As different parts of the world were hit by the health crisis, life and work were changed overnight for everyone.
When the pandemic hit, many employers that had never even considered remote work were forced into allowing employees to work from home. This resulted in reshaped attitudes about remote working, but employers aren’t ready to ditch the office entirely.
To cultivate the future workplace, organizations need to accelerate the process of developing the policies enabling individuals to break away from the standard 9 to 5 hours, setting reasonable expectations around availability and revisiting performance indicators.
For many companies, whether SMEs or large multinationals, the rapid transition to remote working exposed technology gaps. Seeking to support this new hybrid workforce, companies are reevaluating their technology budgets as well as their digital plans, methods and policies.
Hybrid New Normal work model
Hybrid workforce (partial remote) - For organizations looking ahead, all decisions to have a portion of their employees work remotely on a more permanent basis should be thoroughly evaluated. In addition to physical cost savings, considerations should include role or function, the organization’s workplace culture, and most importantly, whether the proper tools and resources are in place for the role to be successful.
Video conferencing - will drive workplace engagement. Many businesses in different industries have adapted this with open arms. Many of these businesses never did this in the past but now, they do such as: video banking, telehealth or telemedicine, and online education.
Video is the new voice - This is now the accepted go-to tool in business. Recruiters and hiring managers use video conferencing for interviews. Digital sales and marketing is also taking advantage of video. Using virtual tours and walkthrough for real estate or insurance agents. The use of cloud video conferencing applications has now grown multi-fold.
Remote work is the norm - After the transition to working-from-home, though, many managers that were skeptical about managing workplaces saw that it was possible. They just had to follow basic rules like setting clear goals, being transparent about the company priorities, outlining responsibilities and using tools that help everyone stay in touch (e.g. cloud collaboration solutions).
Security is even more important with this shift - As organizations plan to setup these systems according to various needs of stakeholders, security measure impacts video deployment and use will need to be evaluated.
Business leaders must refresh their focus on policies that enable the upkeep of robust security strategies and effective collaboration.
The New Normal office
Although some are still skeptical, it cannot be denied that this set-up will still be useful in the future especially against other forms of local calamity and the like emergencies. The pandemic has clarified, more than ever, the need for enterprises to have built-in flexibility to respond to external events.
So, what will the new office look like? These new offices will be optimized for collaborating and will function more as formal meeting places and collaboration studios than traditional offices.
They’ll also cater to a variety of work types: people who want to work onsite full-time and people who want to drop in occasionally to collaborate or interact with others, while also giving people who are full-time remote the option to break up their days by dropping in for meetings or just for a change of scenery.
Most importantly, company leadership must be flexible and adaptable about what employees feel comfortable doing regarding their safety and workspaces, especially as we slowly shift back into a post-pandemic world.youtube.com/IggyGo