When considering the post Covid workforce, if anything can be near certain during these unprecedented times, it is that Hybrid/Flexible/Blended (take your pick!) working is the future.
Choice makes for happy employees
Large companies like Microsoft have announced that employees have the option of working from home permanently. Regulations set by governments across the world are having a long-lasting impact, and or companies that were viewing working from home as a temporary state of affairs are now looking to move to a more permanent Hybrid working approach, keeping in mind the health and safety of their employees. So what will the post COVID workforce look like?
Two Approaches To Consider
Many employees want to work from home at least some of the time. Indeed a large chunk of the workforce stating that they want a blend of office and work ie a “hybrid working environment”. Furthermore, the majority of organisations will need to ensure that they only allow a reduced percentage of employees to work at the office at any given point of time to ensure social distancing. This can be resolved by keeping a hybrid workforce. Now the question is what is the best approach to ensure a happy and safe Post COVID workforce while abiding the local government’s regulations. Two approaches can be used here, Hybrid Workforce and Hybrid Employees.
THE HYBRID WORKFORCE – In this method the employees are split into two teams and every team has to come in an alternative week.
Advantage – This method ensures that only 50% of the office is occupied at any given point of time. This also makes contact tracing easier as only half of the workforce need to look at.
Disadvantage – However this method limits the flexibility of the team in term of project coordination and collaboration.
HYBRID EMPLOYEES – Employees, in a dynamic fashion, can choose certain days when they want to work from home or when they want to come to the office. They then split their time working in the office and at home.
Advantage -This tends to be the employees favourite solution. Giving them autonomy and flexibility on their work schedule.
Disadvantage– This requires a booking or desk allocation system to ensure the number of employees in the office at any one time is not too high.
How do you solve this?
One method for smaller companies is to manage a shared excel sheet. This can be very confusing for the employees and very time consuming for the facilities and administration team, especially in larger organisations. Ronspot’s desk management solution gives power in the hand of the employees, allowing them to check availability easily on their mobile, see the office layout and reserve desks easily. Ronspot controls the social distancing desk spacing and the total number of people given access to the office each day, to ensures employees safety.
