What is the future of the workplace?

 
This last year and half have been filled with uncertainty whether you are a company owner or an employee working for someone else. During March 2020, most workers received an email from Human Resources saying, “the office is closing down, we will be working from home for the next two weeks.” As many of you know, that two weeks turned into more than a year of remote work. Now, with covid vaccines readily available and the spread under control, companies are trying to figure out what to do with employees or how to tell them to come back to the office.
Of course, there are some industries and jobs that can not be done from home like delivery drivers or machinists, but for jobs like sales and marketing, what is the future of those positions?
According to Gartner’s research, 82% of company leaders intend to permit remote working some of the time as employees return to the workplace. Of that 82% of company leaders, 47% said they are allowing employees to work remotely full time going forward.  This more hybrid and more remote workforce brings new challenges, specifically, determining the structure by which people will work together to get their jobs done.

Some companies that are welcoming back employees are instituting a wide variety of safety measures including: limited face-to-face meetings, providing protective equipment, creating physical distance in the workplace, and staggering when employees are in the office. Some major organizations like Twitter, Square, Facebook, and Shopify were the first to announce permanent work from home plans.
The upside of allowing employees a hybrid/fully remote work experience is the reduction in cost associated with smaller offices, or no office at all. If you do have an office, less supplies will be used.  And for employees, many commuters have saved at least $5,000 a year by working from home and avoiding commuting according to Business Insider.
The downside of requiring employees to come back to the workplace is the associated risk of losing much in demand workers. Thirty-nine percent of employees have said they’d consider quitting if their bosses weren’t flexible about them working from home, according to Business Insider. About 49% of those respondents were millennials and Gen Z workers, showing that remote work is going to be required in the future as the Baby Boomers and Generation Xers slowly start to retire.
Many employees are actually quitting the remote jobs they took during the pandemic in 2020 when told they now need to be in person at the office, according to Bloomberg Wealth. Forbes has stated that some of these remote employees have struggled with the isolation and loneliness if they lived alone or that many don’t have a work-from-home arrangements that are ideal.
While many companies are opting for a hybrid/fully remote option, there are some jobs which cannot be done remotely. It seems like having options for everyone is optimal. Whether it’s in person, hybrid, or fully remote, employees’ value being given a choice. Here at Admiral, we are currently allowing many in our office to take a hybrid approach since we are able to function and communicate well whether in the office or outside the office.