Flexibility Is Here To Stay

For years, research has indicated that the workforce would become generally more flexible, but the pandemic has accelerated this change quicker than any expert could have predicted.

With the pros and cons of remote working being argued for years now, the world’s largest work from home experiment has given us a clearer idea of what does and does not work for these arrangements. Business leaders have been hesitant to adopt any type of flexibility due to the misconception that it can decrease productivity. However, data reveals that it can improve productivity and the quality of work.

According to research from Oxford University and Citi, of the 483 occupations they studied, 113 of which employ 52% of the US workforce were able to be done remotely.

Additionally, University of Kent and University of Birmingham’s research, titled The Working from Home during COVID-19 Lockdown Project, found that 52% of parents and 66% of non-parents would want to continue working flexibly after the pandemic. Knowing this, it is apparent that flexibility will be key to all companies moving forward.

“Managers and employers are increasingly sensitive to the personal lives of their workers and how remote work fits into their wider lives,” said Sridhar Iyengar, Managing Director at workplace software company Zoho Europe. “Company culture really takes the human approach to how people are working and trying to fit work into their daily schedule, and at Zoho we have setup a helpline for employees to call, and a lot of problems people have come to us with have been common across the workforce.”