Has working from home had its day? Is the office back in favour now?

?The last three years have seen the unplanned enormous rise of working from home and everything that goes with that; remote meetings, reduced commuting costs, but also the loss of ‘water-cooler’ moments and spontaneity with your colleagues. What has come out of this??Was it just a blip? What might be the future of ‘WFH’? It’s complicated and it’s different from one company to another.?

It depends:

Some industries are just not suited to remote working, especially when work means specialist machinery or physical presence - notably service, retail, manufacturing or healthcare.?However some industries who previously considered themselves in-person only businesses such as legal firms are now allowing a more flexible approach. ?After a high point of nearly 40% of UK workers working from home in March 2021 this fell to around 12% post-pandemic working exclusively from home in Mid 2022, with another 25% of workers working in a hybrid mode, with a?mixture of days in the office and at home. (ONS)

What are the up-sides for businesses?

Having team members working away from the office has benefits for the employer including:

• Reducing overheads by down-sizing the offices. Smaller but smarter offices can support hot-desking for a workforce who are not all in the office on any one day.?This could mean lowering office overheads or upgrading office facilities for a similar cost.
• Competing for candidates.?Good candidates may have an expectation of working remotely at least part of the week. Not offering this facility may make recruitment tougher if you work in a sector with a competitive recruitment market.?A key up-side to this is that if work could be done remotely, it also opens up your geographical catchment area enormously.
• Productivity.?The jury is still debating this, but a study by Stanford University reported a 13% uplift in productivity amongst remote employees.?This came down to:
• avoiding the stress of?commuting,
• not being distracted by colleagues
• ability to work in a quiet environment
• reducing unnecessary meetings
• reduced absenteeism

In the UK the most important benefit for employees is improved work-life balance with 78% of those surveyed giving this as their main benefit of home working (ONS 2022)

What’s wrong with working from home?

Not every company likes their team being out of sight.?Elon Musk scrapped working from home for all Twitter employees in November because he believed it doesn’t work.?Netflix is not a fan, and Apple limits employees to two days per week.

Potential downsides of working from home include:

• Loss of visibility of your employees work.?The ability for employees to shirk because teams aren’t visible is a common concern amongst employers.?
• Distractions at home.?The distractions of colleagues may be reduced but there are other distractions to replace them, especially for those with children off school.
• Isolation and reduced communication.
• Loss of spontaneous discussions, difficulty of collaborating.
• Blurring the lines between work and home life.?It’s easier to work longer hours, especially with no commute, but this isn’t always a good thing.

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Remote working 2.0

The first wave of working from home happened fast due to the Pandemic.?Things have moved on since then.

Hybrid working is nearly twice as common in the UK as remote-only working (mid-2022, ONS).?The part in-office and part at-home ‘Hybrid’ model is popular with employees in both the USA (47% prefer this model) and the UK (58%) preferring it over purely office-based or purely home-based roles.

What does this mean in terms of people in the office??Amongst hybrid workers in the UK they spent an average of?only 1.5 days per week in the office with only 13% choosing to work in the office on a Friday.?Mid-week was the most popular day in the office at 39%(BBC News).?This can cause issues for effective teamworking, making planned co-ordination of office days essential.

Office layouts are also changing as it’s more difficult to justify private office space, and open offices are becoming more common.?Hot-desking is more commonplace although the technology to allow colleagues to work from any location needs to be in place.?Small meetings work well using remote meeting technology, large meetings are better held in-person (Stanford)

Technology implications

Working as a team, particularly in Marketing, Sales, Account Management, Projects Technical Operations and Management, it’s important that colleagues are able to collaborate and update one another with minimal effort or delay.?That was always the case, although achieving it when colleagues are at many locations brings a new challenge. ?A good wide-reaching CRM system will help co-ordinate your teams from new business activity through to project delivery and client retention.?You can also use CRM to report on who is working on what, time logging, project progress, sales, prospecting, customer communications and customer support all within the same secure application.

Cyber-security.?Businesses already deal with security threats, although the trend is upwards in 2023. Having team members working away from the office opens up new security concerns. ?Much of the response to this is better awareness amongst your team of the risks of social engineering and weak password management.?Your technology and the way it is set up also has a role to play in this security management. Your systems can be inherently more secure if they use 2-Factor Authentication and Single Sign-on methods.?Traditional practices of hosting applications on your own servers are much less viable now owing to the much higher burden and costs of maintaining an up-to-date secure platform and the skills to manage it. SaaS (software as a service) offerings with security built in?are an increasingly attractive route.

TOP TIP: In the UK look for partners with ISO27001 certification, a key indication that your partner shows good practice in the way they handle your data.?

?What might the future look like?

It’s starting to look like Hybrid working has a place for businesses and job roles - where it makes sense to do so, and the infrastructure allows for it.

While the future use of Hybrid?or remote working looks positive overall, but the picture changes by industry sector.?According to the ONS, sectors such as Accommodation, Transport, Service, Construction and Retail are least likely to increase their remote workforce whereas Tech, Education, Scientific, Professions and Arts & Entertainment are showing the biggest increases in permanent homeworking.

The office remains in good health, but so does remote working.?For certain sectors there are significant benefits to be gained from using both approaches, provided there is a reasonable balance and the business has the systems in place to take full advantage.

About the author:?Simon Lang works for Gold-Vision CRM and has been working with Uk, European and US Businesses to address these issues over the last 11 years. www.gold-vision.com

Interested in more pieces from Gold-Vision around this topic? Why not check out the following content...

??? Remote prospecting 101:?https://youtu.be/Go4e7Dwm5bU

?? Boost productivity - 6 key gains with CRM:?https://www.gold-vision.com/blog/how-crm-can-improve-productivity/

?? 6 must-have CRM features to boost sales productivity:?https://www.gold-vision.com/blog/6-must-have-crm-features-to-boost-sales-productivity/