Three steps to ready your business for the future of work

For employees around the world, the gradual return to work is far from back to business as usual. Forrester predicts that 70 per cent of companies will pivot to an ‘office plus anywhere’ work hybrid model in which at least some employees can work anywhere they want for part of the week while spending the remaining days in an office.

Just as the workplace itself is changing shape, so too is the working style, technology and management demands of the people within them. Lower talent attrition and better recruitment successes will be driven by the improved employee experience of hybrid work. For employees, offers of increased flexibility and autonomy and lessened commutes will prove an attractive draw. As a result, while the benefits of anywhere-work may appear small at first, the compound effect will accrue over time.

This is a model that even the most reluctant leaders need to embrace to capture an array of business benefits. And yet, jumping quicker than your company is ready for can be just as damaging as not adjusting at all.

Not all companies are ready to seize all the benefits of hybrid work immediately, but there are four steps that leaders can take to determine both how ready they are and what areas require investment to fully support hybrid work.

Ask the right questions – then ask them again

Which roles or functions are suited to anywhere-work? What percentage of employees worked flexibly or remotely pre-pandemic? What percentage of employees could potentially work remotely long term? What’s the relationship between knowledge and frontline workers? How will customers be impacted?

These questions will help to assess your potential readiness. Be aware that the answers might change over time or be impacted by environmental influences, so they need to be regularly revisited.

Reinforce key values at all times

To drive a culture that supports hybrid work, you must reinforce key values. Employees must be able to adapt easily, enabling them to adopt new tools, processes and values at work. They must feel happy and proud to work for your company.

Burnout is common among remote workers, so companies need to be alert to the signs and focus on programmes that encourage balance, as well as investing in engagement and motivation initiatives to keep teams connected and charged.

Stay true to your business goals

To gain maximum benefit from anywhere-work, your business needs to align with the goals that will drive value in the first place. In the context of your business, how important are goals relating to employee performance and retention, customer experience, recruiting the best talent, cutting office rental costs and securing business continuity? Then ensure you have metrics in place to measure, track and understand them over time.

Equip your business for anywhere-work

For hybrid work, it’s critical to reach a level of technological maturity around key tools, keeping employee experience front and centre. Leaders should focus on collaboration tools, conference room technologies, cloud and software-as-a-service and security technologies to underpin successful distributed work. Furthermore, employees must have access to personal technologies such as laptops, webcams and 4G/5G to equip them for success.

Ultimately, assessing your readiness will be the start of a conversation among leaders and employees that defines the best path forward for returning to the workplace. But don’t think of it as a one-time event – this is going to be an ongoing work in progress.

Forrester’s Anywhere-Work Calculator is a tool to help to assess factors such as the percentage of employees who can potentially work remotely and how technologies stack up in terms of collaboration and security. Ultimately, organisations that do this right will be the most productive and empathetic, creating a workplace that drives deep employee engagement and delivers on business goals.

by JP Gownder, Vice President and Principal Analyst, Forrester