With the opening up of the lockdown, employers have been increasingly calling for employees to return to “full-time” office. The reasons for these are not hard to track – better accountability, coordination as well as easier for employers to keep an eye on employees. While some of these are legitimate concerns, many employees have tasted the freedom that work from home provides, and the resistance to change is palpable. In addition, with more opportunities out there, employees are now likely to shift to companies offering more employee friendly work environments such as flexibility to work from home or office.
The last two years have seen a change in employees. According to employers, engagement is lower among team members, leading to higher attrition and needs to be corrected by better engaging employees in the office where they can be with their teams. Employees have been empowered to work independently, giving them a sense of freedom. From an employee’s viewpoint, if the work gets done, what is the harm in working flexibly from home or office, as per the convenience of the employee?
Other aspects like quiet quitting and moonlighting have also played on the fears of employers. So, where is the solution to finding common ground for employers and employees?
Companies don’t exactly stand to lose if employees are working from home. More employees working out of office means companies spend less on costly real estate to seat employees, saving tremendously on lease rentals, energy consumption, etc. At the same time, investment in tracking employee productivity and efficiency becomes imperative. Any work role is only 80% defined on paper. The remaining 20% is intangible and can happen based on circumstances. This 20% is best achieved when teams are co-located in the same premises and working together since it improves coordination and execution.
Ensuring teams bond and work together can become challenging unless there are conscious steps taken to ensure team bonding. With talent increasingly being hired remotely, team members may not even see each other in person. So inculcating company culture, etc. becomes a challenge.
Countering these perspectives is the employee need for better work-life balance, empowerment and control. This has led to employees seeking flexibility and given the paucity of talent, companies have been accommodating of these needs, at least in the short term. However, if companies are looking to incorporate flexible working into their culture, a few key points need to be built into their approach towards present and future employees. These include:
- Clarity on flexibility options and their validity
- Transparency towards employees in explaining the measures used for tracking employee productivity in remote and flexible work environments.
- Setting standards for team leaders and team expectations in terms of measuring employee performance, based on specific metrics.
- Internal company policies on activities and approaches to build team coordination, belonging and interaction.
- Defining flexibility of the role in the job description to the extent possible, so that prospective employees have a clear idea of what is expected from them.
The new work environment is changing, and employers and employees need to work together to evolve standards of performance in this new environment. The best performing companies will be those that figure how to keep employees engaged and performance oriented in order to deliver business goals.