Background: The loss of experienced workers impact organizations significantly, but a positive work environment fosters job satisfaction, influencing retention rates. Employer branding emerges as a crucial strategy, aiming to enhance worker loyalty. However, the shift to remote work poses challenges, effecting internal communication and organizational culture.   Purpose: This study delves into the relationship between employer branding, internal communication, organizational culture in shaping employee retention, particularly in hybrid working environments.   Method: This study focuses on interpretivism as the guiding philosophy and inductive qualitative research was implemented to pursue the objective of the study. Semi-structured interviews with five respondents from four different industries were conducted. Thematic analysis was adopted for data interpretation, facilitating pattern identification.  Conclusions: Key findings reveal that hybrid working significantly influences employer branding, affecting organizational reputation, employee satisfaction, and talent retention. Flexibility in hybrid environments enhances positive employer branding perceptions. Effective internal communication, transparent processes, and inclusive cultures that prioritize employee well-being and recognition are critical. Competitive salaries, flexible work arrangements, and career development opportunities also play significant roles in retaining top talent.

Studiens syfte är att undersöka utmaningarna som organisationskulturen inom ett mindre företag kan stå inför i samband med övergången från fysisk arbetsplats till hybridarbetsplats. Studien antog en mixad metod där 16 semistrukturerade intervjuer genomfördes samt en enkät baserad på intervjuerna. Intervjuerna analyserades tematiskt och enkäten med klusteranalys. Studien kommer fram till att övergången till hybridarbete inverkar på företagskulturen genom att öka flexibilitet och autonomi hos medarbetarna men det kräver en större tillit från ledningen. Ledarskap, kommunikation och samarbete kan även komma att påverkas. Konsultbolag tenderar vara mindre känsliga för förändringar och att ett tillitsfullt ledarskap och en stark öppen företagskultur är viktigt för en hållbar övergång till hybridarbete. / The purpose of this study is to study the challenges that the organizational culture of an SME may experience during the transition from a conventional workplace to a hybrid workplace. The study used a mixed-method approach where 16 semi-structured interviews were conducted, followed by a questionnaire with 30 responses. The interviews were analyzed thematically and the questionnaire with cluster analysis. The study concludes that the shift to hybrid work impacts organizational culture by increasing employee flexibility and autonomy, but it requires higher levels of trust from management. Leadership, communication, and collaboration may also be affected. Consulting agencies tend to be less sensitive to change and that trustful leadership and a strong open organizational culture are important for a sustainable transition to hybrid work.

The world has been affected by the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic and many companies and organizations have adopted different type of strategies in terms of the workplace in all sectors around the world. Working from home practice has gained prominence as a part of quarantine measures to curb the spread of the disease since the beginning of the outbreak. This abrupt change has a dramatic influence on the business life and employees have been struggling to adapt to their new way of working. Therefore their productivity has changed, too depending on various factors at their new workplace: home. Working from home is only possible with the use of information technology. Information technology makes it possible for the business life to continue owing to its solutions. Owing to the solutions of information technology, employees can communicate with each other and organizations and complete their tasks by sending and receiving written, audio and visual information. It is crucial for everyone’s sake that the employees working in information technology work efficiently, particularly in pandemic times. The key role of their success is played by their managers and coordinators. Therefore, this thesis focuses on IT project managers and coordinators’ productivity. The purpose of this study is to list the factors, as benefits and challenges, influencing the productivity of IT project managers and project coordinators working from home during COVID-19 pandemic and provide recommendations to the project managers and project coordinators and also public and private organizations and companies which prefer to continue working from home to increase their productivity. In this study, qualitative research method and descriptive statistics concerning the selected benefits and challenges are used via a self- administered digital survey responded by 46 project managers/coordinators. It is concluded that working from home due to COVID-19 pandemic has both positive and negative influences on productivity of the IT project managers/project coordinators. Many benefits, such as sleeping longer hours and being able to focus at home without open-office distractions and many challenges, such as being distracted by house chores and being disturbed by family members have been identified as a result of the survey. Respondents contributed to the study further by their valuable recommendations to public and private organizations and also to other IT project managers/coordinators who work from home during the pandemic to increase their productivity. The recommendations to other PM/PC are concerned with routine and discipline, work-life balance, breaks and doing other things, workspace, people around and communication. The recommendations to organizations, on the other hand, are concerned with various types of support, respecting time, flexibility about time, trust, communication and acceptance as family. Both the findings and recommendations may help IT project managers/coordinators and their employers to develop a more comprehensive vision in terms of increasing their productivity while working from home during the pandemic.

Nowadays, the hybrid working model has prevailed as the new working model for many organizations, which combines working remotely and onsite. Although the hybrid working model is not new, the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the transition from traditional working model to hybrid one, which results in greater use of technology, especially for the employees’ collaboration. Collaboration is at the core of agile development team members’ daily hybrid work, and it is achieved through the support of technology tools, such as Microsoft Teams. The hybrid working model, due to its complexity, creates opportunities and challenges to the way agile development team members’ work and collaborate. Therefore, it is important to examine the collaboration of agile development team members that follow the hybrid working model, as well as benefits and challenges that may arise. Thus, this master thesis examines, the technology-supported collaboration of agile development team members, that follow the hybrid working model, taking as an example Microsoft Teams (MS Teams). For this, an interpretive qualitative ethnographic research was conducted. The data was collected through participant observations, focus groups discussions, and semi-structured interviews from purposively selected team members of three agile development teams. The collected data was analyzed thematically and generated six themes. These six themes represent the findings of the master’s thesis research and are interpreted and discussed with the help of the theoretical framework, which includes the concepts of agile project management, computer-supported cooperative work, collaboration, cooperation, coordination, information sharing, communication and hybrid working model.   The research findings show that it is vital for the members of the agile development teams to use a collaboration tool in their daily hybrid work to assure close and frequent collaboration, which in the traditional working model was mainly achieved face-to-face on-site. Their collaboration includes communication, information sharing, and coordination activities, which are supported and facilitated by the technological tool of MS Teams. However, the hybrid working model has given rise to challenges in the collaboration among the agile development team members, which can be overcome if the technological tool of MS Teams is used properly by everyone. This research contributes to the existing knowledge of the informatics research field and the body of research of computer-supported cooperative work by providing a better understanding of how technological tools are used to support collaborating team members that follow the hybrid working model, including benefits and challenges experienced. It also contributes to agile development team members and other practitioners that use MS Teams through improved understanding of aspects that can be taken into consideration for the use of a collaboration technological tool, and the generation of guidelines for such technology in order to make the use of it most efficient.