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Hybrid work is a lasting phenomenon. And as firms gradually adopt this employment arrangement, most of them are adding job titles that will focus on providing strategic guidance to hybrid work.
According to data from LinkedIn as reported by Forbes, there has been a 60 per cent increase in job titles related to the future of work and a 304 per cent spike in titles that reference “hybrid work” since the pandemic began.
Among the titles are “hybrid workplace flexibility lead,” “director of hybrid working,” “flexible workspace operations manager” and “vice president, employee engagement & flexible work.”
“Organizations are finding that there’s a need to create roles that have a specific focus on these types of programs to really rethink and evolve their thinking about this new world of work,” says Shannon Hardy, LinkedIn’s vice president of flex work.
LinkedIN says that hybrid work job roles throughout their platform have varying seniority levels. These roles often collaborate with various departments including real estate teams, IT departments and human resource managers.
Hardy explained that in LinkedIN’s case hybrid job role includes the following responsibilities:
- Reviewing workforce communications on Covid-19 updates
- Return-to-office requirements
- Assisting employees who wish to move to other locations
- Updating HR systems to clarify remote and hybrid job postings
Darren Murph, “head of remote” at open-source software firm GitLab, has also seen an increase in job titles focused on the issue.
“Where it’s gone in the year since [the pandemic prompted such roles] is companies outside of tech are now doing this,” says Murph. He’s held the role since 2019 at GitLab, which has been remote since 2011, and has been an advocate for other companies to add such positions.
Murph said these positions with such accountability will be significant for companies planning to implement remote and in-office work.
At Unilever, Patrick Hull holds the title of vice president, global learning and future of work, a role he stepped into in early 2021.
Hull says that having someone dedicated to the job allows them to not just be aware of trends, like the aging workforce or the growth of the gig economy, but to act on them.
