Most office workers will never return full time
In response to the very recent findings that ‘most office workers will never return full-time’, please see below an expert response from Sridhar Iyengar, Zoho, who provides some key business tips to preventing a remote/hybrid working strategy from going stale.
One of the findings in the survey suggested that staying at home would adversely affect creativity and collaboration, and this comment essentially sets out to advise businesses on how to avoid that whilst maintaining remote working for the long term.
see the findings here: most office workers will never return full-time
Sridhar Iyengar, MD, Zoho Europe comments:
“Long term remote or hybrid working is a different endeavour to the short term remote working solution established in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, and businesses could run into productivity, collaboration or creativity issues if they do not properly adapt their business model.
First of all, businesses leaders should proactively work to establish an engaging and interactive company culture, which will, by design, boost creativity and collaboration.
In encouraging a positive company culture, senior decision makers should not simply attempt to replicate an office environment from a digital setting, but instead play to the strengths enabled by remote work. This might include increasing personal autonomy for employees, allowing them to take regular breaks away from screens, and shift away from traditional 9-5 working hours. All aspects which can encourage more freedom to think creatively.
Secondly, there are a number of digital tools and applications for remote working that a business can adopt to help aid communication, workflows, in-document collaboration or creativity. Increasing the amount of tools on offer to employees and training them on how to use each one is imperative to increasing usage uptake of these resources, and even improving a workforce’s digital skills.
Finally, pioneering an effective company culture which breeds creativity from a remote environment must start from the top, and business leaders should have open lines of communication with employees about how remote working can be beneficial, whilst simultaneously encouraging virtual brainstorming, independency and remote collaboration.
While some say they would prefer a permanent remote working solution, a mixed model can provide the best of both worlds as social interaction and personal connection in a physical office is crucial for team bonding and does aid smooth collaboration and creativity. Importantly, it also helps the longer term well-being of employees.”
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