Workers have ignored Sunak’s call to go back to city centre offices and stayed at home since the lifting of government advice on July 19, with Remit Consulting revealing that only 11.7% of workers were in the office at the end of July.
This unveils that much uncertainty amongst employees and employers still remains around the future of the workplace, with data by Future Strategy Club revealing that 57% of workers still do not want to return to their 9-5 role, despite lockdown restrictions fully lifting. Further to this, 58% want flexibility in their current role, with 43% agreeing that this is now the most important thing when choosing a job.
Future Strategy Club believes that Covid has fundamentally changed the power structure between employee and employer. This means flexibility and hybrid working will now not just attract and retain the best talent, but will be key to the longevity of a business. Firms must now restructure how they think about their culture and ways of working, switching to a hybrid model to meet employee demands and build a team based on trust, the new currency in building teams that can help organisations work in disrupted times.
Justin Small discusses:
“Employers need to understand that Covid has fundamentally changed the power structure between employee and employer. The diktat that working from home is less productive has been proved completely false – in fact, Covid has proven that working from home is more productive. Therefore, the talent is now dictating hybrid working terms to potential employers, and employers need to restructure how they think about their culture and ways of working.
Any large organisations that don’t trust their employees, and believe that if their employees are not at their desks they are not working, will struggle in this new post-pandemic world. The top-down command & control organisations have ignored the push for more horizontal hub and spoke organisational designs (where teams have more ground level decision making power) – but the chickens are coming home to roost as they find themselves with a distributed workforce due to Covid – and it’s horizontal or bust!
What is now key is hiring strategies and processes – these need to be recalibrated to hire employees that are more self-directed and independent thinkers – that can be trusted to make decisions. And line managers need to be retrained to enable talent to successfully deliver, rather than dictate how they work and what they should do. Trust is the new currency in building teams that can help organisations work in disrupted times.”
