Remote working - changing the face of work

2-3min read:

Remote working has been a reality for a huge swath of employees in all industries around the world. I’ve listened and read a whole host of analysis on the subject, with a large amount taking opposite views - remote working is good or bad for your mental health, Employee productivity goes up or down, company culture can be improved or negatively affected by remote working.

The truth is until we’re a lot further down the road, the real outcomes of covid on employees well being, satisfaction and productivity may not be known. What is certain is that remote working and more work flexibility is here to stay.

Companies and employees have found that many jobs can be carried out effectively from home and that opens up new possibilities.

From an employees perspective, they may well be getting excited at the prospect of continuing to work from home or having the ability to pick and choose the days they spend in the office. Less commuting, more focused working sprints, more time with family, less spend on convenience food, trips to the coffee shop and transportation, may well be appealing.

From a company perspective, they can expand without the need to relocate, as perhaps 20-30% of employees aren’t in the office at different times over the working week. Remote working offers the opportunity to bring more women back into the workforce, traditionally the child carers, with flexible hours to fit around school or creche runs etc and no commuting eating into the ability to take on a role.

As importantly for companies will be the fact that if the job can now be done remotely, then it can be done from anywhere. Therefore their potential candidate pool to fill these roles has just gone up exponentially. It’s perhaps something that employees or candidates haven't considered, competition for roles may just have got a whole lot hotter!

It also means the gig economy will continue to thrive, as projects/tasks traditionally carried out in the office can now, having been trialled during covid, be completed off site and off balance sheet, reducing the overall workforce.

They’ll certainly be winners and losers from this drive towards flexible or remote working. It will be interesting to see how companies' people strategies develop. 2021 is already shaping up to be a year of massive insights into the effects of covid on the workforce and its make up.