Symbiosis: Knowledge Management in the Age of Hybrid Work

First published in theHRDIRECTOR, December Edition, 2024. Reproduced with permission.

With ever-changing hybrid work patterns putting extra pressure on employers to maintain knowledge within the business, to support and communicate with the hybrid workforce and improve the employee experience, combining data-driven hybrid workplace technology with effective knowledge management capability can make a significant impact on increasingly dispersed and disparate team frameworks. This enables storing, curating, organising and sharing up-to-date HR information and as hybrid policies change, ensure policy adaptation is maintained on a local and global scale. 

The primary goal of knowledge management is often seen as giving staff the information they need to do their job to the best of their ability. However, studies have shown that an effective knowledge management system can also make a significant contribution to enhanced organizational performance, better decision-making, and more efficient problem-solving. 

The studies also highlighted the significant benefits that knowledge management holds for employees, such as reduced effort and time to seek information about the office – and reduced training periods for new staff to learn the lay of the land. 

Understanding the benefits of setting up a knowledge management strategy, the key question becomes how to ensure it is effective. One avenue that proves successful is the integration of knowledge management processes with the latest hybrid workplace technology. Converging the two can help to boost employees’ workplace experience, make it easier to share knowledge, lessen admin time for HR teams and line managers, save on resources, and also set up a company’s property portfolio reduction strategy for success.  

Not only does this strategy make it easier for workplaces to adopt knowledge management strategies, such a data-driven approach can also result in a smarter, more motivated hybrid workforce that is better able to make quick and informed decisions. Hybrid work still remains a challenge for many HR teams when it comes to settling on successful policies and although most think it is here to stay, they believe it remains uncoordinated at the moment.

Maintaining company culture and ensuring equitable experiences for remote and in-office workers were among the top challenges reported by respondents in a recent survey of ours. The research findings indicate that, to succeed in the hybrid model, organisations need to focus on innovate ways to foster company culture while ensuring fair treatment across all work arrangements. A large part of this is down to boosting social connection opportunities in the workplace and increasing transparency on opportunities to collaborate. Both of these crucial team-building and social connection-building objectives can be made possible by combining knowledge management with hybrid workplace technology.

The easier it is for hybrid employees to have a seamless experience in the office, the more likely they are to come in and this is directly influenced by employees’ ability to see how compliant they are with the company’s workplace policies. 

If hybrid workplace technology is integrated with an organization’s hybrid policy changes, the number of days that remote workers are required to be in the office will automatically be taken into account by the technology in place. For example, if the company has a desk and meeting room booking system, this will allow employees to instantly see whether they are in compliance, based on the number of bookings they have attended in person each week It will also tell them if they need to come in more frequently.  

Transparency over policy compliance allows remote employees to save time by alleviating the need to search for policy documentation or reminder emails about the new mandates. It will also enable them to keep track of their usage of the office and let them feel more in control of their schedule. 

It is all about managing employee information and using in-built intelligence to ensure hybrid workers are better informed and to ensure any trip to the office is worth the commute. Such an approach will contribute to a better daily experience for them in the office. I will also help HR teams that may be struggling to persuade hybrid workers to come together in the office more often.  

Another key strategy to improve employee experience is by boosting transparency around social events. A great way to present extra opportunities for colleagues to collaborate is through organized social events. But this strategy can only be successful if employees are aware of them. Combining knowledge management with hybrid workplace technology will enable HR to instantly circulate the latest information about office amenities and encourage employees to take advantage of upcoming workplace events or social activities. 

Hybrid employees will then automatically receive notifications about these events or amenities and will be able to plan their days in the office around them. This can help to build camaraderie, teamwork, and a sense of ‘belonging’, as well as fostering a culture of collaboration in the workplace. 

An integrated approach such as this can also help reduce the amount of time spent on administration and communication. With hybrid working becoming more complex as companies continue to adapt to a mix of in-office and remote work, tracking hybrid policy with spreadsheets and badge swipes is no longer good enough. Neither is informing employees about new policies with a flyer pinned to the office bulletin board. If hybrid policies are not widely known, employees cannot be expected to comply. 

Written communications are great for storing and transferring knowledge, of course, but it can be time-consuming for hybrid employees to access key information such as policy guidelines about in-office requirements. 

Similarly, if there is not sufficient technology in place to accurately track occupancy levels and compliance with new hybrid policies, it will be much harder for companies to identify which policies are working and which are not. Knowing the difference is essential to future workplace policy strategy. Converging hybrid workplace technology and knowledge management can help to guide a company’s future workplace strategy by providing the right tools to track its success.  

For example, mandates and office policies can be updated immediately into hybrid work management systems and integrated into desk and meeting room booking policies. This means HR teams won’t have to send countless emails with updates explaining the changes. The system will instantly put the amendments in place. 

If management switches the mandate from three days in-office to four days in-office per week, they simply need to input the changes into the hybrid workplace management system and employees are alerted immediately. This not only saves management time, but also reduces the need for HR to constantly check and remind employees.  

These days, companies’ workplace strategies are not only focused on implementing a hybrid policy that works, there is also an increasing emphasis on reducing their corporate real estate portfolio in order to keep costs down. 

Knowledge management has a role to play in portfolio reduction, but in the hybrid era there is a growing need to combine portfolio reduction strategies with hybrid strategies. This is because there is a dependency between portfolio reduction and office attendance policies. As the financially driven decision to reduce the portfolio supply carries on, the variables of employee attendance policies become limited, but they are not transparent. 

If a company reduces its real estate portfolio by 30 percent, with no reduction in the number of employees served, it no longer has the ability to go back to working five days a week in-office. This means portfolio reduction and hybrid policy need to converge into a single strategy. 

An integrated hybrid workplace technology and knowledge management solution can help HR directors to visualise what a reduction in space suggested by facilities management and space management actually means for occupancy. This will help the different teams to converge on these strategies — and set them up for success — rather than putting in place hybrid policies that cannot be delivered alongside portfolio reduction strategies.  

The world of work has changed to reflect the hybrid era and, along with this change, there is an increased need for successful policy adoption strategies. Combining knowledge management and technology specifically built for the hybrid workplace will improve the employee experience and employer value proposition, whilst substantially enhancing the flow of qualitative and accurate information in the office.