According to an article in The Telegraph, “One in four people to work from home permanently“, as companies plan for ongoing change to employment patterns even after the pandemic is over. Flexible working is becoming commonplace.
This will change how hire managers think about their organizations. Do they adapt to this new way of working long term or even permanently? Although there is another way. By combining these two systems, working from home and from the office. Whilst finding the right balance between the two. For example 40% working from home and 60% working from the office.
By 2025 according to Upwork’s “Future of Workforce Pulse” an increase of 87% people from now on will work from home after the pandemic. Most of the time, implementing telework involves doubts, restlessness, and uncertainty. The first on the duration of this, which must be scheduled and renewed if necessary. Activity expenses are another recurring concern. Most companies do not pay any costs for supplies; some pay a small supplement. This decision must be agreed between the company and the worker.
How to increase productivity when they are working from home
1 – Motivate Your Team
Create new points of contact for your employees! Physical meetings are no longer possible, but it should not stop employees from meeting. Thanks to video calls through Microsoft Teams or Zoom, each person is just one click away. We have all developed full capabilities to work remotely after almost a year in lockdown. Create a team dynamic virtually and use it to find the best roles and projects for each team member.
2 – Change the Structure
Implement new, more agile work processes and develop new internal hierarchies. This approach allows your employees to work as a team, while remaining interconnected and empowered. To increase the creativity in your organization, you must grant your teams greater freedom and responsibility in equal measure. A virtual work environment does not mean that we must have tight control of what happens.
3 – Empathize so Creativity Flows
Take an interest more than ever in what motivates and worries your employees on a personal level. Managers and team leads have to show their employees their understanding now. We’ve lost physical contact but, on the other hand, we have gained more knowledge about our coworkers lives; We virtually visit their homes via video call and we start personal conversations that might not have occurred in the office. This doesn’t mean that we don’t need physical contact. However, technology allows us to explore other ways of relationship. And a person who is accompanied and listened to becomes an individual who can create freely and safely.
4 – Business Culture
One of the biggest challenges that companies face today is the risk of dissolution of their corporate culture due to working from home. In other words, making your team feel like freelancers since they work from home. Recent research from the University of Southern California supports that one of the biggest concerns of a person who works remotely is the feeling of being professionally isolated. To be disconnected from the company and colleagues, and feeling out of the loop compared to if they went in to the office. This concern raises even more with the additions made during the pandemic and with introverted people.
On the other hand, without face-to-face meetings, managers may lose the ability to identify burnout symptoms or detect malfunctions in their teams. For this reason, in creative environments it’s especially important to generate transgenerational and communicative activities. If these initiatives, called virtual watercoolers, are linked to health and emotional well-being, all the better. A person connected with their colleagues is much more motivated and reinforces their creativity and resilience.
5 – Coordinate
There are no more boundaries between office and home because every home has become an office! It is important to establish new guidelines for work processes. Space has changed and, therefore, time dimension. Space is no longer shared for eight hours a day with co-workers in an office, but also with our partners, children, and pets. The overlapping of roles at home distorts the rhythms.
That’s why it is important to know learn how to work together. Achieving this togetherness means being flexible to cancel or postpone a meeting when something unexpected happens in a house. But if technology brings something new, it is the possibility of working synchronized thanks to work tools in the cloud or downloading documents for viewing when it is most convenient.
Ultimately, it is about teamwork and creating synergy.
Combine working from home and going to the office: Flexwork
Chris Herd (Founder and CEO of Firstbase) spoke with over 2000 companies recently to understand their plans for remote working in the future. This research revealed that organizations will cut their commercial office space by 50-70%. Allowing every worker to work from home 2-4 days a week and come into the office 1-2 days a week. At Ronspot we call this Flexwork. A mix of working from home and co-working spaces are quickly becoming a part of the corporate culture in many companies. This saves costs and increases the personal responsibility and efficiency of the employees.
Some of the advantages that Flexwork will bring to your company are:
- It encourages work-life balance: the freedom to choose how and where your team works is key. Such as allowing workers to adapt their working hours to their daily needs. This can be very important to in your organization and get your employees to value their job much more.
- Improves productivity: We already gave some tips to increase the productivity when working from home, but companies that are committed to flexwork tend to have more active, less stressed and more motivated workers, which makes them more productive. To give you an idea, working from home increases employee productivity by around 15%.
- Reduces travel expenses: employees will not have to invest large amounts of money to travel to their workplace, since with flexwork they don’t need to commute everyday; in addition, flexwork is a significant time and money saver.
These are only a few advantages of flexwork, to know more, read our blog about it: Flexwork: New Year, New Way of Working!
Can Flexwork Improve Your Team’s Productivity?
It seems that most organizations will end up adopting a flexwork model. This is highlighted by the new Capgemini Research Institute report ‘The Future of Work: From Remote to Hybrid’. According to which, if companies want to follow the benefits of remote work, and be able to satisfy employee expectations, they have an obligation to find the right model for a more balanced flexible approach.
Specifically, the Capgemini Research reveals that 63% of companies experienced an increase in worker productivity during the third quarter of 2020 thanks to reduced commute times, flexible working hours and the adoption of communication tools.
It also says that in the next two to three years, three out of ten companies expect more than 70% of their employees to work remotely. Compared to just 10% before COVID-19. Notably 48% of organizations calculate that their total office space must be reduced by at least 10%.
Additionally, about 45% of employees expect to spend three days or more per week working from remote locations in the future. Indicating a quickly increasing trend for flexwork workplaces.
Support, connection, and trust are the keys to change to a flexible model. Both the limitations of totally remote workstations and the possibility of a future based on a flexible model, which achieves a balance between work-from-home and office models, will aim to differentiate the company and generate value for its employees.
Organizations have to find the right balance for a flexwork approach. Now managers are tasked with questioning existing structures, reinventing the effectiveness of operating models, and breaking down barriers between different teams and walls between departments.
