The post-pandemic day-to-day: finding new, hybrid ways of organizing your work life
In March 2020, the Quebec government announced a first round of confinement measures, which, for most professionals, resulted in a forced vacation or remote work. At the time, we believed the situation would be temporary — at most, a few weeks — but a year and a half later, we must come to terms with the fact that the pandemic has permanently and profoundly transformed the business world.
As we wrote about in our recent article about Entrepôts Dominion’s new transformation, the business world is undergoing tremendous changes.
At a time when everyone’s talking about what “going back to normal” will look like, employers face new challenges and no small amount of uncertainty: What’s the best way to deal with COVID anxiety? How can they encourage employees who have fallen into a new rhythm working remotely to come back into the office on a regular basis? What will the day-to-day look like after over a year of confinement?
Here are a few of our observations and reflections on how to approach post-pandemic work life:
OBSERVATION #1: Remote work will continue to be part of the equation.
The pandemic’s greatest impact on businesses has surely been establishing remote work as a mainstream practice. Before 2020, many employers were less-than-thrilled at the idea of allowing employees to work from home, thinking it would affect productivity.
However, the pandemic has proven the opposite: With the adequate technological tools to support communications, productivity can not only be maintained, but improved when employees are working from home.
Whether they’ve adopted these new work habits willingly or given in to them, employers have had to let go of their preconceived notions about remote work. And now that the plunge has been taken — now that they’ve discovered new ways of organizing the workload — there’s no going back.
Even if employers wanted to go back to the way things were, most employees aren’t ready to turn their backs on the benefits and flexibility of working from home to come back to the office full-time.
In short, remote work is now an integral part of our professional lives and won’t disappear anytime soon. That being said, the fact that remote working is now a common practice doesn’t mean the end of offices –– maybe just offices as we once knew them.
OBSERVATION #2: After a seemingly never-ending period of confinement, many employees are eager to get back into the office.
The long months of confinement have been hard on everyone, employers and employees alike. We put on a brave face, set up our home offices, and got used to a whole new way of doing things because we had to. But one thing’s for sure: the pandemic was a true test of patience!
There’s a lot of talk about the benefits of working remotely — and there are many! — but the fact of the matter is that after all this time spent at home working solo, most employees are excited at the prospect of seeing their colleagues again, of doing group meetings in person, and simply getting out of the house!
Just like it would be a mistake to expect people to come back to the office full-time as if nothing had happened, it would also be wrong to put all your eggs in the “working remotely basket” and forget people’s natural tendency to band together.
OBSERVATION #3: So-called “back to normal” isn’t coming anytime soon.
Experts agree: Even though vaccination is well underway and progressing smoothly, and even if it seems, at times, like normalcy is just around the corner, the shadow of COVID-19 will continue to hover for a while.
Although we sometimes feel like the crisis is mostly behind us, we mustn’t declare victory too prematurely. This pandemic has provided us with enough twists for us to know we need to take variants into account. A year and a half in, we all know that measures in place today could very well change tomorrow. As frustrating and unsettling as it all might be, it shows just how important it is to remain flexible in order to adapt to an ever-changing global crisis.
But another factor must be taken into account: It will take time before our fear of the virus, now profoundly rooted in our psyche after months of confinement, disappears. We’ve all gone through something resembling a collective trauma and many of us are still uncertain, nervous, or downright anxious at the thought of going back into the workplace.
Employers will have to recognize this fact and find solutions to alleviate such anxiety because the fear of the virus won’t magically disappear.
***
In order to meet the challenges of a post-pandemic work life, employers will have to get creative. Here are a few reflections to help you navigate the murky waters of these uncertain times.
REFLECTION #1: Since we don’t know what the future holds, flexibility is the key.
In order to navigate the post-pandemic work life, employers and employees alike will have to find new, flexible solutions.
As we were hit with wave after wave of COVID-19 cases, and again as we adapted to changing restrictions that evolved as we learned more about the virus, and now again as we deal with new variants snaking their way across the world, we’ve learned one thing: No one can predict what the future holds.
In this context, we’ve met many business owners who are struggling to figure out the needs of their business as the long-awaited time to get back to the office draws closer. We can’t blame them: Making decisions in the COVID era is a lot like learning to fly a plane mid-flight!
Here and everywhere in the world, employers are proposing various solutions to try and make the back-to-work period as harmonious as possible, ranging from full-time in-office work to remote work, and everything in between: a hybrid way of organizing work life, with some days spent at home and some spent in the office.
The big takeaway, in this context, is that it’s completely normal to struggle with figuring out your business needs. At a time when hybrid modes of organizing work life seem like an unsolvable puzzle, what businesses crave are flexible spaces capable of adapting to their ever-changing needs.
A multifunctional space combining turnkey offices and a coworking space, like Entrepôts Dominion, can be a solution.
REFLECTION #2: We need to rethink our way of approaching work and learn to adapt.
The pandemic changed everything. Today, employers can no longer afford to be uncompromising when it comes to remote work if their employees can complete their tasks without being on the premises and productivity is unaltered. In fact, according to a Leger survey published by Infopresse, it seems like some employees wouldn’t hesitate to look for another job if their employer was steadfast about coming back to work full-time, without any flexibility regarding working from home, on a regular or occasional basis.
As such, a hybrid mode combining remote and on-site work seems to be the way of the future. The same Leger survey confirms that opinions vary wildly when it comes to imagining what post-pandemic work life will look like:
When asked about their preferences for going back to work, 20% of respondents say they would prefer going back to working on-site only. Conversely, 19% of them would like to work solely from home. In between them, we find 40% of respondents who wish for some form of balance between on-site and remote work, and another 19% who would prefer going into the office only when necessary. [free translation]
With such a wide variety of answers, one thing is certain: We must let go of our preconceptions and set the stage for a more flexible, hybrid mode of thinking about work organization.
REFLECTION #3: Employers will have to rely on the quality of their work environment to convince employees to come back to the office.
A recent article published by Radio-Canada revealed that employees and employers had diverging perceptions of what post-pandemic work life would look like.
Considering that only 20% of respondents to the Leger survey published by Infopresse want to go back to work full-time, employers are facing a steep slope. The thing is, all the things we took for granted before the pandemic are out the window: an employee has no obligation to show up to the office to complete their tasks and maintain productivity.
In this context, in order to convince employees to come back to the office and keep their corporate culture alive, employers will have to rely on quality work environments. In a word, they’ll have to prove to employees that there’s added value for them in working in the office.
And what better way to convince your employees of the added value of on-site work than to offer them an inspiring work environment that goes well beyond their expectations — a work environment that will give them a reason to come into work each morning?