The experiments in remote working forced by the pandemic have gone better than expected, agreed digital leaders and C-suite execs at The Economist’s Innovation@Work earlier this month. Users were able to get online quickly. Digital transformation has accelerated in many cases. Productivity has mostly held up, most employees don’t miss commuting, and remote selling has generally proved effective. And while the pandemic obviously has had many deeply negative aspects, it’s almost certainly opened the door for more flexible work patterns in the future, for many employees.
There also seems to be considerable agreement about the broad outlines of what post-pandemic work looks like. Some companies were already fully or mostly remote pre-pandemic. And, according to data presented at Innovate@Work by Nicholas Bloom, Senior Fellow and Professor of Economics at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, about 27 percent of workers would like to work from home (WFH) five days a week.
While some companies and workers want to go back to most employees being co-located in an office most days, many expect to see a hybrid model develop – with people who can do so working from home one to four days a week, with an average of about two days.
All that paints a generally rosy picture, but some speakers and panelists highlighted the challenges of a hybrid model. Dr. Nicola Millard, Principal Innovation Partner and BTIO, BT Enterprise, said that “her anxiety is what I call a horrible hybrid, a meeting with half the people in the office and half remote.” She went on to say that we’ve “learned that digital is the great leveler when everyone is a little box on the screen. The best common ground is probably digital.”
Mike Tumilty, Global COO, Standard Life Aberdeen agreed, adding that the “hybrid world is dependent on a digital first strategy.” It’s a common theme: Companies need to combat remote workers becoming second-class citizens once some come back into offices at least some of the time.
What things haven’t worked as well remotely, to date? These things will probably seem familiar to anyone reading this – and they’re all related. We’re talking close collaboration, serendipitous conversations, building trust in teams, and creating community.
Kedar Deshpande, the CEO of Zappos talked of missing the water cooler, because you cannot “get the pulse, the direct eye contact, the touch. Figuring out how to build the camaraderie and build the trust in the virtual world remains a quest.” Ruth Cotter, senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, Human Resources and Investor Relations at AMD, noted that remote “has elongated our onboarding cycle… to immerse people into our culture.”
In addition, in a common theme, Cotter added that “Ad hoc conversations are very important and they have to be forced.
