Five ways to keep up with an evolving workforce.
As local companies scrambled to go digital and shift to hybrid or remote working in the spring of 2020, a re-defined way of working was ushered in out of necessity; dynamically changing the world of work.
Prior to the onset of the pandemic, the prevailing corporate belief was that - corporate offices situated in a prime real estate area with an open-plan design, are key to employee engagement, retention, and productivity. This belief was debunked by several studies, including PwC Malta’s COVID-19 Remote Working Experiment which collected insights from over 850 local employees and found that most employees felt their productivity increased through remote working. It was also shown that most employees have an interest in maintaining some form of remote work once the pandemic recedes.
The survey highlighted that 51% of employees see themselves splitting their time between working from the office and working remotely in a post pandemic environment.
Employees have since continued to prove that remote working is not only welcomed, but possible and that it does not negatively impact their productivity. However, what is also clear is that some level of presence at the office is required to enhance team collaboration, creativity and social wellbeing. Therefore, a shift to a hybrid working model is very likely here to stay.
1. An Engaged Remote Workforce
An element which is crucial for remote or hybrid ways of working to become a mainstay for local organisations, is trust. Some organisations which had not previously catered for a remote workforce, innately were more suspicious of this way of working, as overnight they lost their ability to physically oversee their employees. However, a lack of trust can pose significant and long lasting effects on the workforce - it can impact employee’s productivity and engagement which are crucial success factors for an effective remote workforce. Another crucial element for a successful and engaged remote workforce is continuous communication amongst employees, both amongst themselves and with management. Such communication is key for community building as relationships are built and strengthened through daily interactions amongst colleagues. Communication is also essential to ensure that employees working remotely do not feel left out.
Our recommendation
We encourage organisations and teams to define routines for continuous communication, including daily or weekly check-ins by management. These can focus on providing and gathering project status updates and feedback, ensuring their social wellbeing, as well as, relationship building.
- The organisation should also closely monitor engagement levels by conducting routine engagement and satisfaction surveys to monitor the pulse of their workforce and course corrective actions in time in order to maintain an engaged workforce.
2. Designing the Office of the Future
Organisations with a flexible working model can also optimise their real estate footprint which can result in an optimisation of real estate and related overhead costs required for the day-to-day running of an office however there would also be a dire need for technological investment to facilitate this way of working.
To work optimally, a hybrid workforce needs to enhance its social connection and collaboration.. It is believed that these social connections and collaboration needs will also lead to a redesign of office spaces.
Our recommendation
We recommend that the real estate footprint is reviewed and wherever possible, redesigned, to create the office of the future which is above all else a creative and collaborative space. Since not all employees will be using the space at the same time,organisations may choose to transform seating into bookable unassigned seating with less square footage than a conventional desk arrangement. As offices become more of a place for collaboration and creativity, more space may need to be dedicated to huddle rooms, hubs and meeting rooms with dedicated technology to facilitate employee interaction.
3. Investing in Technology
At the onset of the pandemic, organisations adopted tools and technologies to tackle their immediate technological needs, both in terms of tools required to communicate and in the technological infrastructure needed to facilitate remote work.
Such communication tools can include instant chat platforms, and investing in teleconferencing tools in all meeting rooms to facilitate collaboration between the team members working from the office and those connecting remotely.
Our recommendation
If remote work will be sustained in a post pandemic world, a systematic approach should be adopted, featuring standardised policies and processes on sharing tools and technologies which are convenient for employees to use, yet are robust enough to account for the heightened cybersecurity needs of an organisation with a remote workforce.
4. Performance Management for a Remote Workforce
While the benefits associated with this redefined way of working are ample, it does not come without its challenges and disadvantages. Another challenge organisations may face is gauging employee performance. While employee performance may have previously been measured by time dedicated to that task, and on a more subconscious level by an employee’s visibility at the office, this is changing.
As highlighted in PwC’s Annual HR Pulse Survey 2020, 60% of respondents stated that the way employee performance has been measured has changed by becoming more focused on output, and less so focused on employee visibility at the office.
Our recommendation
As this shift in performance management occurs, and organisations start to focus more on employee output rather than the number of hours worked, organisations may need to adapt their performance management frameworks including the criteria and KPIs on which performance is assessed. They may also need to adopt specialised tools to monitor and track employee output in the place of older time monitoring technology. This shift will also require a change in the culture of the organisation to ensure alignment to the new performance mindset.
- We also recommend that employee performance management evolves to account for certain skills which became necessary during the pandemic; such as digital skills, the skill of adaptability, and embracing change. These shifts in performance management will require the organisation to upskill their management team to assess employee performance based on changing performance management criteria.
5. Flexible Working Model
As organisations continue to realise that the quality of work is not as heavily dependent on ‘where’ the work is done, they may also be inclined to redesign ‘when’ the work is done as they start rethinking the typical work day. Flexible ways of working have already gained certain traction, as seen in management strategies such as ‘ROWE – Results Only Work Environment’ which moves away from work conducted at an office for an arbitrary amount of time to a focus on clear and measurable results employees should achieve in measuring success.
PwC Malta’s Annual HR Pulse Survey conducted in 2020, revealed that 47% of respondents planned to implement greater flexibility in work hours and move away from a traditional eight-hour work block.
Our recommendation
We encourage organisations to start by assessing their workforce’s needs and wants, and to move away from a one-size-fits-all model - what flexibility are employees after? Is it flexibility in terms of where they work or when they work? The needs of the organisation also need to be analysed to assess the feasibility of such working models.
- As we slowly move into a post-pandemic world of work, organisations should take full advantage of this opportunity to reconsider their work model by evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of transitioning towards or maintaining new ways of working. This may involve reassessing the functionality of their office space and adapting the design accordingly, as well as considering providing employees with further flexibility in terms of where work is done, and possibly when work is done. This will lay the foundation for a new World of Work which champions flexibility, collaboration, innovation, and productivity.
As we slowly move into a post-pandemic world of work, organisations should take full advantage of this opportunity to reconsider their work model by evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of transitioning towards or maintaining new ways of working. This may involve reassessing the functionality of their office space and adapting the design accordingly, as well as considering providing employees with further flexibility in terms of where work is done, and possibly when work is done. This will lay the foundation for a new World of Work which champions flexibility, collaboration, innovation, and productivity.
