Why Hybrid Work Is So Emotionally Exhausting

When Klara was offered a hybrid work schedule, she thought it would be the best of both worlds.

She is an account manager for a London-based company and had been hired to work full-time in the office, until successive waves of Covid-19 forced her to work from home.

Klara’s boss introduced the hybrid work policy in September 2021, when it ended the British government’s guidance recommending that people work from home. Tuesdays and Thursdays would be the work-from-home days and the rest of the week would be spent at the office during normal contractual hours.

“At first, it was a relief to have a permanent hybrid work schedule,” recalls Klara (her last name is withheld for job security reasons). “After years of working full-time in the office, I felt like I was finally in control of my work schedule and my intense home life.”

But as the months passed, the novelty of hybrid work quickly gave way to complications and an uncomfortable day-at-home and day-out routine. “I feel comfortable and focused on days when I work from home,” says Klara, “but at night, I dread having to go back to the office—sitting eight hours a day in a noisy office, staring at a screen and readjusting myself to go back to being exactly the way I was before the pandemic”.

Klara feels that she now has to maintain two places of work: one at the office and one at home. “This involves planning and a routine of interruptions: taking my laptop from the office to the house and back every day and remembering where I left the important things,” she explains.

“Psychological change — switching environments every day — is very tiring. This constant feeling of never being accommodated, being stressed and [ver] my productive work at home is always interrupted,” says Klara.

Data is beginning to emerge to support this empirical evidence: many workers are reporting that hybrid work is emotionally draining.

In a recent global study conducted by employee engagement platform Tinypulse, over 80% of people leaders reported that the hybrid setup is exhausting for employees. And workers also reported that hybrid work is more emotionally demanding than fully remote work and — worryingly — even full-time office work.

Considering that many companies are planning to implement permanent models of hybrid work and that most workers want to spend their workweeks between their homes and the office, these numbers raise alarm bells. But what is it specifically about hybrid work that makes it so draining, emotionally? And how can workers and businesses avoid pitfalls so that hybrid work can really work?

Why hybrid work can be strenuous

As the pandemic drags on and workers’ flexible working habits become more ingrained, returning to the full-time office feels like a relic of the past. But while some companies have implemented remote work policies, a large number of companies have embraced hybrid as a standard working model, as long as employees returning to the office in large numbers is considered safe.

In theory, hybrid work offers the best deal between employees and employers. It combines pre-pandemic office work patterns and remote working days into a schedule that allows for face-to-face collaboration and team building, as well as greater flexibility and the opportunity to focus to work from home.

It seemed like a win-win solution. A May 2021 study showed that 83% of workers wanted to work in a hybrid way after the pandemic.

“The feeling was that hybrid work would be the best of both worlds,” says Elora Voyles, an industrial organizational psychologist and personal scientist at California-based software company Tinypulse.

“For employers, it meant maintaining a sense of control and being able to see their employees in person. For employees, it offers more flexibility than full-time office work and means being able to work safely during the pandemic,” she says.

But as the novelty of hybrid work wore off, so did the workers’ enthusiasm. “We found that people became less supportive of hybrid work over the course of 2021,” explains Voyles. “In the spring and summer months [do hemisfério norte], many companies were actually willing to implement it. They brought employees into the hybrid scheme, but difficulties quickly arose.”

Companies that had never implemented hybrid work were suddenly drawing up policies in a hurry, often without consulting employees. Thus, as in Klara’s case, the mechanisms of work, part at the office, part at home, were imposed on the workers.

Employee optimism quickly turned to fatigue. In a Tinypulse survey of 100 workers around the world, 72% of them reported exhaustion from hybrid work — nearly double the percentage of fully remote workers and also more than among those who work in the office full-time.

Voyles says the small sample reflects a broader trend. She believes that the disruption of employees’ daily routine and their cluttered nature make hybrid work very tiring for workers.

“Consistent and predictable routines can help people deal with their feelings of stress and uncertainty, especially during the pandemic,” says Voyles. “Hybrid work, on the other hand, requires frequent changes to these daily habits. Workers have to change everything constantly and it’s difficult to set a routine when your schedule is always in and out of the office.”

Family routine can act as a well-formed valve that lets things flow, but forming new daily habits — which include a less consistent schedule between workplaces — can erode cognitive resources.

“The shift to hybrid work has the potential to disrupt a person’s work-from-home routine,” explains Gail Kinman, a specialist psychologist and fellow of the British Psychological Society. “Hybrid practices haven’t become second nature yet. So they require more energy, organization and planning. You have to form new strategies — cross-functional offices, planning commutes — that wouldn’t be necessary if you were working entirely remotely or face-to-face. “

Physically transporting work from home to the office and back can also have psychological impacts for some people. A recent study found that 20% of UK workers reported having difficulty ‘disconnecting’ from work and feeling ‘always on’. The struggle to adapt to hybrid work and the blurred boundaries between home and work were mentioned as the main causes.

Hybrid work can also increase the risk of digital presenteeism, according to Kinman, compared to fully remote jobs, which require implicit trust from the employer. “If an employer establishes hybrid work without trusting its employees, that decision can become little more than a symbolic gesture. Workers will be pressured to show their boss that they are not taking advantage of working from home. work and burnout, with effects that can be devastating but take a long time to appear.”

The definition of ‘hybrid’

For some workers, frustration with the hybrid model indicates that they are moving towards jobs that allow them full control of their work schedules.

“I thought hybrid work was for me, but splitting my time between home and work was very problematic,” says Klara, who is due to start a new, fully remote job soon. “I think the office distracts me [porque] I can be disturbed at any time. The more I dedicated myself to hybrid work, the more I felt like it was just one more obstacle to getting my job done—from commuting to knowing I’d be working elsewhere the next day. It quickly became just an obligation.”

But Klara’s experience doesn’t necessarily mean workers must return to the office five days a week or seek permanently remote jobs. Hybrid work can still be perfectly harmonious for workers, as long as your employer sets it up correctly.

“The arrangement doesn’t work when it’s a hybrid schedule imposed by a supervisor,” explains Elora Voyles. “Employees end up with a workweek they have no control over. It’s like the old fixed full-time office schedule, which happens to take place at the employee’s home twice a week.”

Gail Kinman says that the question is what companies understand by “hybrid”. “It’s a broad definition that can be interpreted in many ways — from going to the office three days a week to once a month. Hybrid work may still be the future of employment and represent the best of both worlds, but it needs to be improved.” , she says.

Hybrid work can be successful when managers collaborate with employees, preferably one-on-one, on what configuration would work best for them. “Both parties, employer and employee, need to set boundaries,” says Voyles. “But there needs to be autonomy for the employee to manage their own work schedule. Flexibility needs to be defined by the individual, not the boss.”

In addition, employees in hybrid work can be helped by more consistent remote work setups that help facilitate the psychological shift between the office and home. For Kinman, “Hybrid is a state of mind. It’s the idea that we move from one environment to another and work harmoniously. For that, there needs to be mechanisms in place to ensure employees have the right tools and software to work from home. “

Kinman points out that we are in the midst of a major work experiment and predicts that the problems of adapting to the hybrid system will last for years. “We currently know more about full-time remote work during a health crisis than we do about long-term hybrid work,” she explains.

But if employees have some degree of control and choice over their work patterns, the rewards can be lucrative. “Both people and companies say they want hybrid work,” says Kinman. “So there’s a huge opportunity to change the way we work. But you have to form a mindset that works for both employees and employers.”