Hybrid Work To Become the New Remote Work in 2021

December 24, 2020

cxotoday

Founder, Director of Avaali Solutions Pvt Ltd, Ms. Srividya Kannan’s interview published in cxotoday on the future of the IT Industry.

Many companies are planning a new combination of remote and on-site working, giving rise to a hybrid work model in which employees can work from the home, office, or anywhere.

Historically, organizations have been reluctant about letting their employees work from home, despite studies proving time and again that flexible and remote working increases productivity and employee satisfaction. The conventional wisdom had been that offices were critical to productivity, culture, and winning the war for talent. Needless to say, companies competed intensely for prime office space in major urban centers. In fact, most people took pride in the fact that they commuted to their gift-wrapped offices every day, regardless of the type of work they do.

The going was good… and then the global pandemic hit and everything changed.

People were forced to work from home (WFH) almost overnight and flexible work models replaced traditional ones. In fact, over the last ten months or so, there has been a seismic shift in how people think about their work and workplaces. This ‘new normal’ as pundits call it, became a stark reality of 2020.

While news websites are flooded with stories around remote working in recent times, it is important to understand the ‘next to normal’ and how the trend on remote and flexible work would pan out in the coming months.

In the last few weeks, at CXOToday, we spoke to some of the experts in the tech industry to get an insight on what we can expect from remote work going forward, and how technology can transform the remote working experience and workplace behavior. Let us hear from the experts.

“The pandemic has taught us several lessons. One such significant lesson is how people can work remotely and yet deliver superior performance working independently or within teams. Several enterprises struggled in the initial phases of the lockdown with the high technology dependence and related investments, technology training for employees to work better, and related change management issues that remote working forced us upon. But in the end, people did eventually deliver and accepted that this is going to be the norm. 2021 will see hybrid working models with several employees now preferring remote work citing better productivity and flexibility. Enterprises will invest in building remote-friendly cultures as they continue to heavily rely on technology for enabling productive work and a better employee experience. There will be an increasing focus on significantly strengthening cyber-security and compliance practices to protect the business. Managers will continue to focus on working with peers and teams to identify what is and what isn’t working and make continuous improvements to deliver superior employee engagement. Work from anywhere will be here to stay.” – Srividya Kannan, Founder, Director – Avaali Solutions Pvt Ltd