By Professor Clare Kelliher, Professor of Work and Organisation
Uncertain and anxious; hopeful and excited; or indifferent? However employers and employees are feeling about the next few months, there can be no escaping the conversations that will need to be had.
Whether you support ‘back to normal’ and ‘back to the office’, or are keen to find ‘a new normal’, we are embarking on yet another period of change, uncertainty and possibility. The conversations employers will be having over the coming weeks and months about ‘flexible working’ will be nothing like the conversations they may have had on that topic before.
The coronavirus pandemic has forced us all to re-evaluate our lives and our working arrangements. Discussions around remote working, virtual offices and hybrid models – whereby people work part of their week from an office and part from home – are taking place .
As with any time of change, there is much that employers will need to consider. Here, we offer seven tips for organisations beginning to look past the pandemic to the world of work in the second half of 2021 and beyond.
#1 One size does not fit all
Prior to coronavirus, the majority of people worked from an office or some other kind of workplace. During the pandemic, we all had to work from home if we could. Nobody party to the employment relationship – not HR, not line managers, not company bosses, not employees themselves – initiated the idea of remote working.
Now that we are moving into a time when more options are available to us all, it will be important for employers to give their employees some say in their working arrangements where possible.
Companies that want to get everyone back to the office are likely to experience some backlash if they try to tell people who have worked remotely for over a year now that they now cannot do it at all. Likewise, those considering reducing their office space by moving wholesale to remote working, or intending to initiate a hybrid model, would do well to guard against adopting a one-size-fits-all approach.
Our research at 成人抖阴 suggests that employees who want to work remotely and who are enabled to do so reward their employers with increased loyalty, engagement and productivity, but an employer who requires someone to work at home that cannot or does not want to – whether they live alone, lack a suitable workspace, or simply prefer to work in the office – may find the opposite effect to be true.
#2 Don’t make any quick decisions
This is a crucial moment for employers, and one in which it will be important not to misstep. There are some big decisions to be made, and the complexity of the changes that may be required to establish and maintain successful hybrid and remote working models should not be underestimated.
Many of us have experienced remote working now – but it has been at a time when most, if not all, of our colleagues, clients, customers and stakeholders were also working remotely. Most people will not have experience of hybrid working at scale, and of the subsequent challenges of co-ordinating diaries and organising meetings and events around people’s individual working patterns.
There is a lot to work out. As well as the logistics of how many days each employee will be in the office and working remotely, there will inevitably be technology gaps that will need to be plugged, communication protocols that must be re-visited, trust issues that may need to be worked on. All this takes time and consultation, so emplo