95% of businesses expect their staff to move to a hybrid working model say Trowers' 'Future of Work' employment team.
International law firm Trowers & Hamlins' employment and pensions team has undertaken research as part of its 'Future of Work' agility series, attended by 250 HR directors and business leaders across the country. The live Q&A panel webinar asked participants about on the ground trends and opinions around agility in the workplace during and after the pandemic.
The participants represented businesses from a wide selection of sectors including; professional services, public sector organisations, retail and charity. The key findings from the poll where that:
- nearly 95% said they expect to see the majority of their staff move to a hybrid working model;
- 78% confirmed that they are either reducing office space or redesigning their offices to facilitate collaboration and flexibility and;
- an additional 5% were expecting full time home working for 50% of staff.
The session also took a deeper look at the inclusivity and diversity impact of agile working and explored how to manage a workforce across multiple locations, whether in the office, at home or elsewhere.
Emma Burrows, partner and head of employment at Trowers, who is leading on the team's agility series said:
"With the passage of time the flexibility that the pandemic has afforded employees will be incredibly difficult to reverse. Many of the arguments against agile working are now redundant and organisations are already seeing their recruitment reach widen to include people with disabilities and other needs who would ordinarily have been frozen out of the recruitment process.
Agile working offers a great opportunity for employers to widen their recruitment pool. It is vital that employers keep listening to their staff and adapt accordingly. We can clearly see here that the future for the workplace is hybrid."
The 'Future of Work' series is led by Emma Burrows and Nicola Ihnatowicz from the employment and pensions team at Trowers, who were joined on this panel by David Blackburn, Chief People Officer of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, and HR Director of the Year at the Personnel Today Awards 2020 and Paul Allsopp, former Head of BT Agile Working Programme and currently Managing Director of The Agile Organisation, to continue the conversation on the realities of agile working.
David Blackburn commented:
"True agile working creates an opportunity for greater inclusivity and will unlock an inclusive environment where everyone succeeds. Leaders have to be more emotionally intelligent by asking the questions and empathetically listening to their employees. The job of employers is to create opportunity and space for conversations to happen, and technology has enabled that"
Paul Allsopp said:
"Work is an activity, not a place! Belonging is about creating communities which may or may not be in one place. Organisations should be thinking about screens and not desks which have become the common currency in offices over the years. Agile working should be tailored to the individual and if done well it will widen the talent pool and create a more diversified workforce."
A recorded webinar discussion highlighting these key themes and statistics can be found here.
