Adapting Software Teams to the New Normal: An Early Case Study of Transitioning to Hybrid Work Under COVID-19

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many studies have begun to address what some refer to as the" new normal," comprising hybrid arrangements of employees working from home and working at the office with varying schedule arrangements. While many of the studies to date addressed how employees coped with work-from-home, we sought to investigate how employees dealt with a transition to the new normal of hybrid arrangements. To shed light on this topic, we conducted a survey-based case study at one office location of a large, multinational software corporation. The site sought to transition employees fully working from home to working two days remotely and three predefined days in their shared workspace. Our survey results indicated a substantial decline in work satisfaction since the beginning of this transition, which can be explained by diverse work preferences. Furthermore, some software developers felt frustrated during this transition time; they described challenges they underwent and proposed potential solutions. In this paper, we present our lessons learned in this case study and describe some actionable recommendations for practitioners facing such transitions.