New Year, New Challenges: What Companies Working With Hybrid Models Will Face and What Happens to Home Office

HR Vice Presidents of Natura &Co and PepsiCo Explain How They Are Preparing for the Hybrid Work Challenge Next Year

In the era of hybrid work and remote work, offices have gained a new role, and the explanation comes from the HR vice president of PepsiCo, Fabio Barbagli, with the company mantra: “The office remains highly relevant, but its purpose changes. Now it’s about the 4Cs: collaboration, creation, connection, and celebration,” he explains.

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According to corporate risk management consultancy AON, the pandemic led 73.3% of companies to implement remote work policies. Before 2020, 68.5% of them did not have the home office model in their day-to-day operations. For 2022, the litmus test for the hybrid model will be highlighted among companies. Even though it has proven to be more complex, the current goal for companies is to maintain the benefits of remote work and continue to uncover the best way to proceed with the hybrid model.

With the remodeling of PepsiCo’s office in São Paulo, the coffee space, which was previously secondary, has gained prominence and become a key area. “If you used to rush to grab a coffee and then return to respond to an email at your desk, now we’ve discovered that the space is much more important than that. In the future, we want the most prestigious space to be the coffee area,” says Barbagli.

With over 12,000 employees in Brazil, only 10% work in the administrative area and use the PepsiCo office. For these employees, the model will be a flexible hybrid, starting in 2022.

In a survey by the Think Work Lab consultancy, with about 70 companies in Brazil regarding this work model, HR departments expressed uncertainty about two crucial and more bureaucratic points that soothe the opinions of those who prefer hybrid work.

Among those who responded to the survey, 24% said they still lack clarity on changes in contracts or which groups would be impacted. And 25% have not yet defined how hybrid benefits management will work.

“I would say that the major barrier is labor legislation. It’s not a cost decision issue; we are willing to absorb higher costs. The more significant challenge is labor-related,” claims the VP of PepsiCo regarding the uncertainties that still concern him.

According to the labor legislation of 2018, up to two days of working from home are considered a traditional contract. Beyond that, the model becomes telework or hybrid, as the employee is out of the office for more days. This fact changes how the contract must be managed.

The New Hybrid Reality

The new reality that companies will face with the hybrid model remains complex. Even companies that prepared during the nearly two years of the pandemic, such as Natura & Co, which established a multidisciplinary group to study the new work model for the post-pandemic period, still prefer to adapt the model as necessary, rather than have it fully established in advance.

With the “new normal,” three forms of work will need to coexist in companies like Google and Embraer: fully on-site, hybrid (with different proportions of days in the office and flexibility), and also 100% remote.

“You can’t go back or start anything from scratch. You take what you’ve learned so far, include it [in the culture], and transcend. You take another step. It’s in this sense that we will work,” states the vice president of Natura, Flavio Pesiguelo, about the new challenges the company will have to face.

Beyond structural and technological changes, such as office renovations, Flavio believes that the hybrid model will permanently alter the leadership manual of companies.

Just as the use of the office will be guided by PepsiCo’s 4Cs, he offers his guiding words for the leadership of the future: to guide, develop, and empower.