How One Wriker Manages His Hybrid Work Schedule

It’s hard to believe that just a few years ago, hybrid work was a concept foreign to most workers. Work almost always required leaving your home to commute to an office or business where you’d work for a predetermined time before clocking out and heading home.

The pandemic cracked the concepts of remote and hybrid working wide open. Remote working was required for millions of employees for safety reasons throughout the pandemic, and hybrid working, where employees split their time between remote working and working from the office, became a normal way of life that will endure long after the COVID-19 crisis recedes.

Many companies have allowed their employees to work from home, either partially or full time, even after offices have reopened. Wrike is one such company: employees at Wrike have been encouraged to choose the manner of working that suits them best.

How hybrid work suits a Wrike solutions manager

For Wrike solutions manager Valerio Nocera, hybrid working has offered “a refreshing change of environments,” giving him more time to focus on complex tasks.

Valerio lives in a village 30 minutes from Dublin with his fiancée, having purchased their home during the pandemic. “We love to be a little bit further away from the busyness of the city and close to the sea and woods. In my spare time, I trail run or climb the nearby mountains.”

Valerio had a background working remotely prior to joining Wrike in 2019. In fact, the lively office culture was one of the reasons he wanted to join Wrike. Through the pandemic, Valerio worked exclusively remotely, as did almost all Wrike employees, and he has chosen to continue working on a hybrid schedule now that the office has reopened. “One of the reasons I joined Wrike was because I missed working with colleagues face-to-face,” Valerio explained.

When the opportunity to return to a hybrid work schedule presented itself, Valerio jumped on it.

“Sometimes I feel my network can shrink when working from home, especially over an extended period, to the people I only directly need to work with. Being in the office gives me the chance to have a spontaneous conversation with colleagues from other departments and a bit of context about business insight. Knowing what’s happening in the marketing department can help me to anticipate resource allocation. Being in the office allows me to connect with people I don’t interact with daily and have genuine conversations about work and life.”

Valerio’s hybrid work schedule

Valerio heads into the Wrike office Tuesdays and Thursdays, grouping meetings with colleagues to maximize his time. “I usually sit in the same place as I did pre-pandemic,” he said. “I prefer to drive early in the morning, so I’ll leave home at 7 a.m., and it usually takes 35-40 minutes. This gives me the chance to be in the office early and hit the Wrike gym for an hour of exercise.”

While Valerio enjoys his days in the office, he also appreciates working from home for the focus it brings to his work. “Working from home gives me more focus time and the ability to quickly complete heads-down tasks,” Valerio noted. “As a result, I can concentrate more on what’s really important in my job.”

“Having flexibility, especially now that I have regular meetings with the APAC region [in an earlier time zone], is more important than ever as it allows me to start early and organize my time a bit better,” he said. “It also helps me recharge by cutting out the commute and having more free time.”

Valerio and his fiancée use that time to enjoy how close their new home is to the sea and the woods. “Since the new hybrid model, I find it easier to train and exercise and have more energy,” Valerio explained, reporting that he even sometimes squeezes in a run after early meetings.

And as an added bonus, the hybrid work model has allowed him the flexibility to travel to visit his family in his home country: “Working from home allows me to travel back home from Dublin to Sicily and work from there for a couple of weeks.”

Wrike enables hybrid work around the world

Wrike’s work management software enables companies to provide flexible hybrid working options for their employees. If you’re looking to centralize communication in your organization and help your workers achieve a better work-life balance, it’s time to check out Wrike. You can start a free two-week trial today.

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Why Great Culture is Essential for a Hybrid Workplace

The hybrid work model is here to stay, folks. The great work-from-home experiment of the past 18 months has been a success; companies realize that employees can be just as productive working from anywhere, and workers are embracing the flexibility of a remote or hybrid workplace. Some 83% of workers want their company to offer a hybrid work model post-pandemic, and 39% would like the option to work from home up to four days per week. Many hyper-growth companies are listening to employee preferences, with 63% implementing a “productivity anywhere” workforce model and introducing the possibility of a hybrid workplace for employees. It’s clear that hybrid work is becoming a permanent part of how we work, but what are the potential challenges facing such a model – especially for culture? The hybrid work model can lead to longer working hours, micromanagement, a dissolution of traditional company culture, and opportunities for miscommunication. Thankfully, there’s several ways to avoid these pitfalls and instead come out ahead by building a more productive, streamlined, and positive work culture. Building a positive hybrid workplace Along with the hybrid work model comes a noticeable change in company culture. Businesses are concerned with how they can preserve culture with a semi- or predominantly remote workforce. However, it’s important to keep in mind that culture is much more than just office perks and team-building events. Looking beyond perks Culture begins with a company’s unique approach to work. Consider the critical characteristics of your ideal culture and how they can be achieved in a hybrid workplace. For example, providing flexibility to employees and trusting them to complete their work from home will provide an excellent framework for creating a transparent, autonomous company culture. Free lunches and snacks won’t help employees too stressed or busy to eat it. Helping your employees feel more comfortable about the work they do and the way they do it contributes much more to building a healthy hybrid workplace culture. Setting employees up for success A positive culture starts with positive workers, so focus on ensuring employees have everything they need to be productive at work. This includes: Ensuring employees have the tools and equipment they need to work comfortably at home – including options if the internet or power goes out, as well as funding for new equipment Implementing new training opportunities to allow remote workers to gain the same level of onboarding and upskilling as in-office workers Making sure remote managers are trained in supervising, managing, and coaching from a distance, along with remote team-building skills Ensuring that your hybrid and work-from-home employees have ample opportunity to engage with management Employee involvement and work-life balance Changing to a hybrid work model is an excellent opportunity to reassess what constitutes great company culture. Recruitment company Morgan McKinley used surveys during the pandemic to discover what was most important to workers and, based on the results, built a culture that offered a better work-life balance. To do this, they implemented ideas such as a company-wide 3 p.m. finish on Friday afternoons, cutting hour-long meetings to 45 minutes, and encouraging employees to block out lunchtime each day on their calendar. You’ll notice that all of these new measures provide equal benefits for both in-office and remote employees. When building your culture, ask employees what’s most important to them and create a company culture that benefits all workers. Better tools improve hybrid workplace culture Perhaps the most critical aspect of hybrid work is creating a digital workspace that enables all employees to work together from anywhere. Collaboration is a key cornerstone of hybrid work culture, and it’s a great place to start. These tools will ensure you are supporting in-house and remote workers to collaborate. Your digital workspace is essential to making sure remote workers don’t feel isolated from their team or that office workers aren’t getting more opportunities. All of this equates to happier employees, less turnover, and more productivity — critical foundations for a solid workplace culture. Digital tools also support a flexible workplace by allowing employees to work to their own schedules. An emerging trend in hybrid work is asynchronous communication, which enables teams to communicate without the expectation of needing to respond immediately. Team members will have all the information they need to complete a task and complete it in their own time. Asynchronous communication negates the need to be ‘always on.’ Employees can send questions or provide status updates without everyone being connected 24/7. You can also encourage teams to send daily or weekly updates, so everyone can be transparent in what they’re working on day-to-day. So, what exactly are the essential tools employees need to foster a better collaborative culture in a hybrid environment? They include: A comprehensive digital workspace that captures all work so that projects, resources, communications, and status updates are accessible to remote, hybrid, and in-office workers Asynchronous communication tools to combat the ‘always on’ mentality and minimize excess meetings Security features to ensure the safety of company information and employee data Companies can also achieve a comprehensive digital workspace without bombarding teams with excess tools that can cause miscommunication and unnecessary complexity. Businesses should focus on two core tools to facilitate the hybrid model and enable a better culture of digital collaboration. IM communications tools An IM tool such as Slack or Microsoft Teams allows employees to engage with each other regularly. Channels can be set up for teams and employees with similar interests to ensure all employees feel included. IM tools allow employees to have instant and direct access to their colleagues no matter where they are working and help support relationship building in a hybrid environment. Streamlined IM communication and coordination can contribute immensely to building a healthier work culture and environment. CWM platform A collaborative work management platform is the core component of the complete digital workspace needed to facilitate hybrid work. Teams can track all projects and tasks in one place and gain full visibility over work across teams and departments. These platforms allow for asynchronous communication, enabling workers to be flexible with when and how they work. They also integrate with other tools, allowing all work data to be brought together and stored in one workspace, minimizing the need to be logged in to several platforms at once. CWM platforms also have built-in security features designed to support hybrid teams to work from anywhere. Security features It’s critical to ensure that work and information is protected regardless of where employees work. As businesses become increasingly digitized, bad actors will continue to devise new ways to access and potentially take advantage of your unsecured data. Provide your IT teams with the tools they need to rigidly safeguard your company’s work, perform structured audits on a regular basis, as well as ensure your employees are educated on proper security protocols and practices before they delve into the world of digital collaboration. It’s time to reimagine the way we work The way we work has changed for good, making it the perfect time to reevaluate your workforce based on the changing needs and behaviors of your business and employees. For your company to be resilient and provide the best possible workplace culture, you need to reevaluate work through a lens of flexibility. A collaborative, autonomous culture for workers provides considerably more benefits than the closed, siloed work culture of the past. A compassionate, flexible work environment will increase employee happiness and engagement, and it’s become more important than ever to break down silos in a hybrid workplace to ensure that employees are dedicated to teamwork and collaboration no matter where they are. For more resources on hybrid work culture, check out: Return to Work Management Guide: How to Manage a Hybrid Team Research Uncovers the Technology That Will Power Hybrid Work An Introduction to Hybrid Team Management A Guide to Hybrid Remote Working WFH or Hybrid Office? How to Know Which Works Best for You

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How Wrike Solutions Manager Valerio Nocera Maximizes a Hybrid Work Schedule for Better Work-Life Balance

How hybrid work suits a Wrike solutions manager

Valerio’s hybrid work schedule

Wrike enables hybrid work around the world

Emily Westbrooks

How Wrike Solutions Manager Valerio Nocera Maximizes a Hybrid Work Schedule for Better Work-Life Balance

How hybrid work suits a Wrike solutions manager

Valerio’s hybrid work schedule

Wrike enables hybrid work around the world

Emily Westbrooks

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