At first, many thought the shutdowns would last a few months. But a year later, millions of workers are still working remotely.
The pandemic has forced much of the global workforce to go through a remote experiment on a scale unprecedented – and a lot of has changed in the last 12 months.
The boundary between our work and our personal life has become blurred. Working at the kitchen table has become a habit and for parents, juggling virtual school while trying to meet deadlines has become a daily challenge.
Employers have also been forced to become more agile. They have had to ease the restrictions on where employees can work, equip them with the tools to do so, and support them both professionally and personally.
With more people getting vaccinated and kids returning to school, it seems like they’re going back to ‘normal’, but the workplace as we knew it could change forever.
And of course some companies want everyone to come back.
Whatever the approach, employees and employers can expect a few bumps in the road as they navigate the next phase of this grand work experiment.
“Many companies managed to work remotely in 2020, largely because everyone else did – there was no built-in bias toward office workers or stigma against remote workers,” said Andrew Hewitt, senior analyst at market research firm Forrester. “Hybrid will make it more difficult to deal with this difference.”
The first shock
On the company review site Yelp, the IT department had to rush to find nearly 3,000 laptops for employees, mainly sales people, when it went remote in March.
“We always had spare laptops, but not 3,000,” said Chief People Officer Carolyn Patterson.
Coveo, an artificial intelligence software company, vacated its offices in early March 2020. With more than 600 employees around the world, employees were used to working in different time zones and locations. Nevertheless, personal collaboration and meetings are an important part of the corporate culture.
“We were a company that used to come together; people literally fly all over the world … to get together. People should interact personally,” said CEO Louis Tetu.
From the outset, the company focused on making sure employees were well-equipped in their home office by charging things like tech equipment and noise canceling headphones, as well as offering grants for high-speed internet. And it was not cheap.
“That meant we would give you the best seat, the best screen … that took us seven figures overnight,” said Tetu.
The cost, he said, was well worth it. “You can’t build a great company if your people don’t get it right.”
But it was not just like that figuring out the logistics of working from home that challenged employers and their employees at the start of the pandemic. There was also the mental and emotional toll it took.
“We recognized that our employees came to us for guidance on everything: the pandemic, how they lived, wanted to know what was safe and what was not,” said Cisco executive vice president and chief people, policy and purpose officer Fran Katsoudas. “It became very natural for us to have meetings where we had medical and mental health professionals and discussions about business strategy, all in the same meeting.”
To help employees deal with the changes and uncertainties of the pandemic, some companies have enhanced their benefits, offering things like free counseling, childcare stipends and office setups, and more days off.
But When it comes to post-pandemic workforce, remote working is no longer considered a special benefit.
“It is no longer, ‘Do you offer remote work?’ But offer it with enough organization support so that I can be as successful as the people who work in the office? ”Said Hewitt.
He expects that about 60% of companies will offer a hybrid working model, while 30% of companies will be back in the office and 10% completely remote.
Now here comes the hard part
Despite the challenges, Hewitt says the past year has been easy compared to what comes next.
“We played remote working in easy mode. We all did the same, everyone had equal access to information and promotions,” said Hewitt. “With hybrid it will be more difficult in 2021.”
Inequality between remote and office workers can become a problem among hybrid workers. People in the office get more time with the boss, which can lead to better relationships, better access to information and top assignments.
“There was the stigma [before the pandemic], that remote workers were less productive and career-oriented, ”said Hewitt.
Training managers on how to involve both external and personal employees in meetings and decision-making, and how to communicate, is a critical step in aligning the workforce.
At Yelp, the majority of employees worked in the company’s offices before the pandemic. The company now gives most employees the choice of continuing to work remotely or coming to the office a few days a week.
“We will be very careful that managers do not shift to patterns of having to come to the office for an important meeting, as that is not possible when people leave,” said Patterson.
Employees who move to areas with significantly higher or lower labor costs may see their wages adjusted.
The company has developed a three-pronged system to handle compensation changes for employees who move.
“If you move from a level one to a level three location, you get a lower salary, but we still want to be competitive,” said Patterson.
Coveo also plans to give employees flexibility to choose where they work, but that’s the case no plans to require everyone to be 100% remote.
“It’s very inhumane,” Tetu said of companies that are going completely remote and getting rid of offices. “I love Slack and Zoom, but there is no equivalent of bringing people together and fostering a common culture.”
He looks forward to the day when he can get his team together safely.
“We’re going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on plane tickets to bring everyone together. There’s no question. There are huge gains and benefits in terms of cohesion.”
As things return to normal and services such as childcare reopen on a regular basis, employers are likely to become stricter on their remote working requirements, according to Hewitt. This may mean that the employee must have childcare in place during working hours or standardizing a time zone in which everyone works.
“The other thing that comes with ‘working anywhere’ is the tax laws,” said Hewitt. “That can get tricky and complicated.”
Shrinking office
Companies will also likely need less office space as more employees will be working remotely.
Tetu expects his company to use about 70% of the square footage it did before the pandemic.
To meet the needs of a hybrid workforce, office designs are likely to look different too
Not every employee needs a designated agency. Collaboration spaces are likely to become a higher priority, allowing more team-based work to take place in the office, while individual work will be done at home.
According to Patterson, Yelp is also considering downsizing its office space.
“As our leases expire, we will reduce our footprint,” she said, adding that Yelp’s office spaces can be redesigned with fewer desks and more focus on collaboration.
Even as more people are vaccinated, experts warn it will take time to return to a sense of normalcy work.
“There’s a long tail coming here, no doubt about that,” said Tetu. “This has a lasting psychological impact. Life has been quite shaken up, and this has several consequences. “