WTF is the hybrid coordination tax?

By Hailey Mensik  •  August 6, 2024  •

Ivy Liu

Here’s an explainer.

What exactly is it?

The coordination tax is the time spent working around the logistics of actually meeting with people you need to when some are working in person and others are working virtually. “It’s the effort that’s required from teams and employees to get together in person, in a world where the days that people have to be in the office are not fixed by the company,” said Rob Sadow, CEO and co-founder of hybrid team enablement platform Scoop Technologies.

“If you want to get together with the right people, it requires some overhead of communication or technology in order to facilitate that,” Sadow said. 

Many employers in hybrid set-ups aren’t mandating company-wide days set for returning but rather allowing teams to decide which days they regularly meet. Those arrangements allow for a bit more flexibility and autonomy and are less rigid than having universally mandated days, he said. Among companies in hybrid work arrangements, only 8% mandate staff work in person on specific days of the week, according to Scoop’s latest Q2 Flex report.

But it’s becoming a real challenge for cross-functional teams made up of people from different departments who are working on the same project or assignment. It’s also stifling workers’ opportunities for connection, mentorship and collaboration with people in different parts of their organizations — a key goal of returning to in-person work. 

What’s the cost?

The average worker spends about 37% of their time at work in meetings or coordinating them, according to a report from scheduling app Reclaim AI, which included responses from over 1,300 workers. And that time spent in meetings and managing them costs employers an annual average of over $29,000, that report found. 

While meetings themselves have a bad reputation for being ineffective and time-draining, brief ones — whether virtual or in person — are often necessary to make decisions and provide clarification allowing people to move ahead with whatever they are working on. 

Ultimately, over half of workers say they lose between 30 minutes and two hours daily just clarifying details they need to go forward and do their jobs, according to a survey from Axios HQ including responses from over 400 leaders and 1,000 employees working in internal communications departments.

The average full-time employee earning $100,000 to $150,000 loses 46 workdays yearly due to ineffective communication making them search for clarity, details or context they need to do their jobs, that survey found. That costs employers about $22,000 a year.

Is it solvable?

“You can solve it through a combination of smarter, more thoughtful software and better team practices,” Sadow said. Some of those practices include increasing visibility around when people are getting together. “A lot of companies that do particularly well don’t just create team-level agreements but actually publish those agreements. So everyone on the team can see and other teams can see it as well,” he said.

Some facilities management software tools can also make different teams’ and individuals’ working locations easier to track down and plan accordingly, he said.

At the crux of the coordination tax is ultimately misalignment, said Roy Schwartz, CEO of Axios HQ. “It’s really hard to get alignment, and so you need really good communication to get people aligned and make sure that you’re not wasting time on the wrong things and mis-prioritizing initiatives,” Schwartz said. 

But he remains positive that the issue is solvable with better communication and fixes to share information in the most efficient way possible, making coordination and collaboration ultimately easier.

Sadow also remains positive. “I think organizations are already getting better at this, and with more practice and time, they’ll just continue to reduce that gap and make it easier to coordinate,” he said. 

https://digiday.com/?p=551744