The New Working Order

Office dynamics—remember those? Reading a room, not something easily done on Zoom, is a skill that allows for the cross-pollination of intuition and a business savvy mindset to get better results and a better culture. Water cooler interactions help create familiarity among employees who don’t work on the same projects or even the same department. Again—workplace culture and a sense of belonging.

The pandemic shifted everything about how we live our lives. One of the most profound shifts was in the barriers that had prevented remote work. Now we have greater cultural acceptance, more technical support, and growing workplace structures that enable flexibility about where work takes place for many people.

Bottom line—the remote working paradigm is not going anywhere. Millennials, who value work-life balance perhaps even more than workplace relationships, really like working from home (WFH). Management, especially those from Gen X or Boomer generations, like having their people nearby.

What will the New Working Order look like?   

Remote vs. On-Site Trends

Remote work in white-collar jobs has not changed much since 2020, and in some fields, upwards of 70% of workers continue to work from home. There are many reasons that 35% of full-time employees say they prefer exclusive remote work, ranging from coronavirus fear to personal preference. While health concerns are alleviating, the number of workers preferring to telecommute has remained elevated and seems to be the preference for significant number of employees going forward.  But what if that’s not what’s best for the company (or even the employee)?

Pooled data taken from our clients and prospective clients as to future telecommunication trends looks like this: 

10% forsee a fully remote future

40% anticipate a fully on-site future

50% are aiming for a hybrid, with an average of 3 remote days out of 5

Factors that Play into Decisions about a Hybrid WFH Model

We learned that for the 50% of our clients who foresee a hybrid WFH model, the way it might be executed depends on certain factors.

Team collaboration. Collaboration in a fully remote work environment is definitely possible. Platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Slack make staying connected easy. However many employers and managers favor at least some hybridization of remote and on-site to maximize successful collaboration.

Cross-functional coordination. A 2015 article in the Harvard Business Review reported that 75% of the cross-functional teams they looked at were not actually that functional. There has been much written since then about how to improve this kind of inter-team/inter-departmental collaboration, especially since the beginning of the pandemic, and necessity is often the mother of figuring things out rather quickly. Still, we believe that in-person work environments improve this kind of complex teamwork across divisions.

Creativity. Does creativity within a team require physical proximity? Opinions among other experts vary widely, but the fact remains that the need for creative teamwork will influence on-site requirements in a hybrid model.

What Can We Expect?

WFH will continue forever in some form or another. The interplay among worker preferences, what is best for the company, and manager preferences will determine what this looks like in each company and for each department.

From our perspective, there are some things to keep in mind.

1. Fully remote work by all employees is probably not the best long-term solution. Lack of visibility can impede employees career mobility. In addition, some amount of in-person learning, and cooperation must occur for team members to successfully handle stretch projects.
2. For the execution of certain tasks in the day-to-day aspects of the job that take place outside the team environment and to provide flexibility and job satisfaction, a certain amount of remote work is a great idea.
3. If your company decides to eliminate all remote work and move to in-person work exclusively, prepare for some turnover—probably between 20 to 30% in the first year resulting from employee pushback.
4. There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to deciding how the new working order is going to look. You understand your business better than anyone—your team, the demands on your company, the needs of your clients, and the importance of workplace culture. You will need to look at all those factors to make your best decision.

The needs of the employee and the organization’s needs must both be considered, valued, and supported. That probably means some version of a hybrid remote/on-site model to keep projects on track, clients happy, and workers fully committed.

The technology is there to ensure teams continue to collaborate and communicate. Leverage that technology for all its worth but remember that nothing beats face-to-face interaction and those impromptu encounters at the coffee pot that lead to the percolating of new ideas no one ever saw coming.

Pointedly, an April 2022 Stanford study confirmed that a hybrid WFH strategy substantially reduced quit rates (35%) and improves hiring at zero cost (productivity and employee performance was unchanged). Anecdotal evidence of our client and candidate conversations at Impactful Resources echoes this research.

Our advice? Offer a hybrid WFH strategy in your future business model to ensure attracting and retaining the best available talent.  This will ensure the delivery of your best possible service or product and move your team, their ideas, your mission, and your whole business forward.