COVID-related workplace public health guidance continues to be “If you can work from home, you should” and goes on to state: “Employers should consult with their employees to determine who needs to come into the workplace.”
A way forward many employers are exploring to keep staff safe and ensure business needs are met is through, where the nature of the work permits, the introduction of hybrid working.
This aims to realise the considerable benefits of employees working both remotely and in the workplace.
A properly consulted on policy is critical to the success of hybrid working and will stave off the prospect of numerous individual flexible working requests as many employees seek to continue the benefits of working from home.
Some employees are understandably reluctant to return to the workplace after successfully working from home during the pandemic. Many have experienced the benefits from a better life/work balance, through more manageable caring arrangements, as well as the time and cost savings by not commuting.
Most will have been more productive by being able to focus on their work without colleague or customer interruption. A few will understandably be apprehensive about the health risks.
So, why should employees come back to the workplace and for what purpose?
Hybrid working expert Gemma Dale identifies tasks requiring concentration and focus, and little or no dependency on colleagues, as ideally suited for working from home. Meetings focused on information sharing can readily be conducted virtually.
However, tasks requiring collaboration and ideas creation, and meetings requiring discussion, are best done in the workplace.
While there is evidence that working from home has enhanced individual productivity, the evidence is now emerging that wider productivity levels are suffering.
A recent article in Forbes Magazine suggests that performance and productivity, which rely on engagement, commitment, learning and growth, and innovation, have suffered because of absence from the workplace.
Working from home also takes its toll on employees. Recent Microsoft Ireland research found that one third of hybrid workers struggle to disconnect from work and are lonelier, while one quarter feel demotivated or uninspired.
And, from a wider productivity perspective, almost half of workers find it harder to build trust with colleagues in a remote or hybrid environment and more than a third said that their team culture had deteriorated.
Therefore, the challenge for us all as leaders, is to build an inclusive organisational culture, which embraces the benefits of hybrid working and achieves the right balance between time working from home and the workplace.
:: Don Leeson is chief executive of the Labour Relations Agency. It has published a Practical Guide to Hybrid Working, which is free and is available at www.lra.org.uk.
