What's next for Working From Home?
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Last Monday, the UK officially lifted the remaining COVID restrictions, which means people can both go clubbing and return to their work premises. (Isn’t it exciting!)
Although the government delayed the removal of the restrictions by a month, I am sure most of us have been discussing the post-restrictions working model for a while.
I've been doing some reading on this topic for around a year, and I thought I would share some findings and thoughts about working from home.
It should not be a huge surprise that working from home is not a pandemic induced innovation.
Even before the pandemic, the movement towards working from anywhere (WFA) was brewing, especially among knowledge-work organisations, thanks to rapid advances in personal technology and digital connectivity.
For instance, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) introduced a WFA program in 2012 that required employees to work in the HQ for two years, followed by an optional WFH phase. Employees could live anywhere but have to pay out of pocket for periodic travels back to the HQ (12 days max per annum).
What the pandemic did was allow a global-scale adoption of an unfamiliar way of life without a single test run, thereby accelerating the shift.
I remember feeling lost and resentful having to work from my home at the start of the pandemic, but now, I see the benefits and am not at all eager to give them up. As it turns out, I am not the only one.
An internal survey by Fujitsu, a Japanese IT company, in May 2020 showed that 55% of employees favoured a hybrid working model, and 15% prefered working from the office. The latter result presents a decrease from 74% from the same survey done not long before the pandemic started.
And if we look across the world, we can find similar results.
In the US, the National Bureau of Economic Research found out that out of 30,000 Americans surveyed since May 2020, two-thirds said their perception of WFH improved (Barrero, Bloom and Davis, 2021). Besides, around 32% of respondents said they would prefer not to come back to the office, and therefore, we can see that a significant proportion of people are more open to the idea of working and living in the same place.
I would encourage you to have a read through the Barrero, Bloom and Davis 2021 paper titled "Why Working From Home Will Stick?", or at least through the introduction.
For some people, the WFH experience brought a better work-life balance. They no longer have to spend hours commuting to and from work and therefore can spend more time with their families living in the more pleasant countryside areas while having the same level of productivity as in the office.
Barrero, Bloom and Davis (2021) found that a large proportion of people surveyed (60%) felt more productive while working from home. I must also say that productivity gains were not uniform, and 14% of respondents reported lower productivity. Yet it turned out that we underestimated how much more productive we could be while working from our studies or even kitchen tables or bedrooms - that is around 7.1% more productive. Barrero, Bloom and Davis concluded that if we manage to re-optimise working arrangements after the pandemic, we could see a 4.6% increase in productivity. Most of the productivity boost will come from less time spent commuting.
I think that now is the right place to mention that there are several drawbacks to the current WFH system, such as, knowledge sharing, communication loss and higher cybersecurity concerns. Besides, the most obvious drawback is the loss of social interactions with your colleagues.
As a result, different companies are likely to pursue diverse paths in terms of working arrangements after Covid, depending on the needs of their business model.
A survey in Australia found that business leaders and working experts are currently considering five work models for the future.
Complete return to the office as before the pandemic
Social Hub - which means that employees will use offices only for collaborative work
"Activity-based working". Employees who return to the office will not have an assigned desk and will have to either hot desk or spend time between different workspaces.
A hub system. Employees will be working from smaller satellite offices that are close to where they live. This system implies that employees won’t have to travel long to their main office, but rather will be spread around their cities or countries in local hubs.
Permanent WFH (some tech companies are already testing this system, so we should have some results soon)
These systems do have their flaws. For example, "activity-based working" could hurt productivity and employee satisfaction. Employees will either have to come super early to get a desk or waste time bouncing between different work areas.
To some people, a hub system could sound appealing. But, employees will be spread across different geo-locations, in a way, making it no different to the current WFH set-up. However, people in the same hubs will be able to socialise and collaborate, making it more attractive.
The empirical evidence suggests that it is unlikely for all companies to return to the pre-pandemic nine-to-five workplace model. The way forward will largely depend on a given company's purpose and strategy, and employees' preferences and work styles.