New Working Models For The New World Of Work
An increasing amount of companies are starting to consider hybrid and new remote working models as a more permanent option due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Salesforce announced it will let employees choose whether they want to come into the office again, saying “the 9-to-5 workday is dead.”
Twitter and Square are letting employees work from home forever, whilst Spotify has introduced its new work from anywhere option.
This is also a point in time for organisations to explore not just where their people choose to be based or will be required to physically work, but to also look at its facilities footprint, using the pandemic as a critical moment to consider what’s required in future ways of working. This also gives opportunity to examine how to create and collaborate better, whilst looking at sustainability and ESG footprints too.
Here are some of the models we are working on with our clients in their org design and transformation plans:
Hybrid 3/2 model: 3 days in the office with 2 days at home or 2 days in the office with 3 days at home. This enables organisations to retain its ‘person-to-person’ culture. This preserves and amplifies the benefits of human to human connection, whilst enabling and building on tech and both the benefits and productivity increases of remote working
Work from anywhere model: this allows employees to choose whether they want to be in the office full time, be at home full time or a combination of the two and also introduces flexibility around locations, so employees will be able to choose the country and city where they work
Total remote working model - no plans to return to the office. Strategic model has been amended to put this as a central pillar in its talent and commercial value proposition
Hub remote working model - the office has been replaced with a ‘drop in/serviced office space’ to be booked upon request up to a maximum agreed number of ‘drop in’s’ per month
By-side model - specific areas within an existing office location for remote workers to use as and when required alongside permanently based in-office co-workers.
Critical success factors
The key to success of a hybrid model is communication and collaboration, even more so when the entire organization may be operating from numerous locations across the world.
Hybrid and new working models rely heavily on digital collaboration, which means digitization of processes and operations. A recent survey which was conducted by Cisco indicated how Indian employees want to uphold the positives from remote working, which were increased autonomy and managing well a dispersed team as the two main benefits along with faster decision-making. The outcomes are surprising which in turn will lead to a success of these hybrid working models. However, for this to materialize, organizations also need to ensure better technology support for employees to set up their base at home as well as in the office. 73% participants in the Cisco survey affirm that they do not need to be in the same space to collaborate effectively.
CHRO’s and CIO’s already have a massive task at hand, with ensuring the integration of best practices and technology to make this comfortable for employees and ensure maximum benefits for their organizations. Concerns over safety, cyber security and personal solutions for specific cases, and other risks will be key issues for the HR, finance, and operations teams to handle and mitigate. In particular, companies need to look at a more strategic approach to security as they settle into a hybrid model.
Concerns and consequences
The most obvious is two tier workforces and the potential disadvantages or lack of opportunity for remote workers. Presenteeism must not be rewarded over remote workers and nor must they be penalised or be put at career or opportunity disadvantages for simply working away from the office. This is particularly prevalent for those remote workers who are care givers in their families/households and for women who rely on flexible models.
To counteract that organisations HR, operations & talent teams must focus on building agile and evolving comms that support dual working with a prevailing inclusive culture, along with supporting methods, processes, systems and mindsets to help their organisations to improve their employee journey. This includes feedback, leadership and management development and talent and succession plans. And as for retention, we are already seeing significant exodus of talent to sectors where flexibility and autonomy is offered freely and without struggle.
Opportunities
There are many and multiple opportunities ahead for those organisations who listen and react to what they're workforces need and require to strive and thrive post pandemic.
Those organisations that return to their ‘de-facto’ setting and pre-pandemic modus operandi inflexible working model do so at their own peril. They may find that they become irrelevant and then have massive amounts of costly resource required to build back both its employer brand and its pipeline. This will significantly diminish the opportunity to retain and win new business. The future lies in listening to our talent and building back better solutions for all our futures.
Approach to people & organisation models
The only certainty about the future is, nothing is certain. Better organised business are better by design. We provide organisational design, system and architecture reviews, defining and re-designing your working models, capability frameworks. roles and responsibilities requirements, articulating transition and succession planning and delivering C Suite & Board development that aligns with your strategic future.
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