The coronavirus pandemic forced many office-based workers to adopt a working from home regime and for many this has led to a beneficial work life balance. As the pandemic drew to a close many employers sought to change working practices to include both fully remote and hybrid work. Earlier this month Tesla were allegedly responsible for issuing an internal memo to office workers stating that “Remote work is no longer acceptable” and that “anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean *minimum*) of 40 hours per week or depart.’’ This quite abrasive and inflexible approach directed to talent is quite possibly out of date in the current work environment. However, there may be good business reasons why an employer would insist on at least some physical attendance in an office.
Commercial Business Real estate.
One of the most costly expenses for businesses (after salaries) is office space and if based in a prime location can be extremely high. Some relief from landlords and discounted property tax (rates) was available during the pandemic but this has now ended. This makes it increasingly challenging for any business with office space to justify a physical presence that largely remains empty. In some cases, this is leading to an insistence that office-based workers return to the office. Google has invested heavily in their office space to create pleasant working environments and making it conducive to team working. They have also insisted that office workers return to their physical work space.
Supervision and Monitoring.
It may be that senior managers prefer to have staff physically present so that they can adequately supervise and monitor junior talent. This is probably the case in more traditional organisations and perhaps more pervasive among the older generations. Much of this attitude stems from a feeling of being unable to trust junior talent to perform their duties without constant supervision. This type of micromanagement is largely absent from the modern business environment but still persists in developing counties.
Changing Working Practices.
With advances in technology driven in part by digital tech start-ups the practice of remote working was already common before the pandemic. Remote working became an essential part of maintaining business during the pandemic and office-based workers have adopted well to performing their work at home. In post-pandemic times many organisations have adopted hybrid working practices where a physical presence is required just several days a week for example. Employers now see the benefits of a work life balance for their employees who have reduced stress levels and yet can maintain or even improve their levels of productivity. Organisations are now more interested in talent achievements than hours worked monitored by clocking in and out.
As working practices and attitudes change over time employers may accept that talent can work from wherever they feel most productive. The move towards more hybrid working will probably become the norm as organisations give up their expensive office spaces and the antiquated working practices fade away. There are however benefits in a physical presence for office staff when there are team events and business critical meetings although this may only require limited physical office space. These changes are also impacting on the recruitment of talent as applicants are looking for employers who can offer remote working options and are seen as essential in sectors like digital tech environments.
One such company who are game changing the face of recruitment by providing a robust process to deliver more efficient recruitment without bias is Hire Digital. A start-up recruitment company with a global presence that has invested heavily in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to manage the digital tech recruitment and talent management process. Their ATS software platforms give digital talent recruiters a strict criterion for posting job adverts and descriptions and their AI works in such a way that it generates a much smaller more targeted candidate list by using up to 40,000 attributes. They key to this is efficiency, recruiters spend less time generating job advertisements and trawling through hundreds of CV’s to get their shortlist, Hire Digital tech can rapidly access up to 1bn talent globally.
Hire Digital is an AI technology with a human touch that is completely revolutionising the recruitment and selection process. It’s two times faster, 50 % cheaper and ten times more accurate than traditional hiring tech. To find out more speak to Robin Brohl at Hire Digital he is a real person and would love to engage with you and help you streamline your recruitment processes.
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