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For years, flexible work arrangements had been on the agenda at Fujitsu, but little had actually changed. But the pandemic, Hiramatsu foresaw, was about to turn everything upside down. Flexible work model, which means there is more than one way of making it work for your business. For example, it might be important to you to offer your employees maximum autonomy so they can design their work week with zero restrictions or mandates. You might also decide that requiring your employees to be onsite for a certain number of days will help everyone be more productive and happy at work. This allows you to reinvest those cost savings elsewhere, like providing more work options for employees in the form of satellite offices and smaller co-working spaces.
This includes communication tools like Slack or Teams, video conferencing tools like Zoom, workplace booking solutions , and more. Working from home can also lead to a better work-life balance for employees. With no commute and the ability to create their own schedules, employees have more time for family, friends, and hobbies. 67% of employees say that their work-life balance has improved since they started to work remotely, so it’s clear that this is a big perk of hybrid work. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced businesses of all sizes to change the way they operate. In particular, many companies have had to adopt remote work policies out of necessity.
Lead Your Remote Team Away From Burnout, Not Toward It
First, you must create policies that benefit both WFH employees and in-house team members alike, even if they look slightly different. Employees should feel like they’re equals and not second-class citizens, which sometimes happens with remote teams. Your long-term return to work guidelines will need to include an updated security policy. It’s been long proven that in-person interactions lead to better commitment, support, and cooperation.
Of course, this can make communication extremely difficult and slow down productivity. Before moving on to hybrid work, let’s quickly take a look at the pros and cons of remote working. Even though the remote model offers numerous advantages at first glance, there is also a shadow side of challenges you and your remote workers might face that should not be overseen. This hybrid work model improves efficiency for employees who don’t report in-office. It can also save your company costs, as you’d be paying less for electricity and other utilities with half of your workers based at home.
Hybrid working at Rabobank
The home is a private space, so it makes this an incredibly difficult matter to address with employees without invading personal privacy. Without re-stating the benefits noted above, there are many reasons. From fostering real collaboration and creativity, building company culture, gaining trust, to the employer’s responsibility and duty of care whilst you are working. Performance Management, Data Security, Workplace Health and Safety and Mental Health matters such as isolation and anxiety are concerns beyond these benefits. If you don’t have the right technology, it can be difficult to manage a hybrid team and stay connected. Employees may feel like they’re not getting the support they need, which can lead to frustration and a decline in productivity.
One way to encourage hybrid work from home to come back to the office is using incentives, which 88% of companies are already doing, according to Envoy. These can be things like food and beverage programs, happy hours, company-wide events, and more. Investing in opportunities that delight your employees will help ignite company culture and make people want the workplace experience. Because hybrid work requires employees to have access to both in-person and online collaboration tools, it’s important to have the right technology in place.
What is Hybrid Work?
This optimised work-life balance provides additional satisfaction and strengthens employees’ loyalty to their employers, improving your employee retention rate. The fact that anyone can work from anywhere and at any time creates various obstacles – such as time differences — and makes corporate and team communication much more difficult. For this reason, a very well organised communication structure and fixed guidelines for employees are indispensable for effective remote work.
