Will you return to work tomorrow? That’s the question we posed to our network. We were curious to learn what our candidates think about the future of work and how they would like to organize their work in the near future.
Unsurprisingly, after more than a year of remote work, a large number of respondents wish to continue a hybrid rhythm between remote and office work. 85% of them want to split their work time between the office and working from home, and 10% prefer full-time remote work. But why such enthusiasm for this new rhythm that has been in place for a year?
PROFESSIONAL AND PERSONAL BALANCE
Many of our candidates explained to us that this rhythm allowed for a better balance between professional and personal life. However, today it would be more accurate to speak of balance between four fundamental pillars: Work, Fun, Love, and Health. It’s up to each person to define their priorities and find the right balance between work, family, and personal time. Once you’ve struck the right balance, self-fulfillment and success in all your endeavors, whether personal or professional, can only improve.
UNCONSCIOUS FEAR
We also detect a form of anxiety about returning to “normal life”. Indeed, after a year of a pace that we organize ourselves, mixing personal and professional time, it seems difficult to envision and return to the work schedule that existed before Covid. The fear, likely an unconscious phenomenon, of going back to standard 8am-7pm hours with a defined lunch break, of facing daily commutes again, endless meetings… Moreover, many of our candidates said they felt abandoned and forgotten by their manager during this remote work period. We can therefore also imagine that it’s complicated to return to the office when you felt alone during the crisis. There’s an entire trust-building process that needs to be recreated.
RETURN TO SOCIAL LIFE
The 85% of candidates who wish to opt for a hybrid rhythm acknowledge that their main motivation for returning to the office is reconnecting with their colleagues. The physical office in the company is therefore no longer a workplace per se, but rather a place for socialization. This raises once again the question of reorganizing office spaces in companies to allow for a mix of remote work and employee presence.
DOWNTIME FOR EFFICIENCY
Another important phenomenon to note is that remote work has allowed everyone to organize their own schedule and, most importantly, to grant themselves “slack-time”. These moments, staring into space with your coffee, which might sometimes seem out of place at the office, but which proved necessary for our remote work to function well. Very personal moments that ultimately turned out to be positive and allowed us to step back from our work, solve problems, and thus be more productive. After all, no one knows better than ourselves how we work and when we’re most productive. If a full return to the office is considered, it seems essential that companies accept not controlling every minute of their employees’ time. Perhaps companies should even encourage their employees to take these downtime moments at the office in order to gain efficiency.
We know that the world of work will certainly never be quite the same again. Every company will need to demonstrate open-mindedness and innovation to allow their employees to regain the balance they need following this particular year. As for which organizations will prove sustainable and which will be ephemeral, only time will tell.
