office?

6. Equip Your Spaces to Enable Effective Hybrid Collaboration

For individual workspaces, whether they are assigned or unassigned, ensure that each space has everything required to be comfortable and ready for employees, such as a docking station, monitor, and a webcam.

For hotel desks, create an ergonomic checklist that reminds employees to adjust the workspace before starting their workday.