The year 2020 has been particularly tough and uncertain.Covid-19 has blown the carefully knitted human civilization and gave us a herculean task to reshape the world. There are huge challenges and one of the major ones is related to how we work. We can reform the world, not with the outdated concepts but concept which raise concerns for both employers and employees.
Research has shown that even if the pandemic fades, organisations will still boost remote worker productivity.
According to a BCG-Zoom report, 87 per cent of Indian companies are considering making work from home a permanent option. The study also found that the number of workers employed remotely at the companies surveyed has risen by nearly threefold.
Experts Opinion On Making Work From Home A Permanent Option.
In 2020, Dr Jini K Gopinath, Chief Psychology Officer at YourDOST Said “Most working professionals were not prepared to start working from home in the month of March when the pandemic hit us and they were forced to completely withdraw themselves from social settings and asked to work in isolation,”
“One advantage of offices, especially for employees who are working in teams, is that whenever they are stuck, there are people around them to support, help and handhold them but that is not the case when you are working remotely,”
“Work-life balance also went for a toss post the pandemic because there was no proper routine or schedule. Employees are therefore looking forward to coming to the office at least a few days a week.” he further added.
Dr Gopinath points out that “the fear of the virus trumps the feeling of isolation and loneliness that people were experiencing at the beginning of the pandemic.” “People are now settled and want to continue working from home for some time because they get to spend more time with their family members contracting the virus if they venture outdoor”
According to Harvard Business School professor Prithwiraj (Raj), Choudhury work-from-home is not the right model, “You really need to be convinced of why you are embracing this model. … This is the way to attract and retain the best talent. There are real estate costs and other benefits, but those are secondary,” he said, and he added that the competition among employers for the best talent, based anywhere, will be intense on the other side of the pandemic.
“You can’t keep doing things the way you did in the physical world. … You have to invest in a multi-month, maybe multi-year, organizational project, and most importantly, convince senior managers.”
Managers Are More receptive To Flexible Remote Working Models
To evaluate the economic impact of remote work and video communications solutions during the pandemic, Zoom commissioned the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to conduct a survey and economic analysis, focusing on what industries were able to pivot their business processes using video conferencing, resulting in business continuity and even growth during a time of significant economic turmoil.
At the companies surveyed, overall time spent on video conferencing solutions increased 3-5 times. According to the BCG Covid-19 employee sentiment survey from 2020, 70% of managers are more receptive to flexible remote working models than they were before the pandemic. About a third of workers will operate remotely during the pandemic, according to the businesses polled.
HR professionals are gearing up for the future as nothing can be predicted. There have been certain challenges when it comes to our work patterns. But we can’t deny that work from home has given flexibility, and the well-being of employees became the utmost priority for the organisation. People quickly embraced remote work and video conferencing solutions as countries around the world struggled with lockdowns.
The survey portion of the report asked respondents to predict what share of their company’s employees used video conferencing solutions in 2019, 2020, and planned to in 2022, to look at how video communication solutions impact the way people work now and in the future.
The findings were split into two categories: enterprise and small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMB).
The resulting study, which Zoom created based on BCG’s survey data and findings, covers six primary industries and countries around the world, including India, the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, and Germany.
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