Five Trends Shaping the Future of Hybrid Work in the Media Industry

Most news organizations are becoming hybrid workplaces, somewhere between commuting to the office or working from home.A study by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) found that almost two-thirds (61%) of news organizations are formally committed to a hybrid newsroom: a model of two or three days in the office and the rest at home. The data is based on a survey of 136 senior industry executives from 39 countries and a series of in-depth interviews.

This is a decrease from the79% of organizations that were “on board” with hybrid last year, but hybrid is still emerging as the direction of travel for newsrooms. The difference is that this commitment is now part of formal work policies.

Before the pandemic, commuting to the office was the norm, though exhausting and expensive. Lockdown forced everyone to the extreme opposite, working in isolation and losing the camaraderie of a newsroom. Hybrid seems to be the “best of both worlds,” suggests the author and newly promoted leadership development director at RISJ,Federica Cherubini, in the Journalism.co.uk podcast.

Natalia Uval, editor-in-chief of the Uruguayan La Diaria , stated in the report: “I think we are doing a good job because we take the good things from virtual work (efficiency, punctuality, comfort) and the good things from face-to-face work (human interaction, discussions, collective building).”

Hybrid means journalists can more easily juggle their responsibilities at home. But concerns about this remain.

Productivity: a help or a hindrance?

Does flexibility translate into efficiency? Does hybrid offer more distractions than freedom? The answer is not clear, as almost half (45%) say productivity has been neither good nor bad. This is where newsrooms should try to test and evolve to find the sweet spot for their journalistic operations. For example, look at newsroom attendance policies. Half of organizations have set a mandatory minimum number of days to come into work, while 29% have a voluntary minimum number of in-office days.

UK news publisher DC Thomson experimented within two of its Scottish newsrooms, one with a fixed mandate and the other with a flexible one. It used surveys to evaluate how different policies are received and applied. A default model has not yet been settled on.

Disconnection or democratization?

Newsroom leaders feel more connected to their immediate teammates because of the hybrid model, but there is a general disconnect between the edges of the newsroom and top management. The isolation of working from home was a major concern during the pandemic, and it hasn’t gone away. A third of respondents say they’re worried about a weakened sense of belonging, even with hybrid work models.

A powerful counterargument is that the virtual work environment has democratized work calls. As Cherubini explains: “We’re all squares on Zoom and you might be a square next to the CEO of your company, whereas before you might not have taken that spot in the big meeting with the CEO.” It all depends on the organization and its culture. What the research shows is that the pandemic has produced unbalanced connections across the company. This is where many organizations have been proactive: around three-quarters have already invested in new digital technologies for hybrid meetings and half have redesigned office space to accommodate hybrid work.

The weight of leadership

The pandemic, in general, has placed greater emphasis on mental health, work-life balance, and job satisfaction, even to the point of encouraging people to follow the “quiet quitting” trend (doing the bare minimum contractual obligations).

Presenteeism would be the opposite, defined as showing up to work even when you aren’t physically or mentally up to the task. It would be a mistake to think that this hasn’t carried over into the hybrid work world.

“One way to show you’re working is to have a green dot on Slack,” says Cherubini. The question for newsroom leaders is this: how do you measure work and success in this new world? The challenges in smoothly implementing hybrid are ultimately management-related.

Cherubini cites an article in the Harvard Business Review on the performance-compassion dilemma that weighs on managers: they’re caught between meeting demands from above while absorbing pressure and protecting those below them. The ripple effect is burnout among newsroom leaders.

Developing the next stars

It’s a myth that flexible and hybrid work hinders the growth of young staff. The well-traveled path in newsrooms is to turn to experienced colleagues for advice or “learn by osmosis” as news unfolds in real time. This is much harder to achieve when you’re connected remotely. However, newsrooms have been able to make up for this by providing mentoring, learning, or remote development programs. This is also helpful for older journalists looking to acquire new skills.

It’s also harder to apply remotely, as it can quickly become an issue of staffing and resources, and be disproportionately harder for junior staff with less convenient work setups at home. Perhaps the answer lies in incentivizing staff to come in, either specifically for learning days or more social events, like pizza days. The jury is still out, as 39% of newsrooms say they’re struggling to get staff to come in, and 38% say they’re not.

A competitive advantage?

The advantage of hybrid is that it promises greater diversity in hiring within editorial departments, especially when it comes to hiring outside the immediate geographic remit. For metropolitan organizations, we can hire candidates who cannot afford or do not want to live in large cities. For now, offering hybrid work is still just a competitive advantage during hiring. But that may change as hybrid becomes more common. The likelihood is that hybrid will become less of an advantage and more of an expectation.

For the 17% of organizations currently unable or unsure how to implement hybrid, or for the 20% who largely want to return to the nine-to-five office status quo, will they lose the best talent? This really varies in different parts of the world, where there are different cultures around work flexibility, or where unions may need to be involved to renegotiate contracts. Cherubini’s takeaway from the research is this: consider which rule you are choosing and why. Communicate to your staff why this decision was made and what they benefit from it.

“The worst possible scenario is forcing people to sit on Zoom all day because there are two colleagues in person and four online. So why did they commute if they could have had the same day at home?”

Source: Journalism.co.uk