Even as the world continues to face a surge in COVID-19 and slowing vaccine uptake, most companies are still in the planning stages of reopening their offices.
During the more than 18 months of the pandemic, companies’ plans to open office doors have been repeatedly thwarted, with most organizations pushing back their planned reopening dates – many until next year. after. Regardless of the fit and the start, most companies are slowly realizing that a hybrid work environment – some employees in the office, others at home – will become a permanent reality.
But some companies refuse to budge, insisting on returning to the pre-COVID-19 workplace. For example, Hearst’s publishing division — which runs newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle, and magazines like Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping — is asking to return to the office. According to feedback, last week workers pay an unfair labor practice fee with the National Labor Relations Board.
According to research firm Gartner, while some company leaders are reluctant to evolve their work model out of fear it will put their business at risk, new data suggests that turning around is not a good idea. Going back to the old ways is riskier than reinventing the office culture, according to research firm Gartner.
Given the multitude of job openings and labor shortages, most organizations simply cannot afford to make such requests, the researchers say. Workers are now more focused than ever on improving their work-life balance.
According to Gartner, only about 15% of employees want to work full-time in an office environment. According to a Gartner Hybrid Workplace survey published in September, if an organization returns to fully on-premises operations, it risks losing up to 39% of its workforce.
“[Employees] in general they’ve really stepped back and re-evaluated their priorities in life and how they think about work, health, family, and other things,” said Graham Waller, vice president of distinguished research at Gartner , said. “So let’s join the fact that there’s a lot of opportunity in this war for talent – especially in the US, there are some of the biggest hiring opportunities on record.
“Some organizations, including Google, say you can work from anywhere right now,” added Waller.
Especially in tech-related fields, employers are now offering higher salaries, signing bonuses, and job flexibility as they strive to fill recruitment demand.
M. Victor Janulaitis, CEO of management consulting firm Janco Associates, said that employees working from home are not satisfied with the prospect of having to return to their jobs. “It appears the attrition rate is highest among employees required to return to the office and follow through on vaccination duties.”
(Janco regularly conducts employee surveys, but has yet to complete the latest return-to-office survey.)
Even in the absence of new data, Janulaitis observed several key industry trends. While the overall worker Significant increase in productivity During the pandemic, being forced to telework 18 months ago has hampered some businesses.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) and service level agreements (SLAs) are not met by many IT functions. Hold and wait times were (and still are) long. Limited visibility into staffing requirements for service and help desk. “The barking of dogs and loud background noises affected the ‘professional image’ of the service desks,” says Janulaitis.
“With many IT professionals working from home over the past few months, many employees don’t understand they’ve had the chance to get training,” says Janulaitis.
Most organizations today – around 85% – currently operate with a hybrid work model. Exceptionsns tend to involve workforces in places where physical presence is required, such as brick-and-mortar stores and manufacturing floors. Some tech positions also require workers to be on-site to resolve data center issues, such as malfunctions or security and hardware upgrades.
Even when implementing a hybrid work environment, organizations should remain flexible and not require employees to be in-person on certain days each week or on specific days of the week, according to Waller. .
“Their plan is to have people come in three days a week, such as Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and they get a huge boost from employees, including in the form of attrition,” said Waller. speak. “We have seen such cases before. Many organizations are revising and evolving their plans. “
This year, 83% of businesses expect customer demand for digital products and services to increase, and 65% of corporate board members want to accelerate digital transformation, for see a willingness to fund and invest in technologies that enable hybridization, according to Gartner.
However, organizations should not stop there. They should also develop their thinking around employee autonomy, allowing workers to choose when they arrive at the office or away. Employees engaged in “slow work” – work that does not require direct interaction with co-workers – can do the work from any location.
Waller said executives have a unique opportunity to break away from the position-centric work model designed around the constraints of the industrial age and redesign work in a child-centered fashion. people-centric to secure talent in the digital age and better business results. “Don’t just focus on how much time they spend in the office and at home, but think about how to reinvent work based on people. Location is secondary.”
According to a survey by Gartner, for knowledge workers who are transitioning from office-centric design to human-centered design:
■ 44% showed a reduction in worker fatigue;
■ 45% said it would increase their intention to stay with a company;
■ 28% said it boosted their performance.
For example, there is a shift happening in the manager’s mindset from centralized decisions to peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer decision making to reduce congestion and save time in hybrid environments. . As hybrid work continues to evolve, eliminating the traditional manager role can lead to greater efficiency.
According to Gartner, by 2024, 30% of corporate teams will be without a boss due to the self-directed and collaborative nature of the work.
According to Gartner, getting it right requires experimenting, learning, and iterating. But the result can be better workplace performance, innovation and equity.
In some industries, the benefits of digital transformation during the pandemic may be lost as the world returns to the new normal. For example, the use of telehealth, or connecting with telemedicine, has increased 38-fold from the pre-COVID-19 baseline, According to McKinsey & Company, a management consulting firm. There are some who believe those profits could disappear as insurers may require more in-person visits once the pandemic breaks out.
“Something like healthcare is driven a lot by business models, especially the issue of reimbursement between provider and payer. In many cases, I’m sure they’ll go back to what was before, sometimes for the benefit of different players in the ecosystem,” said Waller. “So I’m sure there will be a pullback. The question is where and how much will we find the sweet spot in the hybrid model? ”
Copyright © 2021 IDG Communications, Inc.
