From remote to hybrid work: the technology you’ll need to connect home and office

Welcome to the exciting new world of hybrid work.

“Somewhere in the neighborhood of 60% of the workforce is choosing the hybrid option,” said Gartner analyst Suzanne Adnams, “which means their ideal is to work from home and walk into the office three days a week. “

If I had a dollar for every time I heard “two to three days at the office” reporting this column, a social distancing steak dinner would be for me.

What is not so clear? Where you will go once in the office. It depends on your employer. Here are three possible options:

• Office identical to the old one: Business as usual. You still have your own desk, but maybe now your chair and your coworker’s chair are further away.

• Hot desking: The horribly named trend where employees don’t have permanently assigned desks. Also known as hotel, flexing, or office swap, this is the primary hybrid option for one key reason – it doesn’t make sense to have one office per person if people only come a few times a week.

• No office: The office is not for solo work but for collaboration. So instead of offices, there are mostly group meeting areas, with a private phone booth here and there. Companies, including Dropbox, have embarked on this path.

I certainly can’t tell you in detail what’s going to happen in your business, but I can say that this hybrid life will make you even more dependent on your technological tools. The very technology that allows us to work from anywhere (laptops and smartphones, video calls, Slack) is also the technology that makes it so complicated.

Are your colleagues in the office putting up a whiteboard but you’re stuck at home in a small Zoom box? You survive the trip to the office, only to find that you left your USB-C drive on the kitchen table. Hey, Bob From accounting, stop yelling on your video call. This is not your basement!

But I have hope. Not only did we prove our technological resilience when we embarked on the great work-from-home experiment a year ago, but the makers of our most reliant products are paying attention and adapting for this next phase. Here are some of the biggest hybrid challenges and some potential solutions.

I’m back to the good old commute, but at my hot desk, I have nothing, not even a stained mug of coffee.

There are no two ways to do it, you are going to need a bigger bag. And for the record: Anyone who tells you that a backpack is only for college students is simply wrong.

As you head to your apartment building (assuming you remember where it is) you may need to pick up your phone. Your employer may require Covid-era health checks and other precautions, but it may also give you the option of reserving your workspace, through systems like Salesforce’s Robin or Work.com.

Congratulations, you have arrived at “your” office. I can’t guess what technology will be available when you get there, but expect it to be pretty straightforward, especially if you BYOL (you know, bring your own laptop).

In Salesforceof

redesigned spaces, for example, employees only have a desk and two monitors side by side, Jo-ann Olsovsky, the company’s information manager, told me.

At the very least, Salesforce employees will be able to keep other personal effects in lockers and easily get other tech peripherals (mice, keyboards, headsets, chargers) from vending machines around the offices. You don’t pay. Simply swipe your employee badge, press the button for your item, and grab it in the bottom tray.

If the vending machines in your office only dispense expired Doritos, you can request things from your IT department. Either way, you’ll likely be dragging your favorite gear back and forth. Sure, more expensive gear that you don’t own two of – tablets, microphones, noise-canceling headphones – will be in your bag.

For smaller items (batteries, charging cords, mice, and various adapters to connect drives, memory cards, and cables to your laptop), you’ll need a protective bag. You don’t have one yet? Oh you have to. The one I just got, the InCase nylon accessory organizer, has mesh pockets and straps to organize different cords and adapters. It costs $ 50 but I got it for $ 15.

I am at the office with colleagues. Other colleagues are at home.

If you think going back to the office means the end of video calling, I’ve got some bad news for you. Expect most meetings now to have a video component and there will be even more cameras in the office, and not just in conference rooms.

“It’s hard to imagine walking into an office now and all those little, enclosed spaces that could have held a phone aren’t video-compatible,” Logitech CEO Bracken Darrell told me, adding that he expects some companies to put webcams on hot. desktop stations too.

Executives who work on collaboration platforms at Microsoft,

Google, Slack, and Zoom said one of the biggest needs is for employees at home and at work to feel equal when they are on calls and working together. Here are the initiatives they have launched:

Microsoft teams: A system called Teams Rooms connects conference rooms with remote users who wish to participate. Speech recognition in the new compatible speakers can identify who in a room is speaking, and the person’s name will appear on the screen. You also won’t be embarrassed to dial a number from home: a new presentation mode removes the background of your video and puts you in front of the presentation, or places the presentation in a box over your shoulder by “reporter mode”.

Google Workspace: Google is also powering speakers and cameras for the office, but as people leave the house they will be using their phones more for video calls. An update to the Google Meet phone app will make it easier to see people on the video. An upcoming update to Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides will include the ability to overlay audio and video chat as people work together on documents.

Soft: An audio room feature is coming, so users can quickly join a conference call. Think Clubhouse but for quick meetings. The company, which Salesforce has agreed to buy, is also adding a feature for sharing prerecorded video messages. It could help a manager send an announcement to everyone, whether in the office or at home.

Zoom: The pandemic star has her own conference room service called, say it with me, Zoom Rooms. The company’s Zoom Rooms Controller app for iOS and Android lets people in the conference room control meetings from their phones, without having to touch the grubby shared keyboard or the room control panel.

Bigger Challenge: What if the in-person meeting included physical elements, like a whiteboard? How do the people at home maintain and contribute?

Google and Microsoft have tried to make this easier. Microsoft makes the Surface Hub, a giant Windows tablet for the office that runs the Microsoft Whiteboard app connected to the cloud. Participants in a Microsoft Teams call can view and add to the digital whiteboard. Same idea with Google’s Jamboard. Office workers can doodle on the giant screen, and those on a Google Meet video call can see it and add items to it. Zoom is working with third-party hardware manufacturers to integrate the whiteboard.

I work from home today – how do I share this with the world?

The good thing about all of this is being stuck at home won’t be as bad as it used to be. You are already tweaking your setup and some companies are even planning to continue subsidizing the needs of home workers. What now that you’ve gotten used to over-communicating your schedule and deadlines? Just keep doing that, wherever you are.

Google has added some features to its calendar to help, including what it calls “segmentable working hours”. You can make it clear to your co-workers where you work or if you are doing other things, like exercising or commuting. Slack is also considering adding other status options to show where you are.

This Return to the Office may have a nifty name – Hybrid Work – but make no mistake, it’s as hybrid as Frankenstein’s Monster. Remember, a year ago we went through a pretty cataclysmic job change, and we’ll do it again. Don’t forget the dog.

—For more analysis, reviews, tips and headlines on WSJ Technology, sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Write to Joanna Stern at [email protected]