Remote Work Versus Hybrid Work Post COVID
Written by: Vicki Shepard
October 23, 2022
3 min read
By now the majority of organizations have felt the impact of remote work and have done their best to make it work for them. Whether your company supports a 100% virtual environment or a combination of home and in-office work, it begs the question:
What do we do now?
As we continue to come out of the pandemic environment many employees are feeling the effects of the past few years have impacted them. Whether it is their mental health, social time, or career development one thing that has emerged is being able to talk openly about how our employees want to work.There have been numerous studies that have surfaced on the impact of remote work and how that translates to our employees both in a positive and negative way. While workers have more flexibility, more productivity, and less distractions working from home, they can also sometimes feel isolated, alone, and left out of workplace conversations.
It’s true that workers who are not in the office will miss the spontaneous hallway conversations, it is important that we recognize that we need to make time to have those unplanned conversations to keep the culture alive and connected. That doesn’t necessarily mean to video call your employees at 8 am on a Friday, but that does mean leaders should consider making time to connect with their employees on a personal level at some point in the work week.
Flexibility is what employees want.
It may be important to consider flexibility when thinking about remote and hybrid work environments. What does flexibility mean to your employees? Does that look like allowing working mothers to drop their child off at school for 30 minutes in the morning (and does that also mean taking their lunch break earlier so they can do so?).
Does flexibility mean working a half day at home and a half day in the office to have meetings or close business for the day? Does flexibility mean working mostly remote and coming into the work environment for collaboration a few times per month?
In the past flexibility was viewed radically different than what it means in today’s world.