This is how the pandemic changed work forever

In May, Twitter said some workers who want to work from home forever can. And DropBox has said it is now “virtual first,” meaning many employees will continue to work remotely most of the time. Meanwhile, Google plans to test a flexible workweek, with employees coming to the office at least three times a week.

The F word

Employees have proven they can be productive at home, so flexibility in where they work is here to stay, experts predict.

Hybrid workforce, with some employees in the office and others remote, allow employees to choose what works best for them. That could mean that employees go to the office a few days a week, switch weeks between work and home, or come to the office just a few times a year.

“I think very few organizations will go 100% remote,” said Erica Volini, global human capital leader at Deloitte.

“There must be new ways to measure productivity and understand what workers produce,” says Volini. “How you measure when you can’t see them physically and communicate with them is going to be quite a significant shift.”

Going beyond health and dentistry

The demands that working parents face when working from home cannot be hidden. And reconciling work and private life is undoubtedly difficult: children turn up unexpectedly at Zoom meetings. Virtual learning consumes a large part of the day.

Even after kids go back to school, According to Melanie Tinto, chief human resources officer at financial technology services provider Wex, companies will continue to look for ways to support working parents.

That can mean additional benefits such as tutoring, financial planning, parenting hotlines, and more mental health benefits for the whole family.

The office makeover

With fewer people coming to the office regularly, companies are likely to re-evaluate their real estate needs.

“Many companies will be given too much office space,” said Chester Spatt, professor of finance at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business. “There is going to be a major reconfiguration.”

And perks like office gyms, dry cleaning pickups and free snacks lose some of their luster as people spend more time in their home office.

“The era of ping pong tables in the office is over,” says Volini.

Companies are likely to focus on creating space for more teamwork and collaboration, rather than solo work.

Dropbox is redesigning its office spaces, and part of that includes removing individual desks to create more space for collaboration.

Patagonia announced plans to transition to a more distributed operating model earlier this year and then sold its new corporate campus in Bellevue, Washington. Instead, the outdoor retailer plans to have multiple satellite locations in the region.

More monitoring

Employee oversight of remote workers may increase as things return to normal, said Roshni Raveendhran, assistant professor of business administration at the University of Virginia.

Employee monitoring software can do things like track productivity, block websites, and track activities, and track keystrokes.

“Businesses, especially given the current reality of working from home, turned to a lot of intensive electronic monitoring and invested a lot of money in this process,” said Raveendhran.

She added that monitoring can be a slippery slope. “Once organizations invest in monitoring tools and initiate new monitoring practices, they will find it easy to continue with those practices when things return to normal.”

To prevent this kind of oversight from hurting employee morale and engagement, Raveendhran said companies should make it “informative” rather than “evaluative.” For example, give employees access to their data first.

“That way, the monitoring itself is seen as a way of getting useful information about someone’s behavior, rather than worrying about them being judged negatively by their bosses.”