[Jjinbit] 'Hwasu' is office, 'Wolgeum' is remote... Hybrid work like 'Jjamjjameon' [Office Shift]⑭

Employees Prefer 'Plain Vanilla Version' for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday Attendance
Companies Face Growing Concerns Over Workdays and Job Content

Editor's Note[Jjinbit] is short for 'Jung Hyunjin's Business Trend' and 'Real Business Trend,' a segment that showcases trends in the changing nature of work. The segment within Jjinbit called 'Office Shift' closely examines the changes in offices triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and aims to lay the groundwork for exploring answers to new work styles through experiments we have conducted together. It will be delivered to you every Saturday and Sunday morning. After 40 installments, it will also be available as a book.

Jjamjjamyeon and Jjapaguri are famous 'hybrid dishes.' Although the term 'fusion cuisine' might be more appropriate, the new word 'hybrid' was applied to explain 'hybrid work,' which shares a similar meaning with fusion. Since both dishes combine two foods into one menu, fusion cuisine and hybrid cuisine do not differ significantly in meaning.

Now, let's consider the difference between Jjamjjamyeon and Jjapaguri. Jjamjjamyeon allows you to enjoy the sweet and savory Jjajangmyeon and the spicy and refreshing Jjamppong separately, while Jjapaguri mixes the Jjapagetti, which tastes like Jjajangmyeon, with the salty and spicy Neoguri ramen to create a new flavor similar to Sichuan-style Jjajang. The two dishes differ distinctly in whether each maintains its original taste or is recreated into a new flavor through combination. The Jjamjjamyeon bowl has partitions between the two dishes, but Jjapaguri is served on one plate.

▲Nongshim Chapagetti and Neoguri products

Which of these does hybrid work correspond to? At this point, it seems more appropriate to compare it to Jjamjjamyeon. This is because hybrid work currently remains at the level of dividing two workspaces?working from home and office attendance?within a workweek. It appears that several partitions still remain, indicating that the two work styles have not yet been fully combined into a single work form.

For hybrid work to properly merge into one dish rather than separate entities, certain stages must be passed. To blend as perfectly as Jjapaguri and achieve a successful unified flavor, various experiments are necessary.

◆ 'The First Partition': How Many Days and Which Days Do You Go to the Office in a Week?

The first concern companies face when introducing hybrid work systems is the number of days employees come to the office. When applying this system uniformly to all employees, most companies fix and announce the number of office days within the workweek. Disney requires 4 out of 5 days, Amazon and Starbucks require 3 days. Most companies adopting hybrid work have gradually increased office attendance from 1 to 2 or 3 days per week after initially implementing full remote work due to productivity and collaboration reasons.

Now, let's consider: how many days out of a 5-day workweek is appropriate to be in the office? Is there really a correct answer? According to Scoop, a U.S. software company supporting hybrid work schedules, which surveyed 334 companies in the U.S. that adopted hybrid work, 46% of companies required employees to come to the office at least 3 days a week, the largest share, followed by 41% requiring 2 days. One-day and four-day requirements were 7% and 5%, respectively, showing a significant difference. The average is 2.49 days, exactly half of the total workdays. In terms of workdays, it looks as if the two systems are perfectly combined half and half.

As conflicts between companies and employees over office return intensify, preferences for the number of remote workdays during the week also vary. According to WFH Research, a nonprofit research organization that surveyed 200,000 U.S. employees, workers wanted 2.73 remote days per week (as of last February), while employers planned for 2.20 days. Early in the pandemic, employers said they would not implement even 2 remote days per week, but their stance gradually changed, exceeding 2 days from an October 2021 survey. Meanwhile, employees wanted more than 2.5 days from the early days of COVID-19. Through this process, the gap between management and employees narrowed from 1.38 days in January 2021 to 0.5 days currently.

Not only the number of office days but also which days employees come to the office is an important issue. The term 'Monday blues' reflects how employees dislike coming to work on Monday after the weekend, showing that weekdays affect productivity.

Currently, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are the most common office days. Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford University professor who has researched remote work for nearly 20 years, recently described the Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday office attendance combination on his Twitter as the 'plain vanilla version' most commonly chosen at ice cream shops. Only 6% of companies require office attendance on Friday, which is attached to the weekend, less than a tenth of Tuesday (72%) or Wednesday (66%).

However, this trend is not necessarily the correct answer. It is a compromise solution offered by companies in the experimental phase, balancing management and employee demands. The results of this combination in terms of productivity and efficiency remain to be seen. Some argue that fixing certain days for office attendance itself is inappropriate.

◆ 'The Second Partition': Are Tasks Assigned Specifically to Office or Remote Work?

One of the challenges to naturally blend remote and office work into a single work system is to distinguish the appropriate workspace for each task. For example, writing a project report is more efficient in a quiet space free from noise to enhance concentration. If 10 people need to brainstorm a project, gathering in a meeting room for discussion is more productive. The characteristics of tasks and workspaces must align well to maximize efficiency, influenced by multiple factors.

According to The Guardian, a research team led by Jonathan Trevor, a professor at Oxford University, published in the MIT Sloan Management Review in December last year, interviewed executives from 20 global companies and classified tasks into four types.

① Tasks requiring individual focus and creativity, such as designing a booklet

② Tasks involving procedural individual work, like data entry

③ Routine projects requiring collaborative group work

④ Product development requiring collective cooperation and creativity

Professor Trevor evaluated that type ① involves less collaboration and can be supported by technology, making it the easiest to transition to video conferencing among the four. Conversely, type ④ requires team members to gather in one space to freely share knowledge and opinions and harness collective intelligence, so teams with many such tasks should spend more time in the office.

For this reason, rather than uniformly applying 'all employees must come to the office X days a week,' many companies delegate the decision on hybrid work details to 'department by department' or 'team by team.' Both terms derive from the English adjective phrase 'case by case,' meaning 'depending on the situation.' This approach allows departments and teams to design hybrid work systems based on the nature of their primary tasks, either directly or through company arrangements.

South Korea's leading IT company Kakao introduced 'Kakao ON' in March, prioritizing office attendance and requiring each organization to decide and submit their remote and office attendance days. U.S. cloud company Oracle recently ordered office returns and categorized employee roles into three groups: ▲ requiring 5 days in the office ▲ flexible work possible ▲ suitable for remote work, announcing that the company will notify employees within 30 days, according to U.S. business media Business Insider.

While experiments with hybrid work systems are underway by differentiating tasks and applying different systems by team, there is no clear conclusion yet on which method yields higher productivity and efficiency. Some argue that differentiating by team or task can cause fairness controversies among employees. Employees who refuse to return to the office and view remote work as a benefit may develop such feelings, damaging overall organizational culture. Additionally, even when employees come to the office, mismatched systems among teams or departments can hinder collaboration.

Martin Haas, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, said last January that managers and employees are doing their best to find their own rhythm in the 'new normal' of hybrid work. He also noted that fairness issues arise when some teams within a company cannot work remotely. Professor Haas emphasized that companies should create customized policies suitable for their own businesses.