You know all about the mythical figure of the mermaid. She's a beautiful woman down to the waist and a fish from the waist down. Even if you haven't read up on any of the older mythological writing on mermaids, I'm sure you're familiar with Disney's The Little Mermaid and Ariel's quest to become a normal girl and live on the land. Ariel's wish is to move from the socially unacceptable hybrid body she finds herself in to a more acceptable, "normal" body. She finds herself in a difficult situation because of her half-half status. While Sebastian tells her it's better under the sea, she envies the humans on the land. And, of course, she finds love with a human man.

This is all to say that hybrid work is the mermaid of our times. It looks a bit like what we are used to, but it's a dual thing that doesn't quite fit into either the old norm of working fully in-person or the new norm of working from home. And navigating this weird in between space, the navel of the mermaid, is tricky.

After many employees have been working from home for more than a year, offices are finally beginning to reopen, but what we are facing isn't the old normal at all.

Rather than returning to offices filled at 100% capacity, employees are returning in a partial fashion, with some of their colleagues remaining remote on a permanent basis. This is expected to be yet another episode of the "new normal" for many companies with 2021 serving as an experimental year of hybrid work, productivity, and employee/employer leverage and management.

Global Workplace Analytics predicts that 25 to 30% of the workforce will work from home multiple days per week by the end of the year, while a TinyPulse survey of HR leaders found that 62.8% saw hybrid work as the most productive approach for their companies to follow. But despite the statistics, many people are concerned about hybrid work.

Whether you've adjusted to working at home, taking breaks to do your at home workouts or play with the dog, or you've been desperately missing the office environment, hybrid work proposes an uncomfortable middle-ground. Come on, you might say, you can be a fish or a human. Pick one. Ariel did.

The new territory we find ourselves in is tricky and it's causing a lot of anxiety for employees who have finally adjusted to juggling work with home responsibilities. The new hybrid suggestion prompts a lot of questions. For instance, when it comes to hybrid meetings:

We are still reeling from the pandemic and the ways in which it necessitated a radical shift in working. And the outcomes of remote work have been mixed. Microsoft Research found that 54% of employees are overworked as a result of remote working, with 39% feeling exhausted. On the other hand, employee productivity actually went up during the pandemic, with email and document collaboration surging. The workday became incredibly intense.

This is a possible contributing factor that led to more than 40% of the global workforce considering leaving their employers in 2021. As the Microsoft Research report states:

"Employees want the best of both worlds: over 70 percent of workers want flexible remote work options to continue, while over 65 percent are craving more in-person time with their teams. To prepare, 66 percent of business decision makers are considering redesigning physical spaces to better accommodate hybrid work environments. The data is clear: extreme flexibility and hybrid work will define the post-pandemic workplace."

Finding a balance between employees who got into the groove working from home and those who really miss in-person human interaction will be challenging and requires innovation around working spaces and flexible work options. Promoting equilibrium between working from home - or from anywhere - and coming into the office for in-person collaboration and team building is the only way to get the best of both worlds. But this requires compromise from both employees and employers.

Despite our cute vision of mermaids thanks to Disney's rendition of them, in many myths, mermaids are actually quite frightening creatures. Think, for instance, of the sirens whose beautiful singing leads sailors to their demise. Even Melusine, the mermaid who graces Starbucks cups the world round has a legacy as a woman who transmuted not just into a mermaid but into a monstrous, dragon-like form!

Melusine was happily married to a human man, Raymond. But she needed one day of respite every week, one day to sit in the bathtub by herself, as a mermaid. And Raymond, suspicious of her desire for privacy on this day, spied on her, and his spying led to Melusine's transformation into a more horrifying - and ostracised - hybrid creature. Just think, if Raymond could've given her just that one day to herself, Melusine's hybrid existence could've worked out!

That's the thing about nurturing a hybrid form: you need to allow space for compromise. Some workers may request staying at home once or twice a week when your office reopens. Giving them the option to do so rather than going straight back to business as usual will likely work in your favor.

The Work Trend Index survey indicates that many business leaders are out of touch with the struggles of their employees, with 61% of leaders saying that they're "thriving" at the moment, while employees report struggling greatly over the past year. 37% of the global workforce says that their companies are asking too much of them during the pandemic. For this reason, in-person meetings can help bridge the divide between how business leaders perceive how things are going and how their employees do.

Impromptu conversations at the office water cooler allow employers and employees to touch base with the simple question, "How are you?" Balancing the productivity of working from home with the mental health benefits of in-person human engagement is key to taking your business forward in a healthy direction.

Only time will tell how true the reports of mass resignations really are, but what is clear is that employees see their careers differently now than they did prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The recent "I don't dream of labor" trend on YouTube illustrates the ways in which many young employees are turning away from the "hustle" and attempts to climb the corporate ladder.

The "I don't dream of labor" movement points to a dissatisfaction with a life that prioritises work above all else and ties your identity to what you do for a living. Although this movement comes from a privileged position, it's telling that those who can switch careers as the pandemic eases up, very well may - and they make drastic career changes.

The workforce are increasingly looking for careers that mesh their personal and professional lives better - work that they find more fulfilling.

39% of HR leaders are finding it challenging to fill open roles following the pandemic, and they predict highest attrition percentage when return-to-work plans include 4 days in the office. Workers' desires for time in the office have changed, with many preferring biweekly commutes.

To clinch the top talent, you need to offer more than just a step on the corporate ladder. Benefits such as flexible working options are a must.

Gen Z, the generation following millennials, generally described as those born in the mid-to-late-90s or early-2000s, are struggling the most when it comes to adapting to new work norms. Many employees in this generation have no work experience prior to remote work.

They are the generation who most likely to be single and early on in their careers, and as a result, they have found the last year particularly isolating. Not to mention that for many, the financial cost of creating a suitable home working environment has been a challenge.

This generation reported finding it difficult to:

Without the fresh perspective of young workers, many companies will be missing out on new ideas and innovation. Bringing young people back in the office will be good for the future of their careers, for networking, and for innovation. Not to mention building the confidence they will need to take them forward in their careers.

Although the advent of time and geographic-defying technologies like Zoom and Microsoft Teams has, in many ways, bridged the gap when it comes to global communication, for many, the pandemic drastically scaled back engagement with the outside world.

Outlook and Microsoft Teams trends reveal a shift to ever-smaller networks, with more long-distance interactions diminishing. Rather than broadening horizons with technology, people began to retreat into cosy, familiar bubbles. And as Dr Nancy Baym, Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft says:

"When you lose connections, you stop innovating. It's harder for new ideas to get in and groupthink becomes a serious possibility."

It's important for some aspects of the old normal to return for the sake of collaboration, building and maintaining healthy company cultures, and for young workers' confidence and exposure. While most employees seem to want more flexibility when it comes to working from home, compromise is key to ensuring productivity, mental health, and continuing innovation.

According to a new McKinsey survey of 100 executives across industries and geographies, nine out of ten organizations intend to combine remote and on-site working but few organizations have begun to think through the specifics of how this will work. This is leaving employees with a sense of anxiety.

Certain tips to take forward into hybrid working include:

The increase in optionality for many, coupled with reconnection with family and home life, has driven workers to rethink their relationships with employers and work as a whole. The pragmatic approach that many employers have of laying down the logistics of return to work - how many days employees are expected in office and so on - miss the mark of what employees are really concerned with.

A hybrid model is more complicated than a fully remote one, especially when used at scale. This requires figuring out things that as:

We need to define yet another new normal.

We have to admit that the way things work now isn't black and white. It isn't fully human or fully fish. And if we are perfectly honest, mermaids are still mysterious creatures to us. We're not quite sure what to do with them.

The first step to tackling the call for hybrid work is to admit that we don't have it all figured out - yet. For a while, we are going to have to approach this with trial and error.

Shifting mindsets also means shifting desks and shifting our idea of what offices are good for. If the importance of the physical office-space is that critical element of socialising and building connections, then the future office will be a more open-plan space, making room for casual interactions. And besides these interactions being good for our mental health, they are also great for generating new business ideas.

The hybrid working environment is, in many ways, as mysterious as the fish-women we've mythologised for centuries. But, unlike the mermaids of yore, we haven't had centuries to ponder this one and it's going to take us a while to adapt and to discover best practices.

However, after the year that 2020 was, we know that workplace adaptation is a lot more doable than we used to think. If we remember to take into consideration what's at stake for both employers and employees, we can find a fair and workable compromise that balances out the best of working from home with the best of office life.