Bengaluru: Hybrid model is future of workplace, say experts

BENGALURU: More than a year after work from home (WFH) took off, some experts believe that the pre-Covid office model may be on the way out and a hybrid system will be the future of workplaces. They say this system will be agile, experimental and empathetic, supporting remote arrangements, and only a few employees will be physically required in the office on select days.
The trends were discussed during a webinar, ‘The future of work – Can it ever be business as usual?’, organised by the Bangalore International Centre (BIC) recently.
Indraneel Banerjee, partner, McKinsey & Company (India), said that plans for a future workplace were still conjecture and would play out in a couple of quarters. “When we ran surveys, we found that on average, productivity has worked well in a remote setting. We have also realised that a significant number of roles across industries can be done remotely. Of course, candidates in roles that need collaboration, data and IP security will be required to return to the office,” he said.
He added that 56 per cent of companies saw the future as hybrid and while 75 per cent of employees agreed with it. “In fact, 29 per cent of employees said that they would move out if the majority of the work moved to the office,” he said.
Ajay Vij, MD of Geographic Services, Accenture India, said that a workplace was no longer a physical space but a mental place. To adopt a hybrid setting, the question that industries need to address is who will come to the office and when. “They have to figure out who will come to the office, how often and what will be their purpose. In future, there may be even something between homes and offices, like a co-working space where people would need a secluded space to take a call,” he said. “I sometimes joke with my developer friends that every large apartment must now have a 50-seater office space within their clubhouse.”
Krish Shankar, group head, HRD, Infosys, said that hybrid workplaces would open up part-time opportunities, and HR policies would have to evolve with this.
But the transition to a hybrid model may not be a simple one. It will have to address the challenges of burnout, blurred work-life boundaries and mental and gender issues. Anjali Varma, an HR consultant, said that 2020 was the year of burnouts and organisations had started taking employee well-being seriously.
Shankar said that working caregivers were facing extra pressure, with the digital intensity of jobs going up and hours of relaxation decreasing. “Earlier, people got home by 6 or 7.30pm, switched off their work mode and relaxed. But now, that boundary has gone,” he said. “Organisations must give people breaks, time to address things at home, reignite the purpose behind their work and push them to increase their social networks.”
Though WFH was seen to be women-friendly initially, the number of women who fell off work scenes last year was seven times more than that of men, Anjali said.
Banerjee said that employees wanted a more agile workplace with a degree of flexibility and self-reporting. He added that 44 per cent of the 5,000 people surveyed were concerned that returning to the workplace might affect their mental health.