Hybrid work teams face a common problem, says John Wichmann. Particularly after COVID, the in-office work experience has diminished, and employees often “end up feeling [it] was not worth the commute,” he told Hypepotamus.
“[That is] inextricably connected with the poor experience feeding the low return numbers,” he said, while adding that it puts additional stress on companies who want employees to balance working time between the office and remote locations.
The problem now, Wichmann said, is that employees and managers aren’t aligned when it comes to expectations around hybrid work.
“For managers and senior leaders, I have seen a shift from prior concerns around “productivity” to more serious concerns with loss of momentum, something that is critical for companies that are trying to grow and for teams that are tackling large or complex problems,” he added. “For employees, the biggest issue we see is that they are often misunderstood. Employers look around their empty offices and assume their employees are not coming in because they don’t see the value in doing so. On the contrary, we consistently find this is not the case. Employees see significant value of in-person interaction and have consistently indicated a desire to work in-office in the range of 2-3 days per week on average. The problem has been that when they tried going into the office there was no system in place to help ensure that it would, more likely than not, be a worthwhile experience.”
That’s where Wichmann’s company Gather Sciences comes into the play. The newly-launched startup in Atlanta is a data-driven platform to help companies reach Balanced Hybrid™. That is all about balancing workforce needs to hit business goals while maximizing employee satisfaction.
“Our software tools first provide companies with new visibility into how their offices are currently being used and uncover insights about what associates value most in an in-office experience. We accomplish this by leveraging the power data integration where we can exponentially increase the value of one set of data by combining it with a separate but related set of data,” said Wichmann.
The goal is to analyze the data around all aspects of the business to “streamline” and ultimately empower the creation of “personalized hybrid approaches at a department or a team level.”
Who’s in the office these days?
Remote work remains a divisive topic for managers, but the sheer number of employees opting for a no-office work set up is steadily declining, according to Axios reporting.
That comes as more enterprises are building office spaces specifically focused on hybrid teams. In Atlanta, giants like Adobe and Visa have reportedly expanded their office footprint with a hybrid work model in mind.
The city was also listed as the number one spot for remote workers and digital nomads in 2023.
That makes Atlanta a good spot to build something like Gather Sciences, says Wichmann.
Wichmann is no stranger to the Atlanta business ecosystem. The Georgia Tech grad has worked at large enterprises like Fiserv and has been in the co-founder’s seat at Maptician, a startup that came out of Tech Alpharetta focused on seat and office management.
“I believe Atlanta is a great representation of what is happening across the country in this area, and in many international cities,” he said. “And, with the vibrant and diverse business community that Atlanta represents, the strong talent pool, and being surrounded by a growing number of technology companies in Alpharetta, where we are headquartered, I could not think of a better place to build this company.”
