Ledelse af hybridarbejde: Et lederperspektiv på det fleksible arbejdsliv på videregående uddannelsesinstitutioner

Abstract

Today, workplaces are facing a general demand for flexibility, allowing
employees to switch between office work and home work. Flexibility at
work is not new; since the 1970ies, companies have practiced remote
work, mostly in the US and international companies, in order to reduce
commuting and attract experts. Digital communication has enabled
flexible work-life, allowing employees to life anywhere and leaving time
for private tasks. With the pandemic, remote work was a reality for many
organizations, experiencing gains and challenges of working from home.
This thesis is about how managers experience the effects of hybrid work
on their role as a manager, partly how they themselves thrive on it, and
partly how they experience cross-pressure in the hybrid workplace.
My focus is managers' subjective perspective on managing hybrid work,
and this argues for a phenomenologically inspired study. It is the
subjective experience itself, that is relevant to be elucidated, and
consequently, I have chosen an inductive approach, based on 10
qualitative 'semi-structured' interviews of managers from the education
sector, supplement with secondary empirical evidence and linked to
relevant theory.
My interviews were anonymous, with questions about the manager's own
practice with hybrid work and generally about managing hybrid work. The
interviews were based on shared 'life world', since the managers are
known to me as (former) colleague, friend or part of a network. Next step
was to extract the essence from my interviews, in a way that could
provide an overview and contribute to the thematization. I aimed to meet
validity criteria for phenomenological studies, including methodological
transparency, research quality and subjective verification.
The first analysis intended to investigate, how managers themselves
thrive in hybrid work. It shows, that many individual factors, both private
and work-related, affect the individual manager choice between office
work and home work. There is no 'one size fits all' for managers' well-
being with hybrid work, and therefore the degree of 'self-selection'
becomes significant. Some managers had a certain degree of influence
on, where to work during the week, but most requested a real choice.

Desires for self-selection are supported by several major studies, and
some show increased productivity for employees, who can choose to
work from home, based on a hypothesis of job satisfaction. However,
flexibility can be experienced differently, and it seems to matter, who has
determined the degree of flexibility.
The second analysis intended to investigate the cross-pressures of
hybrid managers. Firstly, managers are under pressure from
expectations to be both visible and accessible. The use of digital
communication tools has exploded, which stress managers who, in
addition to physical meetings and ‘touch down’, must be available on
Teams/Zoom, chat, phone and email. Secondly, managers are
pressured by expectations of freedom from employees and managerial
expectations to manage the freedom. Some institutions have restrictive
policies, that leave managers to meet the challenges on their own.
Thirdly, managers try to balance between trust and control. They
basically trust their employees, but practice various kinds of checks and
follow-ups, including fertilizing relations. Finally, leaders need to ensure
building bonds across team members and allow for individual freedom.
The office plays an important role as a relational hub, and manager must
ensure a structure for office work, that supports the individual's choice.
In my perspective, we still need to discuss and test, how hybrid work can
contribute to create motivated employees and getting the tasks done.
Top management has an important role in engaging in dialogue with
employees and managers, to seek compromises that can be tested at
the workplace. I agree, that hybrid management should be built on trust,
and focus on goals and prioritizing tasks, rather than activity
management. The hybrid manager's role is to be clear about
expectations, spar with employees and follow up on tasks. In my view,
managers' relational work pressure needs to be addressed, and the
workplace should find solutions, to give managers a real opportunity to
regularly withdraw physically and digitally. It would reduce the risk for
burn out, and leave time for reflection and to concentrate. Finally,
managers have an important role in framing the community in the office,
such as experiencing with ‘fix days' and social activities to build social
capital in hybrid work.