Blog Post

Assessing your organization's hybrid work readiness

By: Marco Campana
January 29, 2023

As you work towards being digitally mature, you are also likely working on a hybrid work model

Take this Cisco Hybrid Work Maturity assessment and get your personalized report and recommendations for optimization. One useful aspect of the assessment is that you can identify being part of the non-profit sector, your org size, and the report will give you a sense of where you score related to peers who have taken the assessment.

There is no single hybrid work model that will fit every organization or employee, since certain roles may require in-person collaboration, whereas other roles may thrive with simple and secure remote connectivity. With a firm understanding of where you are in the hybrid work maturity journey, you can develop and invest in a hybrid work model across all dimensions that will help your organization prosper in this fast-evolving age of work.

Hybrid Work Maturity Stages

This Hybrid Work Maturity Model identifies four maturity stages in four dimensions:

  1. Hybrid Work Observers. You’re just beginning to explore different hybrid work models but are mainly working in traditional in-person ways (i.e. the way you’ve always done things). You’re starting to explore or discuss different hybrid work models but are predominantly working within the office during regular business hours.
  2. Hybrid Work Adopters. You are experimenting with hybrid work models and starting to invest in the technologies to enable them. 
  3. Hybrid Work Champions. You are seeing success with hybrid work models in specific teams or projects, but not across the entire organization.
  4. Hybrid Work Innovators. You have an established hybrid policy and the technology you need to support a hybrid work approach across the organization. You have designed and agreed on a work model where staff understand or can choose where they do their work, when, with the resources and security they need no matter where they are.

Hybrid Work Maturity Dimensions

Technology is important for hybrid work. That’s obvious. What might not be as obvious when thinking about hybrid work is questions about work transformation policies, organizational and people culture, and your office(s) and space where you work (Cisco refers to this as Facilities).

Hybrid work is big. It means organizational change. Culture change. And that is big. This assessment recognizes that and provides you with a model where these dimensions intersect with the Maturity stages.

The bottom line is that you need to not only focus on technology, but policies, people & work culture, and your actual office or work space (if working remotely is part of your hybrid work mix).

Cultural transformation is an equally important component of whether organizations will evolve or remain challenged in deploying hybrid work initiatives. Rather than disassociate the technical focus from policies, culture and facilities, organizations need to integrate efforts and planning across all four dimensions.

Put it all together and you can take the online assessment or work through this table with your organization/teams to identify where you are in the stages.

Maturity DimensionHYBRID WORK OBSERVER
Just getting started
HYBRID WORK ADOPTER
Experimenting with deployment
HYBRID WORK CHAMPION
Implemented but not pervasive
HYBRID WORK INNOVATOR
Implemented consistently
throughout the organization
Policy - codifying “rules of the road” and offering clarity
and consistency on who works where, when and how.
Remote work is only allowed for designated
teleworkers; there is no hybrid work policy.
Hybrid work is limited to role-specific jobs with
minimal flexibility or
agency for workers.
Hybrid work is enabled at function or team levels,
and includes greater
flexibility.
Hybrid work-first is a company-wide policy
across all eligible areas.
People and Work Culture - success
in attracting and retaining top talent and driving business.
Traditional office-centric culture
serves to isolate the
teleworkers designated for remote work.
Culture is evolving to define engagement
between on-site and
remote work practices.
Culture is sustained across on-site and remote work environments with
only isolated challenges.
Culture is fully sustained and evolving in a hybrid
work environment that offers experience parity.
Technology - secure digital and physical work environments
that enable access to core resources and co-workers.
Tools and support to provide secure access to data, applications and other resources are
limited.
There is no parity among remote and hybrid workers regarding access to collaboration
capabilities and other key resources.
IT tools for secure and seamless access to resources and mobility capabilities are well
supported for hybrid work among most functions.
Secure, cloud-first and AI-enabled technologies
support hybrid work and provide digital parity
company-wide.
Facilities - an office environment that fosters innovation, community and enable digital collaboration.Workplace is designed for optimal space utilization, with little
consideration for worker ability to collaborate
remotely.
Office transformation is underway to improve
collaboration and
address needs of remote participants.
Most offices offer secure, intelligent physical and digital collaboration spaces for all key departments.Offices across the organization offer secure, intelligent physical and digital collaboration spaces.

According to Cisco, you can use the results of you assessment in your organization to:

  • Visualize where you are on developing your Hybrid Work programs
  • Benchmark your progress against industry, regional and organization size peers
  • Identify gaps in your technology requirements
  • Share guidance on what steps your organization ought to take to optimize the benefits
    of hybrid work to your organization

What will you get?

Here is a sample result:

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