The financial markets have been rocked the last few weeks with the collapse of two very well-known banks with different DNAs - the darling of Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and the Swiss powerhouse Credit Suisse (CS). It’s interesting to co*mpare the explanations from financial experts on how both companies' return to the office policies were listed as one of the pressing reasons for their downfall.

Ironically, both organizations had completely different hybrid work policies. SVB had a fully flexible work culture whereas CS mandated 3 days at the physical office for all employees.

First, the exact definition of “hybrid work” is nebulous. Employees “work” for companies, committing their time, energy and intellect in the office and in the new digital world from one’s home gives the notion of “hybrid”. Reality is there is no going back to work from one physical space so might as well take out the hybrid from “hybrid work” - work is from anywhere.

Watching the academy-award winner “Everything Everywhere All-At-Once” over the weekend, made me think of the alternate realities of “hybrid work” - the same employee could be having a fully flexible schedule at SVB where their managers and team members have no idea of where or when they would be working or in another universe the employee would be mandated at CS to show up from 8AM-5PM on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at the headquarters and then invisible for the rest of the week.

While both workplaces tried to tackle hybrid work in their own way, it’s clear that something was missing. It’s not enough for companies to set rules for when employees should be at the office - they must also provide a bridge between employees to facilitate collaboration, innovation, conversations, and connections.

What's missing from both alternative realities is employee engagement. Engagement is mission critical for the hybrid workplace, as it is the true measure of the productivity of the enterprise as well as the happiness of the employee. It’s always been about the ability to feel connected to your employer’s mission and be able to feel fully productive in their office environment.

Employee engagement can be as simple as being able to easily navigate your campus using step-by-step navigation from your employer’s workplace experience app to something as complex as building a long-term friendship with a coworker who you discovered loves cross-fit as much as you do through the app’s internal social feed. That “connectedness”, inherent in successful workplace cultures, now extends beyond the four walls of the office and the physical devices the company provides you with. It now includes transformative digital workplace solutions that allow employees to experience their full work lifecycle from anywhere.

The Workplace SuperApp by CXApp provides a full-stack solution that allows employees to experience all their work tools in a single application. When you provide your employees with a simplified user interface, easy to configure options, and the flexibility to navigate your workday – all seamlessly with an employee engagement app, you’re leaning toward a more human-centric work model.

On the flip side, the Workplace SuperApp can provide employers a dashboard of mobile app usage, office occupancy, sensor activity, and other key metrics that help with managing, refining, and even optimizing the health of hybrid workplaces. 

Don’t just believe it, check out the demo below:

And while I’m not saying that using CXApp’s Workplace SuperApp would have ultimately saved SVB or Credit Suisse from their fate – because there were clearly other factors in play that lead to their downfall - it would have deeply benefited them to be fully enabled in the digital world.