If 2022 brings about an evolution of Covid-19 from pandemic to endemic, governments will face a critical choice: to facilitate a safe return to physical office settings as soon as feasible, or to embrace hybrid strategies as the centrepiece of innovative workspace redesign.
The latter necessitates an appropriate framing of hybrid’s value proposition. As George Penn of Gartner Consulting observes: ‘Success in a hybrid environment requires employers to move beyond viewing remote or hybrid environments as temporary or short-term strategy and to treat it as an opportunity.’
In line with this opportunistic orientation, my prior column offered differentiation and engagement as two key design principles for pursuing hybrid strategies. Here, inclusion is presented as the third such principle. Long before COVID-19, governments have strived to deepen and widen diversity and inclusion within the public service. An important question now be-comes whether and how hybrid models can strengthen these efforts which have thus far yielded mixed results.
The risks of heightened exclusion stem from a false and dangerous notion that a wider assortment of hybrid arrangements will naturally be more inclusive. As Bonnie Dowling and Sara Prince of McKinsey Consulting point out (Reimagining the virtual workplace around inclusion and engagement): ‘Virtual relationships are often easier to maintain than to create, causing people to reinvest in existing relation-ships instead of forming new ones, ultimately reducing opportunities for new development and growth. Connectivity can suffer among underrepresented groups as spontaneous interactions disappear.’
With respect to gender, for instance, as the pandemic exasperates in-equities globally, the World Economic Forum now anticipates global gender parity to be achieved in 135.6 years, up from roughly 100-year estimate just two years ago. Although hybrid models can mean additional degrees of flexibility for women in balancing professional and personal responsibilities, it is equally important that hybrid arrangements be utilized by men, thereby avoiding a segmented workspace of predominantly in-person workers (male) and partially remote (female) workers.
Starker challenges exist for racialized minorities – particularly at senior ranks of the public sector that remain heavily Caucasian. As of March 2020, for instance, the Government of Canada reports that across 6,212 executive level positions, there are no minority ethnic groups representing even 3% of this pool with most much lower still. Similarly limited representation characterizes Indigenous Canadians and persons with disabilities as well.
The LGBQT2 community is a similar case in point, estimated by Statistics Canada to comprise at least 4% of the country’s population (ages 15 and above), with one third under the age of twenty-five. Despite little data as to the proportion of government managers that identify with this community, it stands to reason that the number is considerable with this cadre an important and growing source of talent and competence for governments at all levels.
Now widely understood but vastly unrealized, the primary interface between workforce diversity and organizational performance goes well beyond tolerance. A culture of inclusion seeks to leverage varied perspectives, experiences, and worldviews as innovation drivers. As Sylvia Hewitt and her colleagues wrote a decade ago in Harvard Busi-ness Review (How Diversity Can Drive Innovation): ‘When minorities form a critical mass and leaders value differences, all employees can find senior people to go to bat for compelling ideas and can persuade those in charge of budgets to deploy resources to develop those ideas.’
The potential exists for hybrid workspaces to facilitate novel and more varied career progressions – deepening performance synergies between innovation and diversity amongst all segments of the workforce. In place of the traditional ‘corporate ladder’ that features mainly standardized locational and scheduling work patterns that reinforce historical biases and barriers, devising ways to meaning-fully mix and align in-person and virtual processes can democratize participation and foster new avenues for professional advancement.
Nevertheless, any such potential is just that. To be realized, inclusion must be central to hybrid governance design as well as ongoing learning and adaptation. Governments must first fully recognize hybrid’s promise, and the unique occasion at hand to unleash and intertwine human empowerment, digital transformation, and leadership renewal.
Listen to our recent interview with Jeffrey Roy on CGE Radio.
His full report is available online: COVID-19, DIGITIZATION & HYBRID WORKSPACES: Implications and Opportunities for Public Sector Organizations
