With society beginning to emerge from the throes of the Covid-19 pandemic, what can we expect from this new world of work, and why should personalisation and job crafting be incorporated into the restructuring process?
One thing is certainly clear - work as we’ve previously known it may be altered forever. The pandemic has demanded trust between organisations and employees - a trust which has yielded incredible business, as well as wellbeing, benefits.
"The increase in trust this global pandemic has required from leaders of their employees and the relinquishing of control has shown that if you trust your people, they will deliver more than you ever thought was humanly possible” Dr Vicki Elsey, Associate Professor of Occupational Psychology at Northumbria University, says.
Even before the pandemic, research showed that 83% of people would choose a job which offered flexible working over a job that didn’t [1]. Having been plunged into constant remote working during the Covid-19 crisis, more employees have found that they want the option to continue working flexibly, with the World Economic Forum finding that 98% of those surveyed want this opportunity to be available to them going forwards [2]. It seems as though an increasing number of organisations are reflecting and re-evaluating their previous approach to flexible working - research finding that over half of all organisations surveyed foresee their flexible working arrangements as expanding or increasing on a permanent basis post-pandemic [3].
““The increase in trust this global pandemic has required from leaders of their employees has shown that if you trust your people, they will deliver more than you ever thought was humanly possible””
In an interview with the BBC, Rachel Higham, Managing Director of IT for BT, highlights some of the productivity benefits they have seen from employees who have recently made the enforced switched to virtual working due to the pandemic. These include increases in the physical output of their coding engineers, and they have found that the quality of that work has risen too [4]. In a recent study conducted by the Institute for Employment Studies, many respondents reported increased productivity as one of the key benefits to working from home [5], and research conducted by the CIPD has found reported improvements in wellbeing as a consequence of flexible working [6].
Of course, only seeing the benefits of remote working would be a blinkered approach. There is a big difference between working from home as an emergency measure compared with deliberately working remotely in locations, and with all the equipment, that enable you to do your work effectively. Research shows that not everyone values or benefits from remote working in the same way, and many jobs can’t be performed virtually [7].
Whilst flexibility has often been thought of as relating to hours, one outcome of this great pandemic pilot study, is in organisations seeing and realising the benefits of trusting people to be flexible in how they perform, interact and think about their work. This unprecedented time can be thought of as presenting a lasting opportunity for work to be restructured and redesigned, with research showing that 49% of respondents felt that working from home has given them the opportunity to develop new and more effective ways of doing their job [5].
Jules Smith, Founder and Director of People Science, highlights the opportunities that the pandemic has presented for the redesigning of a more personalised people and work experience. “People are going to be contemplating the impact, meaning and purpose of their work, and there's a platform for job crafting to really make an impact in this area, particularly through purpose crafting”, Jules says. “I believe that a personalised employee experience is going to become more important than ever post-pandemic era”.
Time to trust rather than tether
Perhaps one potentially positive legacy of Covid-19 will be the benefits of allowing people to explore and experiment with new ways of working. Rather than tethering people to their jobs, we need to trust them to find, create and shape their jobs in ways that best serve them, their colleagues and the organisation.
References
1 International Workplace Group., (2019). Global research shows that flexible working is now a deal breaker in the war for talent. [online]. International Workplace Group. [Viewed 15 July 2020]. Available from: https://www.iwgplc.com/MediaCentre/PressRelease/flexible-working-is-now-a-deal-breaker-in-the-war-for-talent
2 Routley, N., (2020). 6 charts that show what employers and employees really think about remote working. [online]. World Economic Forum. [Viewed 15 July 2020]. Available from: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/06/coronavirus-covid19-remote-working-office-employees-employers/
3 Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp)., (2020). COVID-19 Response: Collaboration Overload. [online]. Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp). [Viewed 15 July 2020]. Available from: https://www.i4cp.com/file/4976/download
4 The Bottom Line., (2020). How we work now - lessons from lockdown. [podcast]. BBC Radio 4. [Accessed 17 July 2020]. Available from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000knj2
5 Mason, B., (2020). Is remote working really so bad? The benefits of working from home during Covid-19. [online]. Institute for Employment Studies. [Viewed 22 July 2020]. Available from: https://www.employment-studies.co.uk/news/remote-working-really-so-bad-benefits-working-home-during-covid-19
6 CIPD., (2020). Flexible working: the business case. [online]. CIPD. [Viewed 22 July 2020]. Available from: https://www.cipd.co.uk/Images/flexible-working-business-case_tcm18-52768.pdf
7 Turits, M., (2020). Why are some people better at working from home than others? [online]. BBC. [Viewed 22 July 2020]. Available from: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200506-why-are-some-people-better-at-working-from-home-than-others
