Hybrid Office: The future of work Post-Covid

Hybrid Office: The future of work Post-Covid

When I resigned from my day job as a software engineer back in the year 2018 and founded Megashift Technologies, working from home was a thing only associated with freelance developers and the so called online writers. In fact, I remember one time having a hard time explaining to one of my former colleague that I had actually started a company. To him I was freelancing. I felt misunderstood.

We dint have a budget for renting an office and so we opted to working from home as the best alternative so that we could prolong our runway period. This made sense since our initial capital was from our own savings with no initial investor.

We faced credibility issues because we had no physical office and this affected our revenues because we would miss out on opportunities we obviously are qualified for. To put more weight on this, one of the requirements to win government tender is having a physical address. that’s puts the issue into perspective of how many smes who worked from home would miss opportunities

Fast forward covid-19 happened and businesses across the world were affected in a way some will never recover.  Work from home has become the new normal and businesses that adopted this new normal fast had some sort of seamless business continuity advantage and cushioned themselves against massive losses. They survived.

Vaccines have been developed and now businesses are resuming to physical offices slowly but because of government restriction and guidelines of about 30% office occupancy, not all employees are able to report to work physically majority are still working from home.

This has accelerated the concept of HYBRID OFFICE across the globe.

So, what is a hybrid office?

A hybrid office consists of employees who work in the office, while others work from home, and allows for more freedom over when and where work is completed.

A flexible workplace, the hybrid office means that some workers have to remain in office to do their jobs, some prefer to work in the office, and others still might be required to go into the office on occasion. 

Some organizations have different hybrid office combinations like office sharing where employees are allotted a certain amount of time in an office space, but mostly work from home. 

Since the onset of the pandemic, companies have had to adapt in order to stay up and running. A major part of this adjustment involved going remote. With lockdown orders, organizations had to shift to a WFH model – or at least a partial work-from-home setup. But, as restrictions have loosened, many employees are returning to the office. 

However, capacity limits and certain regional restrictions mean that some staff work in the office while others continue to work remotely. 

While this concept is not new and has been in place for some companies before COVID, a hybrid workplace is quickly becoming the “Next Normal”. A report by Xerox found that more than 50% of businesses worldwide have plans to change their WFH policies in the next year. 

On top of that, the World Economic Forum  recommends a 30% occupancy for offices that have reopened. And those who’ve become used to the benefits of both environments, don’t necessarily want to go back to the office full time.

John Macomber, senior lecturer of business administration at Harvard Business School, estimated that COVID-19 has accelerated the acceptability of working from home by 20 years. 

Today working from home thanks to covid19 is not only more productive but also allows employees to have an all-round experience where they can take care of their social life. Employees are also able to save more time and money spent on commuting every day.

However, working from home has its own challenges which need employers to rethink their HR policies. Some of them could be; how do you monitor employee’s productivity remotely? Does the employee have access to fast internet? Will the employer provide internet allowance? Security of employer information will also be a key concern. Which software tools will be required by the HR in order to manage these people remotely? And so on.

Reposition yourself for the new normal. For your business to remain competitive and relevant post covid its inevitable to adopt cloud technology.


Written By Peter Muchemi
CEO AND FOUNDER
MEGASHIFT TECHNOLOGIES LIMITED
send feedback to
pmuchemi at megashiftltd.com