The future is hybrid. That’s what the industry is telling us, with employees set to stay at home and only travel in for meetings and when the kids become too much of a distraction!
Although the headlines of hybrid working hold water, very little has been said of how businesses will transition from a completely remote workforce and get to a stage where their employees come in and out of an office as they please.
Although a lot of the coverage has been of the positives that will come from the hybrid system, Jamie Cole, Microsoft Partner Manager at Exactive, outlined some of the challenges that businesses will face.
“Post-pandemic, people are looking for flexibility in how and where they do their work, evidenced in the Workplace Trend Index 2021 which found 73% of people want the option of working from home and 80% of managers are expecting more flexible working policies”, said Cole.
“It is clear that choice is what the majority of people want, so organisations will need technology that enables their people to do their best work wherever they are. But hybrid working also presents a challenge for people feeling disconnected and excluded with 67% of employees wanting more in-person interaction with colleagues"
“This is where it is important to make sure that employees have feedback mechanisms for how they are feeling about work as these will become fundamental in helping people be effective in a hybrid working world. That also extends to the on-boarding process for new staff working in a remote world and creating an organisational culture. When starting a new company, people need to learn a lot and learn it fast, so remote learning tools, such as Viva will become a must-have for organisations of every shape and size.
“One day we may see ultimate flexibility as the norm, where people are able to work where they want and when they want, but leaders still need to find new ways to create a culture that doesn’t rely on people being in the office constantly. Trust will be a foundational part of that.”
New Normal
As a result of the pandemic, office spaces are lined up for a transformation from siloed workspaces to hubs of collaboration.
Jamie added that office spaces will now be built to make the most of employees face to face time but warned against allotting staff a specific amount of time to travel in.
“The office will most definitely be serving a different purpose to the individual workstations and shared spaces that we were accustomed to. Moving forward, the future could see vastly reduced office space for many companies, where individual workstations are swapped for collaborative spaces.
“These collaborative spaces will help teams make the most of their physical time together and be embedded with technology, enabling people outside the room to feel included and contribute equally with the people inside the room. To achieve this businesses will need tech that can bring remote people in from anywhere and let them contribute as if they are in the room, you can see this with the developments in Microsoft Teams”.
