In some capacity, the prevalence of Work From Home setups in the workplace has been both a blessing and a curse for companies and their employees. Though this adds to the company’s flexibility of continuing business operations while navigating the pandemic, people have begun to feel the weight of the new work environment and have also experienced the negatives that accompany it. At the same time, employees tend to prefer working from home to avoid the inconveniences of the daily commute to the office especially when they can do their job from the comfort of their own home.
The world has taken steps towards the vaccination of the general public and has seen some countries going back to working in-person. Companies still wary of the coronavirus in turn have decided to adopt the practice of a hybrid workplace, giving employees the ability to juggle between face-to-face work at the office on some days, and working from home when they are able to.
Systems such as the Everything At Work Human Resource Management System can help companies adapt to the needs of a hybrid workplace. The system can enable employers to effectively enforce the company’s policies and promote employee accountability while giving employees a means to submit their feedback and monitor their own work profile. To know more about the system, you can submit inquiries at: https://everythingatwork.com/inquire-now/ and start working towards an effective practice.
At the forefront of the hybrid work model, is an overall improvement to employee satisfaction. Most organizations see their biggest productivity increases coincide with high morale amongst employees. Rethinking and reimagining the processes that permeate the workplace injects a boost in productivity as changing up the system contributes to helping employees thrive at work.
Work-life balance is also a pressing issue to keep in mind if you are still on the fence about adopting new approaches. Though this delicate balance is rarely perfect, being as close to it as possible is a vital part of any healthy work environment and transitioning to a hybrid workplace may more often than not enable employees to satisfy their needs towards a healthy work-life relationship. Normal work conditions in the office, especially overloaded 9-5 workdays ruins this balance, while purely working from home also adversely affects employees in one way or another.
Over time, solely working from home eventually blurs the line between work life and home life. This situation is exacerbated in places where lockdowns are the norm and several covid variants are still rampant. Even if employees are still able to communicate with each other via video calls or other messaging applications, there is still a disconnect between an employee and their colleagues and company. Being in the office gives a clear distinction between work and non-work, but purely working from home may lead to employees not knowing when to switch off and take a breather. This further emphasizes how important adopting a hybrid workplace in the midst of the pandemic is.
In Accenture’s Future of Work Study, statistics suggest that 83% of workers prefer a hybrid work model and that 63% of high-growth organizations have enabled models which emphasized productivity from anywhere. Splitting time between remote locations such as home, and the on-site office helps contribute to employee retention without having to sacrifice overall productivity.
Adopting to a hybrid workplace also addresses a looming mental health crisis for workers. Fully remote work reduces interpersonal relationships and adversely affects an employee’s mental state, while office work also leads to eventual burnout from stress. Strategically planning using the hybrid model increases the potential for growth and a higher level of productivity. Fostering a modern work culture with an emphasis on the workforce’s psychological well-being can help address the anxiety and mental challenges that have been brought about by the pandemic. In addition to this, the youth movement of the workforce such as members of Gen Z and millennials have stressed that wellness is an important part of a good work environment.
In a 2016 study, twelve billion days of productivity in the world’s 36 largest countries get lost each year due to mental health-related issues at the cost of $925 billion. The popularity of a hybrid work environment as a solution to this further adds to the thinking that companies need to take a longer look at the models before going back to pre-pandemic norms.
The Everything At Work system helps companies nurture this new-age work environment by committing company resources to easy accessibility and management at the click of a button. Using the integrated modules of the system helps track employees while alleviating their anxiety as the employees can also monitor the personal profiles remotely, or from home.
A shift towards this solution not only benefits the employees but the organization and employers as well. As the pandemic recedes over time, this flexibility will give all facets of the company an opportunity for growth and increased productivity whether they meet online or in-person under this hybrid model.