Majority of companies to let staff choose work model, says report

NEW DELHI: Majority of Indian companies, nearly 77%, are ready to give employees the option of choosing if they want to work from office or home, or in a hybrid set-up, according to recruitment firm Teamlease services.

The data is based on 300 organisations, ranging from startups and small & medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to large enterprises. According to the survey findings, even as 58.04% of organisations think 2022 is the year offices will become completely in-office, 76.78% of organizations said they will give their employees the preference to choose their work model.

As far as the state of workspaces goes, 36.61% of respondents claimed they had office space on lease pre-pandemic but moved to co-working spaces afterward, with equal number of organisations (36.92%) saying they had office space on lease pre-pandemic but moved to fully-remote work settings without an operational office.  “While 21.42% of organisations didn’t see any change in their workspace status quo, 5.05% said they intend to stay a virtual-only organisation for the foreseeable future,” it said.

The survey deep-dives into the challenges and finds out nearly 40.77% of respondents find employee performance management and productivity measurement as a significant challenge in virtual work settings followed by strategy implementation to motivate, engage, and retain staff(18.45%) and planning for office workspaces, according to the report.

The survey also points out that 50.29% of respondents agreed to increase their L&D (learning and development) budget by 15-25% in 2022 and mental health-related initiatives to increase by 10-20% for 46.42% of the participating firms.