Across the country — and indeed, around the world — millions of businesses large and small were forced to pivot their operations to account for the novel coronavirus pandemic. Often, that meant changing remote work policies to be more flexible, and potentially reimagining the entire processes that go into your organizational success.
Unfortunately, it seems that many of the prevalent issues seen in the past several months are going to linger over the wider world for some time to come, and as such, your company may need to continue to account for them in all normal processes. An estimate from Global Workplace Analytics shows that almost 3 in 5 workers across the U.S. have a job that can be done remotely for at least some of the time. Moreover, data suggests that by the end of 2021, up to 30% of people in the American workforce will still be working from home more than one day per week.
In fact, 80% of workers actually want to work from home more often, and more than 1 in 3 say they would actually take a pay cut to do it. As such, this kind of flexibility isn't just a necessity for health reasons — it's also about worker satisfaction.
So what else do you need to know? The following points of discussion could help you craft a better plan going forward:
Child care could be a concern
A number of major companies have, in recent months, become more proactive about providing child care options for employees working from home, according to CNBC. After all, a family with three kids who are all remote-learning (because in-person schooling isn't available in numerous states) can't be expected to evenly divide time between work and making sure those youngsters are on top of their work. As such, you may need to build more flexibility into parents' schedules, or even give them paths to better child care, to account for unexpected issues with their kids.
Setting up for success
CNBC further explained that many workers aren't going to be quite as productive at home because they may not have all the equipment or the fast networks your in-office work relies on. Giving them the resources they need to get the job done from home, including providing work-only computers, is a must.
A need for understanding
Certainly, few companies are going to be completely happy with an all-remote future for work in 2021, but as yet it seems like that is the hand we've all been dealt. As such, everyone will need to be able to roll with the punches and pick up the slack for one another if the situation demands it, no matter what you have planned for the year ahead.
Whether you're just looking to hire for some generalized positions in the last two months of 2020 and into 2021, or you need an HR professional to oversee the path to a reimagined future of work, YES Partners can help you find all the right candidates. To see some of the roles that we have already successfully placed, click here.
Finding people is easy, but finding the RIGHT people is not. YES Partners helps companies FIND the right people for all company functions, across many industries.
