Business
With the vaccine rollouts well under way in many countries, the talk has turned to the reopening of the economies. One of the biggest issues facing many entrepreneurs, is the return to the workplace. At the start of the pandemic, millions of office workers were sent home to work remotely. Once the initial technical issues were resolved, everybody seemed to profess that they are never going back to the office and their future was a zero commute remote work environment. So confident that this new structure would be the new forever normal, many moved out of the big cities to rural or small communities, never expecting to commute again. Unfortunately, this might be a decision that they come to regret. Understandably, no one knew if or when a vaccine would be developed. However, in less than two years many countries are experiencing high vaccination rates and are slowly reopening much of their economies as life returns to some form of normalcy. So, what’s next? Well for starters, offices will begin to reopen, and people will be required to show up for work. Just wait for the howls of injustice, that after more than a year of remote work, employees will be required to be physically present at their place of work. But, the interesting thing is that this vocal group may be in the minority. Research Recent research from KPMG is revealing that the majority of employees want to return to the workplace stating they “miss the social interaction, the buzz, the creativity of being at work”. However, they do want some form of hybrid arrangement combining the opportunity of working remotely part of the week. Interestingly, another survey conducted by Accenture of financial firms in the US shows that 80% of executives want their employees to return office at least 4 to 5 days a week. Clearly there’s a misalignment between employee and employer expectations. Just to muddy the waters a little more, EY conducted another survey, whereby more than half the employees surveyed around the world would consider leaving their job post covid-19, if they are not afforded some form of flexibility in where and when they work. This juxtaposition could prove quite interesting for both parties. When you consider that most employers want people in the office, where exactly are those employees willing to leave their present positions going to go? Lots of discussion Apparently, HR consulting firms and employment lawyers have been exceptionally busy over the past 18 months. For the most part they been dealing with work from home challenges many businesses have had to manage, and it doesn’t look like it will subside any time soon. The new challenge is how to deal with the return to office post Covid-19. But, depending on the jurisdiction, employees may not have much choice as to where they work. According to some employment lawyers, employers have the right to expect their employees to return to the office as the pandemic was an aberration or a departure from the norm and didn’t change the employment contract. Granted, for some businesses, working from home may not be an issue and therefore will continue the practice. However, other employers will be less open to continuing the work from home concept. This is primarily because the pandemic has shown that communications, productivity, and creativity has suffered because of remote working. In SBM #89, Work From Home I related how IBM recalled 11,000 of their employees back to the office 18 months after sending them home to work remotely. They realized that they were missing out on the innovation that happened through in person interactions. So, I think there’s an opportunity to learn from their experience. Now what? So, the question to small business owners is what are you going to do? This question needs to be dealt with now and should not be put off, because once the economies reopen, you may be just too busy to give this the necessary thought. The best advice I can give any employer is to decide w...