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The media is full of articles related to remote working and thoughts on the future of UK working practices. From Goldman Sachs headlines of all employees to return to the office and the head of Morgan Stanley, James Gorman commenting “If you can go into a restaurant in New York City, you can come into the office.”, what does all of this mean for the rest of us?
Contrast these views with news of Nationwide announcing staff can work from anywhere and it’s no surprise many UK businesses are not sure which way to go. Many CEOs like Sundar Pichai of Google and alphabet are looking to implement a hybrid approach.
So, there are a few options being considered by many now:
- Go back to pre-pandemic business as usual
- Fully embrace remote working
- Choose hybrid working
There are lots of articles debating the advantage and disadvantages of each of these options, such as this Guardian article.
- Going back to the office
Nothing beats face to face collaboration and contact with your colleagues, not forgetting the boost needed to the micro economies surrounding many of our businesses. The gyms, the shops and the sandwich delivery vans all need your business.
- Fully embrace remote working
Financially, deciding to work entirely remotely may bring benefits for the employer and employee. Office building costs could reduce and for the employee the commuting costs for many would be a welcome reduction in expenditure.
Something to consider here is that for this to be successful, its our working practices that might need to change.
- Choose hybrid working
For many the thought of hybrid working enables the employee to have the best of both worlds. The flexibility that comes with remote working and the in person social interaction that comes with working in an office. For the employer, if hybrid working is new, there may be challenges. Trusting staff, onboarding new starters, collaboration, staff wellbeing and engagement are just a few.
The British Chamber of Commerce reference staggering differences in approaches between B2C and B2B organisations, with 80% of B2B offering remote working, compared to 54% of B2C.
The big question is how is this different to working practices pre-pandemic? Is pre-pandemic business as usual really 100% of your office staff in the office? Here at Sorce, many of our clients have seen a gradual transition to hybrid working, long before Covid 19 took hold, and we are very much the same.
For many of us, as employees we have found a better work life balance but crave some time in the office to see colleagues, take a break from the freezing video calls and sometimes you just can’t beat face to face collaboration. We are all different though and what has worked well for some, has not worked so well for others.
Whatever you are considering for your business, rest assured you are not alone. There is some comfort in knowing there is no one right way and in fact it can be a gradual transition to whatever works best for your business and your employees.
If you are considering hybrid working or returning to the office as you did pre-pandemic, there are some practical challenges you need to resolve, such as how do you help your employees physically get into your office safely? For this, you might need to limit numbers, rearrange your floors and desks and decide on your company approach. Will you have team days? Will everyone be able to book any desk? How will they know who is in on what day? How can you manage all of this safely?
Desk booking solutions, such as Juggl Desks are becoming the new must have office software. Juggl Desks can
help your employees to embrace a hybrid workplace by:
- Providing a touchless desk booking option
- Enabling employees to hot desk easily by location, facilities and date
- Easily see who else is going to be in the office on a chosen date
- Quickly book desks for team meetings and collaboration
For the employer Juggl Desks can help you:
- Ensure your office is Covid secure
- Give insight as to how your offices are being used
- See which desks are being used most often
- Learn how employees are adapting to hybrid working
- Tell wWhich days of the week are most popular
Finding a desk booking solution that works for you
Juggl desks provides a simple, quick and easy to create, cloud-based solution and what’s more we are offering Juggl desks at no cost until 2022. If you would like to see Juggl in action, please email hello@sorce.co.uk, we will be delighted to show you how we can support your return to work.
