‘As zoom as possible’
The consequences of the pandemic seem unlikely to be benign for the future of work. A serious case for hybrid working and circumventing legislature is laid on the table.
The fire that will rage within the post-pandemic will cause germs of inertia and create unexpected winners. One pyrophile plant that might emerge from the fire is legislated remote work. The long-term future of work has changed for the better this year because it has become more digitised. Remote working is not only softening the problem of expensive housing in prosperous cities. It seems to be good for our planet aswell: videoconferencing uses less than a tenth the energy required for in-person meetings once travel and equipment are accounted for. Also a golden age for workers is welcome, it is right to judge economic progress during and after the pandemic by the purchasing power of median wages, not by profits or share prices. Still, companies shun fledgling capital spending when uncertainty is high and the focus of the stimulus lays on protecting households and companies’ balance sheets. Also, more and more research points that post-pandemic working patterns might look different. A survey of thousands of Americans and Europeans concludes that after the pandemic, the average employee would like to work from home nearly half the time while the employer is less keen and expects one-fifth to work from home. In general, it is expected that the attendance of physical workplaces will settle at a level marginally lower than it was before covid-19.
Low-hanging fruit
Some nascent predictions from early in the pandemic will not come to pass because of the shift to a hybrid world work. Remote-only companies will remain a small minority. Juniors will stay be able to pace around the watercooler in hopes of grabbing 5 minutes with the chief executive. And virtual drinks with colleagues sounded fun at first but socialising with strangers via video still feels awkward. Also, a case can be made for ‘corporate life’ where businesses thrive for transparency, integrity and communication. Most of the time these are empty promises but apparently a jump in approval for the culture and values of employees broke out when the pandemic started, especially in employees’ ratings for transparency and communication. Second, a leap in the share of highly engaged employees is seen where covid-19 is the best thing to happen to employer engagement. Third, remote working has forced people to soften up and communicate better: snowflake managers can’t expect their subordinates to pick-up information by osmosis and everybody smiles when you see a relative cooking or cleaning in the background.
Remotis Iustitia
Blurring the line between home and office will have some consequences. It will not only lead to changes in employment law for people who spend less time in office, some political and cultural differences between knowledge workers and the rest might be deepened. The effects of remote working have been asymmetric for the well-heeled vs. so-called essential workers and calls out dismay from a lot people who have for example bought a computer this year for the first time in their life. The rise of working from home also tests the boundaries where employees’ and employers’ responsibilities begin and end. Mostly because the employment law is largely based on the assumption that work takes place at an office or factory. Governments are now starting to discuss who receives income tax from a person whose office is in one region but works from home in another. In addition, a lot of managers are doing a poor job in record-keeping of home-workers’ hours resulting in a poor defense against worker’s claims that they worked more than 40 hours in a week. Overall, people tend to be nostalgic about how great work used to be, prickly about how it is and fearful of what it will become. The promise is therefore as bright as it ever was.
In order to understand more deeply the effects of flexible work on business processes and their productivity, I had the chance to ask a few questions to Harry Haeck, a sharp and insightful investment manager at Smartfin, who is more than familiar with the space of hybrid work.
L: Thanks Harry for doing this! Are you working from home currently? Do you go to the office part/full-time?
H: No problem! My pleasure! I am currently mostly working from the office, but we are completely free to pick our most preferred work location. Working from the office not only allows me to have meaningful in-person interactions with my colleagues, but also makes it easier to disconnect from work when getting back home. Nevertheless, I really enjoy having the flexibility to work from anywhere.
L: Do you think the workplace will go back to what it was pre-pandemic, or are some shifts lasting?
H: I am 100% convinced that the workplace will never go back to what it used to be before the pandemic hit us. More than ever, the employee will (and should) be at the center of each company’s attention. Companies that will force their employees to come back to the office full-time risk losing talent to their more progressive competitors. As such, it will become increasingly important to keep employees satisfied, and rethinking the organisation of the workplace will be an important success factor. As the pandemic has proven that remote work can be as effective as on-site work, more and more companies will provide their employees with greater flexibility and will allow them to work from anywhere at any time. Offices will continue to exist but will be repurposed to meet the changing needs of the employees, fuel their well-being and reduce attrition to competitors.
L: If these shifts do happen, do you have the feeling it is with the purpose of boosting productivity or just a self-defeating attempt to keep up with employees’ desires?
H: As mentioned before, I truly believe that the main goal is to improve the overall employee experience which will in turn boost productivity and — in the end — customer satisfaction. But the benefits of rethinking the workplace go further than this. For example, large organisations with global offices can realise important cost savings from optimising their real estate portfolio: leases can be terminated, floors can be consolidated or energy consumption can be reduced based on actual demand. Companies are now experiencing increased pressure to adopt to the post-pandemic hybrid working environment and in order to be successful these companies will need the appropriate digital tools that can support them in this transition.
L: Are some startups in your scope finding real advantages during this pandemic from remote work? Is it even more interesting for companies in their high-growth phase to experiment with these cross-border and digital models?
H: In my experience, a lot of start-ups were already adopting a remote-first approach long before the pandemic. Offering remote work options is not only cost-effective and efficient, but also key for talent attraction and retention. Competition for top talent is fierce. This is even more true for technical talent. Opting for a remote-first approach allows start-ups to bypass any geographical limitations and expand the addressable talent pool. In a high-growth environment, being able to hire fast and on a global scale is key. Remote work enables this and also provides a cost-effective way to establish a presence in a new geography.
L: Is it easy for a startup to experiment with these models?
H: I believe start-ups are well-suited to adopt these models as they typically have a smaller, more agile organisation with limited or no legacy systems or cultural burdens to overcome. Nevertheless, changing to hybrid working models will come with challenges like for example establishing and articulating a true company culture and sufficiently engaging remote employees. Therefore, there will always be a place for the office — be it in a different form.
L: You are also a big fan of the low-/no-code movement, do you think these startups/platforms are still valuable when automating business processes was mostly based on people working at the office?
H: Yes, low- or no-code platforms have significantly gained in importance over the past few years, certainly in the enterprise segment. These platforms address a key issue in the market: the shortage of qualified developers to meet the current demand in software. The pandemic has only further increased this demand. Through visual modelling, low- or no-code platforms enable business people with limited or no coding skills to build enterprise-grade applications rapidly and intuitively. This allows companies to further reduce their IT backlog and boost innovation.
L: Do you think we were always destined to work online in this automated and digitised world or did we need the push of a pandemic to realize it?
H: I like to believe that we were destined to be able to work from anywhere. The pandemic only accelerated the already ongoing shift to more remote models. Millions of people were forced to work from home overnight. Organisations and employees are now used to this new way of working, which is here to stay — be it in a hybrid form.
L: Are there other trends in the workplace we should know about?
H: It’s all about the employees: productivity, safety, happiness. In order to make sure companies succeed in offering a workplace that improves employee satisfaction, reliable data will be key. Organisations will increasingly require insights on the actual utilisation of their office space. Based on these data-driven insights, workplace managers will be able to make workplace decisions based on facts, rather than poor guesstimates, which will in turn contribute to providing a better employee experience and retaining top talent. Tech vendors who offer scalable solutions to provide these insights seem well-positioned to benefit from the current tailwinds in the market. I’m all for it.
L: Surely I’m for it aswell! Thanks for giving me this clear overview and thanks for your time!
H: The pleasure was mine!
See you next week,
Laurent
