Hybrid or Full-Time: A Post Covid Discussion
A large percentage of people who work from home are lazy gits they got to like the life created by the pandemic.
Alan Sugar (Billionaire Entrepreneur)
The Covid-19 Pandemic caused a massive overturn in the lives of the working class. During the pandemic, managers and decision-makers were forced to make crucial calls about the running of their businesses.
Outside of cutting back on stuff, reorganising marketing tactics, and developing a way to reach customers who were confined to their homes, management suddenly had to find out what to do with their employees who weren’t allowed to physically come into work.
Say hello to the remote worker solution where zoom calls occurred frequently and the trust in employees was placed entirely in the air.
A few years down the line and with the pandemic becoming a thing of the past, the changes that occurred, in the beginning, are looking more and more permanent.
A New Way of Work
Fast forward to 2022, and the statistics say something.
According to Apollotechnical, 44% of employees seek out a hybrid work environment with 51% of employers supporting the model.
What we saw over the last few years is that companies are able to survive without the workforce physically being present. The owners of businesses also saw a variety of benefits from this change such as:
- Cost reduction on real estate and maintenance.
- Being able to seek employees on a global scale.
- A better work-life balance
With these methods becoming more and more evident in organisations across the globe, the main question employers are asking themselves is.
“Are my employees working as hard as they would at home than at the office?”
The Modern Employee
Another statistic shows that employees that work from home spend an average of 10 minutes less on being unproductive and firms adopting the Hybrid-work model saw an overall increase of 47% in productivity from their workforce.
What needs to be understood from this is that the workplace and employers made the process effective and did not simply leave employees to their own devices.
According to Forbes, there are four methods to manage a hybrid work environment that allows the productivity to increase rather than degrade.
These are:
- The Setting of clear and concise expectations from employees.
- Providing the proper tools and support for employees to succeed.
- Using meetings strategically and effectively.
Creating inclusive employee experiences.
The expectations of productivity need to be made clear and the relationship between employer and employee needs to be fostered in a different way.
With these in place, rest assured in knowing your workforce is looked after and well-equipped to do their job and appreciate the work-balance life created.
One of our own directors says “Everyone loves hybrids, they just need to learn to adapt to their environment or die” – Madeleine McCreanor
This sounds fantastic, but, it may not be the perfect solution for all businesses!
Some insights from modic
Our other director, Shaun McCreanor who heads up the production aspect of our firm has the following to say, “It works for some departments, not so much for others.” What he means by this is that it’s physically impossible to do some jobs from home.
For example, our film team cannot go out to shoots if they are at home. It’s factual and cannot be circumvented. The same would apply to the retail industry.
Shaun also said, “While many tasks can be efficiently completed at remote locations in the modern hybrid model, there is a collective sense of yearning towards the in-office culture that makes up a team’s culture. Culture is of big importance to the effective functioning of a company, it also serves as a medium for teams to feel as if their position forms part of a collective.
So in my opinion, hybrid work is a trade-off between effectivity/comfort and culture/collectives. Each department within a company must choose its ideal trade-off.”
Despite these challenges, we have seen immeasurable growth and opportunity from this work model while still providing an intensive method of employee engagement and culture-building activities and relationships in a virtual and physical space. That’s why we chose a hybrid method instead of a fully-remote method.
Our creative director (who is situated in Ireland) says, “The key to making this hybrid workplace work for everyone will be to embrace a growth mindset and be open to new technologies.
Hybrid is the future, we need to acknowledge that the world has changed. Having more flexibility has allowed the team to work when and where they are most productive.
In a hybrid arrangement, the benefits of being in the office, including collaboration, innovation, and building culture, are balanced with the benefits of working from home, including a quiet environment and no commuting”
Summed up quite well, the hybrid work environment does provide an opportunity for a new era of work. Employees may not always be “lazy gits,” but a strong and firm management structure that is able to cope with the changes prevents this from happening.
