Andy Lake – Director, Flexibility.co.uk & Founder, Smart Work Network
[email protected] | www.flexibility.co.uk | www.smart-work.net | www.linkedin.com/in/andylakewriter
Moving beyond the ‘hybrid’ tropes
We are all learning, constantly, and continuously over time. Then a global and catastrophic event happens, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and we all learn very quickly. We must, for survival. But also, in any crisis, there are people and groups who think that they spot an opportunity. One such opportunity, in early 2020, was to seize the term ‘hybrid’ and apply it to the world of work and place (in almost every article written, it seemed at the time). Commentators are polarised into proposing two different approaches: ‘work from home’ or ‘back to the office’. Critically, this polarised positioning misses the spectrum of work and workstyles which co-exist in the equally broad spectrum of organisations and cultures around the world.
He could have called this new book “Way Before, and Way Beyond the fuss about Hybrid Working”, because the author has been fully immersed in new ways of working since the 1990s. And this long-timeline view is vital to put the often-weak contemporary debate into context.
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