How to sell hybrid 3 in office/ 6wfh to organization that’s never had wfh?

I’m looking for some help in an area that I have little experience in. (Very long and detailed)

I resigned from my management role in mid December and gave notice my last day would be March 31. I’ve been in my role for almost 6-years. I have been with this group in a different capacities for over 15 years.

A week later I was asked if I would reconsider if they made some changes and hired an assistant for me. Background is I have been without an assistant for 2.5 years and recruitment has been put off because they would not provide funds in the budget for it. I reached a breaking point in October, confirmed with myself in November that moving on was the best decision for me and set things in motion to give notice in December at a management meeting. It came as a surprise to my employers hence the request to reconsider.

My role is challenging and our location is difficult to recruit within and to. I felt 3.5 months notice was very generous and appropriate.

I did not change my mind. I gave them some background on what led me to my decision and instead of staying, I offered to work 3 days per week in April and 2 days per week in May to help with the transition. This was met favourably and has been the plan moving forward.

For the last month I have been approached with various different offers to stay. Most amusing but I am not persuaded.

Recruitment has been very challenging. Our candidate pool was very small and in the end we only had 2 candidates to interview that had even a remote chance of being successful.

After the first candidate interview, I presented the recruitment team with a proposal for a hybrid remote role to allow more training and transition time. I made my intentions for my future plans very clear in hopes it would end the daily requests to stay. I feel very guilty for leaving but it is best for me.

My proposal was to continue with the part-time plan through the spring, be available by phone in June, and take my much needed and planned sabbatical/stress leave in July and August. I will be moving about 2500kms east in July.

At the end of August, I would fly across the country to work in office for three weeks. I would then fly back home and spend six weeks working at home in the same capacity in which I am in now but training the successor in my role. That person would be the assistant manager until the training and transition was complete. I provided the recruitment team with a mock up of a calendar of what that would look like beginning with September through till July 2027. I believe that that amount of time should be sufficient to train somebody into the role so that they can take over my position and then hire and train their own assistant.

The Recruitment team seemed to really like this proposal when I first made it on Monday, but at our recruitment meeting last night to discuss the plan for second interviews it was met with some concern about how the person who is being hired as my assistant/replacement would feel to have to manage on their own for July and August and for me to return in September. They also seemed to think because I was out of office for six weeks at a time and in office three weeks that the person in office de facto becomes the manager, despite the fact that I would still be doing the majority of the workload while training and making sure that everything is getting done while that other person gets up to speed.

I made this proposal because they have shown so much concern about the training and successful transition to the new hire. I clarified that they would need to cover my travel costs if this was the solution that they wanted. What I’m looking for from those of you, that work remotely is how to explain to people who have zero experience in remote or hybrid work that this will work and that being out of the office doesn’t change the responsibility level. With today’s technology, such as teams and WhatsApp and screen share, etc. lots of things can be managed at a distance. In the end, if they decide that they don’t want the hybrid option, I’m OK with that because this proposal was me trying to help them and set the manager up for success, and I am not willing to change my future plans in terms of my need for a sabbatical and my desire to move across the country.

Being unavailable for July and August does not seem like a concern to me. If I took holidays or had a medical emergency, the outcome would be very similar to having the new hire cover the priority day to day for which I have cross trained staff to manage as I was trying to make a better work life balance for myself prior to my decision to resign. My workload exceeds 60-70 hours a week and that does not catch me up, that keeps me from drowning.

In the end, they are hiring 2 people to replace me as they now see that the role cannot be completed by one person.

Appreciate and advice for supporting language you may have.