At first, many thought the stoppages would last for a few months. But a year later, millions of workers are still working remotely.
The pandemic has forced a large segment of the global workforce to undergo a remote work experiment on a scale never seen before – and much has changed in the past 12 months.
The boundary between our work and our personal life has become blurred. Working at the kitchen table has become commonplace and, for parents, juggling the virtual school when trying to meet work deadlines has become a daily challenge.
Employers were also forced to become more nimble. They had to loosen restrictions on where employees can work, equip them with the tools to do so, and support them professionally and personally.
Now that more people are being vaccinated and children are going back to school, things look like they are going to go back to “normal”, but the workplace as we knew it can change forever.
And, of course, some companies will want everyone to come back.
No matter what the approach, workers and employers can expect some bumps along the way as they navigate to the next phase of this great work experiment.
“Many companies were successful working remotely in 2020, largely because everyone was doing it – there was no built-in preference for office workers or stigma against remote workers,” said Andrew Hewitt, senior analyst at market research firm Forrester. “The hybrid will make managing that difference more difficult.”
The initial shock
On the business analytics website Yelp, the IT department had to work hard to find around 3,000 laptops for employees, mainly sales employees, when it was remote in March.
“We’ve always had spare laptops, but not 3,000,” said personnel director Carolyn Patterson.
Coveo, an artificial intelligence software company, emptied its offices in early March 2020. With more than 600 employees worldwide, employees were used to working in different time zones and locations. Still, collaboration and face-to-face meetings are an important part of the company’s culture.
“We were a company that was in the habit of meeting; literally, transporting people around the world … to meet. People need to interact in person,” said CEO Louis Tetu.
From the beginning, the company focused on ensuring that employees were well-equipped in their home offices, allowing items such as technology equipment and noise-canceling headsets to be accounted for, in addition to offering subsidies for high-speed internet. And it didn’t come cheap.
“That meant we were going to give you the best chair, the best screen … which cost us seven digits overnight,” said Tetu.
The cost, he said, was worth it. “You can’t build a big company if your people are not doing well.”
But it wasn’t just discover the logistics of how to work from home that challenged employers and their workers at the start of the pandemic. There was the mental and emotional cost that it cost too.
“We recognize that our employees came to us looking for guidance for everything: the pandemic, how they lived, wanting to know what was safe and what was not safe,” said Fran, executive vice president and chief of staff, director of policy and Cisco Katsoudas goals. “It became very natural for us to have meetings where we had doctors and mental health professionals and discussions about business strategy, all in the same meeting.”
To help employees deal with the changes and uncertainties of the pandemic, some companies have increased their benefits, offering things like free counseling, childcare and office facilities stipends and more days off.
But when it comes to the post-pandemic workforce, remote work will no longer be considered a special privilege.
“It is no longer: ‘Do you offer remote work?’ But, you offer this with enough organization support so that I can be as successful as the people who work in the office? ”Said Hewitt.
He expects about 60% of companies to offer a hybrid working model, while 30% of companies will be back in the office and 10% will be completely remote.
Now here comes the difficult part
Despite the challenges, Hewitt says the past year has been an easy one compared to what will come next.
“We have been working remotely in the easy way. We all do the same thing, everyone has equal access to information and promotions,” said Hewitt. “It will get more difficult in 2021 with the hybrid.”
Inequality between remote and in-house workers can become a problem among hybrid workforces. People in the office spend more time face to face with the boss, which can lead to better relationships, greater access to information and key responsibilities.
“There was the stigma [before the pandemic], that remote workers were less productive and career-focused, “said Hewitt.
Training managers on how to equally incorporate remote and face-to-face workers into meetings and decision-making, as well as how they communicate, is a critical step towards equalizing the workforce.
At Yelp, most employees worked in the company’s offices before the pandemic. The company is now giving most employees the option to continue working remotely or to go to the office a few days a week.
“We are going to be very careful that managers do not change to the standards that you need to come to the office for an important meeting, as this is not possible if people move,” said Patterson.
Workers who move to areas with significantly higher or lower labor costs may have their wages adjusted.
The company created a three-tier system to deal with changes in the remuneration of workers who move.
“If you are moving from a level one to a level three location, you will have a reduced salary, but we still want to be competitive,” said Patterson.
Coveo also plans to give employees the flexibility to choose where to work, but has there are no plans to require everyone to be 100% remote.
“It is very inhumane,” said Tetu of companies that are becoming totally remote and eliminating offices. “I think Slack and Zoom are great, but there is no equivalent to bringing people together and promoting a common culture.”
He is looking forward to the day when he can safely gather his team.
“We are going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on airline tickets to bring everyone together. There is no doubt. There are huge gains and benefits in terms of cohesion.”
As things start to get back to normal and services like childcare reopens regularly, employers are likely to become more rigid with their remote work requirements, according to Hewitt. This may mean requiring the employee to have a daycare center in effect during working hours or by standardizing a time zone in which everyone works.
“The other thing that comes up with ‘work anywhere’ is tax laws,” said Hewitt. “This can be complicated and complex.”
The shrinkage desk
Businesses are also likely to need less office space, as more employees will start working remotely.
Tetu expects his company to use about 70% of the square footage he did before the pandemic.
To meet the needs of a hybrid workforce, office designs are also likely to look different.
Not every worker will need a designated table. Collaborative spaces are likely to become a higher priority so that more team-focused work can take place in the office, while individual work will be done at home.
Yelp is also considering reducing the size of its office space, according to Patterson.
“As our rentals come along, we will start to reduce our footprint,” she said, adding that Yelp office spaces could be redesigned to include fewer desks and focus more on collaboration.
Even if more people are vaccinated, experts warn that it will take time to return to any sense of normalcy in to work.
“There will be a long tail here, there is no doubt about it,” said Tetu. “There is a lasting psychological impact of this. Life has been shaken up a bit, and there are several ramifications of that. “